Data & Research

What does the holiday season have in store for developers and publishers?

Fyber digs into the data for the holiday season to help us understand the opportunities coming up in 2021

What does the holiday season have in store for developers and publishers?

As the holiday season approaches, Shahar Raviv, corporate strategy analyst at Fyber – a Digital Turbine company - dives into the data to find out what developers and publishers can learn from consumer trends and spend around this time of the year.

This year of mobile gaming saw its biggest boom yet!

Yes, the pandemic was instrumental in bringing new gamers to the mobile gaming playing field, but gaming publishers and advertisers still faced significant challenges and changes.

The holiday period is one of the most important times of the year for gaming companies - and Fyber is betting that this year could look like no other holiday season we've seen.

Take a look.

Fyber decided to explore insights from how the 2020 holiday season unwrapped.

People spent a lot more time playing during the 2020 holiday season

Historically speaking, the holiday season and mega sales are key periods for gaming. With the pandemic still influencing mobile user behaviour, more and more people looked for entertainment or ways to unwind and relax, leading gaming to reach an all-time high of five to six hours daily on their mobile device (not including work-related use).

As consumers engage with an app, the app requests ads to be displayed and the ad request is counted. Therefore, Fyber used ad requests to measure users’ behaviour on their mobile phones from the pre-holiday period to the peak of the holiday season.

From the data, Fyber saw a sharp increase in ad requests in gaming apps indicating that users spent more time in games (interstitial and banners) and engaging with the game (rewarded video).

These were the 2020 results:

Larger demand offering and more competition

As the holiday season is around the corner, in 2020 Fyber saw a significant rise in eCPMs (Effective Cost Per Mille, which is the cost of a thousand impressions - and in layman’s terms the ad revenue generated per one thousand ad impressions) - compared to the weeks leading up to the holiday season. A high eCPM means the ads served on an app are working and converting users.

For brands, this measures the ad revenue generated per campaign. Interestingly, although Fyber saw an increase in users activity, meaning the supply was growing, the competition in gaming ad prices also became more intense.

Both brands and gaming publishers are willing to invest their budgets in these new players as players’ session time also increased. The holiday season has brands looking to mobile gaming platforms for a worthwhile investment to boost their busy holiday campaigns.

Brands spent more during the holiday season in 2020 and became a more significant part of mobile game advertisers

Similarly to 2020, brands will have to remain agile. With more people expected to be online this season, gaming advertisers are in for a lucrative treat!

While analyzing internal data, Fyber discovered that out of Fyber's top spenders, they saw a 67% increase in brand spend during the holiday season as compared to the pre-holiday season.

Rewarded video has been proven to be a successful and engaging form of advertising for users. Fyber sees that brands that have tapped into this ad format enjoy exposure to a captive audience with tremendous buying power.

Brands and game advertisers have a great window of opportunity to reach this significant audience through in-app ads - the right place and time to spend particularly during the holiday season.

Make the most of the holiday season

From the data and patterns Fyber has seen in 2020’s holiday season - the increase in ad requests, eCPMs, and brand spend, this time of the year has the potential to truly propel apps into the new year and help developers grow their metrics.

If you’re an advertiser - make sure to catch the actionable steps from Fyber's demand team.

For publishers, Fyber's supply team has pulled together seven valuable tips to get ready and take advantage of during the holiday season.

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