Tens of thousands of Americans from all 50 states traveled to Paris in late July to attend the Summer Olympics. But which states sent the most American tourists?
The Games are most popular with Oregonians: Although this tiny Northwestern state only makes up 1.26% of the national population, they made up nearly 13% of all Americans who traveled to Paris for the first week of the Summer Games, according to a new analysis from Start.io.
Per capita, people from Washington state, New Jersey, California, and New York also flocked to Paris in greater-than-average numbers.
Americans most likely to travel to Paris for the Summer Games:
State | % of national population | % of Americans in Paris | Difference |
Oregon | 1.26% | 12.97% | +11.71% |
Washington | 2.33% | 10.46% | +8.12% |
New Jersey | 2.77% | 8.69% | +5.92% |
California | 11.63% | 17.17% | +5.54% |
New York | 5.84% | 10.66% | +4.82% |
Source: 2023 population estimate (U.S. Census Bureau), and Start.io analysis of number of Americans in Paris (10-day average, 7/18/24 to 7/28/24)
On the flip side, people from Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan, and Ohio traveled to Paris in smaller-than-expected numbers.
For example, Texans make up roughly 9% of the country’s population, but only 4.3% of the Americans currently in Paris, according to Start.io’s analysis.
Americans least likely to travel to Paris for the Summer Games:
State | % of national population | % of Americans in Paris | Difference |
Texas | 9.11% | 4.35% | -4.76% |
Pennsylvania | 3.87% | 0.29% | -3.58% |
North Carolina | 3.24% | 0.28% | -2.95% |
Michigan | 3% | 0.19% | -2.81% |
Ohio | 3.52% | 1.23% | -2.29% |
Source: 2023 population estimate (U.S. Census Bureau), and Start.io analysis of number of Americans in Paris (10-day average, 7/18/24 to 7/28/24)
Start.io delivers hundreds of millions of mobile ads per day to people globally, through more than 500,000 active mobile apps. Where allowed, we collect anonymized location data attached to each ad request, to help brands deliver targeted ads.
One of the data types we study centers around travel: When people temporarily request ads in other states or countries than expected, we can assume that they are traveling. This helps brands target specific types of ads to travelers—for example, you might see ads for local amusement parks when you’re on vacation.
For this analysis, we took anonymized snapshots of the number of American travelers in Paris every day in the month leading up to the first week of the Summer Olympics, creating a 10-day moving average of which states were sending the highest number of travelers.
We then compared that dataset to a 2023 estimate of the U.S. population from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Hundreds of thousands of tourists from around the world have traveled to Paris for the Summer Games. On a typical summer day, roughly 25% of people in Paris are travelers, while 75% are permanent residents, according to Start.io’s analysis.
At the start of the Summer Games, the number of tourists in Paris grew to roughly 33% of the city’s population.
There are 594 American athletes competing in the 2024 Summer Games for Team USA. They come from 46 U.S. states, with Vermont sending the most athletes per capita (4.63 athletes per million residents), according to an analysis by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Four U.S. states failed to send any Olympians to Paris: Maine, West Virginia, North Dakota, and Wyoming.
Buried deep in Apple’s many, many recent announcements from WWDC 2024 is an important change coming to SKAdNetwork (SKAN), the privacy-focused advertising measurement framework launched in 2018.
That change? SKAN will eventually get phased out and replaced by a new framework called App AdAttributionKit. Developers can currently use both frameworks without data duplication, but Apple has signaled that SKAN’s days are limited.
Here’s why that’s important.
SKAN helps advertisers figure out which ad campaigns are driving conversions, either in the form of clicks through to a webpage, or new app downloads from the App Store. SKAN anonymizes the data, so advertisers can see conversion rates, but can’t tie that data back to individual user IDs.
AdAttributionKit has all the same functionalities as SKAN, but works on both the App Store and third-party marketplaces. Crucially, AdAttributionKit includes the ability to measure reengagement campaigns, showing advertisers which ads successfully convince someone to reopen an app they had previously downloaded, or return to a webpage they had visited in the past.
