The Mobile Ad Monetization: 11
I always joked that a term that was used in the early days of mobile gaming was: “If you want to win, hire a Finn🇫🇮.” Now I say, “If you want to make it work, Hire a Turk🇹🇷” The Turkish gaming market has seen some crazy exits throughout the years. I’d argue that the Turkish gaming scene is now in its third generation or cohort of gaming companies.
We had the first generation led by Peak Games, which Zynga acquired for $1.8 billion. The second generation of gaming companies, led by Dream Games, which just announced that it’s raising $2.5 billion in a financing round. So, the way I see it, we’re now in the 3rd Generation of Turkish Gaming companies. It’s early days, but I’ve made a list of which 3rd-generation Turkish Studios I think are most likely to have very large outcomes. Thank you Sensor Towerfor the data.
🤔🇹🇷So who are the Turks that are gonna make it work?🤔🇹🇷
Grand Games – an Istanbul-based studio that has already made massive waves after Raising $30 million in its Series A round in December 2024. Its three co-founders, Bekir Celebi, Mustafa Fırtına, and Mehmet Çalım, all worked at Good Job Games Together. Grand Games’ flagship title, “Magic Sort,” which we covered on the podcast, is roomed to have truly insane numbers. In the last 30 days, Magic Sort has scaled to $2m in IAP and what I estimate to be around $500k in Ad revenue.
Another Istanbul-based studio (get used to that in this article), Pine Games, focuses on beautiful ad-monetized games. Their two main titles, Word Weaver and Number Paint have racked up nearly 500k downloads in the last 30 days. It’s early days, but the games show much promise. I will do an ad monetization breakdown when Sensor Tower gives me an accurate Active Userbase estimate. But Pine Games’ C-level is stacked with ex-Peak and ex-Dream Games. It will be interesting to see how this studio progresses. Ad Revenue currently is most likely in the 10-25k/day region, but I could be wrong!
Where’s Waldo is so last decade – it’s all about “Find the Cat” these days. Launched in May 2024, Find the Cat was one of the break-out success titles from Turkey last year. It’s now scaled to nearly 2 million Daily active users and monetizes only with ads. I estimate that it’s currently generating $72k-$100k/day in ad revenue. The founders are ex-Good Job Games and Fugo employees. We briefly covered it on the podcast if you want to learn more. It will be interesting to see how far this title can scale!
Also based in Istanbul, Leap, which has the most minimalistic website I’ve ever seen, launched its first title, Hidden Tales, in March 2024. The game recently scaled up to 200k active users daily, mainly in the USA. The active user base means the ad revenue is most likely between 10-20k/day right now, but the game shows a lot of promise. I’m keeping a close eye on this title! Leap Games looks to have some publishing ties with Fugo Games.
Carpe-Yolo, as they say! Yolo Games based (you guessed it!) Istanbul released its first title, Find Differences, in mid-2022. Since then, they’ve been busy scaling and launching two more titles: Find Master and Find Hidden Objects. Find Differences and Find Hidden Objects have scaled to 1 million DAU and 500k DAU, respectively. Yes, it’s all driven by beautiful ad revenue. It looks like 2025 will be a very interesting year for YOLO games. Fugo Games, again here, looks to be publishing YOLO’s games.
Finally, a studio based in Izmir—not Istanbul! Mage Games launched Goal Battle—Soccer Games in March 2024. So far, it has been downloaded 1.5 million times and generates about $35k/month in IAP revenue. But it’s scaling!
Also, I want to mention Circle, which was founded by former Good Job Games and Gram Games employees. However, they haven’t released their first title, so I can’t put them on the list as there is no data…yet. One thing that is certain is that Good Job Games seems to be the founder’s foundry in this 3rd generation of Turkish Gaming companies.
💰Great Content 💰
It’s been a very Turkish-focused weekly newsletter. The Turks do make it work, but the Vietnamese are putting up a very honorable fight for mobile superiority! This is apparent in Falcon Games’ new title, Goods Sort, which has scaled to $300k/day in IAP and IAA revenue. We do the full breakdown and research, so you don’t have to!
🎯The Cinderella of the Week🎯
Miracles still happen! Despite the uber-competitive landscape in mobile, solo developers can still scale their IAA monetized games to crazy levels. This section is to salute you. Why? Because everyone loves a Cinderella story… that’s why.
This week, Cinderella award has to go to Youngster Studio for its game Digging a Hole Simulator. It’s been downloaded 663k times in the last 14 days and spawned an untold number of copies. It’s originally a Steam game that was repurposed for mobile use. It monetizes mostly with Banners and Interstitials.
The largest geo by far is Germany 🇩🇪 meaning eCPMs will be somewhat decent despite it being all organic traffic. I’m reminded of a time when I met a German crane operator in a Berlin Bar, and he said his biggest hobby was playing Crane Simulator🤷. It’s too early for Active User data from Sensor Tower, but estimating off downloads (which is not as accurate), I think this title is earning around $7-9k/day at the current scale in ad revenue.
