The Global Guide for when to Acquire, Engage and Monetize

Report Methodology

ByteBrew is the leading all-in-one game analytics platform that unifies all your product tools from real-time analytics and live ops to a/b testing and attribution measurement in one integration.

With over a billion active players analyzed each month on ByteBrew, we’re developing new industry-leading resource studies to help our global game developer community on ByteBrew navigate and excel in the dynamic world of gaming.

In this study, we examine how players in each region of the globe play mobile games in each hour of the day. To accomplish this global study, we analyzed the times of day over a billion players across 185 countries were online playing games around the globe and standardized the hours they played to the local timezones within their Geos. By synchronizing all the timezones of each country, we can identify and differentiate how gamers play region by region. For purposes of the study, data variability has a margin of +/- 1 hours in timezones.

Why is this data important?

Mobile gaming behaviors vary greatly across each region of the globe, this study has significant impact and learnings for the game developers looking to acquire, re-engage, and monetize players in each region.

Acquiring New Users

Tailoring your user acquisition campaign strategies to run during each region’s most active gaming hours targets windows where gamer’s attention is at its highest allows your campaigns to maximize advertising conversion and produce cost savings with higher ROI’s.

Re-Engaging Your Players

Knowing these peak engagement windows per region can be used to increase the effectiveness of your push notification campaigns. Using ByteBrew Push Notifications, you can define and target segments by Geo, and schedule campaigns to be delivered at peak engagement hours. See the “Regions by UTC Hour” section for more information about the highest activity windows globally.

Monetizing Players

Coupling this data within your Live Ops campaigns, you can deploy limited-time offers and run in-game events during peak user hours by region to increase the potential to convert your players into spenders. With ByteBrew’s Conditional Remote Config and AB Testing products, you can define and distribute unique payloads with a series of game updates to custom player segments.

Global Players by Hour

At the start of uncovering play patterns, it’s crucial to visualize how players play on average across the globe. The diagram below depicts the percentage of players playing mobile games distributed by each hour of a day.

Analyzing the hourly trends, the most active hour of any given region on average across the globe is hour 20, and the hour with the least gaming activity is hour 4. This data will be key to understanding the variation in play patterns region by region.

North America (NA) Players by Hour

The diagrams in the section below illustrate how players in the North American region play each hour of the day.

For players in the North American region, the most active hours range between hours 19 - 21. The least active hours range between hours 4 - 6.

North American Players by Hour VS Global Players

See how players in North America play games in comparison to the globe in the diagram and datatable.

Compared to the global average player activity by hour, North America displays interesting play behaviour. The hours that show the highest divergence between how players play globally is in the middle of the night. From hour 0 (12:00 am) to Hour 2 (2:00 am) there are up to 40% more players in the North American region playing games.

LATAM Players by Hour

Looking at the LATAM region, the diagrams in the section below highlight how players play in LATAM hourly within a day.

Similarly to the NA region, LATAM players are most active during hours 19 - 21, however the least active hours vary slightly to hours 3 - 5. Additionally the landmark hours in LATAM diverge from North American players with the lowest hour in LATAM being hour 4 and highest rising hour being hour 6.

LATAM Players by Hour VS Global Players

Analyze how players in LATAM play games in comparison to the globe in the diagram and datatable.

In comparison to the globe, LATAM has it’s highest delta in activity during the early morning hours. From the hours of 1 (1:00am) to 4 (4:00am) there are up to 65% percent more players active playing in LATAM than other regions; highlighting that LATAM players are eager to extend their gaming activity into the morning hours.

EMEA Players by Hour

Dive into how players in EMEA region play throughout the day in the section below.

The EMEA region reflects a similar activity windows with the LATAM region’s landmarks for Peak Hour and Lowest Hour at hour 20 and hour 4 respectively. The most interesting player behavior is shown when EMEA is compared to the global average activity.

EMEA Players by Hour VS Global Players

See the percent variance in the EMEA region against the globe in the figures in this section.

Visualizing how EMEA plays in comparison to the globe reveals very intriguing data. While both NA and LATAM players had a higher propensity to play into later hours in the night, EMEA splits from that pattern and, as a region, dramatically declines in activity during hours 4 (4:00am) to 7 (7:00am). During those hours there are up to 46% less players playing in the region during the lowest hourly period.

APAC Players by Hour

Understand the breakdown of how mobile gamers in the APAC region play during each hour of the day in the charts below.

The APAC region has the most variation from other previously reported regions with both the Peak and Lowest Hour landmarks occurring earlier than any other region. Additionally, this deviation in player activity from other regions extends when visualizing the data on a global scale in the following section.

APAC Players by Hour VS Global Players

Gain insight into the distinction in player activity between APAC and the globe in the charts within the section below.

As a region, APAC showcases the highest hourly peaks in the percentage of playing by hour at 7.2% in both Hours 19 (7:00pm) and 20 (8:00pm); reporting at about 10% higher than global averages. However, the largest variation in player activity from average is in the morning hours between 6 (6:00am) and 7 (7:00am) where APAC players are playing at up to a 27% higher rate than globally during the same time. Inversely, late night hours from 0 (12:00am) - 2 (2:00 am) have the largest decline in activity compared to global averages.

Global Regions by UTC Hour

Now that we’ve broken down how regions individually behave locally by hour, let’s transpose each region's data to adjust to one centralized timezone, UTC, to view the aggregated player activity by UTC hour.

This visualization provides unique insight into when the best and worst times are to engage your global players. Based on the UTC timezone, the best hours to launch global events or promotions are between the hours of 14 and 16 - with the Peak Hour of activity at hour 15. The least active time to launch events for your games would be between hours 5 to 7 - showing the lowest hour at hour 6.

Results

As illustrated throughout this study, mobile gamers in each region display drastically different play behaviours, highlighting the importance of tailoring development strategies for each unique market. Leveraging the insights from this report with the power of ByteBrew's all-in-one platform, game developers can design frameworks to maximize user acquisition performance, drive re-engagement, and optimize monetization efforts across the globe.