As any viewers of our Monetizer videoswill know, I'm a big fan of push notifications.

I just think almost all game developers use them dreadfully - a push notification prompt is often the first thing a potential player will experience when they boot up a game.

Surely a much better place for a push notification prompt is after someone has completed the tutorial?

Yet as an in-depth survey - 2,400 apps and 500 million push notifications - from mobile infrastructure outfit Urban Airship reveals, the power of push notifications remains clear.

The power of push

One key finding is that users who opt-in to your push notifications are significantly more engaged than those who don't.

Opt-in users will on average open your app 26 percent more times than opt-out users, and for games the average increase is 35 percent.

Getting users to opt-in to push notifications is also crucial for retention. In the first month after an app download, 55 percent of opt-in users are retained versus only 29 percent of opt-out users.

Bad games, good games

Looking specifically at the games category, the news is good and bad.

The maximum opt-in rate for the best individual games is comparable with media and retail apps (at 92 percent), and higher than entertainment and sports.

Yet the average rate (35 percent) is the lowest of all categories, and the minimum opt-in rate of 16 percent is well below the best - gambling apps (28 percent) and media apps (23 percent).

Urban Airship points out that while games seem to have an uphill battle to use push notifications for longterm retention, this also provides a strong opportunity if game developers can better optimise their push notifications - both in terms of getting players to opt-in and in terms of the information they provide.

[source: Urban Airship]