2.5 gamers x Live AM(F)A #6 - Ask Me Anything @ November 13 5:30pm CET

yeah it's not live yet sure God it's going like you are live so we are live thank you very much hello everyone let's see if this actually works because I'm in [ __ ] us and I don't have the ice pods yeah and I don't see anything on YouTube yet I see it we're live yeah good we are yeah of course yeah we're good don't worry it's just takes time it takes time it's is always the delay always delay so thank you very much everyone for coming we are here ah it's been a while since we've done this so thanks again people are coming great no no no no no it was August August August yeah yeah we're late yeah we are really late yeah yeah we skipped SE we skipped September and October as well and so yeah so I'm goingon to start uh

before we get to the questions because Marshall M has already asked has a really good question which kind of bleeds into this but uh from we're going to go around to each of us what is the most interesting thing MAA you found out about UA in the last month I'm gonna ask yakob on game design and then I'm gonna ask myself on ad monetization or you know yakob can ask me because he has such a pretty voice and then uh that's how we started but Ma what's the most interesting thing you found out and you can't say Ad R campaigns on Facebook no no no of course of course no no honestly the most interesting thing I found out was when I started looking into the the creatives that I mentioned yesterday when we were recording a different podcast which is going to go live tomorrow guys uh that I started digging deeper into create inspiration Trends and different things so as soon as I started digging into who is actually getting inspired by who you uncover a lot of different stuff so let's say Township taking a lot of

inspiration from Idol lumber for example or the idol Lumber being a big inspiration for idle outposts idle fishing too with all these like fence rivers and all of the fun stuff so yeah all the creative uh stuff that is actually going back into like two years God that's so what's the what's the what's the actionable thing for listeners to take away from that uh to actually go and check all their games and like uh that okay so one step back five zero basically yeah exactly exactly five that's and that's exactly what I'm doing that's exactly what I'm doing I'm just going back like where did I see all the creative uh videos and different things and then just going back in in time thanks to sensor Tower so exactly patient zero and then you can see so many different

things that for example let's say Township didn't use and you could use because the patient zero had a different uh different iteration well it's not iteration actually it's the the base it's the default creative yeah but that's the whole thing same with game design like if you don't know where this is coming from maybe if you see the original it could help you much more than the one that's already iterated so I guess same applies for creatives yeah yeah yeah absolutely all right yakob Mr Remar what's the most thing you've learned about game design in the last month or scene scene um it would be either Age of Vampires mobile building vampire survivors into it so that was very surprising explain that a bit more uh because I wouldn't really expect that they would build the whole game into it and then not use it in the creatives which was the surprising fact yet yet exactly so we'll see by the end of the year on review radar how this goes but even more

interesting was definitely the Pokemon TCG Wonder pick mechanic I never saw anything like it before where it literally if you look at it from like high level it skips the gacha and it's just like super super rewarding actually and gives you like yeah like we talk last time on the on on the port that it's basically better than opening packs because you have literally a chance for the card that you actually want so the value ratio is kind of like complete discounted there so yeah that's super interesting and especially with the social element of it because keep in mind this is a social element where you see the packs of your friends that you can get and your your friends I guess can literally tell you like I got the whatever legendary card go pick it up or whatever so yeah that that's super interesting how come he can talk about Pokemon TC TCG and I can't talk about Adas campaigns on Facebook you want to talk a bit about ad R campaigns because I think that's quite a big thing right cuz it's been hasn't

been released to the general public before right no it wasn't it was in beta for a long time and I found out also yesterday it's like 50% roll out now on Android only and when I was digging into this with thash in also like he said it's if you have Facebook SDK in the game implemented it's easier to see uh everything if you have Mmp I think that's going to be rolling out a little bit slower than than when you have Facebook SDK so but it's like it's it's the new thing finally I mean new thing on Facebook old thing on other channels can you also explain what is yeah yeah yeah yeah Facebook said that it took them so long because this is going to be two times three times better than the the products from competition let's see wow ah yeah yeah yeah so very yeah yes exactly

and Adas means you're basically um using value from ad revenue and optimizing for for ads so it's like ad veils very simplified very very simplified okay uh and Felix the latest in admon asking me okay okay so glad you asked I have been going back for so basically there's two ways to set up a pre-bid solution and basically I used to what you [ __ ] yeah you [ __ ] actors like oh oh my God I'm so surprised I told you they were J yeah yeah I thought you never ask you you dumped this question on us like one second before we started and now you guys did great you guys did great you prepared all of these in advance like go go go man go

