The Extended-Play Format Advantage: How to Pair Reach and Memory in Mobile Games Ads

Attention isn’t bought, it’s earned

Mobile gaming is where daily attention lives. 2025 benchmarks show the category holding steady with longer average sessions and healthy play patterns, ripe conditions for opt-in formats that add value, not pressure. Global games revenue is forecast to reach $188.9B in 2025, up 3.4% YoY. More importantly, behavior is shifting: sessions rose 12% and time spent increased 8% YoY in early 2025.

Formats that deliver and add value

Campaigns should combine targeted ads to reach gamers at the right times with custom brand activation solutions. Effective targeting lifts outcomes like recall, engagement, and purchasing intent.

Opt-in video earns time: Value-exchange units continue to outperform on watch-through and session depth across large data sets, underscoring that how attention is earned beats raw volume.

Interactivity builds memory: Hands-on ads are now a mainstream performance tool. Liftoff 2025 analysis (4.7T impressions) reports playables delivering up to 16× higher impression-to-install efficiency for non-top spenders (8× for top spenders), a signal that interactive creative travels further than a passive view. 

Quality protects the business: When ad quality drops, users churn. Unity’s 2025 Ad Quality survey found 44% of players would very likely stop playing and 47% would very likely uninstall after poor ad experiences, clear evidence that intrusive formats erode lifetime value. 

Why this is investable: A steady foundation of time-in-game and stable app economics makes mobile a credible place to compound outcomes. Time spent up 8%, sessions up 12%, even as downloads flatten.

Bottom line: balancing formats is the lever. Choose well and attention turns into repeat exposure, memory, and return sessions, the inputs that move revenue curves.

Kidoz proof in action

• Model the mix, don’t guess it. We start with a hypothesis, rewarded + short interactive for depth/memory, plus context-fit video for qualified reach and size the expected completion, time-in-experience, and return-session lift by genre and audience. Only winners graduate to scale.
• Learn early, then lock. We run lightweight learn packs to test end cards, interaction paths, and placement timing before the market tightens, shortening time-to-signal and keeping discovery costs low. A 2025 priority echoed in AppsFlyer’s App Marketing Outlook.
• Measure what proves value. We report completion, time-in-experience, interaction depth, recall proxies, and return sessions, signals that map to outcomes and hold up in privacy-first environments.
• Scale safely by default. Delivery runs on verified, brand-suitable supply with transparent seller paths, aligning with 2025 consolidation around quality-controlled inventory, where rewarded/native units appear at natural breaks to protect session health and minimize fraud.

Mobile already has the attention. Formats decide ROI. Teams that invest in opt-in and interactive delivery, measure against practical, privacy-ready signals, and scale on verified supply paths outperform, without pushing pressure on players.

Question for you: Which formats are earning time in your plan today, and how are you proving it? Let’s compare and shape a mix you can defend. Get in touch with us for more information.