App Annie just released its "2015 Gaming Report" and gaming on mobile devices widened its lead over other platforms in terms of spend, comprising 40% of all consumer spending on games for the year 2015. The reports key findings are summarized below.
Key Themes & Takeaways: Gaming Trends
Mobile gaming overtook both home game consoles and combined PC and Mac gaming in consumer spend for the first time in 2014; the gap widened in 2015 and shows no signs of slowing.
Games continued to have the majority share of worldwide consumer spending on both Google Play and the iOS App Store, with each store seeing incremental year-over-year gains in gaming-related share of consumer spending.
Home game console spending was disproportionately high in North America and Western Europe. Mobile game and PC and Mac game spending was centered in Asia-Pacific and shifted further in that direction in 2015. Asia-Pacific in particular saw explosive growth in share of consumer spending on the iOS App Store.
The top revenue-generating titles on mobile were actually more stable year-over-year than those on handheld game consoles (partly due to handheld games being sold in physical packaging).
Home and handheld game consoles declined marginally in consumer spend from 2013 to 2015.
Home game consoles saw the highest consumer spend per device in 2015 at nearly 5x that of mobile games. However, given their broad appeal, mobile games have a much larger user base and therefore monetize higher overall.
Worldwide Consumer Spending on Games by Device for the Years 2013-2015
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Mobile gaming overtook both home game consoles and combined PC and Mac gaming for the first time with the highest consumer spend in 2014.
Mobile gaming’s lead continued to widen in 2015 over PC and Mac gaming, home game consoles and handheld game consoles.
Worldwide Consumer Spending Shares on Games, by Region, 2015
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Asia-Pacific gained in share of game spending for iOS App Store and Google Play combined due to iOS’ explosive growth in China and the healthy growth of all major APAC markets.
Asia-Pacific also gained in share of consumer spending for both handheld games and PC and Mac gaming.
Home consoles didn’t see much growth in Asia-Pacific despite the 14 year ban on consoles in China being lifted in 2015. Western Europe showed growth in home game console spending in 2015.
Top 5 Worldwide Grossing Portable Games, by Platform, 2015
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Worldwide Game Spending Per Gaming Device, 2015
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Home game consoles far and away led other gaming mediums in consumer spend per device.
Mobile gaming saw the smallest consumer spending per device, but had the largest gaming base, reaching not only core gamers but also a significant amount of casual gamers who may not otherwise play games.
Key Themes & Takeaways: US Gamers
There was practically an even gender split within both the mobile gaming (Android Phone and iPhone gamers) and PC and Mac gaming communities in the US in 3Q 2015. Related games represent a great opportunity for marketers to reach both male and female customers.
In 3Q 2015, PC and Mac gamers skewed toward those aged 45+, handheld and console gamers skewed towards those aged 13–24, and mobile was more evenly distributed with the largest age bracket being 25–44.
Android phones trailed significantly behind the other gaming platforms in typical hours of gameplay per week. (Such gamers spent less than one-third the time of those on home game consoles, handheld consoles and combined PC and Mac.)
Appealing to a broader user base, which includes non-traditional and casual gamers, US Android Phone gamers played less time per person per week. Gamers on other devices had much higher weekly gameplay hours per person.
US Gaming Device Demographics, by Gender, 3Q 2015
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Males and females were represented evenly among US iPhone and Android Phone gamers and combined PC and Mac gamers.
US home console gamers skewed male (approximately 59%) in 3Q 2015.
Handheld game consoles in the US skewed the strongest female (approximately 53%) in 3Q 2015.
US Gaming Device Demographics, by Age, 3Q 2015
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PC and Mac gaming skewed older than other US gaming devices in 3Q15 with about 59% aged 45+.
Handheld game consoles had the largest share of young American gamers at 36%+ under 24 years old in 3Q 2015.
US mobile gamers were strongest in the 25–44-year-old bracket at about 40%.
US Gaming Device Demographics, by Hours of Gameplay Per Person, 3Q 2015
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US Android Phone gamers played less than 3 hours per week on average in 3Q 2015. (This mobile gaming community is larger and includes a significantly higher share of casual gamers.)
41% of PC and Mac gamers played less than 5 hours per week versus 22% on consoles.
14% of PC and Mac gamers played greater than 20 hours per week versus 8% on consoles.
Key Themes & Takeaways: Wrap-Up
Mobile gaming surpassed both home game console and PC and Mac gaming to become the top global platform by consumer spending in 2014, furthering this lead over other gaming devices in 2015. Mobile gaming grew to over 40% of total consumer spend on games last year, up from about 35% in 2014.
More than 80% of combined iOS and Google Play consumer app spending in 2015 was derived from games, which enjoyed significant spending growth. On iOS, this share topped 75% in the second half of 2015.
The Asia-Pacific region saw the greatest growth in share of game consumer spending worldwide on iOS and Google Play app stores, handheld gaming, and combined PC and Mac gaming, a testament to the cultural gaming tradition of many countries in the region as well as the ongoing expansion of China as an increasingly large and viable market for game monetization.
Home console gaming saw more than double the consumer spend per device than any other gaming platform. Mobile gaming saw the lowest consumer spend per device, but had the largest audience, giving it the highest overall consumer spend in 2015.
In the US, there is a significant opportunity across all platforms to attract male and female gamers. Console gamers skewed decidedly male. Android Phone and iPhone along with PC and Mac gaming represented near-even gender divides for gamers.
Across handheld, PC and Mac and home console games, users spend roughly the same amount of time per week playing games on average.
PC and Mac gamers have much more variance in the amount of typical gameplay per week compared to home console gamers, with almost double the size of the user base at both extremes (less than 5 hours per week and greater than 20 hours per week).