Okay no Okay so uh one of the best ways to increase Banner revenue on applin was always working with Amazon publisher Services right and you know I said yeah exactly but basically the issue is that Amazon doesn't take new Publishers right so they don't accept new inventory right now which is [ __ ] because it's so good so it gives everyone who has it such an advantage but there's also another way that you can get a pre-bid Solution on Max for banners and that's PubMatic open wrap and they take clients and actually for everyone who's not working with Amazon working with ptic open wrap is a really good way to increase your banner Revenue because it's allowed by applen so it's not like a hack or anything like that that you have to hide and what you can do is basically set up a pre-bid solution with pup Matic so you have your Dynamic bid floor set up so while Amazon typically

takes maybe you know like 15 to 35% of your us Banner Revenue P Matic might take you know 10 to 20 right still not as crazy uplifts but you can still build out the same Tam like feature in ptic open WP as you can on Amazon which means that everyone who's hasn't gotten access to Amazon now can get increased Banner revenue on Max that's a really big feather in the cap so yeah highly would encourage people tested okay if you're talking about app then what's the the latest about the e-commerce inventory and is it only is it not only about banners but it's also kind of going into interstitials and reward videos so for those who haven't noticed the crazy stock rise right part of that is also driven by the fact that basically the street thinks that they cracked gaming but basically the new e-commerce product is kind of also the reason why it's growing like crazy

because if they can crack both Performance Marketing for gaming and for e-commerce which is spending the equal amount in theory that would be like doubling their revenue right because e-commerce the same as G exactly exactly so in app I've noticed that I'm getting a lot more e-commerce demand in the last couple of weeks and basically that should kind of echo with what I'm hearing from people that they've been approached to with incentives to onboard like e-commerce demand campaigns from applen and yeah it's amazing from a gaming perspective right because we would rather have e-commerce demand in our games than we would other games right so if someone can pay the same amount of because you like I mean it's just one of these things like you'd rather show e-commerce because someone churning and buying something is not going to cause someone to leave a game so like if you're in a let's say a far it's the same thing it's the same thing they leave they [ __ ] leave it's the same but they won't leave men if it will

be a Coca-Cola ad it's not a Coca-Cola it's like it's like what their product is it's like showing e-commerce product it's like it's like e-commerce yeah yeah so okay it will be a Bitcoin minor app no no no no no no no no it's not e-commerce it's going to be it's going to be Gucci boots it's going to be whatever doesn't matter but it's not going to be your like third Travel Town competitor exactly it's not going to be right it's going to be yeah e-commerce yeah so that's why gaming companies tend to prefer it right they'll still take the money but you know it's a lot of gaming companies I work with prefer to have brand or e-commerce because it's seen as less competitive it's money without the competitors sure but it's like it's the the players leave anyway so like what's I mean I I kind of get the point okays men they won't leave they'll get back to your game they will go buy then go back

we'll see man like I'm not so sure question we need to go enough talk we need to jump into questions here because we've done 15 minutes of jibber jabber which was interesting but we have Marshall M who asks hi what trends do you expect to see in Mobile gaming for 2025 both in product and UA Parts Remo you want to start I hate these questions yeah I question sorry more more creatives that are just like build into the game and like product Focus yeah but we talk we talk about this for two years yeah yeah so but now it's like fully fully fledged uh that's what we said in 2024 now now it's now it's the real time like but now it's more more moving into crossplatform and like PC clients or whatever like that does the same with web shops like spreading around like trying to get get away from the store fees and then uh I guess more hybrid casual definitely like that's growing like crazy more um big

IPS probably that's also kind of growing like crazy because it helps with UA and only few of few companies can afford that and then more consolidation probably well it's kind of like also answering my part of the UA equation because it's um the what you said with uh the Age of Empires and the mini games that's I mean again like what we're talking about for last two years it's not going to be about like one game only but multiple games within one game so you don't really use not even altered gameplay or misleading ads but actually ads that are in the game if it's just like a side Loop and then I've been talking about um rewarded UA channels for some time which is not new but they are growing like crazy so last time we talked about it on the podcast was I

think there was only mplay nothing else now it's like to do another episode yeah need to do another episode on that yeah 30 30 new channels which uh is definitely interesting there are so many different um caveats to that like how to measure what to do what kind of um LTV curves are there like what are like the fraud kind of um options there which there are a there is a lot of fraud as well so that's that's that's a new thing and then in terms of the creatives uh if you follow our creative Trends and we're going to record um a new episode it's going to go live on Monday so you should definitely uh definitely check that the creatives went from let's let's say being like 15 20 second very easy to to digest to like one minute two minute long really complex videos and in some cases for some genres which we dis dis discussed when we were talking about

