Gaming

Gaming ad spend hits $25bn as paid installs rise 10 per cent: AppsFlyer report

Published

2 weeks ago

January 22, 2026

MUMBAI: Artificial intelligence has made building games faster, cheaper and easier. Standing out, however, has never been harder.

That is the central takeaway from The State of Gaming for Marketers – 2026 Edition, a new report by AppsFlyer that paints a picture of an industry bursting with content, cash and competition. The tools of creation are now widely available. Attention is not.

In 2025, paid installs for mobile games rose 10 per cent year on year, while ad impressions jumped 20 per cent. The reason is simple. AI has turbocharged development and creative production, allowing even small studios to churn out games and marketing assets at speeds once reserved for blockbuster titles. The result is a crowded marketplace where marketing muscle and data savvy matter more than ever.

“Production is no longer the problem,” the report suggests. “Attention is.”

Money is still flowing in. Global gaming user acquisition spend hit 25 billion dollars in 2025, up nearly four per cent from the previous year. But the geography of that spending is shifting. Almost half of all budgets still go to the United States, yet US spend actually fell five per cent as high costs make incremental growth harder to justify.

By contrast, markets such as India and Turkey are enjoying a surge. Spend jumped 19 per cent in India and 29 per cent in Turkey, reflecting cheaper scale and growing ad based monetisation. For marketers willing to look beyond traditional strongholds, opportunity is knocking loudly.

Genres are also moving in different directions. Casual games continue to command more than half of all acquisition budgets, but their Android spend dipped seven per cent as returns softened. Hypercasual titles remain heavily reliant on paid traffic, thriving on Android where costs are lower, but struggling on iOS where spend fell 14 per cent. Midcore games, meanwhile, are enjoying a renaissance on iOS, with budgets up 26 per cent year on year as publishers chase higher lifetime value players.

One of the most striking shifts comes from China based publishers. Their share of global gaming acquisition spend outside China rose 22 per cent to reach 35 per cent of the market. Once focused on domestic success, these companies are now aggressively expanding into Western and mature Asian markets. Growth in the US, UK, Germany and France shows that creative localisation is working, while gains in Japan and South Korea signal direct competition with long established local players.

Monetisation models are also evolving, albeit slowly. Around seven per cent more games adopted hybrid monetisation in 2025, combining in app purchases with advertising. Even so, fewer than a third of games currently use a hybrid approach. Developers are experimenting, not yet committing, as they search for the right balance between player experience and revenue resilience.

Behind the scenes, AI is becoming an everyday companion for gaming teams. Nearly half of all AI assistant queries are now about reporting and performance breakdowns. Hypercasual teams use AI for speed, checking what works and cutting what does not. Midcore and Casino teams dig deeper, asking AI to explain anomalies and interpret shifts that affect long term monetisation.

Creativity, however, remains the ultimate numbers game. Top spenders now produce between 2,400 and 2,600 creative variations every quarter, up as much as 30 per cent year on year. Smaller advertisers are scaling up too, while some mid tier players risk falling behind by cutting output. In a world awash with ads, testing velocity has become a competitive weapon.

The report also highlights growing diversification on iOS, where advertisers are spreading budgets across more media sources rather than squeezing existing channels. This broader mix offers incremental scale and some insurance against platform volatility.

Taken together, the findings point to a simple truth. AI has levelled the playing field on creation, but raised the bar on marketing. Winning in 2026 will not be about making more games. It will be about reading the data better, testing faster, and knowing where attention and value truly lie.

For an industry once defined by play, the real game now is focus.

Related Topics:AppsFlyer China France Germany India Mumbai The State of Gaming for Marketers – 2026 Edition Turkey United Kingdom United States

Up Next

Indian digital journalism in 2025 was fragmented, says Delcom’s Vikram Singh

Don't Miss

Pinterest revenue chief Bill Watkins exits as ads and AI race accelerates

Click to comment

Gaming

Ex-Glazer Games CEO Anand Mishra joins MetaNinza

Published

3 days ago

January 30, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

Ahmedabad: MetaNinza, a rewards-first gaming and esports platform, has onboarded Anand Mishra as co-founder and chief of staff, signalling an ambitious push to scale its ecosystem across India and South East Asia.

Anand, a serial entrepreneur with 7+ years in consumer tech, blockchain and gaming, previously founded and led Glazer Labs, where he built Glazer Games and THRYL, a rewards-centric gamer engagement platform. Under his leadership, Glazer Games delivered 400 million+ impressions for 50+ brands, drove 10 million+ user acquisitions, executed hundreds of creator partnerships, and launched new esports IPs. THRYL amassed nearly half a million users in just two months. Anand also founded HECOD Blockchain, serving 400+ B2B clients globally and scaling to 8 million+ active users, with a $4.2 million ARR.

