monetize idle games

Can You Monetize Idle Games?

While many businesses took a beating when the pandemic hit, the mobile gaming industry was among the ones who made bank. With people forced to stay home, they searched for different activities to keep their minds off of the ongoing health crisis, and mobile games became one of their go-to’s. It has become a versatile and widely available form of entertainment. A 2020 digest found that games posted a 50% growth because of COVID-19. A 35% and 38% year-over-year growth was posted by the App Store and Google Play, respectively. As such, it has allowed many individuals to become more aware of different genres of gaming, including idle games.


Even before the pandemic, idle games have already been booming. The pandemic brought it even closer to the consciousness of many casual players. For newcomers in the industry, it begets the question—can you monetize idle games?


The Answer

Monetizing idle games is possible. In fact, it’s highly encouraged. If you think that hyper-casual games do better with monetization, then you haven’t seen the potential of idle games yet. Comparing the two game genres, monetizing idle games can bring your more revenue based on the following data:


Higher Stickiness

Idle game players have a stickiness of 18% compared to hyper-casual titles generating 10.5%. This means that idle games have a higher ability to retain players over a month’s time. The higher the retention rate, the more opportunities for monetization.


More Daily Sessions

Idle gamers log more sessions per day marking at least five to six sessions that last longer than hyper-casual players. This can show that the market is steadily growing. In fact, idle games have an average revenue per daily active user (ARPDAU) that is nine times more than hyper-casual titles.


Data shows that the audience of idle games is much more engaged. When it comes to monetization, this level of engagement spells a big difference.


How Do You Monetize Idle Games?

If you plan to jumpstart your revenue stream using idle games, here are some useful strategies:


Rewarded Videos

Rewarded videos are great revenue streams for developers. With it, advertisers can show a 30-second ad, allowing developers to earn money. Users, on the other hand, will have to give up the same amount of time in exchange of a reward, which can either be saving more time to achieve their in-game goals or increase their soft currencies.

It can be tricky to apply, though. There must be a careful balance of advertising implementation. Too many ads can significantly downgrade user experience and affect retention rate.


Offerwall

The offerwall is a rapidly growing method of getting ad units well-suited for idle games. Since the offerwall leverages a player’s motivation to level up in their games, it can attract players who would rather spend time on game progression. Often, this is preferred by advertisers because they have the freedom to “purchase” users in a more cost-effective way since they would only need to pay developers once users complete advertiser events.


In-App Purchase (IAP)

For idle games, monetization should focus on banking on the player’s speed of progression. Remember, most idle game players are highly engaged. This means they are willing to pay for offerings that would allow them to achieve their end goals. In most cases, it would be a better option to focus your direction on offering in-game currencies that they can use to progress faster.


Now that you’re armed with this information, it’s time to think of ways on how you can monetize your idle gamesContact AlgoriX, and our experts will connect with you to give you valuable insights on how you can ramp up your revenues.

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Pranav Kataria

Associate Director, Programmatic Strategy

As the Associate Director of Programmatic Strategy, Pranav brings over 8 years of experience in the adtech industry working with Publishers, DSPs, Agencies, and Advertisers from global regions to improve their monetization, performance, and strategies. With great understanding of the mobile market, his expertise lies in analytics, account management, strategy, and ad sales. With this refined skill set, he brings customer-centric mindfulness that enables growth and innovation.

Before joining AlgoriX, his keen business perspective and skills have earned him opportunities to work across different organizations and verticals in the advertising ecosystem; be it improving the processes, sales enablement, and managing client relationships.

Ray Xia

VP, AlgoriX Partner Studio

Ray Xia was a mainstay at Tencent Games, having worked at the company for 13 years. There, he took on various roles including backend developer, application development manager, and game producer. During this time, he actively participated in the development and operation of popular titles such as QQ Pet, QQ Pet Fight, and games involving the Naruto franchise. To date, these games have over 10 million daily active users. Through this rich well of experience he has accumulated covering all aspects of game development and operation, he aims to spearhead more creative endeavors via AlgoriX Studios.

Naomi Li

VP, Research and Development

Naomi Li has a decade’s worth of experience in research and development for the adtech industry. She started her career at Baidu where she was mainly responsible for the Automation Testing of the Baidu Fengchao Ad Search Engine. There, she focused on the fields of overlapping experiment infrastructure, rich media ads rendering, and ad antispam technology. Moreover, as part of Baidu’s International Group, she led the research and development of various monetization and advertising mechanisms for Baidu’s overseas app store, SDK, and AdNetwork. At present, she is responsible for the overall direction of AlgoriX’s R&D efforts, which include product planning, technical architecture design, and talent training.

Frederic Liow

SVP, Revenue Growth & Strategy

A veteran in the digital advertising industry, he began his career during the early days of the dotcom era. To date, his passion for the digital industry is still as strong as ever (and getting even stronger). Spanning twenty years of his digital career, he has worked for leading companies like Nielsen, MRM McCann, Omnicom Media Group, Millward Brown and Smaato. Currently, Frederic is the revenue officer for AlgoriX spearheading global revenue growth, business expansion and strategic partnerships. He has set up and built AlgoriX’s global mobile ad exchange, hiring talents, establishing best practices, and injecting global industry standards into the company. Prior to his current role, he was the Head of Demand for Smaato, overseeing the demand business and operations in APAC. Frederic is currently based in our Singapore HQ.

Xinxiao Guo

Chief Operation Officer

Equipped with a decade’s worth of experience in global product operation as well as a deep understanding of emerging markets, Xinxiao brings her expertise in mobile traffic monetization and programmatic advertising to the table. Before her role at AlgoriX, she was a core member of iQIYI’s research and development unit. After that, she moved to Baidu as Head of Programmatic Advertising.

At present, she is AlgoriX’s co-founder and Chief Operation Officer. Together with the team, she aims to help game developers effectively reach global audiences and implement better monetization strategies.

Ruiz Xie

Chief Executive Officer

With nearly 20 years of business experience, Ruiz Xie founded AlgoriX with the vision of creating a global advertising platform and entertainment ecosystem. Through AlgoriX’s services, he aims to create a more inclusive tech ecosystem by providing customized solutions that meet the needs of businesses at every stage. At the same time, through AlgoriX Studios and its third-party partner studios, the company is currently bringing to life a greater goal of providing a comprehensive entertainment platform for people worldwide, which covers games, IP, comics, movies, and more. At present, he leads nearly a hundred employees with concrete plans to expand the company by establishing more offices worldwide.

Before founding AlgoriX, Ruiz Xie joined CoreMail in 2002. There, he created the first Ajax version of the mailbox in China for NetEase, which was the largest Internet company in China at the time. After that, he joined Tencent in 2005 and contributed to the creation of Tencent Games while also building a large scale distributed storage system. In 2013, he moved to Baidu where he took part in developing Baidu International’s overall architecture and search advertising system. During his tenure, he was also the Chairman of the Baidu Global Technical Committee and Baidu’s chief architect.