real short to five six 15 19 minutes videos which are basically like small or short shows basic or miniseries that's like where we are going with with the creative yep okay moving on Google introduce High engage there's like [ __ ] ton of questions man we need to go faster yeah don't worry Google introduced High engagement setting in admob a few days ago how much do you think this will impact APPL in unity and admob this will have this will probably be looked back as as probably one of the biggest admon events of this year and it's quite strange to me why Google would wait two and a half years to follow suit I appreciate that they made it optional uh for basically developers to choose their own settings but basically what this will mean is that the profitability of Google ads will increase dramatically

it's likely that we'll see ctrs on video inventory increase from the standard 2 3% to the app Lon Unity standard of 75% and um yeah it's it's a race to the bottom right uh the one thing that's quite interesting in how Google have executed and how they do this is that you basically opt in to the setting that basically says hey you can have longer end card that is I think they're like 14 second interstitial uh videos and on rewarded it's 60 seconds uh but what you can't change is actually the the length or what it is you either opt out or you opt in so there's no changing what it is which is an issue because on applo Unity you can change and you have some input if you want 30 second video with three second end card or you can have some input in it Google just said we're rolling this out which is super aggressive either in or you're out so I

expect them to change that relatively soon also if you opt into this uh most likely you'll see your ecpm rise but your retention lag okay thanks for the question Sagi uh there's a question from SAA hey you guys talk a lot about player segmentation is there any guide or proper way to do this fix again well yeah player segmentation is also on your end Mr yakob not only not only Felix yeah we should start by saying you should only really do segmentation if you have a little bit of IAP revenue and that typically starts around 30% I would say yako what would you say yeah uh are we talking just the player segmentation for the ads and interstitials Y segmentation for you I guess in I think in in general like player segmentation like at the there isn't isn't a guide but I would say like you can segment based on game design or ads or you and we should actually put something

together yeah we should definitely put something together because there's not like I can't really tell like if there's a specific Direction I could like okay go read this I don't think so there's that yet there I guess we'll get to it but yeah just to be kind of very short here uh as Felix said if you have any IP Revenue coming make sure that you segment at least the best cut off that you can get which means you give the payers time to manifest them El not to kind of detract them by showing immediately the ads and interstitials so it and you need to find The Sweet Spot because otherwise you just don't want to kill your at Revenue by you know moving this I don't know day seven or day eight which is too late already so you find The Sweet Spot which is usually something like I don't know maybe even like third session maybe I don't know but it's it's like a matter of like U AB test depends on your game like how like if you can for instance capture 50% of the pairs until day X then segment on

day x that's it very simple yeah we also have an episode that's coming out uh soon uh with uh anatu Anatoli from Bernie games and he was quite honest how they do segmentation he's gonna be explained there yeah sure to watch that one okay uh hey hey hey could you tell me more about app SDK txt FSD you know the f file managing how to organize uh lines check for errors and fix them is it worth it to talk with ad Partners about those red and yellow lines I don't know what this is talking about uh this is for me uh so the best way to do so adaps txt file is where you control the resellers so as you know networks don't have only their own demand they also resell their Plumbing or their SDK access to resellers typically what they charge for this is 36% if you don't have the lines in your

adaps txt file uh these Partners can't access your demand it's an anti-fraud solution you should update this every two to three months depending on your size and this is the only way how I'd recommend to do it this is a client or form of client just put this and you have your adaps txt entries here and then you have it set up like this you can easily add or remove uh you will get a lot of random people messaging you on LinkedIn and your email to add entries here whatever you do don't ever do that because mostly that is fraud uh I can tell you every time a partner or developer has gone into trouble it's because they added an adaps txt line from someone on LinkedIn and basically they stacked like six intitial ads on top of each other to make more money and then you get dinged for it so don't ever add anything that you don't know or nobody textt me this [ __ ] text only you

what like nobody text me you're not you are not relevant for people always tell monetization I want to monetize blah blah blah blah blah but do they really text you text you stuff like dxt files yeah hey we want to access your Dand please add this to your adaps dxt file and you should be like nope mushrooms mushrooms ex all right come on okay let's move on uh hello from game district oh hello really really great game guys again kudos to the to the you guys nailed that like organic Trend well done yeah yeah uh there's a question from zap what do you think about hexagons are beston Trend will it continue Trend with Twisted metrics heag hexagon are always the bestos this is not the trend this is simple fact yeah it's not going anywhere yeah

