Russian Mobile Game Advertising Market 2020

As mobile consumption increases, so does the importance of mobile ad formats. If earlier mobile advertisement was perceived by many advertisers as a secondary promotion tool, and its budget for it was distributed on a residual basis, today marketers have a perceptual unity of this tool as one of the key ones.

Mobile audience in Russia

The audience of mobile users in Russia is growing steadily. According to Mediascope data, the monthly audience of mobile Internet users in Russia exceeded 85 million persons.

Source: Mediascope, Web-Index, February 2020 – April 2020, Russia, 12+ years old persons

More than 32 million Russians use only mobile devices to access the Internet.

Source: Mediascope, Web-Index, February 2020 – April 2020, Russia, 12+ years old persons

Every day Russians spend much more time on the Internet on mobile devices than on desktop. And this applies to absolutely all age categories.

Source: Mediascope, Web-Index, April 2020, Russia, 12+ years old persons

Top 10 resources for mobile audience scope

Within framework of monthly usage by audience Google leads the way in Russian mobile service. If we talk about daily use of mobile resources, the leaders among Russians are Whatsapp.com messenger (with daily coverage of 40% of the mobile audience) and Vk.com social network (with 29.5% coverage), Google takes only the third position with 29.1% daily coverage.

Source: Mediascope, Web-Index, March 2020, Russia, 12+ years old persons, Monthly reach, Mobile

Russian audience for mobile games

According to MY. GAMES* data, 85% of all Russian players played mobile games once a month. The audience for mobile games is evenly distributed between men and women. Thus, the male part of the audience prefers to play competitive and tactical genres (military simulators, shooters, Battle Royale, action games, strategy games), while female – casual (music, time management, simulation of life).

*The survey involved more than 1.5 thousand people aged 15 to 44 years.

Advertisements in mobile

The growth trend in the mobile Internet audience is directly reflected in volume of the mobile advertising market. Compared to 2017, it increased by 32% and in 2018 amounted to 92.4 billion rubles. The share of the mobile advertising segment within all interactive advertising increased from 21% in 2015 to 45% in 2018. Availability of Android smartphones and high-speed mobile Internet are becoming key drivers of the growth of the entire Internet advertising market, which logically follows the changing media consumption by users.

According to results of the IAB Russia survey, 58% of all mobile advertising expenditures in 2018 were made up of ads on mobile sites, while the remaining budgets (42%) were spent on ads in mobile apps.

The ratio of expenses for promoting mobile sites or mobile apps depends on the advertiser's category. Thus, advertisers from FMCG, telecommunications, automobiles, finance, and insurance categories allocate more than 70% of their mobile advertising budgets to mobile site advertising, and no more than 30% of their budget to mobile app advertising.

Advertisers in e-commerce, Internet services and games categories, on the contrary, spend almost whole of their budget on advertising apps, and a small part (or nothing at all) on advertising mobile sites.

Source: IAB Russia, mobile advertising Market in Russia in 2018/2019

The Russian market of video games: total of 2019

According to MY.GAMES estimates, volume of the Russian video game market in 2019 increased by 14% YoY and amounted to 120.4 billion rubles. The main growth driver in 2019 is mobile games (+49% to 48.1 billion rubles), which almost caught up with free games on PC against the background of slowing growth of the latter (+5% to 49.1 billion rubles).

In 2019, the share of free games on all platforms increased by 21% and reached 99.9 billion rubles, which is 82% of the market.

Global and Russian mobile game market 2020 forecast

According to ResearchAndMarkets.com data, the global market for smartphone and tablet games will grow from $58.3 billion in 2019 to $97 billion in 2020. This growth is largely due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mobile gaming market.

According to our analysts' forecasts, the Russian mobile games market is also expected to grow in 2020. And if in 2019 users spent $744 million on mobile games in Russia, this year this figure may well exceed the $1 billion bar.

As for mobile advertising, Dentsu Aegis Network forecasts that its global market share will exceed that of television in 2020. TV is expected to account for 31.5% of the global advertising market, and mobile – 32.1%. In 2020, mobile advertising will show an increase of 16.5% to $172.6 million.

This trend is also observed in the Russian market. Dentsu Aegis Network analysts forecast that in 2020 volume of mobile advertising in Russia will increase, and spending on mobile will reach 50% of digital budgets.

One of the most dynamic segments in the Russian market in 2020 will be online video, which is expected to grow by 20% in 2020. The mobile video segment is rapidly developing, although in the first half of 2019, key formats showed various dynamics: while out-stream video advertising grew by 98%, in-stream video advertising grew by 10%.

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