One of the largest independent platforms that facilitate the growth of mobile apps across analytics, user engagement, monetization, and acquisition on a global scale, Liftoff, has revealed record spending in social casino applications in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
The report, which has been released in collaboration with GameRefinery, a mobile games insight and analytics platform, has also revealed record spending across social casino applications, as well as some changes in platform engagement after Apple unveiled its privacy regulations and key insights into the value of global regions’ value.
The abovementioned data draws on over 83 billion ad impressions, as well as 1.1 billion clicks across 239 mobile casino applications that were installed about 12 million times in the year from August 1st, 2020 and August 1st, 2021. The report of Liftoff and GameRefinery also unveiled that iOS users spent almost $1 billion on casino apps at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Following the recent changes that Android has brought to its Identifier for Advertising (IDFA) policy, the report of Liftoff and GameRefinery found that Android narrowly defeats iOS as the leading platform for social casino applications. As marketers have been forced to adjust their advertising spending strategies to the landscape after the change of Android’s IDFA policy, cost-per-install (CPI) on iOS rose to 9.9% on a year-on-year basis. On the other hand, the CPIs of Android declined by 13.7% in the year from August 2020 to August 2021, which extended the affordability gap for Android.
Currently, iOS install costs are 122% higher than the ones of Android. In comparison, they were 74% higher than Android install costs in 2020.
Social Casino Apps Keep Steady Pace of Growth in the Year from August 2020 to August 2021
As CasinoGamesPro previously reported, the coronavirus pandemic resulted in a significant decline in customer visits to brick-and-mortar casinos. However, the lengthy period of lockdown and social distancing measures have had a positive impact on online gambling, with social casino applications gaining massive benefits from the increased number of people who started using their platforms to spend their spare time or fill the void of in-person betting.
Liftoff and GameRefinery revealed in their report that many consumers took to a new habit of playing social casino games available online. According to the data compiled by the two analyst firms, iOS users in the US spent a record $990 million in social casino applications from the third quarter of 2020 to the second quarter of 2021, which was considered the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
The success of social casino platforms did not show signs of stopping even at times when vaccination increased in the US, and brick-and-mortar casinos in key states were allowed to resume operations. By the second quarter of 2021, the quarterly profits rose to more than $260 million, which has been a new high. The overall gambling industry market share in the US, however, had experienced a decline from 19.43% in the third quarter of 2020 to 18.89% in the second quarter of 2021.
An interesting fact was the finding that social casino users tend to be older than every other gaming genre. The report found more than half of the users of social casino apps were over 45 years of age, with the user base being split pretty evenly between men and women, showing there has been a broad appeal for the gambling category.
The head of Game Analytics of GameRefinery, Joel Julkunen, explained that the rise of social casino apps on a global scale is not surprising, as analysts examine the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the gambling sector. As Mr. Julkunen explained, there has been more movement in the market, so it is extremely important for mobile gambling developers and marketers to use the latest insights in order to make their long-term strategies more successful.