so all in short what I think will happen that yeah there's going to be more hex hexos sword like core game plays that's going to be iterated we saw that already with an RPG setup at my games portfolio I'm guessing two or three more games will happen during the end of the year even like this is not slowing down this is speeding up slowing down they're just getting started go daily not monthly yeah uh there yeah yeah okay still still 150k still strong yeah so very strong yeah so I guess it will just proliferate to like different games different iterations different combinations of metas because it works just so well that's it okay that's the thing it's going to be like combined with different parts of different games just as we saw with the the hexa heroes but say same thing with like with matching you know the 3D match G play same thing yeah you could also you can slow down I mean there are a lot of questions but you can slow down don't

don't be like don't feel a bit be rushed like you just I think M I think M you should read the next question because yob needs a little timeout yeah yeah he's like come on like shush please what advice can you give uh into a small Indie Dev team that has free for solid hybrid casual games but don't have a budget for UA if your answer is Publishers can you list a few good ones well unfortunately you can't list a good one ones I can say there are Publishers I don't I don't I don't really work with Publishers honestly if you have a good free or four hybrid casual games good for you if you don't have the budget that's quite bad for you uh unfortunately what in this case what I would do and we we discussed this on one of the the live AMA as well like you just conquer Tik Tok and start like pushing content out with Tik Tok organic posts and try your best as you can you can get because

there is like a still kind of algorithm advantage that you can leverage afterwards and get or free kind of let's call it free Organics rather than just sit in the store or just try to get the publishing deals if you are going to go and get publishing deals I would just go with one game not all of them and try like what uh what you are going to get because you always get into this weird position where you you start working with a publisher is they have very different motivation and incentives that you have like they care about like getting the most money out of it not necessarily to actually yeah yeah immediately not necessarily to help you so it's like it's quite tough situation so honestly the only publisher that I would now kind of work in is also because of John Wright uh would be qual and rest that rest is out there somewhere so the thing is just just one more thing to

add here like if you have good game like it's a very big question of or like the defition definition of the good game like if you have a really good game with very good kpis and you just don't have the scaling budget you can still start from slow and like scale eventually like you know just be kind of careful with your spend but again depends like if you even can do UA because if you can do UA like this is out of question of course that's there yeah Felix I have a question M what about the UA financing companies is that a good way to go or no it is a good way to go but also like the the UA financing uh company companies they have requirements so it's not like you have a game and you think it's good there are certain kpis you need to meet in order to get those uh those financing deals as well so I start working with pvx which is a kind of like a different spin on this financing but they they check the game they check the the kpis and then make some predictions based on what they see and then like if

if it's not actually viable like they they don't put their money in the same thing like with uh with any like Poland or Bravo or whoever like if you if you sign that deal and you your kpis are not that great well you're going to be actually losing money because the interest are really really the interest rates are really really like high so it's not like oh well give me money on like from the well let's sign the financing deal and then just it solves all all the problems well it won't so but yeah I mean like that's part of the the equation that you can or like part of the solution you can go for and also there's like the followup question from AR like what are the pros and cons going with Publisher rather than getting private investment and or and hiring you a consultant if you have a game with good kpis which you want to scale it's like what are the good kpis that's the thing it's always very question questionable yeah the the question is

also like if you know if you are let's say we are R positive let's just assume that was a good KPS so we are R positive in let's say 30 days what okay in 30 days in 30 days so this is let's say I think like average good for a small Studio on like some moderate spent you can just go what's the moderate spent because if you're R yeah moderate spent for R positive to be able to actually sustain the company is like what like 20 30k depends on like the size of the company and what means Ross positive it's like Ross positive 100 10% or 100% it's like the thing is here it's great to be Ross positive but small company is like you have all the other fees and and and costs and everything if you spend 100 per day it doesn't matter it's just like it it's it's nothing if you spend 10 thou 10,000 a day and you positive yes fine then again like there's so many

different kind of parts of that equation that you need to take into into consideration the moderate spend and being R positive it's it's a good sign yes and that in that case you don't and you have two people team you don't really need to go to publishing to to get an investment to get like financing you can slowly bootstrap the whole kind of company and just yes go from there it just takes more time which is fine but then investors and then you know public which is like you said like immediately get the money like you scale scale scale which is also quite dangerous yep okay um moving on what was the question when will be implemented dwas day3 campaigns on admon networks you think aavin open it to some users but for current market ra 7 is like a bit pushed metric so yeah this is Day Day 28 iip R campaigns I mean you should pay

