Swrve Finds Over 35% Of All In-Game Revenues Are Delivered In The First Three Days Of Player Life

SAN FRANCISCO, April 9, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Swrve, the leader in driving engagement for mobile apps, today announced the results of its first-ever "New Player" Report. The report reveals for the first time retention, engagement and most importantly monetization numbers for new players, enabling those in the mobile games space to finally benchmark their acquisition performance against competitors.

Findings from this report indicate that of all revenue delivered in the first 90 days of player life, over 53% is generated in the first 7 days. That underlines the need to optimize and personalize experience from day 1, ensuring that during that all important first week players are both retained and effectively converted into paying users.

Key Report Findings:

• A shocking 19% of players played a new game only once.
• In the first 90 days of life, the average new player in November contributed 45c in in-app revenue. As the first research that truly follows and measures purchases from millions of new players, this number sheds new light on the metrics of free-to-play games.
• An average of 2.2% of new players made a purchase in the title they started playing in November. Of those who did, 40% made only one purchase.
• As seen in our previous report (link), of those new players spending, almost 46% of revenue comes from just 10% of those players (0.22% of the total group).
• Just 34% of players are retained through Day 1 - meaning fully ⅔ of acquisition fails to remain with the game beyond the first 24 hour period.

"Our last report made something of a splash - and we expect this to do the same," said Hugh Reynolds, CEO of Swrve. "For the first time in the industry we're looking at the actual data from millions of new players in November, following them for 90 days of life and identifying exactly how they behave."

"The report delivers a host of surprises. Whilst a long tail certainly exists, it is a shock to see so much revenue delivered so early. And there is a confirmation of the results in our monthly monetization report in our finding that effectively a mere 0.22% of this cohort deliver almost half of total revenue."

"Perhaps most interesting is our figure of an average of 45 cent from in-app purchases. Whilst it does not include all sources of revenue, and includes only 90 days of data, this is noticeably lower than some competing numbers out there. We believe that our methodology is the only correct approach to this number, and our results may cause a 're-reckoning' in the economics of freemium games."

Methodology

The report was restricted to freemium games and examines 90 days (exactly) of behavior for all players playing a game for the first time in November. Data is collected from over 30 titles, and reflects the behavior of over 10 million players.

SOURCE Swrve