Marketing your mobile game is an essential part of increasing the number of users who use your app, so it’s vital you get it right. And when your game is not an advergame, this advertising becomes all the more important.
But how do you market a mobile game? What is the best form of advertising to use? And lastly, are there any additional, less widely used channels to advertise a mobile game?
Let’s take a look.
Quick Links
- Why do you need to market a mobile game?
- How to market your mobile game
- What’s the best way to advertise a mobile game?
- Frequently asked questions
Why do you need to market a mobile game?
The main reason you need to market your mobile game is to attract users and downloads. The cruel reality of mobile games is that most will never get much traffic.
Evidence of this comes from bestsmartphone.games, who released a mobile game on the iOS App Store with no marketing. The result was just 53 downloads, coming through the App Store search function.
So yes, marketing your mobile game is very important if you want to get a good number of users actually playing your game.
As well, for your mobile game to get noticed in the App Store, it needs to rank well.
And according to Apptopia, there are three main components that go into getting a higher ranking in the App Store:
- Quantity of new users added
- App usage (how long users are spending on your game and how often they’re playing it)
- Velocity of downloads
All three of these components require a significant number of users to have downloaded your game, which requires marketing to be able to achieve.
How to market your mobile game
When looking at how to market your mobile game, you’ll come across a lot of different advertising channels and ad types to choose from.
The best way is certainly through digital advertising, without question.
Not only is your mobile game a digital product, but digital advertising has some fundamental advantages over traditional advertising:
- Greater targeting and personalization: Digital advertising allows for much more precise targeting and personalization of ads, which increase their effectiveness and ultimately your ROI. To give an example, digital ads can be targeted based on things like demographic information, interests, and behaviors, all of which can’t be done effectively with traditional advertising.
- Real-time feedback: Digital advertising offers real-time tracking and reporting, which allows you to see how your ads are performing and make changes in real-time to get the best out of your campaigns. This is simply not possible with traditional advertising methods.
- Lower cost: On the whole, digital advertising is significantly cheaper than traditional advertising. This is due to a combination of factors, such as the ability to target ads more precisely and the lower cost of creating and distributing digital ads – you can do it with as little as $5 per day!
What’s the best way to advertise a mobile game?
Let’s take a look at some of the best ad formats to advertise your mobile game, followed by some additional advertising channels you can try to stand out.
App install ads
We discuss a range of app install ads from a number of platforms in our How to advertise a mobile game article here.
The most effective platforms to run app install ads on are Google (Google Search, the Google Display Network, and the Google Play Store), YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
In addition, data from Statista shows that global spend on app install ads will reach almost $120 billion in 2022, growing from just over $27 billion in 2017.
That exceptional growth is testament to the fact that app install ads work extremely well.
In short, app install ads can be an effective way to both promote your mobile game and drive app installations.
To make your app install ads as effective as possible, focus on creating attractive visuals, having a clear call to action, and targeting the right audience.
Finally, choose the platform that is best suited for your ads, and consider testing different ad formats and targeting options to find what works best – don’t just stick with the first platform you try!
Display ads
Display advertising is a great way to promote your mobile game, and it comes with a huge option of available targetings, not least of which the powerful contextual targeting options, which we talk about in detail here.
With display ads, you can’t link directly to an app store listing, unless you use the app install ads in the previous section. So, you’d be best off building a custom landing page promoting your app, which contains a link to your mobile game’s app store listing.
A custom landing page however gives you more opportunity to convince potential users to download your game, and you can use it as a highly effective conversion funnel.
One of the main advantages of using display ads to promote a mobile game is that they can be highly targeted. By using data such as a user’s browsing history and interests (known collectively as behavioral targeting, which we talk about in detail here), and location, display ads can be shown only to users who are likely to be interested in your game.
This can help increase the effectiveness of the ads, as they will be seen by users who are more likely to take action and download the game.
Lastly, display can be relatively inexpensive, especially compared to other forms of advertising such as TV or print ads. This makes them a good option for smaller game developers who may not have a large marketing budget.
To give you an idea of just how cheap they can be, data from WordStream suggests the average CPC on the Google Display Network (GDN) is just $0.63.
Video ads
Compared to display ads, video ads can be a lot more engaging, using motion, sound, and other multimedia elements to create a more immersive and compelling experience.