Ad networks register with Apple, and every ad they deliver on iOS gets tagged in the background. Apple can see these tags, and the actions that people take after seeing an ad.
For example:
- A person sees an ad for a mobile game, clicks on the ad and downloads the game immediately. AdAttributionKit would attribute that conversion to that ad, and the app that it ran in.
- A person sees an ad for a mobile game, but doesn’t immediately click. Later, they install the game directly from the App Store. AdAttributionKit would attribute that conversion to the last ad they saw, and the app the ad ran in.
- A person sees 10 ads for a mobile game, inside multiple apps, over the past week. They finally decide to click on the tenth ad, and download the game. AdAttributionKit would attribute that conversion to the last ad they saw, and the app it ran in.
AdAttributionKit cryptographically signs each transaction to minimize ad fraud.
Apple and Google are in the midst of a multiyear journey to create a more privacy-centric advertising environment on Safari, iOS, Android, and Chrome. Regulators across the world are pushing both companies to balance the measurement and attribution needs of advertisers with the privacy needs of consumers.
The podcast advertising market grew by just 5 percent in 2023— its slowest growth rate in at least a decade, according to a new study published by the Internet Advertising Bureau.
Last year, U.S. podcasts pulled in an estimated $1.92 billion in ad revenue, slightly better than the $1.82 billion in ad revenue the medium generated in 2022, according to the 2023 U.S. Podcast Advertising Revenue Study.
The slowdown was due to mid-sized companies pulling back on ad spending in 2023, according to the report’s analysts. That said, the decline in midmarket ad spending hit podcasts harder than the overall digital advertising market, which grew by 7.3 percent in 2023.
The data suggests that the podcast advertising market is maturing. In the past, podcast ads were stereotypically run by direct-to-consumer brands that negotiated directly with podcast networks to run irreverent, native ad spots for mattresses, digital postage, nutrition supplements, and the like.
Today, those DTC campaigns are being replaced by big brands that buy audience-segmented ads programmatically, across thousands of podcasts at once.
Podcasts still represent a uniquely intimate advertising channel, because people trust their favorite podcast hosts, and tend to recall the ads they hear from their favorite shows. Podcast ads boast a 73 percent aided brand recall rate, according to Nielsen.
But the medium’s murky measurement tools mean that only 49 percent of marketers say they feel confident that they can measure the ROI of their ad campaigns on podcasts—the lowest level of confidence across all digital channels, Nielsen says.
Today, roughly 1 out of 3 Americans listens to podcasts at least once a week, typically while commuting, according to Nielsen.
The podcast ad market will continue to grow, crossing the $2 billion mark in 2024 and reaching $2.5 billion by 2026, according to an IAB estimate.
Start.io is proud to announce the general availability of Start.io Android SDK v5.0, which includes several new features designed to improve performance, privacy, ad trackability, and measurement.
If you’re an Android app developer who uses Start.io’s mobile app monetization software, we encourage you to upgrade to the latest SDK now. Here is what you can expect from this update:
#1: JVM 8
Start.io Android SDK v5.0 has been upgraded to Java Virtual Machine 8, which improves the SDK’s performance and compatibility with modern mobile apps.
#2: Obfuscation
We’ve improved privacy inside the SDK by better protecting private members within our code. This provides an added layer of security against potential reverse engineering.
#3: MRAID 3
Start.io Android SDK v5.0 supports the latest MRAID 3.0 standard. This standard improves mobile ad execution and integrates with the IAB’s Video Player Ad Interface Definition (VPAID), which helps publishers support ads with interactive video.
How to upgrade to Start.io Android SDK v5.0
- For direct SDK integration: Go to your project gradle file (or libs.versions.toml if you use it) and change the SDK version in dependency section from com.startapp:inapp-sdk:4.+ to com.startapp:inapp-sdk:5.+
- For LevelPlay integration: Go to your project gradle file (or libs.versions.toml if you use it) and change the adapter version in dependency section to com.startapp:ironsource-mediation:2.+
- For AdMob integration: Go to your project gradle file (or libs.versions.toml if you use it) and change the adapter version in dependency section to com.startapp:admob-mediation:3.+
- For Applovin integration: Go to your project gradle file (or libs.versions.toml if you use it) and change the adapter version in dependency section to com.startapp:applovin-mediation:2.+
- For Unity integration: Follow our step-by-step guide here.
