Free-to-play Conversion Benchmarks by Gamesbrief
With all the numbers we're inundated with each and every day (especially in tech, particularlyin mobile) it's easy to look over the KPI's (actionable metrics) that might actual make a difference (if you know about them). With that being said, Gamesbrief in association with NativeX have shared some #'s on that help answer the question: "What makes a good conversion rate?"
With previous industry benchmarks being a mere 3-7% for monthly conversions. While some claim to have conversions as high as 20% and others as low at 0.1%, it was discovered that achieving industry benchmarks are not a given, but actually take work to fall within.
Here are how the conversions lined up with some of the games Gamesbrief put to the test.
Conversion rate
Autoclub Revolution, Eutechnyx: 9% lifetime conversion (source: The A List, 6/28/12)
Ski Champion, Majaka: 0.1% lifetime conversion (Source: Majaka, 6/8/12)
AI War, Arcen Games: 15% lifetime conversion (source: Cliffski’s blog comments)
Note that for forecasting, it’s much better to use monthly conversion rates – lifetime conversion is likely to increase as retention increases and time passes since launch, so it’s not really a clean statistic.
ARPPU (Average revenue per paying user)
Giant: $15 (Boing Boing)
Auto Club Revolution, Eutechnyx: $24 (The A List)
Playdom: $20 (Lightspeed Venture Partners)
EA Social Sports: $56 (Lifetime: AllThingsD)
CPA (customer acquisition cost)
At Game Horizon 2012, Torsten Reil announced that CPAs on iOS have not risen to $1.80
DAUs (daily active users)
Temple Run, free: 7 million DAUs (source: GAMESbrief)
Dark Orbit, Bigpoint: 100,000 DAUs (source: Social Games Summit)
Additionally, you can take a look as Gamesbrief's game spread sheet by clicking on this link here.