Stacking Dollars like a Wizard in Disguise. On the production culture of ad monetization for hyper casual games

This paper turns to industry-produced texts from the hyper casual mobile games sector in order to get a grasp of what happens behind the scenes of this lesser-known part of the games industry – one that relies heavily on advertisements and analyzing user metrics to generate income. It thereby contributes to game production studies as well as media industry studies. The analysis of deep texts by and for monetization professionals from this segment focuses on the profile of Ad Monetization in particular; a task that requires a highly specialized skillset and that is dedicated exclusively to maximizing revenues by selling various types of ad space within the game. The ads are sold to ad networks, which are important nodes in the ecosystem and communication with which is carefully managed as an important part of the job. The exploratory study underlines the entanglement of more traditional screen-based creative industries – like the games industry – with the business of software and app development.