How to tap into growing global opportunities in mobile gaming

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Mobile game developers are often hyper-focused on key markets like the U.S. and the U.K. because these markets tend to generate high levels of revenue per user. But there’s a problem: these markets are growing increasingly saturated. Once you’ve captured a domestic audience, where do you go from there?

Google’s International Growth Team (IGT) is a global team composed of strategy consultants and operational experts who tap into Google and third-party data to deliver strategic recommendations to clients on prioritizing markets, identifying consumer nuances, and streamlining localization efforts.

“Export into global markets allows developers to find new audiences and diversify their revenue streams, which hedges against risks and lowers costs overall,” says Ludovic Thevelin, IGT Consultant at Google.

Smaller markets are often ignored simply because of their size. However, when they have the same income and GDP per capita as some of the more common western markets, grouping them together can allow developers to more easily find dedicated players who also spend in-game. Consider, for example, Northern Europe. Areas like the Nordics, Belgium, Switzerland, and Austria are often overlooked, but when grouped together they can be a powerful tier of markets to pursue.

There’s also what Google calls the Next Billion User markets. In these markets, hundreds of thousands of new users come online for the first time every day, which adds up to millions of people every week. This is where the future is, Thevelin says. The company’s more