“Players remember how your game made them feel far longer than they’ll remember its economy or progression system,” says Deepanjali Sarna, Senior Game Designer at Gameloft and former designer at Hitwicket, Zynga, and Liquidnitro Games. We went deep into this discussion with Deepanjali to understand more about player emotions and drafted our learning in this […]
Top 25 Mobile Gaming Publishers and Developers by Revenue
Mobile gaming is no longer a subset of the games industry. It is the industry. In 2025, mobile accounted for over 50% of total global gaming revenue for the second consecutive year, with worldwide player spending across the App Store and Google Play reaching approximately $76.7 billion (and that figure covers only IAP, not in-app […]
11 Revelations: The Secret to Winning In-App Game Events with Lucas Nogueira
In-app game events are time-limited, in-game activities (such as live competitions, seasonal campaigns, or exclusive challenges) designed to boost player engagement, retention, and monetization. These events are discoverable both within the game and on external platforms like the Apple App Store or Google Play. Lucas Nogueira is the Monetization and LiveOps Manager at Ritz Deli […]
How Much Do Mobile Games Make Per Ad?
If you search for a straight answer to this question, you’ll find a number somewhere between $0.50 and $50. That range is technically accurate and almost completely useless. What a mobile game earns per ad depends on which format you’re running, which platform your users are on, where in the world they live, what genre […]
Paid is for Validation, Not Scale: Kübra Taşlıtepe Bıyık on Acquiring the First 10k Game App Installs
Kübra Taşlıtepe Bıyık is a Digital Marketing and Growth Specialist at Moralabs. We asked her how studios should approach paid acquisition for a new game, where most of them go wrong before hitting their first 10,000 installs, and how she would allocate budgets of different sizes. Her answers are below, lightly edited for flow. This […]
25 AI Tools in Mobile Gaming (Agents, Creative, Design, Data, and more used by Gaming Studios)
The mobile game industry has a new operating reality. Across every function, from writing a line of code to launching a UA campaign to testing a build. There is now a purpose-built AI tool that can do it faster, cheaper, and at greater scale than before. This guide covers 25 of the most relevant AI […]
The Game is Shifting: From Filling Ad Slots to Owning Your Impressions
“The game is slowly shifting from ‘how do I fill my ad slots?’ to ‘how do I intelligently route and price my own impressions?’” That’s how Tracy Phan sees where ad monetization is heading. And if you’ve spent any time working with gaming studios on their ad stack, you’ll know exactly what she means. About […]
Top 19 Apps by Revenue in 2026: How They Monetize with Ads and What Every Publisher Can Learn
The top-grossing apps are all running in-app advertising. What separates them from most publishers is not the ad networks they use. It is the decisions they made about format, timing, and who to show an ad to in the first place. Candy Crush has 180 million monthly players. Most have never spent a dollar. Wordscapes […]
Best Ad Formats for Mobile Gaming Apps
Mobile gaming has a unique dynamic: players are deeply engaged, but also deeply protective of that engagement. The formats that work best are ones that either fit naturally into gameplay or make the interruption worth tolerating. 1. Rewarded Video Ads The clear winner for mobile gaming. Players opt in to watch a 15-30 second video […]
User Acquisition Lessons from Batu Oğultürk of Perk Game Studio
UA isn’t broken. Your approach probably is. User acquisition isn’t complicated, but it’s often made so. The hype, the metrics, the jargon, the endless abbreviations. Somewhere along the way, clarity got buried under dashboards. To cut through that noise, we spoke with Batu Oğultürk, co-founder of Perk Game Studio and a veteran of studios ranging […]