Why installs alone no longer define games growth

• Julia Gorbunova says that installs alone no longer guarantee growth.
• Long-term value will become the primary focus for publishers in 2026 and beyond.
• Oscar Clark believes friction between discovery and access is increasingly undermining traditional performance-led marketing approaches.

Games marketing is forever changing - and often changes fast.

Marketers face challengs such as rising user acquisition costs, tightening privacy regulations and increasing competition, which challenges teams to rethink their strategies and growth goals. 

As marketing continues to change, the focus is shifting to long-term value, retention and connection with audiences. This evolution will be covered in an upcoming panel, Beyond Downloads: The New Rules of Games Marketing, taking place at Pocket Gamer Connects London on January 19th and 20th. 

Speaking on the subject and taking part in the panel at PGC is Almedia senior UA manager Julia Gorbunova, who states that the industry's obsession with installs has masked a deeper problem. 

“Installs alone no longer guarantee growth," she says. "Acquisition costs are rising, and traditional performance channels largely optimise for install rather than retention.”

For Gorbunova, the real work begins after the download, saying that "whether they retain and whether they generate long-term clauses are where publishers want to focus in 2026 and beyond".

This shift has direct implications for how UA channels are evaluated as well.

"Rewarded engagement has become a normalised pre- and post-install behaviour. Users are getting more and more used to rewards, so without serious investment in rewards as a UA source, publishers risk missing out on lifetime value in the long term.”

The limits of performance marketing 

While Gorbunova focuses on evolving UA economics, Arcanix.ai's chief strategy officer, Oscar Clark, highlights a broader structural issue affecting games. He says that many experiences struggle because they exist outside the natural flow of how people discover content.

“VR experiences have a major issue as they are ‘separate’ from the natural environment that people experience communication," Clark says, further explaining how audiences don’t tend to watch streams, YouTube clips or get ads that speak in a VR context. 

This creates friction between awareness and access and a “break in flow".

Clark mentions transmedia experiences as a way to double down on branding. “We have to connect people emotionally to the concept to such an extent that they care enough to switch platforms and go to a new place.”

Tools such as QR codes can help bridge the gap, but Clark warns they are not a silver bullet and notes that "generally we lose a lot of eyeballs that way". He also states that this challenge is not unique to emerging formats. “Console games have largely the same problem.”

Frictionless installs to emotional investment

Clark dives into how strong brand identity has become a prerequisite for overcoming this friction, regardless of platform. “Any game/media using normal channels gains when they invest in building up their brand identity so that players care."

Mobile games in particular could rely on performance marketing because of the lower effort required on the user's part, as Clark notes, and because rewarded and performance ads had almost zero friction.

"The install of a game relied on an emotional, instantaneous gratification. A ‘that looked cool I’ll try it’ mindset was enough to get you numbers.”

However, Clark also expresses that the environment no longer exists and that with “more complicated targeting, it has become too expensive to rely on this".

As a result, Clark sees a growing need for deeper planning and more integrated marketing approaches.

Learn more

Retention-led thinking, rewarded engagement, emotional branding, and design awareness are increasingly relevant across platforms in games marketing.

As discovery becomes more fragmented and acquisition more expensive, success may be less about a simple one-off click or download, but more on sustained engagement and long-term value. 

These themes and more will be explored further at Pocket Gamer Connects London on January 19th and 20th during the Beyond Downloads: The New Rules of Games Marketing panel and more in the Marketing Marvels track.