Google I/O has come and gone, and was chock full of announcements that will affect Android app developers in the very near future. Here are our top 6 takeaways from I/O:
#6: New quality-of-life improvements for Android
At Google I/O 2024, Google highlighted three new-ish features that improve user experience on Android: Edge to Edge, Predictive Back, and Glance.
With Edge to Edge, rectangles are out—full-screen views are in. Copying a popular feature from iOS, Android apps can now stretch to fill the entire screen, rather than being confined to the slightly smaller rectangle they previously lived in. People prefer edge to edge apps, which feel more satisfying and premium, according to Google.
With Predictive Back, people who make a swiping motion to go backward in an app will now get a little animated visual cue that gives them enough time to abandon the motion, or commit to it. This is designed to make apps feel more fluid, and reduce the number of accidental backward swipes that people perform.
Glance allows developers to build widgets that display information from their app. For example, a weather app might build a widget in Glance that periodically updates with the latest weather from the user’s current location.
#5: Improvements to Firebase
Firebase gives developers cloud-based tools to build, deploy, and scale mobile apps built on Android (along with a bunch of other software platforms). At Google I/O 2024, Google announced improvements to Firebase’s app analytics, crash reporting, and user engagement tools.
These improvements will help Android app developers better understand and optimize their apps.
Google is also deploying Vertex AI for Firebase, an enterprise-grade generative AI platform that allows developers to run AI applications in the cloud using their own private data.
#4: Google Play’s visual overhaul
Some 2.5 billion people user the Google Play store to download Android apps. At Google I/O 2024, Google introduced new features to simplify monetization for Android developers, including expanded payment options, more subscription management tools, and new user acquisition strategies.
Google Play is getting a visual refresh, and will now highlight more content from inside an app to help developers stand out from competing apps.
Android’s dynamic widget view will surface useful content from apps that people have already downloaded, and apps that they haven’t downloaded yet, giving developers another place to promote their app’s content.
Google Play increased its app price range, and will now allow developers to sell apps for up to $999.99, opening up a new price ceiling for ultra-premium apps.
Google also made SDK Console available globally to most SDK owners. SDK Console allows an SDK owner (like Start.io) to validate their identity, get crash reports, and flag outdated versions of their SDK in use out in the wild.
#3: Automated privacy compliance with Checks
At Google I/O 2024, Google announced general availability of Checks, the company’s AI-powered global compliance checker for developers.
Checks runs locally in the background of an app development environment, and automatically flags places where an app falls out of compliance with privacy regulations worldwide. If privacy regulations change in the future, Checks will highlight exactly what the developer needs to change to stay compliant.
#2: App security enhancements
Google Play is rolling out new app security features that will prevent fake and malicious apps, and protect people from digital theft.
Using these tools, Google has prevented 2.3 million policy-violating apps from being published on Google Play, they’ve banned 330,000 bad developer accounts, identified more than 500,000 new malicious apps, and issued more than 3 million warnings to developers about suspicious app activity.
Android screen-sharing will now default to just sharing a single app’s screen (rather than a live view of everything a person sees on their phone), and will automatically hide one-time passwords from view during screen-sharing sessions.
Starting in August, Google will also cut off legacy access to apps that can see every photo and video on a user’s phone, and instead default to a clickable view, where people can select which photos and videos they want to share.
Google is also creating a secret folder function in Android, so people can hide their sensitive apps and data.
#1: Android 15 is here
Android 15 is currently in beta, and includes a number of new features and changes relevant to all Android developers.
