


To kick off this new, bi-weekly series we compare the performance of two popular Casual Games: The Android versions of Homescapes from Playrixand Toy Blast from Peak Games To help you make the match, we deep dive into mobile ad intelligence data to suggest surprising reasons why some apps are winning, and others are missing the mark. In an age where engagement trumps – well – everything, the extra work to align mobile ad creatives with audiences is sure to pay dividends. But you also have to monitor the wider landscape, paying attention to how market leaders (and your leading competitors) are advertising to their users. To hit your target, you have to build a smart advertising strategy built on a deep understanding of your audience.

It’s a highly competitive space where missing a step on a campaign can mean the difference between success and failure. Their popularity-a genre that appeals to all types of users–can be short-lived if marketers fail to make a connection that lasts. The bad news: Casual games are notoriously the mayflies of the App Economy. In March 2017 Casual was *the* genre that had a massive 57.7% reach among Android users worldwide. The good news: Research from Shared2You and reported by Statista shows Casual games are indeed on the rise, both in numbers and popularity. Attention to mobile ad creatives and strategies that harness formats, such as video and playables, allow app marketers to scale advertising reach and engagement. As Misha Katkoff, Director of Product Management at Rovio and the founder of gaming blog Deconstructor of Fun, put in a recent interview with IronSource, the category is “soaring,” powered by new approaches that combine mid-core gaming features and mechanics to deepen gameplay and user engagement.īut companies haven’t just cracked the code on ways to make their games easy to start and to play for longer. Gaming still accounts for the lion’s share of app revenues worldwide, but casual games, specifically puzzle games, are the stand-out genre where we will continue to see the most growth and innovation.
