Numbers can be dangerous things.

I think that's the context in which to view Playnomics latest report.

Its Player Engagement Study for Q3 2013 compares user behaviour for web games against that of mobile games and apps across more than 20,000 players.

Either or

It came up with two seemingly divergent findings.

For web games, the top spenders make up more of the total spend than on mobile.

The top 20 percent of web games spenders accounted for 87 percent of total audience spend, while on mobile this figure was 56 percent.

However, if you consider the top 1 percent of spenders, web and mobile were roughly the same; respectively 32 percent and 30 percent.

Three and in

In contrast, Playnomics discovered that mobile monetisers (defined as anyone who spends money in-app within their first 180 days) spent 63 percent of their total lifetime value within their first day in-app.

For web games, this figure is a mere 10 percent.

There's no clear reason why behaviour should be so different between the two platforms.

Another interesting titbit was that Playnomics said it could predict with 74 percent accuracy whether a web player would spend any money. The simple rule was whether they played three or more sessions within their first seven days.

There was no such simple rule to delineate spenders and non-spender on mobile, though.

You can see the full survey here.