Understanding the Hyper Casual Game Market

The hyper casual game market is one of the hottest spaces in the mobile app world today. The mobile gaming industry has been changed dramatically by the hyper casual genre, with these kinds of mobile games dominating the app download charts.

Hyper casual titles typically feature very simple game mechanics, making them easy for just about anyone with a mobile device to figure out and play. In this space, game development is usually streamlined too, making it relatively easy to make and market these kinds of apps, which is why hyper casual games now dominate the app store charts.

In 2019, not only was the mobile gaming market worth over $80 billion, but close to half of all game downloads came from these kinds of app, according to App Annie’s report on The State of Mobile 2020. Mobile games overall made more than $3 billion in 2019, with a significant chunk of that coming from ad revenue and not just in-app purchases, according to eMarketer. There’s a reason even the likes of Goldman Sachs have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in hyper casual markets.

Uncovering the Typical Hyper Casual Mobile Gamer

But who are these hyper casual mobile gamers? To find out, we turned to InMobi Pulse. InMobi Pulse builds a holistic understanding of consumers across data sources ranging from InMobi Exchange, which reaches 1.6 billion users globally, to permissively-sourced deterministic first-party telco data to stated feedback directly from the customers.

In particular, we looked at the following hyper casual games:

• Wordscapes
• Piano Magic Tiles
• Impossible Bottle Flip
• Temple Run

So what does the data reveal?

Who Plays Top Hyper Casual Mobile Games?

Demographics:

• A significant number of app owners here are female, even though app ownership overall across categories tends to skew male. Over 58% of those with the Wordscapes app and close to 55% of those with the Piano Magic Tiles app are female.
• Temple Run has the same percentage of male and female app owners, while just over 49% of Impossible Bottle Flip app owners are female.
• Close to 27% of those with the Piano Magic Tiles are between 26 and 35 years old, while another 25% are between 56 and 65. Around a third of Temple Run app owners are between 18 and 35.
• Over 53% of Impossible Bottle Flip app owners are between 26 and 45 years old, while more than 55% of those with the Wordscapes app are between 46 and 75 years old.
• Over half or more of those with the Impossible Bottle Flip, Piano Magic Tiles and Temple Run apps are Non-White (Hispanic/Latinx, Black/African-American and/or Asian/Pacific Islander). Wordscape is the only app of the four where over 50% of app owners are White.
• For all four apps, around three-fourths of app owners have one or two children at home.

Income and Employment:

• Temple Run overindexes with individuals making under $50,000 a year.
• Piano Magic Tiles overindexes with people making between $50,000 and $100,000 a year, and people making more than $250,000 annually.
• Over 31% of Wordscapes app owners and more than 28% of Piano Magic Tiles app owners make $100,000 or more a year.

Interests and Motivators:

• People with these apps generally love playing other games, with most app owners also having many other hyper casual games on their phones.
• Top audience segments here include entertainment enthusiasts, business executives, family shoppers, high-end fashionistas and socialites.
• Temple Run app owners often visit the PBS Kids mobile website, and overindex on GoNoodle app ownership. Similarly, a significant number of Impossible Bottle Flip app owners also have the YouTube Kids app on their mobile devices.
• Wordscapes app owners are particularly interested in word games, often having other word apps and logic games apps on their mobile device.

Location:

• Across all four apps reviewed, a significant number of app owners like in either California or Texas.
• For both Impossible Bottle Flip and Temple Run, many app owners live in major cities like Houston, Chicago and New York City. A significant percentage of Wordscapes app owners also live in New York City, while two of their top ZIP codes are in Chicago.

How To Use This Data To Inform Your Mobile Marketing Strategy

These insights are interesting, but how can all of this high quality information from InMobi Pulse be used intelligently to further your mobile marketing and business aims? How can this data be used to inform both user acquisition and ad monetization?

For starters, it’s no surprise that cross promotion has become a hallmark of this space, as people often have multiple hyper casual games on their mobile devices. But, that doesn’t mean that hyper casual gamers are only receptive to rewarded video ads. As the data illustrates, many of those with hyper casual games are also wealthy urban parents, which is an appealing category that many brands want to reach through advertising.

From a monetization perspective, it can be helpful to stress to advertisers that these kinds of apps can be a great way to reach populations and/or audiences that might be difficult to reach through other media. After all, compared to other app categories, those with hyper casual games on their mobile devices are more likely to be female and not White.

Curious to see more insights? Reach out today to learn more about InMobi Pulse.

Our Commitment to Data Privacy: What You Need to Know About This Data

InMobi takes user privacy extremely seriously. We meet the most rigorous governance, compliance, and security standards. We have collaborated with consumer advocacy groups and incorporate guidelines from multiple federal government agencies to define industry-leading practices for data governance in the U.S.

Users retain complete control over the data they provide, have a choice in whether they participate and have transparency as to how their data is utilized. Subscribers have constant access to their privacy elections through multiple telco touchpoints. The patented anonymization platform ensures data sets are 100% secure, and are refreshed to ensure all data are anonymized.