39% surge in mobile game downloads during COVID-19: POKKT Mobile Ads

With people staying indoors and practising social distancing, POKKT reported a 39 per cent increase in global mobile game downloads in the month of March 2020. While industries like travel, hospitality, FMCG have seen a considerable dip in their performance, the mobile gaming industry has seen a major surge due to more indoor time on consumers’ hands. 

POKKT Mobile Ads works with over 3,000 publishers across the globe, thereby managing in-app advertisements for top games, generating about 700 million monthly unique users coming to their platform. The ad-tech platform has registered that there has been 31 per cent increase in ad requests globally, thereby pushing the mobile gaming industry into a stronger growth curve. 

Few highlights from the POKKT analysis on the mobile gaming space: 

• While February 2019 registered 2.9 billion mobile game downloads, March 2020 saw over 4 billion downloads globally
• 22% increase in monthly game downloads whereas pre-COVID, the growth was only 5%
• Increase in daily average session time to 45 mins from 30 mins
• 5-7 times increase in daily no. of sessions compared to 3 daily sessions
• Playing time has changed from 2-5PM to 2 to 6 PM + 8 to 10 PM

Comscore reported, “Devoid of sports, travel and any social activities, many have turned to online games. Between the weeks of February 10-16, 2020 and March 16-22, 2020, visits to online gaming websites or apps increased by 24 per cent. Engagement, as measured by time spent on gaming sites or apps, increased by 21 per cent during the same time period.”