attention next time when you when you were at amplify Felix they talking about it quite a lot so honestly you can you can do day 28 well you're talking about adal networks um Unity don't think that they're going to go to that direction or any other yet they're not even close close to what appla is doing at the moment now like you can do it on Google or Facebook is kind of thinking about the day 28 Ras uh option as well it's just the day seven it's day seven because Day Zero or day one is too early day seven is kind of in the in the middle and it's honestly it it's okay like I'm not sure like why why you think it's a pushed metric why is that why is that the problem the problem in my opinion is when UA managers have this as a as a Target and they don't care they don't care about anything else but they they

seven let's say 20% because they they are incentivized to hit this and then everything else is irrelevant but honestly like overall I have pretty good numbers for the seven Ross um campaigns on Apple on on Google I do two 14 days on Facebook I do day one or day seven so it's it's basically a combination of different things okay um thank you so much for all the effort you put into creating these videos I'm learning a lot from them do you have any tips on how could I regularly study and keep up with the market more effectively um well you just subscribe to to the channel like And subscribe okay honestly I think like joining the SL would be good because the SL is like 2,200 people plus and not really even like just watching other people's conversations can give you a lot and I that's for instance like what I do a lot

of time I just like read other people's conversations because it keeps you up with the trends especially we have a separate admon Channel game Design Channel user acquisition Channel there's lots of questions that lot of times are basically the ones that you are asking for and you can find them there so that I guess is the closest one but we are working on a library right yeah don't tease it yet all right don't te we're not working on a library nope uh no hi I've noticed that Bas Mania style games are being copied a lot lately and even rig and crazy Labs have released similar game what are your thoughts on this if I is like yeah the origin yeah exactly so whatd right yeah what's happening here is that roic roic probably at some point I think it was somewhere after the Twisted tangle success like they cracked this before I think or even what was before I I think Bas Mania was Bas Mania

bjam was first B was first what happened basically was that Ric at some point cracked this level based kind of custom puzzle hybrid setup that they are now like scaling on five or six games at once and my guess is that they are really the closest one to create something like a hobby pipeline out of it because they know no and it's like those hidden things that you can't really see on like just looking through the game because those are like trigger events like this can streamlined Royal match meta and like all these other things the difficulty curves and stuff that's like you know you won't see it like like if you look at hubby game you see it's HBY template because you see the this is this progression layer blah blah blah but with the roic setup you just don't see it because it's dynamically driven within the like meta structure so my guess is that yeah that's what happens and if something works some if something works people

will hope on it because keep in mind that hyper casual sorry hybrid casual trend is still kind of similar to hyper casual in lot of ways and one of those ways is that if it works we take it and we try to iterate it as fast as possible that's it so we'll probably see more and more buzz games even now I'm I'm now it's it's GNA be the the combination of not yeah yeah exactly and there are already some of some of is like bus almost like a bus parking game but yeah that's that's like bus Mania do you see a future for crypto game like Ember sword where items are sold and traded between players in cryptocurrency um flash three years flashback three years yeah this is not your flashsd um so yeah my honest opinion here is like I just don't see anything uh coming out of the crypto we3 whatever

something because it doesn't enable any new functionality like it needs to enable some kind of functionality to to have the USB like some Milestone games that did this were let's say Clash Royale because Clash Royale when it came out in 2016 was like the only game that was able to do synchronous multiplayer PVP that was the big USB Pokemon go did the same with this geolocation setup where you were running around and like growing on Google Maps and blah blah blah stuff like that it's a technology enabled gaml cryptocurrency doesn't do that cryptocurrency is basically even worse than like closed economy like I don't know World of Warcraft had auction house from the day it was you know 2004 or whatever so yeah don't think so currently the the big big uh last thing the big thing that I'm waiting for and you will see tomorrow as we talk about this is how Pokemon TCG pocket will implement the trading mechanic within their game because he not there yet so

that could be a good Quee how to approach this but definitely I don't expect any kind of innovation coming from crypto yet what about crows that game we covered in South Korea that was going to have some crypto elements right you said that was the best chance did it not work not best chance the biggest game that weiming it but I don't think so it worked or like yeah correct me if I'm wrong but like yeah otherwise we would be reading about it probably well you know if we ever do a coin drop you know then buy that I'm joking we're not doing coin drops okay next one how come there is none of the tile blasting game in 3D view in the market I created and tested a prototype with Voodoo Cube match plus 3D but could not find anything relevant great question well tile blasting game it's View what's the what's the new game that the

