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Since the launch of the App Store in 2008, the mobile game market has entered a stage of rapid growth. During this period, the success of mobile games has also set an example for other application businesses to achieve strong and sustainable revenue, which has valuable reference significance. For example, many apps that were once monetized on a paid subscription model or through in-screen ads, native ads, and banner ads are beginning to incorporate mobile monetization elements in order to boost revenue and achieve large-scale growth.

Growth experts from Unity share best practices for building growth loops in mobile games and lessons non-gaming apps can learn from below.

I. Marketing Best Practices

(i) Enriching customer channels

In addition to traditional social and search acquisition channels, expanding more acquisition channels can help reduce acquisition costs and improve effectiveness. By deploying multiple acquisition channels, developers can reach a broader audience while increasing the resilience of their business and growth models. For example, laying out SDK networks for acquisition may increase costs compared to social channels, but if managed properly, SDK networks can help advertisers acquire high-quality new users. Other popular channels include advertising in the App Store through Apple Search Ads and displaying pre-installed ads through partnerships with mobile device manufacturers and operators.

(2) Optimizing creative strategies

In today's highly automated app acquisition, creativity has become one of the important levers for marketers. According to Unity data, the average monthly number of creative material tests for a mobile game can reach hundreds. If developers want to test enough material to find the one that appeals most to users, then the scale and speed of creative material production is important. Many mobile games use tools to accelerate creative production and automate material testing and optimization under very detailed standards.

II. Advertising monetization best practices

(i) Diversified sources of income

Unity data shows that only 2-7% of users who download mobile games become paying users, and 75% of these paying users complete the payment conversion within 25 days. In order to capture revenue from the rest of the users, the mobile game industry has adopted a refined advertising monetization strategy, which includes segmenting players and providing personalized advertising experiences based on their game participation.

For non-game apps, you can also analyze the conversion data of users to understand the time it takes for users to complete their first purchase. Once the conversion peak is over, developers can consider monetizing by serving ads to non-paying users. In addition, by analyzing and testing multiple ad units, especially those that are not commonly used in apps, developers can find ad units that can be cleverly monetized to non-paying users without affecting their in-purchase potential.

(ii) Increase user retention and engagement through incentivized video advertising

People often misunderstand that advertising damages the user experience and leads to churn. However, through the mobile game industry's practice, the industry has found that fine-grained implementation of certain advertising formats can actually improve user Retention rate, increase session length, and encourage users to log in more frequently. Among them, user-triggered advertising units, such as incentive video advertisements, become an important advertising form to achieve this goal by allowing users to actively choose to watch videos to obtain in-app rewards. Even for apps without virtual currency, there are many ways to create small rewards from existing content to generate revenue by incentivizing video ads.

Incentive video ads are designed to allow users to earn points by viewing ads and use those points to unlock rewards. To achieve this goal, developers need to design a complete virtual economy system that includes points or in-game currency. Users can use these currencies to purchase a variety of bonus content.

In games, the virtual economy is primarily driven by player demand for more functional or dress-up content; for non-game applications, functional content is the primary motivator. Therefore, in order to create a virtual economy, developers need to segment paid content of a functional nature and determine what content users are likely to pay for.

In the case of music apps, for example, users can get a free ad skip by watching two motivational videos, while for dating apps, they can be motivated by video ads to allow users to view people who "like" their profiles. Incentive video ads can not only increase revenue for apps, but can also be used as free trials for paid content, thereby promoting subscription services.

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