As the end of the year approaches, many mobile games in overseas markets are already working to carry out corresponding operational activities for important festivals. In addition to the upcoming Halloween, Thanksgiving, Black Friday/Cyber Monday, Christmas, etc. are also important nodes for the significant increase in revenue of these products.
holidays will help increase the number of new users of the game. Data shows that global smartphone sales exceeded 400 million units in Q4 last year, an increase of 30 million units compared with Q3 last year, with a significant increase in hardware. The use of new phones has also brought about a significant increase in the number of app downloads. Taking the United States as an example, in the first month of use of new phones, users tend to download 10 apps, while the average monthly download volume of old phones is only 2.
In addition, the game duration of overseas users during the holidays has also increased significantly. For example, the United States has 6.5 hours of free time during the holidays, which is 37% more than usual. Judging from 2016 and 2017, users' gaming consumption during the holidays is 40% to 50% higher than usual, which has also become a very important opportunity in the annual revenue of game products.
Therefore, it is very important for game manufacturers to promote targeted game operation activities based on local cultural characteristics based on understanding the festival habits of overseas countries.
Based on this situation, Google China's team released the "2018 Game Holiday Insight Report", which conducted a more in-depth analysis of the behavioral habits of users in some overseas countries during the holidays. Among them, the report gives the specific practices of Finnish game company Supercell and Russian game company Playrix in doing festival operations, which facilitates reference when mobile games are doing festival operations in overseas markets.
The following is an interpretation of the report content:
Festival has become the peak period for download and revenue growth
From the perspective of the global market, the fourth quarter of each year is the peak season for smartphone release and sales. According to data provided by Statista, global smartphone sales exceeded 400 million units in Q4 last year, an increase of 30 million units compared with Q3 last year. While mobile phone sales are growing rapidly, app store gift cards are often used as holiday gifts during this period.
At the same time, many overseas countries have more free time during the Q4 holidays. For example, the daily free time for Americans during holidays is as high as 6.5 hours, which is 37% higher than that of working days. The increase in idle time of
has also brought a lot of opportunities for games to grow in revenue and downloads, becoming the best time for game products to increase the number of users in overseas markets.
is affected by Thanksgiving and Christmas. The average daily application installation number in December is 2.2 times that of the usual, and it reaches the installation peak in January.
In addition, smartphone sales increased significantly during Q4, which also brought opportunities for game installation. Taking American users as an example, according to statistics, users of new mobile phones tend to download more apps, and they tend to download 10 apps in the first month of obtaining new phones. Generally speaking, users who use old phones have only 2 apps installed per mobile phone per month.
Practice of game activities for overseas manufacturers
In the past two years, the Q4 festival has played a very important role in the growth of global mobile game downloads and revenue.
data shows that from January 2013 to January 2018, the global app download volume maintained an overall growth trend, and the fourth quarter festivals made certain contributions to the overall growth of app download volume. In addition to the slight increase in app downloads during Halloween, there were significant growth during Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year.
And for F2P games that have in-app purchases, holidays are often more important than other periods of the year. Although there was no obvious seasonal revenue growth trend between 2013 and 2015, judging from the two years in 2016 and 2017, users' gaming consumption during the holidays was 40% to 50% higher than usual. This also reflects that in the annual revenue of game products, festivals such as Halloween and Christmas will play a more critical role.
Taking casual games as an example, the usage time of American users during the festival has increased significantly. Among them, Christmas is the peak period for users' usage time, and the high activity level of Christmas and New Year can even be maintained until the end of January.Therefore, games need to use the popularity of the festival to launch corresponding game activities to increase user activity.
For example, Russian game company Playrix launched a large number of content updates 4 weeks in advance just before Halloween last year. Many of its games have Halloween-themed operation activities throughout October. For example, " Dream Garden " has updated a series of content including plot, language version, Halloween decoration, etc. In addition, in order to cater to the festive atmosphere of Halloween, three mobile games under Playrix have also updated the Halloween version of icon.
Halloween version icon
"Dream Garden" was updated in the 2017 Halloween version
, while Supercell's " Clash of Clans " has always maintained the habit of launching operation activities during the festival. Take Halloween as an example. Overseas users of the game will search YouTube for related event videos a few weeks before Halloween. It is worth noting that due to Supercell's year-on-year optimization of art materials and operation activities, last year's Halloween warm-up video received 8 million clicks and 930,000 likes on Youtube.
It can be seen that after years of operation accumulation with the popularity of the festival, a game can continue to attract users' attention, which is very beneficial for maintaining high user activity.
For festival habits in different countries, the report also gives some suggestions. For example, in the United States, Halloween represents witches, pumpkins and skeletons, which can be designed as decorative elements in the game. Thanksgiving represents turkey, black hats and retro clothing from the seventeenth century. There are generally full-day promotions on the first and next day of public holidays. Therefore, seizing these two points to do game operation activities will also be conducive to revenue growth. Black Friday/Cyber Monday and Christmas are related to the Christmas theme, and this period tends to add Christmas elements to the game to operate activities.
When launching game operations in the UK market, you also need to pay attention to the three time nodes: Halloween, Black Friday/Cyber Monday and Christmas. It should be noted that Black Friday and December 26 are the two largest shopping days in the UK, and there will be promotions that will last until mid-January. Updates to game content at these points will be conducive to significant revenue growth and user growth.
Brazil is suitable for promotions on Black Friday/Cyber Monday and Christmas. In Brazil, the last Friday of November is the Christmas bonus day in Brazil. At this time, there is usually a double salary, and there is also a custom of giving gifts on December 24. These time points can focus on launching some Christmas-themed activities to attract users to download and pay.
In Japan, Halloween and Christmas are important festivals. December 30 to January 3 are the New Year holidays, and the winter discount is from the end of December to the end of January. Manufacturers promote and launch game activities for these time periods, which can also bring greater opportunities to the growth of user volume and revenue.
It should be noted that Christmas is the peak holiday period for Western countries. Therefore, when launching Christmas activities, it is necessary to try to advance the version update time to avoid delays in version review.
After preparing holiday marketing activities and creatives, you can choose Google's Universal App Advertising (UAC) to serve ads. Finally, three suggestions were given for festival operation activities. First, due to the fierce competition in holiday game products, bidding will be pushed up. At this time, it is necessary to consider increasing tCPI and increasing or canceling the daily budget ceiling according to actual conditions. Second, manufacturers need to customize creative content that can attract users to click for the holidays, and add specific incentives to enhance the relevance of creative content with the quarter and improve CTR. Third, after setting the KPI, you can use a universal application (UAC) to control the advertising performance of the game.
