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Gaming Solved App Monetization From Day One. Why Is the Rest of the App Economy Still Playing Catch-Up?
Often, app publishers still treat monetization as a partner decision. Gaming publishers treat it as infrastructure.
Early on, gaming companies approached monetization as a system, not an add-on, fostering an environment where multiple advertisers compete for every impression, driving revenue while maintaining performance and user experience.
What’s more, leading publishers like King and Supercell have operated top-grossing titles such as Candy Crush Saga and Clash of Clans for more than a decade. These games are still culturally relevant, standing the test of time as high-engagement products that continue to rank among the most downloaded and highest-earning apps globally.
What’s important is that they achieved this while aggressively monetizing through ads and in-app purchases. These examples directly challenge the notion that monetization comes at the expense of user experience. In gaming, the opposite appears to be true. According to critics, aggressively monetizing through ads and in-app purchases should have led to a worse user experience and, over time, a reduction in engagement. However, their sustained decade-long success suggests that well-designed monetization systems can allow publishers to increase competition and yield while maintaining engagement over time.
The majority of the remaining app ecosystem took a different path. Utility apps like news or weather, and sports scoring or social apps appear to have focused on building engagement and scale. While they succeeded, enjoying the reach of millions of users each day, their monetization unfortunately seemingly still lags behind, especially as many of these apps are free to download.
Most non-gaming apps monetize the few while gaming monetizes the many.
Subscriptions, transactions, and commerce models generate meaningful revenue, but oftentimes, it is only from a small percentage of users. In today’s environment, that model would be increasingly under pressure if subscription growth slows, retention could become more volatile, or broader macroeconomic conditions might limit consumer willingness to spend. 60% of the app store revenue is attributed to games, which suggests that the audience of non-gaming audience still remains under-monetized. Gaming publishers focused on solving the monetization issue from day one. Other app categories are still catching up.
Instead, these apps stitched together an ad strategy. An SDK here or tagging in a demand partner there. A setup where only a limited number of advertisers can compete for each impression, leaving meaningful revenue on the table. Over time, that approach created fragmented stacks where limited demand competes, auctions lack pressure, and yield plateaus.
This divide has defined the last decade of mobile trends.
The scale of the gap is visible and widening by the day. With mobile games generating the majority of the appstore revenue, it appears the difference is not in audience size, but rather in monetization maturity.
It seems gaming built systems designed to extract value from the entire user base, while most other apps monetize just a fraction of theirs.
In gaming, monetization is diversified across formats. We are seeing that some major studios can generate around 15 percent of revenue from advertising, while hybrid models often balance revenue more evenly between ads and in-app purchases. In some cases, such as hyper-casual games, advertising accounts for nearly all revenue.
Even today, despite increased screen time and the removal of friction around payments, converting users to make in-app purchases remains challenging. It was even more difficult over a decade ago, which is why gaming apps took to this strategy early on.
Hybrid monetization works because it increases competition for each impression. Research shows that combining in-app advertising with in-app purchases yields higher revenue and lifetime value than single-revenue models, with some segments seeing returns more than 50 percent higher.
The gains come from better auction dynamics, not simply more ads. More demand sources competing in real time leads to higher performance and higher yield without degrading the user experience.
The challenge is no longer just acquiring users. It is capturing value once they are inside the app.
As acquisition becomes more expensive and less predictable, the ability to monetize existing users becomes a primary growth driver.
Publishers that can support more demand competition and better performance within their apps will be in a stronger position to capture value as budgets move. Those that cannot will see more of that value captured elsewhere.
The next phase of app monetization will not be defined by how many SDKs a publisher adds. It will be defined by how effectively those partners are made to compete for each impression, and how much control the publisher retains over performance.
Gaming solved this years ago. The rest of the app economy is just starting to catch up.