Hours of gameplay per user per week on Android phones was significantly lower than other gaming platforms, a result of the wide appeal and broadened user base from casual gamers.
Courtesy of an article dated March 29, 2016 appearing in App Annie Blog
Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg having fun test driving the new Oculus Rift VR headset after its launch last month. (Click Image To Enlarge)
VR hardware makers seem to know that, for now anyway, it's in their mutual interest not to tear each other down.
While LinkedIn leads as a business-to-business platform in terms of penetration and scale, B2B social media engagement is actually highest on hip photo-sharing platform Instagram, according to a new study by TrackMaven, based on an analysis of 316 B2B brands across the major social networks.
Unsurprisingly, B2B brands have been busy on LinkedIn, building relatively large followings of vendors and customers; thus brands in the professional services category have a median LinkedIn audience of 1.2 million followers. They’re also active on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, with varying rates of success: for example, the median number of Pinterest followers was less than 3,000 for most of the brand categories studied.
However Instagram – not necessarily most people’s first example of a B2B medium – stood out for delivering high engagement across a range of categories, with measurement defined by TrackMaven as the number of interactions per post per 1,000 followers.
Here are the B2B engagement rates for the major social media networks according to TrackMaven:
Instagram yielded an engagement rate of 22.53.
Pinterest at 15.88.
Facebook at 5.99.
LinkedIn at 1.09.
Twitter at 0.86.
Instagram was the biggest source of social engagement for 15 out of 17 categories, including aerospace and defense, chemicals, computer hardware, construction, electrical equipment, energy, engineering, logistics, machinery, medical, motor vehicles and parts, pharma, professional services, software, and wholesales.
Just two categories did better elsewhere, with biotech seeing bigger engagement on Facebook, while financial services’ highest engagement came on Pinterest.
The rise of digital, including social media, has had a disruptive effect on B2B publishers similar to the impact on consumer media. According to figures from Connectiv (formerly ABM), from 2008 to 2014 B2B print ad revenues declined from 34% of the industry’s total revenues to 24.4%, while over the same period, digital advertising increased from 10.3% to 21% of the total business. Data and business information services rose from 5.8% to 10.2%, and events increased from 42.8% to 44.4%.
COMMENTARY: TrackMaven's B2B brand social media study included a grand total of 508,060 social media posts and over 100 million social interactions. The 316 brands featured in their analysis include the leading B2B brands in the Global 500 and B2B leaders on social media as identified by the TrackMaven platform across 17 industries.
Which B2B industry has the best social media strategy?
Let’s start with a view of the complete B2B landscape on social media in one summary graph from the report. The graph below plots the average follower growth, average engagement ratio, and median social media audience size for B2B brands by industry across 2015.
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In a nutshell, you should aspire to land in the top right of this graph. Score high on the y-axis (follower growth) but low on the x-axis (content engagement), and your brand is growing but not engaging your audience. Score high on the x-axis but low on the y-axis, and your audience is interacting with your brand on social, but not bringing anyone new to the table.
So which B2B industries excel on social media? Here are just a few of the key takeaways:
Biotech, engineering, and financial services brands are in the social media sweet spot. Brands in these industries have both substantial audience growth and high content engagement on social media, indicating impactful social content. The financial services industry’s 81.77 percent average follower growth per brand is especially impressive given the industry’s large median social following.
Machinery manufacturers are adept at growing their audiences. Across the B2B landscape, brands in the machinery sector see the highest social media audience growth, with average annual follower growth across all five major networks of 129.02 percent. Engaging content is a correlated factor; social media content from machinery brands is ahead of the B2B pack, as indicated by its high engagement.
Biotech brands know how to engage audiences. Across the B2B landscape, biotech brands have the most engaged social media audiences with an average engagement ratio of 12.46. Financial services brands are a distant second at 9.94
Are software brands in a social media bubble? Software brands see fantastic social media growth — up 82 percent of total followers across 2015, on average — but the worst content engagement with a 2.62 engagement ratio. Is the allure of Silicon Valley attracting followers to top software brands without the content to back it up?
How to create a B2B social media strategy that works
Our analysis points to a major contradiction in B2B brand popularity. If you look at brand popularity based on follower count, then LinkedIn is the big B2B winner. Overall, B2B brands have the largest audiences on LinkedIn, according to our research. The median social media audience size for B2B brands is:
109,000 followers on LinkedIn;
34,000 page likes on Facebook;
18,000 followers on Twitter;
3,000 followers on Instagram;
and 420 followers on Pinterest.
This finding probably comes as no surprise. After all, LinkedIn is B2B marketers’ social channel of choice. It’s used by 94% of B2B marketers, and the 10 most-liked brands on LinkedIn are all B2B brands. But is this a case of a self-fulfilling social media prophecy? I’m a B2B brand, therefore LinkedIn is my primary social channel?
Our research indicates that this might be the case — and it’s likely holding B2B brands back from newer, more impactful networks.
Let’s look at B2B brand popularity by a different parameter: content engagement. When we analyzed the average engagement ratio (number of interactions per post per 1,000 followers) for B2B brands on each social network, Instagram is by far the B2B powerhouse. The average engagement ratio for B2B brands is:
22.53 on Instagram;
15.88 on Pinterest;
5.99 on Facebook;
1.09 on LinkedIn;
and 0.86 on Twitter.
We cover this finding (and many more) in detail in our report, but here’s the quick and dirty bottom line: Challenge the LinkedIn legacy effect for B2B brands. Explore newer, visual-oriented networks where there are high levels of engagement and less competition.
Courtesy of an article dated April 4, 2016 appearing in MediaPost Social Media Marketing DailyThe Social Graf
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