Mobile gaming UA economics have been quietly rebuilt over the last 24 months. IDFA loss made fine-grained optimisation harder. The shift from IAP to hybrid IAP+IAA monetisation changed the LTV math. And rising CPMs across Meta and TikTok have squeezed the historically reliable hyper-casual playbook.
What still works: aggressive creative testing, hybrid monetisation modelling, and ruthless portfolio management. The publishers winning today treat each title as a 90-day experiment with clear kill criteria, and pour the savings into the 1-in-10 titles that show real LTV signal.
On the buying side, AppLovin’s AXON 2.0 and Unity’s bidding overhaul have reshuffled the deck. Many teams that were Meta-first 18 months ago are now seeing better marginal ROAS from networks they had written off.
