Gaming

Free-to-play games monetized via in-app purchases and ads. ARPDAU and whale concentration define monetization — a sliver of payers drives most revenue — while genre-indexed retention curves (D1/D7/D30) decide whether a title survives. Benchmarks only make sense within a genre.

Free-to-play games invert the traditional media revenue model: the content is free, and a small share of players choose to pay. The result is an extreme revenue distribution — in most titles a few percent of payers, often called whales, account for the majority of in-app purchase revenue. This concentration is a feature of the model but also its primary risk: if whale acquisition or retention falters, revenue can fall sharply even as DAU holds steady.

Retention as the Genre Test

D1, D7, and D30 retention curves are the earliest and most genre-specific signals of a title's viability. Genre benchmarks vary widely — casual puzzle games tolerate very different D7 retention than mid-core RPGs — so numbers are only meaningful relative to category peers. DAU/MAU stickiness captures whether the install base is habitual or seasonal, and low stickiness predicts soft monetization even when daily numbers look healthy.

Monetization Depth

ArPPU (average revenue per paying user) and ARPDAU (average revenue per daily active user) together reveal monetization depth. ArPPU shows how much payers are spending; ARPDAU blends payer spend across the whole active base to show the per-user economics that underpin LTV modeling. IAP conversion rate (the share of players who ever make a purchase) and whale concentration are the two levers: you can grow revenue by converting more players or by deepening spend among those already buying. Revenue per install is the acquisition-efficiency bridge — it determines how much can be spent to acquire a user while remaining profitable on a cohort basis.