Middle East region becomes the home of the world’s most active gaming community, according to the Newzoo’s 2019 Global Games Market Report. The industry shows the consistent growth of 25% each year, which helped the Middle East to become the fastest growing online gaming population in the world again compared to Latin America (13.9%), Asia Pacific (9.2%), North America (4%) and Western Europe (4.8%). The Middle East gaming market is set to triple in size to $4.4 billion by 2022, with gaming revenues in the GCC alone standing at $1.05 billion in 2016.
This is due mostly to the popularity of social gaming, casual games and free-to-play role-playing games – the very types of games that consumers are turning to now, to not only release stress but to connect with other people online. And they’re doing it daily: Nearly half (47%) of respondents are now playing mobile games on their smartphone every day. Some are sticking with the tried-and-true: 31% of respondents are playing mobile games that they already enjoy, just more often. But there is plenty that is branching out and downloading new ones: 32% of mobile users surveyed are playing new games on their phones.
It’s important to keep the user’s needs in mind. In the study, mobile users reconfirmed that the ads they most like to see are those that help them notice products they might need – which during these times has, of course, shifted. And user-initiated ads, where the user chooses to view an ad in order to receive some sort of benefit (e.g., virtual currency, access to gated content) is also highly regarded: 35% of users listed it as the most positively perceived ad format. IronSource recently reported that the highest player engagement comes from rewarded ads.
As we shift into a new world, the mobile gaming channel is only going to increase in importance. When we look at the mobile game downloads and the daily average time spent on mobile gaming per user in the Middle East, we see that mobile game downloads shot up 28% and the daily average time spent on mobile gaming per user increased by 24% from February 24th 2020 according to AdColony Inventory.
Just as all eyes were on China last month, trying to predict the impact of COVID-19 in other nations based on what was happening there, we can foresee that mobile gaming use in Europe and the Middle East is going to go up as the crisis continues, and that is something that all advertisers must take note of.