2022 is a year when the global mobile game industry enters a downward cycle, and various market research institutions have generally made negative growth predictions for the global mobile game market revenue in 2022.
AppGrowing's data monitoring of the overseas mobile advertising market also found that the proportion of mobile game advertisers in 2022 fell year-on-year, reflecting the contraction of the global mobile game industry.
Despite this, more and more Chinese mobile game manufacturers are still choosing to release their products overseas as an important means to fill the domestic shortfall.
In order to help practitioners in the mobile game industry have a more comprehensive understanding of the changes in the global mobile game market, AppGrowing released the "2022 Mobile Game Overseas Buying White Paper", interpreting the mobile game overseas marketing situation in 2022 from the aspects of market trends, key categories, and head cases, and specially invited independent overseas consortiums, Adjust, AppLovin, Chartboost, OpenMediation, Game Teahouse, Counting Technology, and Rosky to share industry views from different angles. Discuss new market trends together.
The following is a summary of the content of the white paper, and the method of obtaining the white paper is attached at the end of the article.
In the overseas mobile app advertising market throughout 2022, the proportion of mobile game advertisers has remained at around 45.0%. Among them, the first half of the year fell by about 4.2% month-on-month, down about 2% year-on-year, and although there was a 0.2% increase month-on-month in the second half of the year, it still fell by 4% year-on-year.
This suggests that most mobile game advertisers began to tighten their product purchases in early 2022, and this strategy continued into the second half of the year.
After experiencing the rapid growth brought about by the epidemic, the global mobile game market has seen a correction momentum in 2022, and mobile game manufacturers have shown a more cautious attitude towards the launch of new products and advertising marketing.
In terms of category, casual mobile games accounted for 20.8% of the total number of overseas advertising mobile games. Puzzle mobile games also performed strongly, accounting for 12.9% of the total, ranking second out of 19 game categories.
The representative categories of medium and heavy products, role-playing and strategy, are in the middle of the ranking, accounting for 5.8% and 4.2% respectively.
Comparing the proportion of advertising volume in various mobile game categories in 2022 and 2021, light games showed a clear upward trend, while casual and puzzle solving were the only two categories with an increase of more than 2%. The category with the highest decline was role-playing, with a 4.7% year-over-year decrease in ad volume.
Another category to watch is desktop, where the share of ad volume in this light category decreased by 3% year-over-year. The main reason is that last year's popular coloring games have declined in popularity this year, and the advertising volume of related products has dropped significantly.
Compared with the proportion of mobile game advertising volume in major global markets in 2022 and 2021, emerging markets show a more obvious growth trend. Latin America grew by 6.4% to become the market with the highest year-over-year growth in mobile game advertising volume in 2022. This was followed by the African market, which rose by about 4.5%.
Among the regions where the proportion of advertising volume decreased year-on-year, Eastern Europe was mainly affected by the war, and the proportion of advertising volume fell sharply. The share of advertising volume in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan decreased by 4.3%, while Southeast Asia and North America decreased by 1.7% and 1.8% respectively.
As the growth rate of the global mobile game market slows down, the high cost of customer acquisition in traditional popular markets has begun to appear, and more and more manufacturers have increased advertising investment in emerging markets in order to find new traffic pools.
The report counts the 10 most advertised mobile game categories of three representative overseas social media platforms in 2022. As you can see, the most advertised game categories on the three social platforms are all role-playing.
For role-playing or similar heavy products, volume campaigns often need to be combined with social and content marketing. Facebook is an important channel for community operations, while YouTube and TikTok, as representative video platforms overseas, have stronger content attributes.
In the first half of 2022, medium and heavy mobile games showed strong competitiveness in the overseas purchase market. In the second half of the year, light leisure products began to buy volume. Among the medium and heavy products with outstanding purchase volume in the first half of the year, the advertising volume ranking of most products declined to varying degrees in the second half of the year, and even fell out of the top 15.
From the manufacturer's point of view, light game manufacturers have seized more traffic in overseas markets. Zhenyou Technology, ranked fifth, is the only manufacturer in the Top 5 that mainly invests in medium and heavy categories, and it is also the Chinese manufacturer with the highest investment volume.
In the Top 15, Chinese manufacturers account for 5th, and the main buying competitors are from Europe and Southeast Asia.
In the tide of China's mobile games going overseas in 2022, low-threshold casual games are still the track with the largest number of products, accounting for about 20.3%.
