Gaming person acquisition spend hits $25 billion as AI fuels artistic increase

The information: User acquisition funding is surging throughout the worldwide gaming market as AI-driven manufacturing results in explosive advert content material progress.

• In 2025, international gaming advertisers spent roughly $25 billion on person acquisition, half of which went to the US market alone, per AppsFlyer’s 2026 The State of Gaming for Marketers report.
• Content manufacturing from the highest gaming spenders is up 25% to 30% YoY, whereas smaller advertisers are rising output by as much as 40% YoY to remain aggressive.

What it means: AI-powered advert manufacturing is a key driver behind these fast manufacturing features. By decreasing the fee and time wanted to generate content material, AI helps advertisers make and take a look at adverts at scale, per AppsFlyer. However, that dynamic can be flooding the market with content material and making it tougher to face out.

Success in person acquisition may rely not on how a lot advertisers spend, however on how shortly they will take a look at, deploy, and refresh artistic.

AI’s position extends properly past artistic era, with groups utilizing it closely for efficiency measurement. Almost half (45.4%) of AI queries from groups are about reporting and efficiency breakdowns, not ideation.

Implications for entrepreneurs: Gaming advertisers’ priorities in 2026 ought to embrace specializing in creating content material at scale over single, high-stakes bets to interrupt by way of saturation and utilizing AI as an insights device, not only a artistic one, to hurry evaluation and marketing campaign optimization efforts.

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