Major new features include:
- Android Dynamic Performance Framework updates, which allow processor-intensive apps to interact with power and thermal systems on Android devices
- App archiving and un-archiving, supported at the OS level
- App-managed profiling
- Automatic language switching improvements
- AV1 software decoding
- Better support for Braille
- Camera Controls extensions give developers more control over camera hardware
- The CJK (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) font file NotoSansCJK is now a variable font; also, a Japanese Hiragana font called Hentaigana is being bundled by default
- Cover screen support, for apps that want to display information on the cover screens on select Android devices
- Detailed app size information, which gives developers more granular information about the size of their app
- ‘Do Not Disturb’ rules, designed to improve the user experience
- End-to-end encryption key management
- Health Connect extensions, for health-related apps
- Large screen multitasking improvements
- Loudness control
- Low Light Boost
- NFC updates that improve tap-to-pay
- OpenJDK 17 updates
- OpenType improvements
- Partial screen-sharing
- PDF improvements
- Privacy Sandbox on Android
- Private Space, to help people make secret folders on Android
- Satellite support
- Screen-recording detection
- Selected Photos Access
How many languages do you use to communicate?
A new analysis from Start.io finds that roughly 9 percent of people in America communicate using two or more languages. Linguistically diverse communities are the biggest in New Jersey, Florida, California, New York, and Texas, while they’re the smallest in West Virginia, Montana, North Dakota, Vermont, and Maine.
Start.io recently analyzed a fully anonymized sample of 94.7 million smartphones and tablets in the United States, querying how many keyboard languages were installed on each device. Nine out of 10 mobile devices in the U.S. have just one keyboard language, while the rest have two or more keyboards.
Start.io’s analysis examined keyboard installation rates, but not how often each keyboard was used.
This analysis provides an alternative look at language use in the United States, because it captures a practical view of the tools people use to communicate with their friends, family members, and at work.
In this article, we’ll highlight the most thought-provoking insights from this analysis. Contact us for more information about this dataset, and Start.io’s other data capabilities.
What are the most popular languages in America?
No surprise, English is the most popular language in use in the United States. Of the 94.7 million mobile devices owned by people in this study, 91 percent are monolingual—they use just one keyboard when typing on their smartphone or tablet. Among people who are monolingual, roughly 87.6 percent communicate exclusively in English.
The 5 most popular languages in the United States among monolingual communicators:
1 | English | 87.6% |
2 | Spanish | 7.2% |
3 | Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese) | 0.9% |
4 | Japanese | 0.6% |
5 | Korean | 0.6% |
All other monolingual communicators | 3% |
Roughly 5.7 percent of people in the United States are bilingual—they use two keyboards when texting. The remaining 3.1 percent of people use three or more mobile keyboards.
The 5 most popular bilingual keyboard combinations in the United States:
1 | English + Spanish | 63.7% |
2 | English + Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese) | 6.2% |
3 | English + Arabic | 4% |
4 | English + Japanese | 3.8% |
5 | English + Korean | 3.2% |
English + all other languages | 19% |
Which U.S. states have the least language diversity?
West Virginia, Montana, North Dakota, Vermont, and Maine are the five states with the least language diversity, with the highest concentration of English communicators in the nation.
The 5 states with the highest concentration of English communicators, per capita:
1 | West Virginia | 99.4% |
2 | Montana | 99.4% |
3 | North Dakota | 99.2% |
4 | Vermont | 99.2% |
5 | Maine | 99.1% |
National average | 96.1% |
Which U.S. states have the most language diversity?
The five most linguistically diverse states in 2024 are New Jersey, Florida, California, New York, and Texas. These states have the lowest percentage of English communicators in the nation, per capita.
The 5 states with the lowest concentration of English communicators, per capita:
1 | New Jersey | 91.9% |
2 | Florida | 93% |
3 | California | 93.1% |
4 | New York | 93.5% |
5 | Texas | 93.8% |
National average | 96.1% |
What is the most popular language other than English and Spanish in each state?
English is the most popular language in all 50 states, followed by Spanish. Russian is the most popular language (other than English and Spanish) in 11 states, Persian and Portuguese are the most popular languages in 10 states each, followed by Chinese (8 states), Arabic (5 states), Korean (4 states) and French (2 states).
The #3 most popular language in all 50 U.S. States (other than English and Spanish):
Russian | Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Washington |
Persian | Delaware, Kansas, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming |
Portuguese | Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah, Vermont |
Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese) | Arkansas, California, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, West Virginia |
Arabic | Arizona, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Tennessee |
Korean | Alabama, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland |
French | Indiana, Ohio |
Where are there statistically significant concentrations of non-English speakers in America?
