For nearly three decades, marketers celebrated impressive mobile gaming growth that created an industry bigger than Hollywood and music combined. But the latest data from mobile data analytics provider data.ai, in partnership with research firm IDC, shows this meteoric growth has taken the first hit since the advent of the app stores. It’s a surprising slump that marks a new chapter in the industry and pressures gaming companies to recalibrate how they generate more value from players who don’t pay.
Driving the player loyalty and longer lifetime value (LTV) that are essential to profitable growth represent the “biggest challenge marketers face,” Robert Garfinkle— a growth consultant who has worked on hundreds of growth campaigns and held positions at major mobile gaming companies, including Nexon M, Netmarble and Gameloft —told me during a . [Disclosure: The webinar was a paid engagement sponsored by Adikteev, which retains my services as a host and moderator.]
“It’s the end of the Wild West era in the apps industry where some level of inefficiency was acceptable,” he explains. Splashing the cash on expensive player acquisition and prioritizing short-term wins over longer-term retention worked as long as companies and their investors had the appetite for risk. Today, the market is a “less forgiving environment.”
Read the full article on Forbes.