spike is scaling the blitz Busters doesn't doesn't that look kind of same uh it's match Frey it's 3D game yeah okay that's match 3D game okay so match 3D game okay okay I mean maybe there is 3D would be something like Zen match in in 3D if I get it right even tile Blaster triple triple tile or whatever like it's just like I mean the the thing is that 3D isn't really the answer most of the times like if it doesn't add any as as again like gam playay functionality or some kind of element that only 3D can do instead of 2D like to be honest in my opinion 2D is even easier to produce or like assetwise you can just go and grab something out of unity store or whatever like just faster so I don't know maybe yeah if if I didn't answer your question feel free to write another one because I'm kind of lost here a little bit yeah

this is a good one best MMP to implement as a new gaming studio oh I don't I don't think there is a best MMP it's just um oh come on new gaming oh come on like I I mean honestly I'm you know like we are not paid by any of these so I can I can say okay let's start with what MMP means let's be let's be clear here mobile measurement Partners so attribution it uh enables you to to attribute uh or like identify different players from players from different UA channels and sources so for a news gaming studio I think if you go for the three which are the major kind of um players in the space which is Singler adjust or UPS you you will go you will do fine then if you are looking at different pricing

structures then you might see Singler as the best option if you want anything else you can go with adjust or or UPS slay honestly it's I usually ask question like what is easier for your Dev team to implement and then just go with that because for me it's just the same thing in just different colors now we have the new airbridge guys from from South Korea coming but they don't have like all the all the UA channels as partners so it's kind of hard uh tangin is or is also kind of limited there is bite Brew which kind of wants to be MMP but it's not yet so it's I don't think that there's like a best option what should you look out for that you need like what are some features that you actually say would be necessary otherwise you'd screw it up or be on the back foot pricing it's pricing also

because like UPS charges you for basically everything even for your liver and then then everything it's just like they just you you want to get spent and then you need to pay for it which is kind of free in in other mmps but again it's just up for your like per preferences like from the UA perspective it's all the same it's basically all the same does it matter if you have different scale like if big scale depends on the pricing again that's the that's the only thing uh Singler has different pricing for Budget of spend not necessarily for each install which can be what like few cents per install but yeah you can you can go and just check the pricing for single on different options but yeah it's a good and bad question at the same time okay moving on based on your experience what paybacks are usually targeted for hybrid casual titles and with what profit

Target are you Mr YouTube Watcher if you are if you add your name and uh and picture would be nice because uh what paybacks are usually targeted anything between 30 to 90 days what profit the maximum profit possible would you say running hybrid casual games campaigns over 90 days it's not the best practice uh I would say you need to look at day 90 day 120 retention okay if you're obviously if if you have any exactly if you have any you need to check what it is because most of the hybrid casual games don't really have strong long-term retention where it kind of gets problematic if you want to just Target more than 90 days of course all right uh let me read the next one cuz I haven't read one uh ma what shampoo do

you use was a dead joke Head and Shoulders all right we have Philip Gil asking I have a mobile game which needs to present new features to the player how fast should I present new features and is there a curve in uh in the industry people follow to optimize retention Remo yeah I'm thinking about it I guess you can say From admon perspective that as soon as you add ads that's retention starts going down no um yeah so okay let's start from the usual uh features should be presented in a way that the user can first understand them so you don't overstep the player budget attention budget player attention budget works on a premise that if you see something new you first need to learn it Master it kind of touch it and whatever and if your budget is full and

then you st a new feature during the time the user gets overwhelmed pissed churns goodbye uninstall so there always needs to be some kind of a let's say relief period or like period where you're not even putting the difficulty into the game or you're not even like demanding performance of the player You're just showing him new stuff and usually it goes in this kind of a three-level setup where you show new stuff you get the player to to kind of like learn it then you get the player to use it and then finally the player get to actually test it and some kind like win it with it and then then the magical time when again he gets bored again because his attention budget goes low as he already Master it so like no need to master like this [ __ ] so what happens you put in a new toy here go play with this other thing and the cycle rins and repeats basically and this is how it should be the best case scenario for this is something like I don't know Survivor IO unfolding or even capy

barago and like all these other hybrid casual games literally nailed it here because they are starting from very very small easy to understand approachable core still hyper casual and they unfold very very slowly if you compare it to something like I don't know old old years forex's where there would be like just clicking simulator like that's definitely how you should not go so yeah start by that and yeah the difference is I don't know 3 to 5 minutes between like new session keep in mind that there's also the other thing that you don't want to end up with and this is like I've seen it all moment when people hit this I've seen it all which means they seen your whole feature set and there's nothing else to kind of be added later it's a problem because then people leave that it's just like the nature of things okay um yes anything else was the next yes no hi

