AI Influencer Moment?
Is this the AI influencer moment?! This guy created an AI avatar of himself and sold $7m of product in a 6 hour livestream. Beat his last livestream of his real self.
mobilegames
A new game just shook up the stagnant Top 10 mobile revenue rankings!
Wow, a new game just shook up the stagnant top 10 mobile revenue rankings! SD Gundam G Generation ETERNAL by Bandai Namco grossed $43.9M in April.71% revenue from Japan shows the power of home market advantage.Beloved IP + solid gameplay 💪 🇯🇵
Top 6 Android Games Making a Fortune From Ads
Do you ever look up at the night sky and wonder…What are the biggest ad-monetized Android games? And how much are these publishers making? Worry not! Your ad revenue prayers have been answered.🙏 Here are the six largest ad-driven Android games from the past 30 days. Please subscribe for more ad-related content! Block Blast - Hungry Studio Chinese studio Hungry Studio tops the Android ad revenue charts with an estimated $584,000 per day, or $17.5 million per month. Over the past 30 days, the game reached a peak of 25 million daily active users on Android alone. Industry rumors suggest the studio employs over 125 data scientists to fine-tune the level difficulty, ensuring retention remains high. And the ad ops? Rumor has it that Block Blast has the most extensive advertiser block list in the world. The game keeps it […]
New event in Royal Match: Puzzle Break
New event in Royal Match: Puzzle Break Based on Playliner research, here’s how it works:• You get 3 days to complete 5 jigsaw puzzles.• Each puzzle gets bigger (9 → 16 → 25 pieces).• Each piece costs 1 point to place, even wrong guesses.• Points come from beating levels, with bonuses from events like Train Journey.Start with 1 free point. After that, grind your way through the main levels to earn more.Progress looks like this:• Picture 1: 9 pieces → Easy• Picture 5: 25 pieces, 3 pre-placed → Not so easyFinish a picture, and you unlock a reward chest:• Boosters• Coins• Card packs• Tokens for other eventsComplete all 5 puzzles? You unlock the grand prize 🏆On average, you’ll need about 53 levels to clear the entire event.So it’s short. Strategic. And pretty satisfying to finish.Smart addition to Royal Match’s live-ops. […]
Puzzle & Dragons: $5 Billion Made, 0 Influence in the West
GungHo last month released Puzzle & Dragons 0. It seems not everything is going as expected for a company that released the original Puzzle & Dragons with $5 billion revenue on 60 Mil. downloads 🤔. A little bit of history, Puzzle & Dragons released in 2012 is the first mobile game that did $1 Bil. in revenue. You may know its western iteration from Small Giant Games under the name of Empires & Puzzles, which streamlined its core. In the original you not only match the tokens but you literally drag one token across the board, with which you can rearrange it and match the whole board in one move 💥. So now they released a version 0 again and we just had to take a look at on the podcast. Surprisingly, there is no gacha in it. You read […]
It’s challenging to capture user attention in mobile gaming.
It's challenging to capture user attention in mobile gaming. We see this reflected in 42matters' estimates, which show almost 500,000 mobile games in app stores, with roughly 10,000 new releases each month. The more optimistic news is that the total number of games is still lower than it was a few years ago, and the rate of monthly new releases is also declining (as the quality threshold for mobile gaming projects increased heavily...).
Creative Strategy of Wittle Defender by Habby
In less than a month, Wittle Defender by Habby has already secured 1.3M+ downloads AND generated over $1.4M in IAP Revenue! 🚀 WD is Habby's latest Idle RPG hybrid gam,e blending tower defence, rogue-like progression and card strategy - primarily targeting East Asian markets with YouTube dominating ad network share!We ran some of their top creatives through our Creative Agent to tag and analyze why their creatives work: 🔑 Creative Code (TL;DR):1️⃣ 36% of ads use "Just Started → 1 Month" progression showcases2️⃣ Reward/gacha unboxing mechanics in 18.2% of top ads3️⃣ 81.8% showcase multiple characters to emphasize collection mechanics
Game Shop best practices in UNO! from Mattel
Game Shop best practices in UNO! from Mattel, Inc. As I'm writing the book on Game Shops in f2p mobile games, I check many top games for best practices. And for bad ones, too.Let's see today, how many of them are presented in UNO's game shop:✅ Shop is clearly divided into sections by tabs. It has so many items, that making a general list would make it feel infinite.✅ Red bubble notification markers drag attention to important news. Like that it's time to claim free gift.✅ Slots have titles for bundles, clear bright images, only essential texts. It is very easy to read.✅ Time-limited offers are clearly indicated by label with timer.✅ Content is animated, which is also visually appealing and raises perceived value.✅ Currency counters are shown at the top, for easy checking current balance.✅ (i) buttons for getting […]
Top Mobile Gaming Companies by Revenue Per Employee
Turns out the top gaming company by revenue per employee isn’t King, Playtika, or Scopely. It’s Supercell with just 686 employees, $4.37M per head. Dream Games is right behind them.Pretty striking how the leanest teams generate the most revenue per employee. Likely because they focus on fewer, high-performing titles and keep mobile as their core platform.
Startups often struggle.
Startups often struggle. I remember having my first startup almost run out of money on four different occasions. Here was the usual procedure to get back up: 1. Find work-for-hire. Tap your most “expensive” team members, usually senior tech or art, for freelance work. If you can land a contract or two that covers runway, that’s a win. Even part-time work-for-hire can keep the core alive.2. Cut costs hard. You want to get to break-even, or at least slow the burn. Shrink the team back to founders-only if needed. Reduce founder salaries to the bare minimum you can live on: rent, food, coffee, that’s it.3. Keep chasing funding, and ship something fast. Whether it’s VC, angels, or a publisher, keep the outreach going. But more importantly, ship something. Anything. Nobody cares if it’s not polished. If it can make a […]
Wittle Defender: Will Habby’s New Game Become a Hit?
Will Habby’s New Game Become a Hit? 🌟 On June 9, Habby globally launched Wittle Defender — a new game clearly inspired by The Tower from Tech Tree Games, but with Habby’s signature touch:— Roguelike abilities from Survivor.io and Archero — Hero collection mechanics similar to Souls — Classic Habby-style meta and progression, just like in Capybara Go and other titlesSo far, the game has hit over $300K in daily revenue — a solid start by industry standards, though not quite on the level of Survivor.io, Capybara Go, or both Archeros at launch 🎢Still, it’s too early to judge. What really matters is how well the game retains and monetizes players in the mid and long term 👀Will Wittle Defender become Habby’s next classic? Maybe.
Failures are necessary.
A mistake = failure. And failure = A sign to give up. If this is the mentality within your team, good luck with ever achieving meaningful growth in your craft. In my career, I’ve been lucky enough to work alongside patient managers and colleagues who saw mistakes and missteps as opportunities to learn and grow. Some of my most important learnings in influencer marketing have come in retrospect, after seeing firsthand what not to do.Case in point, I only realised the importance of avoiding seasonal custom influencer assets after a six-figure collaboration nearly fell through due to the influencer wanting to rework and delay the video.Another early lesson? Always cap CPM-based deals.I once negotiated a deal based on $20 CPM without a maximum cap, assuming the video would perform in line with the creator’s usual range (with a maximum of […]