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Stay up to date on the latest happenings in digital marketing
Summary
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Focus on iOS Mobile Gaming Advertising: Marketing professionals should capitalize on the dramatic increase in click-through rates (CTR) within mobile gaming on iOS, which surged from 6.1% to 25.9% in just six months. This trend is largely driven by the effectiveness of rewarded ads using SKOverlay, suggesting that integrating such ad formats in campaigns could yield significant engagement.
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Reevaluate CTR as a Metric: Given the evolving landscape, where CTR may resemble impression counts rather than a true measure of engagement, marketers should adjust their strategies to focus on broader performance metrics. This shift emphasizes the importance of understanding the implications of iOS's ad measurement changes, particularly with SKAdNetwork's limitations.
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Explore Market Opportunities Beyond Gaming: While mobile gaming leads in CTR, other verticals on iOS and Android are also experiencing notable growth. For instance, Android utility apps are seeing high CTRs (up to 25.4%). Marketers should explore diverse app categories and
Mobile gaming CTR is out of control.
Overall click-through rate in mobile advertising was up 5.6% globally in Q2, as measured by Singular. But that’s not the story. The story is that CTR is only really up on iOS, where CTR jumped from 4.3% in January of 2025 to 13.4% in June. But that’s also not the story. The story is that CTR is only really up in mobile gaming advertising on iOS, where it ballooned from 6.1% in January to an eye-watering 25.9% in June.
Ouch.
That and much, much more is in Singular’s newest Quarterly Trends Report for 2025 Q3, which is available for free right now.
Mobile gaming CTR: up, up, and away!
This is the chart for CTR for both iOS and Android, year to date:
Clearly, something’s happening here. Android is basically flat for the full 6 months, while iOS is on a steady rise.
As I mentioned above, though, there’s 1 very clear culprit here.
Mobile gaming CTR is the primary reason for the steady increase, as you can see in this iOS-only chart that breaks down CTR by vertical:
(The spiky blue line is Travel, a much smaller vertical for Singular than Gaming, which is basically half of the App Store. Travel isn’t impacting the overall numbers nearly as much.)
Every single month this year, mobile gaming CTR has increased. There hasn’t been a single month in which it has decreased.
Why?
Rewarded ads in games using SKOverlay to pop up a lightweight App Store app listing view right inside an ad, inside a game. I’ve talked about this before in Making Mobile Ads Suck Less, with Moloco’s Francesco Renzo, and Tragedy of the Commons. There are 3 versions of SKOverlay: a banner version, a full-screen version, and an App Clip version.
Spurious summoning of this and missed-that-X taps when people try to escape the ad result in clicks, clicks, and more clicks.
And the mobile gaming CTR rates rise and rise and rise.
Understanding CTR in the new reality: impression counts on iOS are back, baby
If mobile gaming CTR is just going to keep going this way as the mobile ad network arms race to get credit for conversions continues, it doesn’t necessarily mean that CTR is completely toast as a metric or a form of measurement.
It just means we all need to factor this into our new understanding of CTRs.
And, perhaps, start treating CTR almost as more of an impression count.
Which means, sort of, that impression counts are back on iOS, even though SKAdNetwork doesn’t support ad impression reporting the way we could see that before with the IDFA or can now on Android with GAID.
Not really, of course, and SKAN clicks are not trackable, so it’s not useful for MTA, or for frequency capping.
But hey: CTR is now the discount version of old-school ad impressions on iOS.
It’s not just mobile gaming CTR on iOS
Mobile gaming CTR isn’t the only thing that’s up.
Gaming in general tends to have higher CTRs — about 3X to 5X higher — so Android gaming CTRs are also up, at around 5%. That’s high compared to ads in Android shopping/retail apps, where we see about a 1% CTR, or entertainment apps on Android, where we see about a 2% CTR.
Utilities on Android is also an outlier.
Here’s CTR on Android by vertical:
Utilities starts the quarter high, at 17.7%, and finishes much higher, at 25.4%. Interestingly, on iOS Utilities has the highest ATT opt-in rates, and utilities are often “interesting” in grey hat sort of ways.
Draw your own conclusions.
Singular’s Quarterly Trends report for Q3: much more than mobile gaming CTR
This is a jam-packed report with so much more in it.
Get your copy today for everything you need to know, including:
- Global ad spend was up 45% quarter over quarter as measured by Singular
- All key metrics — CPI, CPM, CTR, and IPM — were up as well
- Android ads drive almost 3X more installs per impression than iOS
- CTR ballooned by 38.6% globally (and we share why)
- CPMs went up more than CPIs: good news for ad monetized apps
- CPIs were up almost 15% in the U.S.
- Fintech CPIs jumped almost 80%
- Targeting is improving: IPM was up 11.3% across the board
- Top 10 ad network share-of-spend gainers
- Rewarded ad networks continue to grow
- Hottest game genres (and what changed)
- Hottest app verticals (and what changed)
- ATT opt-in rates by vertical
- And much more …
Plus, there’s some cool new tools to dial in to just the data you want:
And, we have great contributions from partners:
- AppMagic on top LiveOps trends
- AppTweak on how CPPs lift conversion rates
- Jampp on the recent surge in CTV
- YouAppi on the least sexy but super-effective ad type