how would you recommend testing retention and other kpis yourself first and then going to a publisher or is it better to find publisher right away um I'm always more inclined to test first on your end and then go to a publisher with some data I mean they will any anyway say oh you know what like we will do our test as well but at least at least you sorry just I got yeah I got distracted by aren from SAA Jesus Christ I didn't see that coming I didn't see that coming anyway yeah so so but at least you have you have your own data and then you can compare uh the the notes with with the publisher because you all don't always see the full VIs ility from the publishing side of of the testing and

everything where Publishers kind don't trust your data because they think it's Cherry Picked you're just making it up blah blah blah stuff like that so in the end it's best to have like your own and the Publishers data um okay what do you think about doing one mother review of some indie game game design adma muua potential based on experience and Market state if you like the idea maybe you can start with one of our games nice try nice try no well but but you know like here's the thing I I had this idea like one or two weeks ago where we actually have this live um live podcast or session but it's not ask me anything but we actually go and kind of review a game and then we do like a questions and answers afterwards with all of you guys so if you are if you think this is a good idea let us no because I'm definitely uh I definitely

want to do it yep um okay in slack older messages become inaccessible after a certain point wooden switching to Discord where messages history is ful will be a better option we're working on something but we're not working on something we can't comment or deny but we are aware of the problem what I'm sorry uh just don't listen to this Magikarp yeah yeah so so the thing is so the thing is uh I can understand the Discord uh and uh the history but uh more people actually use slack and I also prefer slack I don't really I we Tred Discord for our let's say previous um podcast in in a different language didn't really go well and this slack is actually doing fine it's just history is not there so just yeah you know take screen yeah there won't be history because

otherwi we would need to pay obscene amount of money for all the users it's like there like practical reasons and the other practical reasons uh Discord is banned in turkey and we don't definitely want to leave our Turkish Brothers out there you want to make it work you need the Turks exactly there you go um is is Max the best mediation out there and specifically for hybrid casual Felix I'm going to get in so much trouble from this but okay so let's just go over it because I see another question I see another question for ADM below so let's just give a brief overview of what the three main mediation platforms do well and do badly right so let's start with admob admob is the first mediation platform that was uh made in 2006 Follow by Google in 2012 what admob does extremely well it munches and spits out high ecpm for Banner Impressions and banner impression on Google uh basically you have to have

a 30 second refresh rate for it to be optimized from their addex bidder which means that you get the highest ecpm for banner ads at the least like most least annoying refresh rates so primarily if you're like mediating and you have revenue from banners admob is the best solution for you level play or Max is the best solution if you have significant amount of Revenue coming from video ad iing uh because there's more competition app Loven is one of the largest networks right now on Android and iOS so if you have access to the Appling bidder that competes really highly against uh Google so basically pushes up your bids and you can only get the app Ling bidder currently on Max mediation some benefits also from uh level play mediation but banners admob is the Undisputed King it works extremely well and then uh so I even have a client right now where we just did a math calculation like and it

was actually beneficial to stay on admob because more Banner Revenue they had more Banner Revenue than video Revenue so yeah oh I'm gonna get so much trouble for that okay so there we have AR SAA greetings yeah Hi Felix yob and mate what are the advice for the small Publishers who are only relying on Google ads for UA and using mediations in admob stack so I mean what are what exactly adice and also what is actually like the advice you're looking for like it's advice on the UA side it's advice for the admon or advice for the game design I guess it's from ads because like it ends with like relying on go ads for UA and using mediation that mob stack yeah like I said right like um if you're on admob that's great for banners if you're on admob and you're considerable a video inventory might not be the place best place for you to be right uh going to

get in trouble for that but you know that's the way it is the way it is yeah yeah also for for Google ads UA it's fine but you definitely need other UA channels or UA side okay okay uite I think you can you can get a lot of good numbers from the addas campaigns uh on Google but then you definitely need other channels to grow because usually Google ads let's say Mai campaigns or CPI campaigns are absolute [ __ ] so you need to go and try deeper optimizations and addas is the only thing that might be uh relevant for you on Google so but it kind of goes again to UA diversification so even though you're a small publisher you start with Google and then expand to other channels so that's that's the advice for sure okay um and hello quick question if I map my

purchase events from both the MMP and the Facebook SDK will this cause duplication yes if you if you send the if you map the purchase event no but if you actually send it back to Facebook then it's going to be duplicated so you need to che check that box out uh and only pick one option for sending the events okay so Age of Empires who's actually made their childhood game go that treatment I mean Nathan everybody I think everybody everybody everybody you can clearly see under my under my fail the worst part is it didn't even work out like it's Force like you know it's like what six place in the revenue of Forex like for sacrificing our childhood yeah yeah it's not it wasn't worth it guys I guess yeah it definitely wasn't worth it like you could have just keep very disappointed yeah very disappointed memories whatever TOS on

