When Amazon starts a new business, competitors scrap business plans and markets shudder. We examined 19 of Amazon’s divisions to help parse how the company fuels its flywheel to keep driving the virtuous cycle.

Europe's video game market grew 22% YoY in 2020: The rise of social and mobile games is presenting opportunities for marketers to reach gaming audiences.

Sony’s future gaming fortunes are in PC titles: The PlayStation maker is betting big on ports of its games on Windows PCs, a market where console rival Microsoft is already a dominant player.

Mobile gaming’s multibillion-dollar market

Though time spent with mobile games is expected to decline in 2021 after the pandemic bump, it will rebound to 25 minutes by 2023. Why it’s worth watching: As the mobile game market has grown, so too has its function as a platform for advertisers.

Merger frenzy: This comes as the video game market consolidates like never before. Microsoft plans to acquire Activision Blizzard in a $68.7 billion deal that should turn the software giant into one of the world’s largest gaming companies. Take-Two Interactive (Grand Theft Auto, NBA 2K) completed its acquisition of mobile game giant Zynga for $12.7 billion.

The top 5 countries for mobile gaming revenues

Gaming will make up the large majority of mobile app spending, report shows: Mobile game spending will increase 12.6% worldwide this year, but its overall share of in-app spending is on a slight decline.

Once again, Netflix has started experimenting with these “universes” for other popular franchises in smaller markets, such as with the release of two mobile games based on “Stranger Things” in Poland this past August.

This will be the result of a massive increase in purchases of consoles and games, as well as in mobile game downloads. According to data from market research firm The NPD Group cited by Forbes, US retail sales of video game hardware, software, and accessories and game cards reached $1.5 billion in April 2020, up 73% YoY.

Netflix’s gaming investments set it apart from streaming competitors: The company acquired a Finnish mobile games studio that it has worked with in the past.

Consumer behavior shifts are also driving advertiser allocations, including the increasing time spent with video streaming services (often at the expense of linear TV) and the popularity of mobile gaming. WHAT’S IN THIS REPORT?

An October 2020 survey by market research company The NPD Group and Sensor Tower found that the number of mobile gamers (using either smartphones or tablets) in the US and Canada who were ages 45 and older grew by 17%, while the number of those ages 25 to 44 grew by 13%—the two highest growth rates across all age groups.

The combination of new mobile gaming growth and increased activity from current gamers caused time spent with mobile gaming to rise significantly during the pandemic. We estimate that consumers spent an average of 27.3 minutes with mobile gaming apps per day in 2020, which was up by 16.8% from 2019.

Trend No. 9: Turmoil in Casual Game Market Will Open Opportunities for Brands. Like OTT video, mobile gaming has thrived during the pandemic. Downloads of casual games—generally free-to-play games with simple structures that are primarily monetized with ads—grew 45% YoY in H1 2020, according to app analytics provider App Annie.

The pandemic’s effect on the market began in March and will continue to be severe through Q2. Outdoor ads are getting less exposure due to stay-at-home orders. Consumers are spending more time with many forms of media during the pandemic—TV, streaming video and mobile games, for example.

Peloton’s market cap has dropped nearly 40% since Apple broadened Fitness+, which takes direct aim at Peloton’s digital workouts, as of the market close on Friday. Elsewhere in earnings:. Pinterest stated in its SEC filing for Q3 that Apple’s privacy changes have impacted the company’s “ability to track user actions off our platform and connect their interactions with on-platform advertising.”.

Metaverse content creators and platforms operating in the market need to pay attention to the strict content regulatory regime in China, where the leash for violence and anything deemed “vulgar” is extremely short.

US adults will spend an additional 11 minutes on social media apps, 10 minutes on mobile video apps and 3 minutes on mobile games in 2020. Messaging will gain 4 minutes, but advertising within messaging platforms remains lightly developed. Mobile Gaming. One of the brightest spots in mobile advertising is in-game advertising, which has managed continued growth due to strong demand for mobile games.

We estimate that mobile gaming ad revenues will reach $6.26 billion in the US this year. It has more than quadrupled in the past five years: When we began tracking this metric in 2017, US mobile gaming ad revenues were $1.43 billion.

Mobile gaming ad revenues will total $6.26 billion in 2022, less than a third of the $19.61 billion in revenues generated by IAPs. (Note: Our definition of virtual goods covers all in-game transactions other than subscriptions. Mobile games often have a narrower definition based on items bought for in-game characters.).

Mobile Games. Mobile gamers least like the ad formats that cover up the game and that force the user to experience the ad, such as when ads take over their screens. They feel most positively toward rewarded ads, whether video or static display, versus any other format in mobile games.