TheGamingEconomy rounds of some of the biggest stories in the business of gaming. In this week’s edition: Voodoo Gets Some Help from Goldman; Apple Back in the Ad Business; and Zynga Grabs Gram Games for USD$250m. 

There is a huge amount of money still going into gaming. Goldman Sachs is investing USD$200 (£150m) into French gaming firm Voodoo, which has had a string of hits over the past twelve months, and is looking to use the money to [...]

Arguably, one of the most crucial aspects of performance advertising for in-app gaming is creative. From leveraging the correct ad format – depending on your user acquisition, retention, and reactivation strategies – to multivariate testing of creative across those different target segments, gaming developers need to place a lot of importance on creative output. TheGamingEconomy speaks exclusively with Jeff Marshall (pictured below), CEO, CrossInstall, about its newly launched Creatives as a Service (CaaS) platform, to help gaming developers do [...]

For many gaming developers, there is a fear of advertising; and one of the major reasons for this is the bad publicity around fraud. TheGamingEconomy speaks exclusively with Asaf Greiner, CEO and co-founder, Protected Media, about why in-app fraud continues to be a challenge, and how gaming developers can get one step ahead.

Asaf Greiner: Today, growth and [...]

TheGamingEconomy visited Casual Connect Europe this week, where we interviewed Simon Spaull, managing director, EMEA, AppLovin, about the challenges and opportunities of in-app monetisation for gaming developers both big and small.

Simon Spaull: Financially, it’s a challenge. If you want to get to the top of an app chart, the predominant way is to buy users; and when you’re competing against the larger companies, it’s difficult, as [...]

With a surge in popularity of multiplayer games, it comes in tandem with a number of challenges, not least of all with mobile app communication capabilities. TheGamingEconomy speaks exclusively with Shlomi Gian, CEO, and Chetan Ahuja, CTO, PacketZoom (both pictured), about the challenges developers need to consider, and how their new solution helps to mitigate these.

Shlomi Gian and Chetan Ahuja: PacketZoom’s Mobile Connect is a turnkey [...]

Fortnite is the break-out gaming success of the year. It has currently got 45 million users playing the game (across platforms) and has a run rate of around USD$3bn (£2.3bn) per year.

The game has barely touched the sides in terms of growth; and with its Android launch next month, a huge spike in user growth is expected.

Fortnite’s success has been built on a freemium model. Its ‘Battle Royale’ version is free-to-play across all platforms. Players [...]

When King launched its ad business nearly two years ago, you sensed a struggle within the company between the burgeoning ad business and its well-established in-app monetisation strategy. The company has nearly 400 million MAUs, and there was clearly an opportunity to monetise that user with an ad model.

Video ads, with their high CPMs, was the logical option for King. The problem, as I saw it, was the length of the video ad on their mobile games.

For any of [...]

Which event had more people watching live in the stadium in 2017? The Superbowl? The FA Cup Final? Or the Intel Extreme Masters? Well, you might have guessed it (though you may never have heard of it) – it’s the Intel Extreme Masters! In fact, with over 173,000 fans in attendance, this event, which includes competitions in League of Legends, Starcraft II, and Counter-Strike, had more spectators come through its gates than the other two events combined (as well as a [...]

Think you might be obsessed with gaming on your mobile? You’re not alone.

– In 2016, 53% of South Korean mobile gamers spent between 30 and 120 minutes playing mobile games every day

– By 2020, it is predicted that 77% of the American mobile population will be mobile gamers

– This year, in India, 43% of smartphone users will download a new game on a weekly basis, with 16% downloading one daily.

Whether it’s Angry Birds, Clash of Clans, or [...]

We are living in the era of connected entertainment. Media companies have been quick to pounce on the second-screen phenomenon, where viewers watching a TV show are consuming supplementary content and applications simultaneously via their phones and tablets to create a fully immersive entertainment experience. Writing exclusively for ExchangeWire, Shane Leahy, CEO, Tola Mobile, explains why there is so much value in the second screen.

Research suggests that 83% of people are now browsing a second screen while watching TV. [...]