What’s next for the app and game industry in 2025?
We asked eight industry leaders to share the top monetization and UA trends they anticipate in the following year. From new forms of IAP offers and more engaging ad experiences to high-quality UA campaigns and the rise of rewarded ads, the year ahead brings exciting opportunities for growth and development.
Monetization Trends
Julia Iljuk, Co-founder of Balancy
Over the last 8 years, Julia has been helping game studios to monetize games better and smarter. She is a mentor in renowned accelerator programs (by Google Play, MGVC, WePlay, etc.), the host of a game analytics course on Edvice.pro, and Wargaming Forge LiveOps alumni.
It’s no secret that there’s a growing focus on improving IAP monetization, with top-grossing hybrid casual publishers seeing great success. This trend will continue into 2025, but it will require even more creativity and effort. As players become more budget-conscious with their in-game spending, developers will focus on creating offers that are better targeted and personalized.
Offer formats are also evolving to capture the attention of players who are “spoiled” by a wide range of content. Alongside popular mechanics like chain deals, progress offers, and piggy banks, new variations, and fresh ideas are constantly emerging. Examples that come to my mind quickly are offers with delayed rewards that motivate players to return on the following day or custom offers where players can choose their own rewards. Finally, special offers are transforming into entertainment or mini-games in their own right.
An interesting example of this is Florescence by Game Garden, where the game combines the mystery of loot boxes with player choice, allowing players to select their final reward.
Stanislav Stankovic, Senior Game Design Director at EA
Stanislav is a Senior Game Design Director with over 12 years of experience in the gaming industry. He currently leads the design team at EA Tracktwenty, working on SimCity BuildIt. Prior to this role, Stanislav worked at Supercell on Hay Day and served as Creative Director at Northern Stars, while his journey in the gaming industry began at Rovio. Stanislav’s expertise lies in designing engaging systems, live service games, and monetization strategies that strike a balance between player satisfaction and business success.
A troubling trend in monetization is the rise of ‘slash-and-burn’ game economies, which prioritize aggressive, targeted offers over providing lasting value to players. These strategies focus on maximizing short-term revenue by pushing high-pressure sales tactics, often alienating players in the process. While this approach can yield quick financial gains, it undermines long-term retention and lifetime value (LTV).
Sustainable success requires balancing monetization with player trust, offering meaningful and engaging experiences rather than exploiting their commitment. Developers should aim for strategies that cultivate long-term loyalty instead of sacrificing the future of their games for immediate results.
Josh Szabo, Head of Mobile at The Media Trust
Josh has spent 10 years navigating the programmatic landscape and lives with partners and dog in Ontario, Canada. He’s played key roles in optimizing publisher systems, building an SSP, improving DSP/SSP pathways, and leading teams of account managers and ad traffickers. Known for his ability to connect the dots between tech and business, Josh thrives in fast-paced environments where collaboration and creativity are essential.
The future of 2025 monetization comes down to trust and value. Users are quick to uninstall when disrupted or re-directed with harmful ads, never to return.
Reward ads, native placements, and engaging ad experiences are the keys to growth. Acquisition costs aren’t getting cheaper, so it is crucial to retain users with personalization and premium options that make them feel safe. Every poor ad experience risks your reputation and the bottom line. Protect users with safety tools and provide personalized experiences to scale apps like never before!
Alexandra Trifonova, Senior Monetization Manager at Hitapps
Senior Ads Monetization Manager with 4+ years of experience driving revenue and profitability in the fast-paced world of mobile games. By marrying an analytical mindset with a passion for gaming, Alexandra specializes in crafting monetization blueprints that both enrich the user experience and maximize ROI.
In 2025, the shift to bidding-only in ad monetization is inevitable. If you’re still using waterfalls, you’re holding on to outdated ideas. It’s time to rethink your strategy.
Next year, the focus should be on strategically placing ad spaces within your app and refining user segmentation. By understanding your audience and tailoring ad placements to user behavior, you can enhance engagement and revenue.
Reed Sutton, Head of Business Development at MAF
Reed Sutton has spent the past decade working at leading ad networks that serve mobile-first app publishers. His expertise spans collaborations with hundreds of gaming and non-gaming publishers, helping them optimize in-app advertising revenue while boosting user engagement and retention.
Over the past several years, the mobile app landscape has undergone a transformative shift. Product Managers, Mobile Marketers, and Monetization Managers who began their careers in gaming have now moved into leadership roles across nearly every app vertical. With them, they are beginning to leverage the mobile game monetization playbook, which emphasizes experimenting with a mix of rewarded and non-rewarded ad formats.
In 2025, I foresee a continued rise in non-gaming publishers adopting advertising strategies traditionally used in gaming. These formats are designed to monetize effectively while also engaging and retaining users by rewarding them for their time and attention. This convergence of gaming-inspired ad strategies and non-gaming verticals marks an exciting evolution in how app publishers continually recalibrate their user experience with various monetization formats.
User Acquisition Trends
Claire Rozain, CEO of RZAIN
As the CEO of RZAIN, Claire has led +5 games and apps to profitability in the past 7 months and generated +100k CA. Prior to entrepreneurship, she had the opportunity to explore different verticals in the UA and CRM world.
UA is changing and getting much more tailored to the product funnel and personalized to the product experience. Revenue curves are drastically different depending on your channel (social, ad network, reward) and it becomes crucial to get the right channel mix to break even.
With incent, you are able to pay back in a month, with e-commerce your Admon ARPDAU can easily double. Nowadays more than ever, doing ads does not mean only doing traffic—it means having high-quality campaigns able to monetize and pay back.
Julie Tonna, Founder of Neo Ads
With 7+ years in Ad Tech at Apple and ironSource, working with top gaming apps across EMEIA, Julie has seen how fast User Acquisition evolves, driven by new tech, policies, and shifting user behaviors. Now, as a freelance UA consultant, she’s always looking at what’s next. Through my newsletter Neo Ads, Julie explores what’s shaping Ad Tech today and tomorrow.
AI-generated ads are transforming user acquisition, with Meta, Google, and TikTok releasing AI assistants to generate ads.
Moreover, tools like ElevenLabs and CaptionAI make it easier than ever to create personalized, localized, and high-quality ads at scale. For Apple Search Ads, however, finding the right tools and strategy remains essential. Leveraging AI for keyword research, advanced data analysis and ideation for Custom Product Pages ensures brands stay ahead of the competition and maximize performance.
Alessandro del Grano, CCO at MAF
Alessandro is the Co-Founder and CCO at MAF, a leading rewarded advertising company, with over a decade of leadership experience in the mobile app space.
User acquisition in 2025 is set to become increasingly loyalty-driven. As competition intensifies and acquisition costs continue to rise, retaining users while monetizing effectively will be paramount. The focus is shifting from pure scale to sustainable engagement, where building lasting relationships with users takes precedence over short-term wins. Reward-based and retention-friendly UA strategies will lead the way, ensuring every ad interaction delivers value to users and strengthens their connection to the app.
This approach emphasizes transparency, personalization, and seamless integration, creating experiences that users trust and enjoy from the UA phase onward. By understanding user needs and aligning ad strategies with their preferences, advertisers and publishers can aim for not just incremental growth, but sustainable success that fosters loyalty and enhances monetization.
