In this 알바구인 article, we are going to take a look at average revenues of a mobile game released in 2021, and do some of our math on different types of releases. In this tutorial, we are going to look at the mobile game landscape, the various revenue models for publishers, different types of mobile game ads, and how they all work.
By understanding different revenue models, advertising formats, and best practices, you will be able to maximize revenue from advertising on mobile games. Next, we are going to outline a few best practices for publishers looking to utilize advertising within games as a revenue model. When developing ad revenue strategies, it is important to consider both game developers needs as well as advertisers.
Advertisers pay for the appearance of their ads within a mobile game, while the publishers of the mobile game earn part of the advertising revenue. In-game ads may also be used by mobile game publishers to improve user retention of mobile games themselves. Show means by creating freemium mobile games that feature in-game ads, mobile game developers can reach a larger number of players.
The more devices that you are able to play games on, the more potential revenue you will generate through ads on your mobile games. The more downloads and users your game has, the more revenue it could potentially bring in, particularly when players known as Wales are taken into consideration. Do not forget the biggest love in the mobile game industry, WALES, who contribute around 50% to the games revenue, despite being only about 1% of its players.
While premium titles may succeed, the lions share of the mobile revenue is made from micro transactions, as mobile players mentality tends toward lower-demand, higher-frequency interactions with the games that they like coming back for. People download games that are very polished now in app stores, and even though most are inexpensive to purchase, or are often free, publishers earn significant revenues through in-app purchases. Entertainment and utility apps generate more revenue on iPhone than games, at $6.70 and $9.50 per user, respectively.
The average smartphone led to $9 of monthly spending in free games, as players purchased in-app purchases for upgrades, power-ups, speed-ups, other benefits, and a few cosmetic items. The average game, with a good monetisation strategy and a good retention rate, may make about $61.07 per user (over a lifetime). The average mobile game with a good freemium monetisation model, which has fewer than 50k downloads, can expect to make about $1 per 4 users that they have, which results in about $12500 of revenue.
This brings us up to $61.07 revenue per active user, and multiplying that by 9000 leads to a total revenue/average game of $549630. We took the average 36 000 downloads/game from Google Play and multiplied it by.25, we ended up at 9000 life time users for the game.
Or to put it another way, for each user that we get in a game, if we can get them to play it a few times per day over the course of seven days, we will earn $0.1 in revenue. For instance, on my projections, with an estimated DAU of 11K users, 2.5% spend conversion, and $15 median spend, the game I am building might potentially generate $4K/day, or $2.2M in revenue over the lifecycle. For example, if my game gets 150K installs within the first 30 days, and has a D30 retention rate of 8%, then I project that it would average a daily DAU of 12K players.
If you know your DAUs and DARPU, you can work out a rough projection for gross revenue by multiplying these with the total days of your games lifespan. DARPU stands for daily average revenue per user, which represents the average revenue that your game brings in each day divided among all players.
The bulk of your games revenue will be derived from smartphone games (43%), with 9% coming from tablet games. According to the gaming revenue forecasts from Newzoo, total gaming revenue is expected to reach $174 billion by 2021, with mobile gaming accounting for 52% of revenue. The $120 billion is four times as much as mobile games were worth in 2014, representing a revenue increase of 16 times faster than PC/Mac games and home console games.
Before getting into the juicy pay details that you are hungry for, we have to take a look at where the game industry makes all of its billions. For the purposes of this article, we are going to be relying on Glassdoor for our estimated salaries at positions within the games design industry.
We will be looking at average game developers salaries for entry-level, senior, senior manager, and lead engineering positions. The average game developer salary for senior and lead developers is $127,778 and $131,464 annually. The average entry-level game developer salary is $81,803 per year, making it one of the best-paying entry-level software developer jobs in the world.
The only way to accelerate this into senior game developer is by starting your own studio (which is doable, if that is what you are interested in!). As the numbers show, Game Designers and Game Developers can earn quite decent salaries. If you are developing for Mobile, a better way to hedge your bets is by building an F2P (Free-to-Play) title using a SAS (Software-as-a-Service) model.
No matter what app store you are using — like Google Play or the Apple App Store — there are several different mobile game monetization models that a game developer can choose when it comes to mobile games. Mobile games advertising revenue refers to revenue generated through advertising within a game, like rewards ads, OfferWalls, Interstitials, and Playable Ads, as opposed to within-app purchases, as part of your apps monetization strategy. Apples official numbers may be misleading, because not all of its 700-plus apps are games, and many apps that are not games bring in much more revenue than an average $9.