• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, November 13, 2023

The online gaming industry’s opt-in method of collecting first-party data is about to prove its worth to the advertising industry. Perhaps that why AppsFlyer acquired a data analytics provider for game and app developers called devtodev.

The acquisition will help AppsFlyer to expand on its Privacy Cloud Marketplace and suite of gaming products, keeping devtodev as a stand-alone company. All 27 of its employees have joined the company, meeting the demand to protect the privacy of consumer data and target ads.

Oren Kaniel, CEO and co-founder of AppsFlyer, believes the acquisition fosters growth and a visionary approach to the future. It also underscores the company’s commitment to expand on targeting and customer personas.

The roles of marketers and developers are changing. With marketing and product teams focusing more on shared goals of retention, privacy and customer lifetime value (CLV), the demand for advanced data analytics continues to surge.

The company often points to the increase in privacy measures and an uptick in signal loss, as well as data silos and inconsistencies that have complicated the marketing decision-making process. This acquisition is meant to address these complexities that gaming and app developers face, and provide access to unified data analytics and actionable insights.

The benefits to clients, said Brian Quinn, president and GM of North America at AppsFlyer, are more opportunities for "our customers to unify their data sources across teams and better understand their analytics, user behavior, customer journeys and successes of their campaigns" as part of "modern gaming and digital businesses."

The acquisition gives AppFlyer clients more opportunities to unify their data resources across teams to better understand analytics, user behavior, customer journeys and successes of ad campaigns. It also expands on AppsFlyer's capabilities to meet the need of evolving gaming and digital businesses.

Founded in 2014, devtodev helps developers analyze their games and apps with data-driven insights to optimize user retention, maximizing conversions, and creating personalized experiences.

It’s been a long haul for in-game advertising, climbing to acceptance and then momentum fizzles. A study of 207,000 mobile gamers from the experience platform Monetizr analyzes gamer sentiment and offers a detailed look at how diverse gamer demographics perceive sponsored in-game experiences.  

The study estimates 43% of the respondents belong to the Boomer or GenX age groups, while 40% were from the GenZ and younger. Millennials made-up 17% of the mobile gaming community. Some 51% of the 207,000 identified themselves as female.

Some 31.43% of respondents confessing to playing for five hours or more daily. Sixty percent of respondents play between two and four hours per day, while 30.27% of gamers dedicate up to one hour to their favorite games, demonstrating a widespread appeal across varied playing durations.