Role-Playing Game Advertising Monthly Report: August 2026

CreativeScope's August 2026 RPG ad report: 559.2K active ads, images at 30.1% of the mix, Hero Wars first on both stores, and top-20 rankings by platform.

Daniel Brooks

Creative Strategy Analyst

Published Sep 18, 2026

Updated Sep 18, 2026

CreativeScope's August 2026 monthly report on role-playing game advertising: 559.2K active ads across Android and iOS, the top 20 titles on each store led by Hero Wars, format mix, creative age structure, and regional demand.

559.2KActive ads, August 2026 (down 6.3% from July's 596.5K)

17.1 daysAverage ad run time (down 1.1 days from July's 18.2)

58%Share of ads in delivery for 7 days or fewer — the highest of any top-level category

1. The headline numbers

Active ad volume in the role-playing category fell 37.3K month over month, and average run time shortened by 1.1 days to 17.1 days. Daily active volume through the month stayed within a 160K–180K band with limited variation.

Metric	August 2026	July 2026	Change
Active ads	559.2K	596.5K	−6.25% (−37.3K)
Average run time	17.1 days	18.2 days	−1.1 days (−6.04%)

2. Format mix: video down, images up to 30.1%

RPG was the image-heavy exception among the major genres: static images carried 30.1% of active ads in August, up 5.2 percentage points from July, while video's share fell 5.5 points to 69.2%. Playables stayed under 1% of the mix.

Format	July 2026	August 2026	Change
Video	445.3K (74.6%)	386.8K (69.2%)	−13.13%
Image	148.2K (24.8%)	168.1K (30.1%)	+13.47%
Playable	3.1K (0.5%)	4.3K (0.8%)	+38.46%

Video volume fell 58.5K ads month over month while image volume rose 20.0K — the two formats moved in opposite directions in August.

3. Creative age: the newest library of any top-level category

Ads in delivery for seven days or fewer accounted for 58% of active role-playing ads (326.7K) — the highest 0–7-day share of any top-level game category and 5 percentage points above the 53% all-category baseline. Ads running 30 days or longer made up just 12%, the smallest old-ad share of the major genres.

0–7 days58% · 326.7K

8–14 days16% · 89.6K

15–29 days13% · 74.3K

30+ days12% · 68.2K

Share of active role-playing ads by run-time band, August 2026. Bars are scaled to the largest band. Shares are rounded to whole percentages and sum to 99%.

4. Regions: East Asia leads by 44.4K

East Asia led all regions with 207.2K creatives — 44.4K ahead of second-place Southeast Asia (162.8K) and 62.3K ahead of North America (144.9K). Western Europe and Central Europe completed the top five.

East Asia207.2K

Southeast Asia162.8K

North America144.9K

Western Europe121.4K

Central Europe111.6K

Role-playing creatives by region, August 2026, top five regions shown. Bars are scaled to East Asia.

All 15 regions

Region	Creatives	Region	Creatives
East Asia	207.2K	Australia & New Zealand	78.2K
Southeast Asia	162.8K	Middle East	77.8K
North America	144.9K	Northern Europe	75.4K
Western Europe	121.4K	South America	60.4K
Central Europe	111.6K	Africa	43.9K
Southern Europe	86.8K	South Asia	31.9K
All other regions	85.9K	Central Asia	27.7K
Eastern Europe	84.5K

5. Android top 20

Nexters' Hero Wars: Alliance RPG Legend led the Android ranking with 11,992 active ads, 10,828 of them new in August — a 90% refresh ratio. Three games cleared 10.5K active ads: Hero Wars, Gangstar Mirage City: Online (11,259), and Genshin Impact (10,558).

#	Game	Publisher	Active ads	New ads	New %
1	Hero Wars: Alliance RPG Legend	NEXTERS GLOBAL LTD	11,992	10,828	90%
2	Gangstar Mirage City: Online	Level Infinite	11,259	11,031	98%
3	Genshin Impact	COGNOSPHERE PTE. LTD.	10,558	9,104	86%
4	MapleStory: Idle RPG	NEXON Company	5,829	3,409	58%
5	RF ONLINE NEXT	Netmarble	5,698	4,013	70%
6	Zenless Zone Zero – Anniv.	COGNOSPHERE PTE. LTD.	5,241	3,411	65%
7	열혈강호: 넥스트	Kingnet Technology Limited	5,151	4,022	78%
8	Rogue Legend – Roguelike RPG	PocketHaven	4,417	2,107	48%
9	Honkai: Star Rail	COGNOSPHERE PTE. LTD.	4,350	2,623	60%
10	鬥破蒼穹M：少年崛起	JOYSTAR GAME INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY	3,709	3,323	90%
11	Fate/Grand Order	Aniplex Inc.	3,476	2,388	69%
12	Eternal Sword Pact	Leniu Technology Co., Limited	3,275	1,524	47%
13	Palmon: Survival	LILITH TECHNOLOGY HONG KONG LIMITED	3,262	2,464	76%
14	OneState RP – Role Play Life	ChillBase	3,168	2,521	80%
15	Pokémon GO	Scopely Explore, Inc.	2,867	1,699	59%
16	Depth Survival	RP Suriya	2,826	2,582	91%
17	Mabinogi Mobile	NEXON Company	2,665	2,444	92%
18	소드 앤 프론티어	ONCENIUDE	2,594	2,594	100%
19	JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: GS	Wanda Cinemas Games	2,572	1,991	77%
20	Ragnarok: The New World	Gravity Game Vision	2,513	2,286	91%

Multiple titles in this ranking: COGNOSPHERE ×3NEXON ×2

Bars in the active-ads column are scaled to the top title in this ranking; New % is new ads as a share of active ads.