Certain states have a greater-than-average concentration of non-English and bilingual communicators.
For example, Massachusetts is home to nearly 10 times as many Portuguese speakers than the national average. The state has a long history of Portuguese immigration, stretching back to the whaling industry of the 1800s.
Greater-than-average concentrations of non-English speakers in America:
State | Greater than the national average: |
Portuguese speakers in Massachusetts | 9.8x |
Serbian speakers in Alaska | 7x |
Polish speakers in Illinois | 6.6x |
Persian speakers in Kansas | 5.1x |
Central Khmer speakers in Massachusetts | 5x |
Gujarati speakers in New Jersey | 5x |
Central Khmer speakers in Rhode Island | 4.7x |
Burmese speakers in Nevada | 4.5x |
Hebrew speakers in New York | 4.5x |
Polish speakers in Connecticut | 4.4x |
Thai speakers in Alaska | 4.2x |
Ukrainian speakers in Washington state | 4.2x |
Persian speakers in Delaware | 4.2x |
Methodology
Start.io delivers hundreds of millions of digital ads per day and collects anonymized data where it’s permitted by privacy regulations. Some mobile devices share their keyboard language with advertisers, who use this data to build targeted ad campaigns.
In May 2024, Start.io studied 94.7 million mobile devices in use in the United States, and analyzed which keyboard or keyboards those devices had installed. Start.io analysts studied keyboard installation rates, but not keyboard usage or volume.
Contact us for more information about this data set, and Start.io’s other data capabilities.
For the first time ever, brands will spend more money buying ads on digital videos this year than on traditional TV, according to a new report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
Advertisers are expected to spend $62.9 billion buying digital video ads in 2024, or roughly 52 percent of the total spend going toward all types of video ads, according to analysts at IAB. Traditional TV ads will take the remaining 48 percent of total video ad share, or roughly $58 billion.
The data suggests that advertisers are chasing two things—audience size and audience segmentation.
2024 CTV audience size
The digital video audience is large, and continues to grow. The average American household now spends around 38.5 percent of TV time per month watching streaming video services like YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, and others, according to a March 2024 report from Nielsen.
Americans spend more time watching streaming video than cable TV (28.3 percent of TV share), broadcast TV (22.5 percent of TV share), and a catch-all category that Nielsen calls “other,” which includes video games and physical media, like DVDs (10.7 percent).
Nearly 7 out of 10 American households now have at least one connected TV (CTV) device as home, according to eMarketer.
Digital video can deliver better audience segmentation than traditional TV, and promises to eventually give advertisers the kind of granular targeting more common with display ads.
CTV ads deliver better audience segmentation
This desire for better-performing audience segmentation appears to be reflected in the IAB’s data.
In a survey of 139 advertisers who plan to increase their spending on CTV ads this year, 40 percent said they plan to increase their CTV ad budgets by shifting existing budget from traditional linear TV. Just 26 percent said they planned to shift budget from audience-based linear TV—an ad targeting method where advertisers buy ads attached to specific TV shows.
2024 CTV advertising trends
Digital video ad spend has doubled since 2020, when brands spent just $26.2 billion on the channel. By 2023, that number crossed $54 billion, and is projected to grow another 16 percent this year, according to analysts at IAB.
Digital videos include CTV, social media videos, and online videos. CTV mostly describes long-form streaming content through apps like Netflix and Amazon Prime, social media video includes video from apps like YouTube and Instagram, and online video includes all other short-form video from online publishers.
Roughly 37 percent of digital video ad spend in 2024 is projected to go to social media video ($23.4 billion), 36 percent will go to CTV ($22.7 billion), and the remaining 27 percent will go toward online video ($16.8 billion), according to analysts at IAB.
Consumer packaged goods companies are currently buying the most digital video ads, with roughly 1 out of 5 dollars ($12.6 billion) spent coming from CPG companies like Procter & Gamble and Pepsi. Retail and technology companies take the second and third spots, respectively.
