The old era is over. Since 2025, the global mobile-ad landscape has undergone a structural shift. Under AI-driven algorithms, major ad platforms have moved from "tag matching" to "content understanding". The traditional two-tower model is now passé, replaced by interactive towers that semantically match audiences likely to perform interactive actions — in this context, creative becomes the new targeting. Source：《Hierarchical Structured Neural Network: Efficient Retrieval Scaling for Large Scale Recommendation》 The Strategic Shift: AI vs. AI Marketers now face a critical choice: continue inefficiently scaling volume, or adopt strategy-level AI tools to respond to algorithmic change and build reusable formulas. AppGrowing and Youdao Ads released AI vs. AI: Global Mobile Games & Apps Trends 2026 to help marketers answer:   […]

The following analysis of mobile game marketing trends for February 2026 is based on advertising data from AppGrowing across 50 countries and regions, and 28 global media platforms. In terms of ad distribution by category, Casual games regained the top position, followed by Casino and Puzzle. However, Casino games continued to lead in the share of newly advertised apps, accounting for 29.42%, down from January. By ad volume, the top three categories remained Puzzle, Casual, and Role-Playing. Simulation ranked fourth, with ad volume comparable to Role-Playing games. In terms of ad creative formats, video continued to dominate global mobile game advertising, accounting for 70.07%, while image creatives made up 26.51%. By video length, the 16-30 second segment remained the most […]

According to AppGrowing, industry giants like such as Lilith, 4399, Bilibili, and FunPlus have successively launched their own Palworld-like mobile games. What’s notable, however, is the emerging design trend: a lightweight blend of "Palworld-like elements + refined gameplay mechanics." Monster-chatching is no longer the core gameplay by itself; instead it becomes an important module that drives game systems. Multiple “Palworld-like” combinations keep entering the market. This evolution is also reshaping UA: simply showing the “capture moment” in ads is no longer enough to attract users. Creative selling points are moving toward greater diversity. The Strategic Shift: Beyond Simple Cloning Rather than simply cloning the open-world framework of Palworld, most publishers choose to embed creature-collection mechanics into established genres to reduce development […]

In the era of Meta Andromeda, low bids, aggressive scaling, and simple asset swaps no longer work. If your cold-start phase stretches from 2 days to 7, or your ads never exit learning, your creatives are likely below Meta’s new “semantic kill line.” 01 The Semantic Kill Line：Does AI Understand Your Ads? Under Meta Andromeda, creatives are treated like programming languages: if the logic is messy, the system cannot match it to the right audience in vector space. Source：《Meta Andromeda: Supercharging Advantage+ automation with the next-gen personalized ads retrieval engine》 To pass the algorithm's test, your ad needs to cross three simple bars: 1. The 3-Seconds Rule: The algorithm must identify the target audience within the first 3 seconds. 2. […]

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where your ad performance just won't budge, no matter how much you "fix" the campaign? Usually, our first instinct is to check the settings: the bidding strategy, audience targeting, or even the budget. But here's the frustrating reality: even with these optimized setups, many ads struggle to get moving and fail to even pass the cold-start phase. This isn't just a streak of bad luck. It's because the rules of the game have changed: Meta has fundamentally rewritten the rules of ad delivery, quietly shifting its focus from manual campaign adjustments to the actual content of your ad. 01 From Matching to Mind Reading For a long time, Meta's algorithm acted like a matchmaker. It paired users […]

In the world of mobile game user acquisition (UA), we are witnessing a fundamental paradigm shift. The era of "human vs. platform" is ending; the era of AI vs. AI has arrived.  The Algorithm Trap: Are We Just Working for the Platforms? For years, game developers have felt the squeeze of "Traffic Red Oceans". But the real pressure isn't just rising costs—it’s the loss of control. Modern automated bidding systems and black-box algorithms now dictate traffic auction and distribution, leaving marketers with dwindling room for manual optimization. Many practitioners now feel they are "working for the platforms," with every dollar of their budget serving as training data for the platform’s machine learning rather than guaranteed ROI.   The Efficiency Paradox: […]

In 2019, Leyi launched the SLG game "West Game," set in the American Westward Expansion era. With its differentiated theme and mature operations, the game quickly attracted a large number of users. As of now, the game has accumulated approximately 27 million downloads and generated over 1.4 billion yuan in revenue. However, since "West Game," Leyi seems to have hit a growth bottleneck. Despite the company's ongoing high-frequency testing of various SLG new games, it has failed to find a product capable of succeeding "West Game" and taking on the company’s revenue banner. Recently, AppGrowing observed that Leyi has launched the sequel to the "West Game" IP, "West Game II," which officially entered public beta on September 21. The data […]

If we were to rank the most popular gameplay styles of the year, "Loot & Extract" would undoubtedly be among the top. The impressive data from "Delta Force" with daily active users surpassing 30 million, alongside "Escape from Duckov" achieving a million evacuations, consistently confirms that this genre is in a period of explosive growth. What’s particularly noteworthy is that "loot & extract" is breaking the boundaries of traditional shooting games, beginning to penetrate the heavy category of SLG. Recently, AppGrowing observed that an increasing number of SLG developers are gravitating towards "Loot & Extract" gameplay. For instance, FunPlus launched "Bone War" last month, integrating a "top-down shooting + loot & extract" model similar to that in "Escape from Duckov," […]

Here is an analysis of the global non-gaming App user acquisition marketing trends for November 2025, based on ad data from 50 countries/regions and 28 global media platforms, according to AppGrowing's report. In November 2025, tool apps continued to account for the largest share of active advertisers among global applications, with the highest proportion of new advertisers as well, rising further to 25.39%. Beyond tools, categories with over 10% share of newly advertised apps include life, Health & Fitness, Entertainment, Educational. The top three categories for ad volume perspective were shopping and entertainment. Among them, the overall advertising volume for tools apps has increased compared to October, showing a month-over-month growth of 49.15%, rising to third place in the current […]

The following analysis of mobile games marketing trends for November 2025 is based on advertising data from AppGrowing across 50 countries and regions, and 28 global media platforms. In the ranking of overseas mobile game advertising by category, casino, casual, and puzzle games occupy the top three spots. Among new app releases, casino games maintain the lead, accounting for 46.26%. Casual games come second, with over 30.00% of new app releases. Notably, although the overall number of arcade game ads is relatively small, new arcade apps constitute 19.11%, ranking third. The top three in advertising volume are puzzle, casual, and role-playing games. However, when considering creative material count after de-duplication, casino games surpass role-playing titles. In terms of Ad Creative […]