Women love mobile games and brand advertisers should play along

Here’s a fact that might surprise you – women love mobile games. A 2017 Google Play and NewZoo survey [pdf] reported that 65 percent of U.S. women, ages 10 to 65, play at least one mobile game regularly. In fact, 49 percent of all U.S. gamers are women.

We know that rewarded video ads have outstanding engagement rates across all genders, including an average CTR that’s 3.4x higher than other mobile video advertising. These ad units offer the user some kind of value in exchange for watching the video, such as access to the next level in the game. Moreover, the users must initiate the rewarded video, so they’re actively saying, “show me this ad.” For these reasons, rewarded video is a popular format among mobile app developers looking to drive user installs and engagement. It can work for brand advertisers just as well, as the fashion house Karl Lagerfeld discovered when it decided to advertise in the mobile app game, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, and enjoyed a 3x uptick in site visitors.

What’s more, women are 79 percent more likely to make in-app purchases while playing mobile games. Add all of this up and what you have is women of all ages loving mobile app games, highly engaged when they play and far from shy about spending money while playing. For a brand advertiser seeking to engage women, it doesn’t get much better than that.

Popular games among women

Women tend to gravitate towards social mobile games, the vast majority of which already use rewarded video. Three genres are particularly popular among women:

• Match 3 Games (i.e., games in which the user needs to swap two items to get three in a row). Examples include Gardenscapes and Homescapes (Playrix), the Candy Crush series (King), Cookie Jam (Jam City), Emoji Blitz (Disney).
• Word games, which have always been popular among women. Examples include Wordscapes (PeopleFun), Word Connect (Zentertain) Word Cookies (BitMango)
• Hyper-casual, which are growing in popularity, and currently dominating the Top Free charts in Gaming. These games are lightweight, easy to start playing right away (i.e., tap-and-play) and allow users to play for just a few minutes at a time. Games by Voodoo, Ketchapp, Lion Studios represent this genre.

Ad creatives that work

Rewarded videos, like TV commercials, offer a great deal of room for creativity, allowing you to leverage sight, sound and motion when telling your brand story. You can also include interactive elements, such as clicking to a product details page.

When creating a rewarded video ad for women, make sure it resonates. Women like games that feature a strong central character and community – ample inspiration for your creative agency team.

If you’ve never advertised in mobile app games before, now is a good time to consider adding it to your media strategy. Targeting women at scale, while they’re highly engaged, and with ads they’re motivated to view, can pay off.