This week, we launched iOS SDK 4.10.3. If you’re a mobile app developer using Start.io’s advertising solutions inside your iOS apps, we recommend installing the latest SDK now.
iOS SDK 4.10.3 contains important updates that will keep your iOS apps in compliance with Apple’s current privacy guidelines.
Apple has taken decisive steps in recent years to give consumers more transparency and control over the data they share with the mobile apps they use. The company rolled out App Tracking Transparency in 2021, followed by Privacy Nutrition Labels in 2022.
When Privacy Nutrition Labels first launched, Apple asked app developers to create an inventory of every time their app gathered consumer data, and whether that data was tied to people’s identities. Developers quickly ran into a challenge—most apps use third-party SDKs, and it’s not always clear how and when a third-party SDK gathers consumer data while running inside an app.
This year, Apple made an important update to help developers solve this challenge, by rolling out Privacy Manifests for third-party SDKs.
The developers of third-party SDKs must now submit a Privacy Manifest that describes the data types that their SDK collects, how each data type is used, whether that data is linked to individual users, and whether that data is used for tracking, as defined by Apple’s App Tracking Transparency framework.
Apple collects these manifests, and builds a privacy report for each mobile app, to help developers fill out their Privacy Nutrition Labels more accurately.
This requirement took effect on May 1, 2024.
Start.io gathers data to help improve our ability to deliver high-performing ads to hundreds of thousands of mobile apps each day. We’ve documented the types of data we collect, and how we use it, in our latest Privacy Manifest.
We urge developers to upgrade to the latest version of our iOS SDK to remain in compliance with Apple’s privacy guidelines. Apple says developers who use third-party SDKs without Privacy Manifests will not be able to update their existing apps in the App Store until they return to compliance.
Read more on Apple’s app developer portal.
The digital advertising market reached a new, all-time high in 2023, generating $225 billion in revenue—roughly 7.3 percent higher than 2022, according to the IAB’s latest Internet Advertising Revenue Report.
The digital advertising market has nearly doubled its revenue over the past 5 years; in 2019, digital advertising pulled in just $124.6 billion.
Search ads grew by 5.2 percent year-over-year in 2023, pulling in $88.8 billion in revenue. Display ads pulled in $66.1 billion—roughly 4 percent higher than 2022.
Video ads and audio ads pulled in another $59.1 billion in revenue, and both grew by more than 10 percent year-over-year. “Other ads,” a catch-all category that includes digital classifieds, generated $11 billion.
Digital advertising remained heavily consolidated in 2023, with nearly 80 percent of revenue—roughly $179.5 billion—going to the 10 biggest companies in the industry.
How do brands prefer to buy their ads?
Excluding search ads, brands spent $114.2 billion buying ads through programmatic channels in 2023, and $22 billion buying ads through non-programmatic channels.
Among all programmatic ads, an estimated 63 percent of ads—representing $71.9 billion in revenue—were bought using the Open RTB protocol, while 37 percent of ads—representing the remaining $42.2 billion—were purchased via programmatic direct channels, such as private marketplaces, preferred deals, and programmatic guaranteed deals, according to the IAB.
Taking a wider look at all advertising mediums, internet advertising, B2B advertising, and cinema advertising grew the most year-over-year, while traditional TV advertising ended the year flat, and newspaper and magazine advertising declined by 5.2 percent.
Looking ahead, analysts at the IAB identified three major trends to watch for in 2024 and beyond: new privacy restrictions, budgets shifting toward CTV, streaming, and retail media, and the rise of generative AI reshaping how ads are bought, sold, and measured.
On the privacy front, the advertising industry is facing pressure from regulators, who want to restrict the amount of data that adtech companies have access to, and give consumers more control over the data they decide to share. The industry is also being pressured by Apple and Google, which have restricted third-party cookies on their browsers, and mobile advertising IDs on iOS and (soon) Android.
As a result, brands shifted their budgets in 2023 toward the industry’s 10 largest companies, whose ecosystems of first-party consumer data have remained intact. Brands are also investing in first-party data, privacy-compliant data collaboration, contextual advertising, and retail media.