Gangstar Mirage City: Online ran a 98% refresh ratio (11,031 new of 11,259 active), and 소드 앤 프론티어 launched its entire Android count as new ads (2,594 of 2,594).

6. iOS top 20

Hero Wars: Alliance Fantasy led the iOS ranking with 3,373 active ads — just 11 ahead of Eternal Sword Pact (3,362) in second place. iOS volumes ran far below Android's: the 20th iOS title held 1,076 active ads against 2,513 on Android.

#	Game	Publisher	Active ads	New ads	New %
1	Hero Wars: Alliance Fantasy	Nexters Global LTD	3,373	2,162	64%
2	Eternal Sword Pact	Leniu Technology Co., Limited	3,362	2,003	60%
3	Rogue Legend – Roguelike RPG	PocketHaven Games Ltd.	2,876	1,032	36%
4	Idle Heroes – Idle Games	DHGames Limited	2,776	2,398	86%
5	Mabinogi Mobile	NEXON Korea Corporation	2,444	2,255	92%
6	Dragon Traveler	HONGKONG GAMETREE LIMITED	2,430	1,409	58%
7	One State RP: Role Play Online	CHILLBASE LTD	2,158	1,665	77%
8	Gangstar Mirage City	PROXIMA BETA PTE.LIMITED	2,131	2,131	100%
9	Pokémon GO	Niantic, Inc.	1,828	1,197	65%
10	CookieRun: Crumble – Idle RPG	Devsisters Corp.	1,769	1,477	83%
11	MapleStory: Idle RPG	NEXON Company	1,757	891	51%
12	Khế Ước Rồng	VGP JOINT STOCK COMPANY	1,701	1,701	100%
13	天命：六道輪迴	SPGame Co., Limited	1,636	942	58%
14	半夜別修仙	EVOLENS TECHNOLOGY LIMITED	1,573	1,262	80%
15	Genshin Impact	COGNOSPHERE PTE. LTD.	1,442	1,254	87%
16	Arad: Idle RPG	NEXON Korea Corporation	1,289	1,289	100%
17	Fortress Saga: AFK RPG	cookapps	1,239	868	70%
18	Omni Warriors: Super Evo	SenseTime Shanhui Technology	1,159	736	64%
19	やばい！少女に囲まれた！	HONG KONG STAR POWER CO.	1,096	809	74%
20	StarSavior	Studio B Side Co., Ltd	1,076	614	57%

Multiple titles in this ranking: NEXON ×3

Bars in the active-ads column are scaled to the top title in this ranking; New % is new ads as a share of active ads.

Three iOS top-20 titles — Gangstar Mirage City, Khế Ước Rồng, and Arad: Idle RPG — launched their entire August active counts as new ads. Idle Heroes refreshed 86% of its active count (2,398 of 2,776), the highest ratio among the iOS top five.

7. Cross-platform: nine shared titles, Hero Wars first on both

Nine games appeared in the top 20 on both stores. Hero Wars held the number one position on each, under two listings — Alliance RPG Legend on Android and Alliance Fantasy on iOS.

Game	Android rank	iOS rank
Hero Wars	1	1
Eternal Sword Pact	12	2
Rogue Legend	8	3
Mabinogi Mobile	17	5
OneState RP	14	7
Gangstar Mirage City	2	8
Pokémon GO	15	9
MapleStory: Idle RPG	4	11
Genshin Impact	3	15

Android's number two, Gangstar Mirage City, ranked eighth on iOS, and Android's number three, Genshin Impact, ranked 15th — the store rankings diverged sharply below the top spot.

Data notes. All figures come from CreativeScope and cover August 1–31, 2026, Android and iOS combined unless noted. Active ads are ads in delivery during the window; new ads are ads first seen in the window. Average run time is the mean days in delivery per ad. Creative-age bands are derived from average run time; "old ads" means 30 or more days in delivery. Region figures are creative counts. Monthly comparisons are against July 2026. Game titles are shown as they appear in the ad libraries; a few non-English store listings are given under their common English release names. Source figures quoted in units of 10,000 ads have been converted to K.

Track the category yourself

CreativeScope tracks mobile game advertising across genres, stores, and regions with monthly rollups like this one, plus per-game teardowns on the CreativeScope blog. To pull the same category, store, and region breakdowns for your own competitive set, start from the CreativeScope platform.

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