The Emerging Market Advantage: Your Brand's Playbook for LATAM and MENA Audience Growth

The global mobile gaming audience is vast, but the engine of new revenue and growth has shifted. For brands looking to maximize their advertising ROI, the focus could be in pivoting from saturated mature markets to two high-potential regions: Latin America (LATAM) and the Middle East & North Africa (MENA).

This is where brand advertising spend needs to follow the steepest upward trend in user value and engagement.

Emerging Market Data - What Could it Mean to Your Brand

While mature markets maintain high revenue, LATAM and MENA are defining the future growth trajectory, characterized by high engagement and an increasing willingness to spend.

• LATAM’s Install Surge: The Latin American region is showing significant market expansion with mobile game installs rising about 8% year-over-year. This indicates a constantly refreshed audience base, making it ideal for brands focused on mass reach and market penetration.
• MENA’s Spending Power: The Middle East and North Africa region is currently the fastest-growing hotspot in terms of revenue acceleration, with player spending jumping 18% year-over-year. This explosive growth in monetization signals a highly engaged, high-value audience receptive to in-game rewards and premium brands.

For brands, this data means you can find both volume (LATAM) and high monetization potential (MENA) in two distinct, yet accelerating, markets. Adding these markets to your strategy in 2026 is a clear option for growth and expanding your audience,

Decoding the Emerging Mobile Gamer

The mobile-first nature of these regions contributes to their high value:

• Hyper-Mobile First: In many LATAM and MENA countries, mobile devices are the primary, and often only, means of internet access and entertainment. This translates to longer session times and higher attention for in-game content.
• Receptivity to Value: Due to the dominance of free-to-play games, players are accustomed to a value-exchange model. Rewarded Video and interactive ads are seen not as interruptions, but as earned in-game benefits, leading to lower ad fatigue and higher conversion rates for brands.

The accelerating data from LATAM and MENA signals a critical opportunity for brands to expand their mobile ad footprint and diversify their spend beyond traditional regions. This strategic addition allows brands to simultaneously capture high-engagement, high-monetization audiences while maintaining existing market presence. By utilizing Prado’s platform, advertisers can seamlessly apply programmatic and contextual precision to these diverse regions, guaranteeing cultural relevance, ensuring brand safety, and securing measurably higher returns on investment from the world’s fastest-growing mobile gaming ecosystems.

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