Three trends in mobile advertising
MoPub recently published its quarterly Mobile Advertising Marketplace Report for Q1 2013, which, combined with other such reports from mobile advertising operators, reveals three interesting, emerging trends in mobile advertising. Advertising placements are getting bigger The performance of larger ad sizes (480×320, 769×1024, and 1024×768) experienced a marked increase in Q1 2013, creating a wide [...]
GungHo, the $15 billion dollar gaming behemoth
Tokyo-based mobile game developer GungHo Entertainment has dominated mobile gaming press lately with its enormous and ever-increasing revenue announcements: in late March, Japanese gaming analyst Dr. Serkan Toto reported that GungHo’s largest title, Puzzle & Dragons, had generated between $62 – 86mm in February alone. In April, the company’s market cap surged to $9 billion [...]
King vs. Kabam on the road to IPO
The performance of Zynga’s stock in the almost two years since its IPO has chilled public markets ambitions for gaming companies. But two Western gaming developers, both of which have capably navigated a transition from Facebook (and other web-based platforms) to mobile, currently contend for the distinction of most likely to undertake the first post-Zynga [...]
When will Android-first be a viable launch strategy on mobile?
Apple’s Q1 2013 results were undisputably poor; its net profit fell by 18%, representing the first time in more than a decade the company has posted a quarterly earnings decline. Samsung, meanwhile, grew its shipments by 56% year-over-year, to 69.4 million. Apple’s shipments grew by a mere 7%, to 37.4 million, which is its slowest [...]
Should Lifetime Customer Value (LCV) be Discounted?
One of the more difficult adjustments to make when transitioning from academia to industry is the change in vernacular required in communicating the machinations of models. In academia, the formatting and notations used generally indicate concepts that are taken for granted by the author and sometimes included only because, at a theoretical level, not including [...]
The economics of mobile game publishing
(The model referenced throughout this post can be downloaded here) Supercell’s recent $100mm secondary financing round raises some interesting questions about how mobile game developers capitalize on a hit game. A title in the Top 10 grossing chart for the US can, as evidenced by a number of recent high-profile examples, generate upwards of $500,000 [...]
Why the retention profile is more useful than the churn metric in freemium
I’ve stated a number of times that, within the context of the freemium model, retention is the most important metric a product manager must track; in the Minimum Viable Metrics methodology, retention is the top-most of the top-line metrics. Retention is not only a proxy measurement for customer delight, but it’s also the input for [...]
An overview of mobile gaming in Asia, Part 3: Japan, with Dr. Serkan Toto
The last country covered in the three-part overview of mobile gaming in Asia is Japan, which is fitting given the recent buzz around GungHo Entertainment, the Tokyo-based developer behind Puzzle & Dragons: last week it was reported that Japanese telecommunications firm SoftBank purchased a 58.5% stake in GungHo for $265 million. GungHo’s nearly half a [...]
An overview of mobile gaming in Asia, Part 2: China
Last month, Flurry Analytics projected a larger total smartphone and tablet install base in China than in the US (246 million versus 230 million). This usurpation of the top position is significant because 150 million of those nearly 250 million devices – or 60% – were added in 2012. China’s breathtaking pace of mobile device acquisition [...]
An overview of mobile gaming in Asia, Part 1: South Korea
Until mid-2011, mobile gaming in South Korea was a niche activity, despite the country’s reputation as a gaming powerhouse. The reason was regulation: the South Korean government insisted on reviewing all games made available in localized app stores, meaning gamers interested in recent titles were forced to register foreign app store accounts. But since this [...]
