Just last week, I wrote about a data dive by mobile research firm Flurry (who, thanks to their mobile analytics SDK, has a sample group of about 20 million users across 110,000 iOS/Android apps) on which age group was shelling out the most cash in freemium mobile games.
Almost immediately, the top rated comment was something along the lines of “That’s cool and all — but where’s the breakdown by gender?”
Here it is.
Flurry looked at this topic from a number of ways. First up: who spends the most time in freemium games? Which sex is most dedicated to tending their virtual farms for carrots they can never eat?
Looks like it’s juuuust about equal. Guys spend more time in-game almost across the board (especially in the 25-34 age range), but the difference is consistently ever-so-slight. This data also suggests last week’s findings that the vast majority of people spending time in-game (regardless of sex) are under 35.
Now, what about the money?
Anecdotal evidence would have lead me to guess that females would be the big spenders here — turns out, gents take the lead. Dudes are spending around 16% more in freemium games than their dudette counterparts, at 58% vs 42%. Folks in the 25-34 age range (especially males) prove to be the most valuable, with the 35-54 age group swooping in for a surprising second.
So, what can we gather from this? While that 16% cumulative difference between sexes certainly isn’t trivial, it’s not quite as monumental as it may seem. The female kind still accounts for a staggering 42% of money spent overall — so if you’re looking to maximize the money hittin’ your pocket, it seems like a good idea to really toe the line between which audience your game focuses on. To get all KINDS of gender-stereotypey here for a second: Too much cute-and-fuzziness, and you’ll scare away the largest money spending group; too guns-and-ammo, and you might be spooking off just shy off half of the folks who would consider shelling out. It’s not a shocking concept: when you’re banking on the idea that some small percentage of your audience will spend money in a game you gave away for free, you want your app’s focus to be friendly to as big of an audience as possible.
And for one last bit of data: if you’re wondering which group is spending the most per transaction (these folks will, after all, only come back to the checkout stand so many times), the answer is once again males between 25-34. You can find Flurry’s full data dive here.
Flurry increases the size and value of mobile application audiences, already helping more than 65,000 companies in over 170,000 applications across iOS, Android, HTML5, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and J2ME platforms. Flurry has built the world’s leading mobile application analytics and data-powered advertising platform, with more ground breaking services in development. Flurry has offices in San Francisco, New York and London. The company is venture-backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, InterWest Partners, Union Square Ventures, Menlo Ventures, First Round Capital and Draper...
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