Last Week’s Top Mobile Marketing Reads: 15 -21 February 2021

Welcome back to “Last Week’s Top Mobile Marketing Reads series that recap the most read industry news on gaming, business of apps, and mobile advertising. 

Last week’s most notable acquisition and IPO news came from the gaming industry. Casino giant PlayStudios announced that it’s set to go public via a $1.1 billion merger with Acies Acquisition Corp and expand into Squads RPG and Bingo markets, while Electronic Arts announced that it has completed a $1.2 billion acquisition of Codemasters.  

Another important news about the game industry was that Saudi Wealth Fund acquired more than $3.3 billion worth of stock in EA, Take-Two, and Activision Blizzard.

Google shares checklist for building high-quality Android apps

Google has created a new ‘Build high quality apps’ section on its Android Developers website to help Android developers to make sure ‘’their apps not only work but work well’’.

”This section will help you stay up-to-date with the latest minimum requirements through the core quality checklists, and provides in-depth guides in selected technology areas to help you go beyond the minimum,” says the company on the new webpage.

Pokemon’s LoL-style MOBA game is getting Android beta in March

The official Pokémon YouTube channel has announced a new MOBA game for Android, iOS and Nintendo Switch called Pokémon Unite. 

In the upcoming MOBA game, players will be tasked with collecting Pokémon as part of MOBA’s team-based online multiplayer battle arena game. 

Zynga builds its own ad network, lookouts for more acquisitions

In the last quarter of 2020, Zynga’s revenue was $ 616 million, up 52% year-over-year, and total annual revenue for 2020 was $ 1.97 billion, Zynga’s highest revenue ever.  

Frank Gibeau, Zynga’s CEO, said to investors that the gaming  giant expects to build its own ad network, including “key components of technology” related to the demand side, the supply side, an exchange layer, and some type of attribution.

Google releases the first Android 12 Developer Preview: Here’s what is new with UI

Google released the first developer preview of Android 12 as of yesterday. 

According to the first look made by the developers, Android 12 will allow the use of a brand new interface. The changes that can be seen for now show that the lock screen and notification panel will be renewed. However, we can already say that the stable version of the operating system will offer much more.

Mobile adtech companies form ‘Post-IDFA Alliance’ to address the concerns of mobile marketers

A group of mobile adtech companies including Chartboost, Fyber, InMobi, Liftoff, Singular, and Vungle started an initiative called Post-IDFA Alliance in order to provide resources to mobile marketers and app publishers to support transition to the post-IDFA landscape. 

The alliance aims to address the concerns of app and game publishers and mobile marketers following Apple’s update to its IDFA policy. No IDFA No Problem features a wealth of videos, articles, case studies, best practices, webinars, and tools.