unskippable playables I mean much I see that all the time all the time is it yeah yeah yeah yeah it's it's pain in the ass but again again we talked about like how multiple clicks and leads to like closing the ad are actually better for conversion rates so this is the same thing so they're going to stay absolutely it's bottom it's gonna get worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and then someone's gonna like replace mobile and then it's going to get better and that's the only thing it's just going to get worse until then like corre anyway um thanks for the info thanks uh for the question for getting the highest retention do you have recommendation for where to run a campaign for iOS Android and campaign type what game is this I mean for highest retention yes on paper on paper it should be

iOS appin hybrid Blended R campaign I guess it's for the publisher stock I mean no it's it's it's very broad question that kind of hard to answer but let's say it's a casual game I I will go for us Facebook ra um vo campaign U us for sure okay Android based on your experience what do you think about the CPA forecast for this kind of a genre and do you have any advice on optimizing for user acquisition that was from Matt and did I miss the like which kind of I think you took away the message he took away the message above which probably yeah yeah it was retracted yeah because I think I I saw it briefly that there was like based on their success of the game but then I I didn't see anything any CPI forecast that are not based on based on your own data or data you can you can

check it's not from external like tools everything external is is [ __ ] so so you need to see you need to forecast the CPS from your your own kind of data points Felix this is for you are gam sellers still alive yeah so uh I covered quite a lot on this podcast uh the beauty of gam resell which the best hack which is basically another way where you can access addex inventory in your mediation deack and you can have addex demand compete against other addict demand from admob uh Google also realized that this was not great for Google because they were paying more so what they did with all the gam reseller networks which grew at a very rapid rate because it was easy to get them is that they stabed them all then before twisting the knife they decided not to twist it and they just take it out so so it's still really good with gam networks on banners so banners is still really

really good with gam networks so it makes sense to work with them video inventory they've really cut down on it but it still makes sense to work with one or two gam networks I would say uh specifically on banners uh because the addex demand is not cut there and from I'm hearing on the inside track is that this is the level that will remain at for the foreseeable future uh but I'm sure we haven't heard the last but yeah if you have a lot of banner Revenue you should have one or two gam Partners uh if you have a lot of video inventory test one see if it works okay um this is a serious question and maybe there's no good answer what's the best way on the site to negotiate margin meaning margin of CPI the network takes as well as the Rev margin thank you uh from admon side be grumpy and never tell the truth uh the mushroom method we've talked about is that your works you should feed them [ __ ] and keep them in the dark the less they know the

more Advantage you have as a publisher over to you Ma top three Publishers you would go with a casual game well honestly there is you got exactly you get the you get the answer from vital right there it's he says up the thing is like the thing is like if you have a good game Publishers will actually compete against each other for you so the recommendation talk to everyone talk to everyone like it's like you know getting a new car or whatever you want to see what's on the market what are the possibilities like don't you know just talk to one and then like oh maybe if we do this blah blah blah we need to start wrapping this up guys uh so maybe speed let's do speed round yeah speed round uh have bit for something that have proven to be sustainable and actually incremental in the long run just something or just something random yes uh build up bid floors uh around Google

Google bidder so you put bid floors around the Google bidder for gam networks uh if you're on Macs there's not that many networks still on uh bid floors so the only thing you can really do there is build up uh bid floors around Google bidding and that really helps if you're on level play they have more bidding networks particularly Apple so put those around Facebook Google and basically Build It Up really tight around there works really well on admon mediation there's still mostly placements not on better so yeah still the normal setup there so yes yeah okay Frederick what kind of retention numbers would you say okay I will I will answer in to our direct message because we don't have enough time I'm just making screenshot so we can actually answer all of these in our slack channel uh but then there is the mcra do you consider similar to what you did with monetization some basic us step by step guide for main channels Facebook Google Tik Tok yes yes it's just going to take some

time but yeah I'm definitely definitely gonna going to do that okay guys I think let's just end here because we need to wrap things up and I think uh we should just take this into our slack Channel where you are and there's the There's the link to join the slack Channel and you're going to do this yeah we're going to do this next month as well most probably when I'm back from us or we'll see see promised he's going to wear a Santa hat oh okay in that case it's going you're wearing the magicarp had done yeah of course yeah I'm I'm Pikachu Pikachu piku yeah all right yeah it's settled settled thank you very much guys for coming uh it was great and see you uh in our SEL Chanel for for not for all the not anwered questions yep yes it's going to be there cheers thank you

bye-bye