Game makers for instant play casinos are discovering that free and low-cost Vegas online casino gaming apps are a great marketing opportunity. Worldwide, mobile gaming is the top-grossing gaming segment and game apps for virtual casino instant play is the most popular type of mobile app.
App-makers are discovering that it’s more profitable to monetize their apps for marketing purposes than to charge people for their use which means that these days, gamers are enjoying more free gaming apps than ever.
Popularity
Figures are not yet available for 2022 but at the end of 2021, the global mobile gaming market size was valued at $97.81 billion. There are more than 3 billion active mobile gamers worldwide with almost half of them in India. The number is expected to continue to rise and app makers are learning how to better monetize free-to-play games.
Cloud gaming services are having a significant impact and it’s estimated that by 2028, over half of all mobile gamers will be using cloud gaming services. The trend is augmented by the rise of 5G technology which offers higher speeds and lower latency than 4G networks, rising global income levels, growth of the Chinese gaming market, increased smartphone penetration around the world and better Internet access in almost every region.
As more people own smartphones, the number of people playing mobile games increases as well. Mobile gamers see that they have the consumer power to demand more challenging and engaging games that have good gameplay and graphics. Social media gives users the ability to work together to encourage developers to provide better content.
All of these factors are combining to lead to an increase in investment in the mobile gaming industry and mobile games app makers are paying attention.
Marketing
Games are the most popular type of app in both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. That means that it’s often more economically feasible to target consumers with relevant ads by providing free game apps rather than having users pay for the games.
That’s the conclusion that many gaming app makers are coming to as they find that reaching paying users is increasingly more difficult. Instead, they are trying to improve the user experience as they attempt to get relevant marketing content to the right audiences.
Potential
In today’s gaming environment, developers can offer alternative revenue models by making games more accessible. Now, in a departure from the traditional pay-to-play model, they are promoting their games apps as free-to-play.
By allowing players to access mobile games for free, developers believe that in the long run, they’ll make more money through the players’ in-app purchases as well as from the ads that appear in the games which allow users to make other game purchases. Developers can thus monetize their apps.
The types of free-to-play games vary. Most are hypercasual games which are easy to use and convenient. According to the 2021 data from Sensor Tower, such games accounted for nearly one-third of additional purchases. When these audiences are presented with the right type of material, they provide significant revenue to the app developers.
Social Games
Increasing numbers of gamers are linking their social media accounts to the mobile games that they like to play. For many players, this is a strategy of social interaction via gaming. It also gives them a new dimension to the way that they experience the mobile gaming apps as they become part of a community of people with whom they can engage via interactive in-game elements.
For app developers, such social gaming means that there are new marketing strategy challenges and opportunities. Marketing professionals watch to see how gamers share their gaming experiences, trade in-game content, track friends’ progress and more.
A number of marketers are maximizing this trend by creating communities where users share their game achievements via posts about their markers of success, trophies, scores, etc. They encourage users to share content including in-game videos or screenshots, provide tech support and feedback and, ultimately, drive traffic back towards their marketing channels where users will be exposed to promotional material.
Purchase Data
App developers are working hard on figuring out how to optimize the opportunities that they are being offered. They need to capitalize on this new strategy by ensuring that they are delivering engaging, relevant ads in a way that the users will be most receptive to the information.
One of the biggest tools in their arsenal is the purchase behavior targeting advertising strategy which is already in use on platforms like Facebook. With purchase behavior targeting ads at users who are most likely to buy based on purchases that they’ve already made.
To run a successful purchase behavior targeting campaign, advertisers need only acquire data that are needed to run effective ads so they aren’t dependent on the collection of personal information – information that users are more and more reluctant to share.
The marketers need to identify high lifetime value (LTV) users because they are most likely to convert. This means that users enjoy a better experience, don’t feel that their privacy is being invaded and feel that they’re receiving value for their time and money.
The mobile gaming market is growing at a CARG (compounded annual rate of growth) of over 11%. To sustain this growth, app makers need to ensure that players have a safe, fair and positive experience.
