What inspires such impressive growth in hyper-casual mobile games? With annual revenue ranging from $2 billion to $2.5 billion, these veritable mobile marketing darlings are one of the most successful genres of game apps.

 

The number of downloads of hyper-casual mobile games has grown rapidly since 2018, The market stays relatively stable in terms of downloads currently. According to the recent study, of the 100 most downloaded mobile games in 2021, 36 were hyper-casual games.

 

Can these numbers remain so high? Could hyper-casual games go even higher?

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Overview of hyper-casual games market

In the post-IDFA era, the hyper-casual games faces fewer UA challenges than other casual and midcore games due to its extensive targeting strategy. The hyper-casual market remains competitive all over the world.

 

New hyper-casual titles are quickly added to the chart. Among the top 100 downloaded games in 2021, we see 36 hyper-casual games. However, only 8 of these 36 games appear in the 2020 rankings.

 

Over the past two years, hyper-casual games are adding deeper gameplay content to retain players, which has also created monetization opportunities for in-app advertising (IAA) and in-app purchase (IAP).

 

The hyper-casual mobile game market is developing rapidly in terms of trends. For example, ASMR is a hipster mechanic in 2020, but it fell out of the rankings in 2021. Runners/race cars have replaced the simulation hyper-casual as the most popular subgenre in 2021.

 

In addition, there are few "perpetual franchises" in the hyper-casual space compared to other genres. Under such fierce competition, more and more developers are investing in improved retention, leading to the emergence of hybrid casual games.

At the same time, more and more hyper-casual developers are expanding into the casual genre through in-house development and mergers and acquisitions (e.g., Good Job Games, Voodoo, Rollic).

 

Hyper-casual games remain a huge success story and an innovative, dynamic genre in the mobile game industry. Currently, almost a third of the most downloaded games are hyper-casual games, an increase of 157% compared to 2018.

 

The good news is that the potential for new publishers to succeed in the hyper-casual space is still great. It's a genre played by every crowd and the hyper-casual design means that anyone can enjoy simple game.

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Opportunities for hyper-casual games business

• User acquisition

• User retention

• App monetization

 

User acquisition: cross-promotion strategy is commonly adopted by publishers

User acquisition is extremely important for casual mobile games, because getting a lot of installations will lead to success. In order to attract a larger audience, casual mobile games tend to design simple game mechanics that appear in popular art forms and themes. Game titles and ads are often straightforward and allow users to stay in the app store for a few seconds to understand how the game is played.

 

Casual mobile games have a very low cost per install (CPI) compared to other genres of games. This lowers the barrier to entry for developers and increases the fierce competition for this genre of mobile game.

 

However, since hybrid-casual gamers often play multiple games at the same time, hybrid-casual games do not look for exclusive users. Therefore, the method of cross-promotion is very common in hyper-casual mobile games.

 

In order to attract more users, hyper-casual mobile phone developers generally strengthen game design and gameplay. At the same time, a large number of trend-based casual mobile games will begin to optimize the user experience. However, these trend-based mobile games are difficult to ensure user retention after the popularity of the trend has passed.

 

Comparing user profiles in four major markets, they are biased towards men, are full-time employees, have high earnings, and like movies, TV series and video games. hyper-casual mobile gamers are younger than all users in the mobile game market with an average age of 33, probably under the age of 30.

 

User retention: acquire loyal users with retention optimization solutions

Retention is a key metric for hyper-casual mobile games, allowing publishers to forecast user growth, revenue growth trajectories, and calculate customer lifetime value (LTV). However, marketing campaigns that atract traffic in the past have often struggled to target the right audience.

 

Here we will provide you with optimizations that will help you quickly find the user who may return the day after installation under a given target cost per install (CPI):

 

• Advertisers send back retained user profile data

• Analyse the learning curve in the ad delivery system

• Portray the user profiles

• Get the similar loyal users

 

Traditional hyper-casual mobile games are often troubled by retaining a large number of users.

 

In order to be able to solve the problem of low retention, more casual mobile game developers choose to deepen the game loop by adding progressive difficulty and lite meta. Simply put, casual mobile games have gradually evolved into hybrid casual.

For example, Join Clash from Supersonic features RPG mechanics and customization. In addition, hyper-casual mobile game developers are learning to embrace live-ops from other game genres. IP and brand injection are another trend that is popular in hyper-casual mobile games.

 

App monetization: diverse app monetization strategies

The most common ad format-Interstitial video

In some cases, there is the only currency in hyper-casual games-ads. Players watch ads to progress, unlock items, earn rewards, resurrect, and more. Popular hyper-casual games such as Rollic's Hair Challenge have even implemented a new form of Interstitial ads. To unlock exclusive content and rewards, players need to watch multiple ads.

 

Hybrid monetization is on the rise

Previously, casual mobile games tended to use the method of cross-promotion in the same genre of mobile games. However, in the past year, more and more other genres of mobile games advertised in casual mobile games, and more and more developers of other genres of mobile games found their potential audience in hyper-casual mobile games.

 

In addition to app advertising, at the same time, more and more casual mobile game developers are charging consumers directly. The option of paying for free ads has become common, with prices ranging from $2 to $3.

 

Publishers of other game genres can also take advantage of the large user base of hyper-casual games to acquire players.

 

According to research, there are popular types of mobile games for casual mobile gamers: such as battle royale, strategy, and role-playing and so on. It should be noted that developers need to take into account different regions and user needs when advertising. Delivering localized ads is key to successfully improve user acquisition.

* To study how we helped our users' hyper-casual games growth: How We Use ASO Boosting The Hyper-casual Games Rapid Growth and Increasing Visibility.