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The 1 thing that separates games that win and games that fail: Felix Braberg on mobile game monetization

Mobile game monetization is hard. Over 200 games are published every single day ... that's 73,000 a year. And then you also have to ...

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Mobile game monetization is hard. Very hard. Almost 2,000 apps are published every day to Google Play and the iOS App Store. Hundreds more are published on third-party app stores in China and elsewhere. If only 10% of them are games, that’s well over 200 games being published every single day.

Think 6,000 a month.

73,000 a year.

And we haven’t even talked about the hundreds of thousands of already existing games on app stores around the world. Or about how generative AI isn’t nearly as involved in app-making as it will be in a year or two, which should juice the daily numbers even more. 

Imagine a pre-schooler literally prompting a game via ChatGPT, for example, or making a game entirely by voice, which Roblox chief scientist Morgan McGuire told me isn’t too far off

Last I checked, there’s only 10 games in the top 10. And the top 1% of games make maybe 90% of the money. And only a tiny percentage of games are actually profitable. (I’ve heard 2-3%, but don’t have hard data on this very depressing statistic.)

Key question about mobile game monetization:

How is your game going to be 1 of the few that win?

We recently chatted with ad monetization expert Felix Braberg for our Hack Gaming Growth miniseries. There are tons of insights in the whole miniseries from experts like Matej Lancaric, Jesse Lempiäinen from Geeklab, Günay Azer from Gamelight, and others, plus Braberg himself, of course.

mobile game monetization

 

Our topic with Felix?

Monetization. Specifically, ads-based monetization, which is his speciality.

And that’s where he shared the 1 thing that differentiates games that win from games that fail.

Mobile game monetization: Games that win vs games that fail

Leadership should begin at the top, and so should product vision. People who know and understand mobile game monetization tend to be vastly superior at creating games that win.

And that’s the key difference between game publishers that win and those who build games that bleed cash.

“ The best studios are the ones where the people who are calling the shots also know what they’re getting paid on the other side,” says Braberg. “That’s what I see as the biggest disconnect between people who have games that fail and who succeed. If a CEO or a product leader knows how much you actually get for an interstitial impression in non-U.S. geos and how much you get for one in the U.S. geos, you can start to design a gameplay around that.”

In other words, successful game studios build monetization at the very same time they’re building their game. It’s not just that they’re not bolting on an off-the-shelf monetization strategy at the end, it’s that they’re designing gameplay, levels, durations, challenges, and solutions around monetization.

Including pleasure.

Including pain.

Elad Levy, who sold a game to Playtika and served as the CTO for the company’s massive social casino game House of Fun, once told me both pleasure and pain are essential to creating a great game. And they’re both also essential for creating a great game economy … AKA something a publisher can monetize.

“That’s the art of building a great economy and game progression systems … it’s a balance between pleasure and frustration,” he said. “Those are the most successful games. Sometimes you’re super happy. Sometimes you want to throw the phone out the window, but that balance between pleasure and frustration, that is what builds amazing games.”

Happiness keeps players in the game and keeps them coming back: usage, engagement, retention.

Frustration gives them something to work on, fix, overcome, defeat. And also something to position a monetization model around, whether it’s standard interstitials between levels, or pre-boss-level boosts, or post death revivals … you name it.

More from Felix: the Goldilocks zone of monetization

We all know the Goldilocks story. 

Goldilocks tries three bowls of porridge. The first is too hot, the second is too cold, and the third is just right. If she worked for a mobile games publisher with a job in monetization, she’d probably try at least that many levels of ads-based monetization as well.

The goal: not too much, where you’ll lose players

Not too little, where you’ll miss out on revenue.

But just right, where players are happy enough to stay and even engage deeper, and you’re making solid revenue.

“ I see people experimenting with what they allow with the end cards and the creative length,” says Braberg. “The eCPM goes up the longer the creatives, right, because you have better CTR. So [the ad networks] pass that on to you in terms of higher eCPM. So maybe you need to experiment with this … maybe you want to put 45 seconds, 15 seconds. It’s different depending on the type of genre, right?”

That makes sense, of course, and clever testing will allow you to unlock the Goldilocks zone of monetization for your specific app, in your specific geos — it could be different for each geo you’re active in — and for your specific players.

But there’s a challenge: you need to be big in order to get this kind of leverage with most ad networks: to tell them what length of creative and end cards you’ll allow.

“It’s very unfair for new developers,” Braberg says.

Much more in just the mobile game monetization session …

As you’d expect, there’s much more just in the mobile game monetization session I did with Felix Braberg. We spent 30 minutes chatting about ad monetization for games, and talk about models, balance, A/B testing, audience segmentation, optimizing placements, and much more:

  • 00:00 Introduction to Game Monetization
  • 01:11 Current Trends in Hybrid Monetization
  • 01:54 Building Monetization Models
  • 02:22 Ad Monetization Strategies
  • 06:00 Innovative Monetization Techniques
  • 10:02 The Goldilocks Problem: Balancing Monetization
  • 17:43 Challenges in Ad Measurement
  • 23:49 Future Trends and Tips for 2025
  • 29:22 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Get it all right here …

But this is only 1 of the 5-episode miniseries

But even more in the entire Hack Gaming Growth miniseries

We have not yet published the hack gaming growth miniseries to the main Growth Masterminds podcast.

Get early access to the full 5 episodes:

  • EPISODE 1
    Mastering the Art of Creative
  • EPISODE 2
    Navigating iOS Measurement & Marketing
  • EPISODE 3
    Scaling with Channel Diversification
  • EPISODE 4
    Win Them Back: Retargeting & Re-engagement
  • EPISODE 5
    Making Money: Hybrid Monetization

Our goal: getting you at least 1 new insight that will transform your game and its growth. 

All of it is available right now, right here. See you soon!

About the Author
John Koetsier

John Koetsier

John Koetsier is a journalist and analyst. He's a senior contributor at Forbes and hosts our Growth Masterminds podcast as well as the TechFirst podcast. At Singular, he serves as VP, Insights.

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