Meanwhile, emerging advertising channels continue to grow. CTV is projected to grow by $17.8 billion between 2023 and 2027, according to analysts at eMarketer. Other red-hot growth areas for advertising include live sports broadcasting moving to streaming services, direct-to-consumer sports apps run by sports leagues, user-generated content from micro-influencers, shoppable ads, and retail media networks, according to the IAB.
Finally, generative AI is reshaping the advertising industry in profound ways. Brands are using generative AI to create data-driven campaign concepts, personalized content creation, and real-time optimization of ad campaigns. Publishers are using generative AI to create content, streamline their commercial processes and cut costs.
Check out the full report here.
Brands will spend $8.5 billion running ads inside games this year, inspired by their nearly universal popularity and relative brand safety, according to a new survey from the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
That said, brands still spend more money per person reaching consumers on other advertising channels, suggesting there’s additional room for growth in games-related advertising.
In 2024, the gaming industry is bigger than it’s ever been. Roughly 212 million people in the U.S. play games on a regular basis. Mobile gaming is king, bringing in an estimated $101 billion in total revenue in 2022.
Most of that game revenue still comes directly from players, not advertisers.
But perceptions among advertisers are changing quickly, eMarketer analyst Ethan Cramer-Flood said on a recent episode of the Behind the Numbers podcast.
“That’s changing now because these ads work,” Cramer-Flood said. “Obviously, mobile gaming is unbelievably popular. Everybody [plays mobile games] and now you’re starting to get higher quality ads from higher quality advertisers. The numbers are starting to get really real, to the point where now I think this is something you have to pay attention to.”
Roughly 32 percent of advertisers say game-related ads are “excellent” at driving brand awareness, because they engage people while they’re immersed in a game. Advertisers rank just two other channels—social media and digital display ads—higher, according to the IAB report.
Some 86 percent of advertisers say games represent a brand-safe advertising channel—ranking it the second highest-rated channel for brand safety, behind digital audio, which includes streaming music and podcasts.
So why aren’t brands spending more money running ads alongside games?
One of the leading challenges is access: The majority of game advertising transactions still involve negotiations between the advertiser and the publisher in some form. Nearly one-third of transactions are programmatic guaranteed, where games publishers guarantee a specific number of advertising impressions at a fixed cost. Roughly 30 percent of transactions are direct deals, negotiated with the publisher’s sales representatives.
Another 20 percent of transactions occur on private marketplaces, which are invitation-only platforms where games publishers invite specific advertisers to bid on their inventory. Just 17 percent of games advertising transactions today occur on open exchanges, where any advertiser can bid on available advertising inventory, according to the IAB report.
By comparison, 91 percent of all digital display ads worldwide are purchased today on programmatic platforms, with fewer than 10 percent of advertising deals happening directly, according to analysts at eMarketer.
Another big challenge is inventory: Mobile games are the most popular medium for games-related advertising because consumers expect to see ads inside free-to-play games. As a result, there are millions of available ad units each day inside mobile games.
Consumers haven’t been conditioned to see ads on PC and console games, so there are fewer available ad units there. Roughly 3 out of 4 advertisers surveyed said they bought ads on mobile games, while just 1 out of 4 said they bought ads on all three gaming media platforms—mobile, PC, and console.
The final challenge is financial: Mobile games have one of the highest 30-day churn rates among mobile apps. If 100 people download a mobile game on the same day, just 2 people from the group will still be playing that game 30 days later, on average.
Looking at Android games specifically, it costs an average of $1.10 to acquire a new customer, which means publishers have a short window to make $1.10 or more in revenue per customer, so they generate enough money to fuel new downloads, and pay for ongoing operational costs.
As a result, game publishers prefer rewarded video ads, which pay high CPMs. The challenge is that rewarded video ads are largely used by other app developers, who are trying to generate mobile downloads themselves.
In 2024, traditional brands still believe that buying ads on digital games takes too much effort to plan and buy.
Asked to rank the ease of buying ads across six different media channels, digital games ranked close to last, with digital display, social media, digital audio, and CTV ranked higher for perceived ease of use, according to the IAB report.