At MetaNinza, Anand will oversee growth, user acquisition, creator ecosystem building, tournaments and rewards distribution, and ensure alignment between product, tech, marketing and operations. His blockchain expertise is expected to strengthen secure, fair and anti-abuse reward systems across the platform.

“MetaNinza is building something truly differentiated by combining competitive esports, rewards-first daily engagement and community-led growth. What drew me most was their clarity of vision: to go beyond tournaments and build a full participation ecosystem where gamers engage meaningfully every day and are rewarded fairly,” said Anand Mishra.

The appointment comes as MetaNinza strengthens its platform foundations and expands its offerings, including tournaments, scrims, quests, coin wallets, offerwalls and anti-abuse frameworks. The company has also launched 16score.com, a global esports news platform aimed at boosting organic community growth. MetaNinza currently serves India-first users but plans to scale across South East Asia, targeting 600 million gaming enthusiasts in the region over the next three years.

“Anand brings a rare combination of ecosystem insight and execution discipline. His experience in building scalable gaming platforms is exactly what we need as MetaNinza enters its next growth phase,” said Sudhansu Sinha, founder and CEO of MetaNinza.

MetaNinza is positioning itself as a full-stack, community-first esports brand, combining competitive tournaments, teams, technology, content and social engagement into one end-to-end platform.

Gaming is no longer just play. With Anand on board, MetaNinza is turning competition, rewards and community into a high-speed growth engine.

Gaming

Esports Nations Cup to debut in Riyadh in 2026 with national teams

Published

3 days ago

January 30, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: When esports trades club colours for national flags, the stakes get personal. The Esports Nations Cup 2026 is set to make its global debut in Riyadh from November 2 to 29, 2026, adding a fresh, nation-first twist to competitive gaming.

Announced by the Esports World Cup Foundation, the new tournament is designed to sit alongside the club-based Esports World Cup, giving players the rare chance to represent their countries and fans a reason to cheer with identity and pride firmly in play.

The numbers are hard to ignore. ENC 2026 is backed by a $45 million, three-part funding model, aimed at strengthening the entire esports ecosystem. Of this, 20 million dollars will be paid directly as prize money to players and coaches across 16 game titles. A further $5 million has been earmarked as incentives for esports clubs that release their professional players for national duty, with payouts linked to player performance.

Another $20 million will flow through the ENC Development Fund, supporting national teams with logistics, travel, operations, marketing and long-term pathway development signalling that this is as much about future pipelines as present-day podiums.

The competition introduces a placement-based prize framework that keeps things simple and transparent. Every qualified player is guaranteed prize money and at least three matches. A gold-medal finish earns $50,000 per player, silver takes $30,000, and bronze pays $15,000. The same placement pays the same amount across all titles, whether solo or team-based, with team payouts scaling by roster size. Coaches are rewarded alongside players for identical finishes.

“National teams bring a powerful new layer to esports, rooted in identity and pride,” said Esports World Cup Foundation CEO Ralf Reichert, adding that the model is designed to reward performance while remaining fair and sustainable for players, clubs and national programmes alike.

While Riyadh hosts the inaugural edition, the ENC is planned as a biennial event with a rotating host-city format, taking nation-based esports to major cities around the world.

Several titles are already locked in. Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, Trackmania, and Dota 2 have been confirmed for 2026, with more games expected to be announced shortly.

For esports fans, it is no longer just about who plays best but which nation plays proudest.

Gaming

Christoph Hartmann exits Amazon games after eight years

Published

4 days ago

January 29, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: It seems Amazon’s gaming division has finally met its final boss. After nearly eight years at the helm, Christoph Hartmann is reportedly packing up his controller and heading for the exit. The news, first reported by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, marks the end of an era for the man who steered the New World and Lost Ark ships into the choppy waters of the MMO market.

While Hartmann’s departure might look like a simple game over, it is actually part of a massive tactical pivot. Amazon appears to be retreating from the costly, high-stakes world of traditional AAA console and PC development. Instead of chasing the next blockbuster epic, the company is looking skyward by focusing its energy on Amazon Luna, its dedicated cloud gaming service.

This leadership shuffle coincides with a broader wave of 16,000 redundancies across the Amazon empire. For gamers, the most poignant bit of lag is the news that New World: Aeternum is set to go offline permanently in January 2027. It appears the company is no longer interested in building digital worlds from scratch, but rather in providing the cloud-based pipes to stream them.

Hartmann leaves behind a legacy of taking Amazon from a struggling studio to a genuine, if brief, contender in the PC gaming space. Looking forward, the hardware focus is shifting entirely to Luna infrastructure. Rumours suggest the new-look Amazon Games will be heavily bolstered by AI-integrated experiences rather than traditional software. Whether this move is a masterstroke or a massive misclick remains to be seen. For now, the Amazon Games office is looking a little bit emptier, and the cloud is looking a lot more crowded.