The number of role-playing and strategy categories accounted for 16.7% and 9.5% respectively, which is significantly higher than the average of the overseas market. At the same time, these two categories are also the categories with the most advertising by Chinese overseas manufacturers, accounting for 21.3% and 22.2% of advertising volume respectively.
In 2022, 28.2% of the advertisements placed by Chinese mobile game manufacturers in overseas markets will cover the North American market, and North America is a market that cannot be avoided for mobile game manufacturers interested in entering the English-speaking world.
The second, third and fourth regions were Southeast Asia (25.4%), Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan (17.7%) and Japan and South Korea (17.0%). Similar cultural backgrounds make these markets the first choice for Chinese manufacturers to go overseas.
The Latin American and Middle Eastern markets, which showed strong growth momentum in the overseas market trend, were not favored too much by Chinese mobile game manufacturers in 2022, accounting for only 10.1% and 4.8% of advertising volume.
In 2022, the number of casual mobile games in overseas markets fluctuated and increased, with an average of about 3,900 casual mobile games advertising in the first half of the year, and this number increased to about 4,500 in the second half of the year.
The three main sources of overseas casual mobile games are Chinese mainland, Turkey and Vietnam.
The number of mobile games in the action category fluctuates in the range of 1700~2000 per month, which is less than half of the casual category. Among the 1,000 action mobile games with the highest advertising volume, products from Chinese mainland manufacturers accounted for 16.0%.
In addition to the traditional impression of hand-eye cooperation and emphasis on operational action games, with the trend of casualization in recent years, some light products such as casual parkour gameplay will also carry action labels. In the traditional heavy track such as shooting, eating chicken, and MOBA, lightweight products have also appeared.
Casino games have seen significant growth during the pandemic. From the perspective of the number of mobile games in the month, the casino track has a relatively concentrated rise in June ~ September, and a large number of products have entered the buying market during this time period.
In terms of advertiser sources, products from Chinese mainland accounted for 20.0%, and the main competitors were from the United States and Taiwan.
As a category with relatively high R&D and customer acquisition costs, the average monthly number of overseas strategy mobile games is only about 1,100, and there is no significant fluctuation throughout the year.
However, the characteristics of high investment and high return of strategic mobile games have been sought after by Chinese manufacturers, as the main battlefield of China's overseas mobile games, 39.7% of the top buying strategy games are from Chinese manufacturers, which far exceeds the 6.5% of second-place Vietnam and 3.5% of third-place Russia.
In 2022, Tencent Games has made significant efforts in overseas markets. On the one hand, the star product "PUBG MOBILE" continues to buy at a high level; On the other hand, a number of new products quickly achieved outstanding results after being launched overseas, such as "Tower of Fantasy" and "GODDESS OF VICTORY: NIKKE". The opening test of the overseas version of "Honor of Kings" is also looking forward to its performance after its official launch.
As a manufacturer focusing on SLG products, almost all of tap4fun's main products in 2022 are SLG games, but there are still significant differences in the theme and gameplay form of different products.
"Kingdom Guard" achieves lightweight transformation with tower defense and fusion gameplay; "Age of Apes" attracts players with a unique "ape" theme, combined with casual side gameplay to obtain outstanding market performance.
The two product strategies reflect the two main directions of the SLG category in the past two years, namely exploring new themes or incorporating light casual gameplay.
MARVEL SNAP, RELEASED BY LIGHT YEAR, IS ONE OF THE MOST WATCHED NEW MOBILE GAME TITLES IN THE SECOND HALF OF 2022. JUDGING FROM THE PURCHASE DATA, ALTHOUGH IT HAS BEEN ONLINE FOR LESS THAN HALF A YEAR, "MARVEL SNAP" HAS BECOME THE MOST ADVERTISED PRODUCT UNDER THE LIGHT YEAR.
On the other hand, a number of products in the investment of Sunset Lightyear have IP attributes, including DC Universe, Ragnarok, and Hatsune Miku, and it is clear that Sunrise Lightyear has explored a set of methods for the distribution and operation of IP adapted mobile games.
The above is an excerpt from the "2022 Mobile Game Overseas Buying White Paper", please check the full white paper for more content.
Special thanks to the joint publicity media: Mobile Game Matrix, Tencent Research Cloud, Youzi.com, Morketing Global, Enjoy Going Global, Discovery Report, App Dry Goods Shop, Insight Research Report, 199IT and various industry opinion providers for their strong support to this white paper.
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