The growth potential of mobile gaming apps continues to reach new levels. Even in today’s challenging economic climate, worldwide consumer spending for this industry is in the billions, downloads are on the rise, and the time people spend in apps is increasing. The competitive landscape for acquiring, engaging, and retaining new users for mobile games has never been more intense – so how are marketers getting ahead?

In a new guide – Games Gone Global – Remerge experts and Apptivate podcast guests share their expertise on how to market a mobile game across international markets. Here are five key talking points from the guide:

Consider adding countries outside of North America to your marketing strategy 
With revenue hitting a record $41.7bn (£33.9bn) last year, the US remains one of the biggest and most lucrative mobile gaming markets. However, is this always the best place to launch your ad campaigns?

Farhan is the founder of Hyper HQ, a consultancy for user acquisition and ad monetization for mobile games. He offers his take on the US mobile market and the other options marketers can explore:

“On a fundamental level, most of the Western gaming developers go for a US audience because, traditionally, that would be where you’d have a few hundred million people to target. For that reason, competing in the US is really tricky. We see that other regions have come more into play in the last few years, so firstly, the rest of tier 1: the UK, France, and Germany. Western Europe is somewhere that has become more and more relevant as lifetime values in this region are not far off the US, and the combined population is not that far off the US either.”

Learn how to crack Africas mobile market
If you can overcome the technological and infrastructural constraints in certain countries, the potential for growing your mobile game in Africa is significant.

Cordel Robbin-Coker is the co-founder and CEO of Carry1st, a consumer content platform in Africa focusing on mobile games and fintech companies. He joined Remerge’s Apptivate podcast and shared his experience with marketing mobile games to the new, emerging markets of Africa:

“You have some big markets that have a lot of room to go from an infrastructure standpoint – but if you crack them, you have massive markets. You have 200m people in Nigeria, there are 100m people in Egypt. Those are places where, if you can solve some of the challenges, particularly around payments, suddenly you’ve got a really big market.”

Prioritize early retention strategies
Gaming apps suffer from some of the highest uninstall rates in the mobile industry, so it’s essential to remind people why they downloaded your game. Otherwise, the investment in launching a title and gaining millions of players is wasted.

Remerge gaming clients have recorded some of their best results when implementing early retention strategies that aim to reconvert mobile gamers from as early as 1-2 days after they have lapsed. These retargeting campaigns hone in on areas like running creatives and messaging for special features, offering bonus rewards, and promoting login streaks.

Develop a winning production process for your creatives
The most successful gaming studios plan ahead, thinking about how they can make iterations to their top-performing ads, conducting competitor research for specific countries or regions, learning about different consumer behaviors, and understanding what works in certain markets by analyzing trends across platforms.

Claire Rozain is the User Acquisition Lead at Rovio, the Finnish game developer, famous for Angry Birds. Here she talks about Rovio’s creative process for mobile ads:

“We noticed that the market really grew post-COVID. When we think of creatives, we usually think about our audience, and I think this is important. The creative is the first thing new users are going to see from your game, and if you don’t think about the user, you are missing an opportunity. When we think about creatives, we include a lot of different stakeholders.

We read comments on our creatives and always rethink what we are doing – is it accurate for our games? Is it accurate for our users?”

Video is among the most preferred ad formats for gaming apps 
At Remerge, gaming app marketers invest the majority of their budget on video ads when running re-engagement campaigns (November 2022 – January 2023). In the US, for instance, Remerge’s gaming clients allocate more than 50 per cent of their budget toward video, while those in the EMEA region spend more than 70 per cent of their budget on this format.

Download Remerge’s Games Gone Global: A guide to effective marketing for mobile games entering international markets.