This can make them more effective at capturing users’ attention and convincing them to take action, in the form of downloading your game.
As well, video ads have access to the same targeting options as display advertising does, which are highly effective at reaching the right people at the right time.
You should consider however that there are also some drawbacks to using video ads to promote a mobile game.
One of the biggest challenges is that they can be expensive to produce, especially if you want to create high-quality videos that are effective at capturing users’ attention.
This can make video ads a less attractive option if you have a limited marketing budget.
Additional advertising channels
As well as the main three ad formats above, there are also some alternative advertising channels you can look into. These may or may not be effective for advertising mobile games, but it could be worth experimenting to see if any of them work well for you.
Digital OOH
DOOH, or digital out-of-home advertising, is a type of advertising that uses digital displays, such as billboards and kiosks, to advertise to people while they’re out and about.
In recent years, the use of DOOH ads has grown significantly, and now may be the time to try mobile game advertising through it.
There are several reasons to think that DOOH ads may be a good way to promote mobile games.
First and foremost, DOOH ads are highly visible and can reach a large number of people in a short amount of time. For example, a billboard advertising a mobile game can be seen by thousands of people driving or walking by, making it an effective way to get the word out about your game.
And it’s this getting the word out that will inevitably drive traffic to your game, making this (in theory) a highly effective form of advertising for your mobile game.
If you think about it, DOOH billboards are often located in high-traffic areas like shopping malls, airports, and public squares. This means that, with the high number of people who would potentially see your ad, a proportion of those are likely avid mobile game users.
Another reason why DOOH ads could be effective for promoting your mobile game is that they are often interactive. Many DOOH ads have QR codes or other types of interactive elements, that can be used to let people immediately download your game or visit its app store listing to learn more about it.
This interactivity can be particularly effective for mobile games, as people can try the game out for themselves right away, which can help increase its popularity.
Connected TV
With the rise of streaming services, more and more people are watching TV through CTVs, making CTV ads an increasingly popular way to promote products and services.
First, it’s important to note that CTV ads are highly targeted. Because CTV ads are delivered over the internet, advertisers can use data about the viewer’s interests (viewing behavior) and demographics to only show them ads that are relevant to them.
This means that CTV ads can be used to reach people that are likely to be interested in mobile games, making it a more effective way to promote your game.
As well, it’s becoming more and more likely that people are already on their mobile phones while watching TV, making CTV ads a great time to advertise something that can be downloaded on a user’s smartphone.
In fact, according to Digital Turbine, 65% of internet users aged 35-44 said they used their mobile phones often while watching television.
Audio ads
Audio ads, like those you hear on Spotify’s free ad-supported tier, can be another great way to get the word out about your mobile game.
The main selling point of audio ads are that you can reach users where other advertising channels can’t, such as when the listener is driving or washing up the dishes – basically, whenever they are not directly looking at their phone screen.
This gives you an advantage, as you can get the idea of your mobile game playing on a user’s mind in the middle of a long drive. And with a lack of distractions while driving, this is arguably the perfect time you want to be reaching these users.
In addition, audio ads can be both engaging and attention-grabbing.
A well-made audio ad can use music, sound effects, and a voiceover to create a compelling and memorable ad for the listener.
As well, audio tend to be relatively inexpensive to produce – in many cases, you can create an audio ad using just a smartphone and some basic editing software.
Frequently asked questions
How many mobile games make money?
Very few. It is estimated that for every successful mobile game, there are thousands that make no revenue at all.
This is due to the sheer volume of mobile games now available for download, which leads to fierce competition. According to Statista, as of October 2022 there are over 1 million games available on the Apple App Store.
Is it profitable to make mobile games?
It can be very profitable to make mobile games, especially hypercasual games that don’t cost a lot to develop, and can be developed by a single person in some instances. We have a whole article about hypercasual games here.
On the flip side, , mobile game development is highly competitive, and it can be difficult to predict which games will be successful. Making a mobile game profitable requires careful planning and execution, and tends to need a large marketing budget too.
In short, whether or not it is profitable to make mobile games depends on a variety of factors, including the type of game, the target audience, the marketing strategy, and the business model. The mobile gaming market is huge and growing, and it offers a variety of monetization options to make profitable mobile game development a possibility.