2.5 gamers x Live AM(F)A #8 - Ask Me Anything @ February 19 5:00pm CET

so terrible oh you were live okay good hello hello hello hello welcome let us uh let me actually ping the the the SL Channel hello everybody thanks for coming for another live AMA it's true yeah finally I mean we lost one one person yeah to fatherhood par to fatherhood yeah uh yeah so if you have any questions about who's this no the mustache man hey how's it going guys hello hey wel wel cheer the cheerful fin that was pretty that was pretty good intro it was really good thank you yeah still cheerful despite the the horrible that we've had in

hockey for the past few days but uh oh man I have no idea what you're talking about yeah why don't you uh why don't you move to Vietnam and launch a game yeah I guess I have to oh my God yeah didn't how's going good good nice to have you man yeah it's good it's good you came yeah you came to visit us in our live AMA which is actually eight one and we lost we lost the guy because yakob is is not coming cuz he just had the had the child I don't know if that's a free pass or not but uh kind of I guess kind of is yeah I will see if we have uh if we have actually any questions because it was kind of last yeah yeah do you want to do an intro maybe y see and then tell us what you're working on and then maybe I'll ask you some questions and then we'll get questions sure sounds good yeah uh not a hockey player even though I kicked off with hockey um

so uh yeah we've we've been running keyl for a bit now uh I'm one of the co-founders uh Yanni was actually with you guys a while back as well and he's he's one of us as well um yeah we've done ASO concept validation for about five years through gig laab and uh just for the past sort of two years we've been developing like a iOS attribution and Analytics tool that we've now been like really really focused on for the past uh half a year or so like actually doing doing things on that um but yeah that's pretty much feel like wait a second I know I have a question and I just want to ask straight away off the bat ASO takes a special personality to do how much is going to get replaced with AI like it should just seems to me that this is an AI task ASO right yeah and I think the the entire like term ASO in itself as well is quite broad like people think about keyword optimization people think about like just general

like more more about surge engine optimization the point of takes a special person that's what to do so maybe to also maybe clarify a bit so uh We've more been on the the paid user acquisition side still so focused more on like just making sure that whever ends up on your app store Page actually will be converted to a a install and and maybe even be educated uh on on on on that platform as well so that when they come from a misleading ad uh you'll slowly transitioned into understanding what the game is all about okay but can you can you talk a little bit more about the the actual iOS uh framework that you are now fully focusing on yeah because that's interesting that's very interesting sure thanks yeah uh well very very short uh kind of what we what we noticed was that uh all these Frameworks that we've now put in place instead instead of uh like uh having access to if say yes can like

there are still like Frameworks that focus on kind of user level information um and uh when it comes to like making creative decisions when it comes to actually running campaigns you're not necessarily uh you don't have to dive into user LEL information so that's kind of our entire mentality so what we did we buildt up a new framework a creative level framework that allows us to we have an SDK that you put into your game or or or a a the server solution as well which does all the kind of sensitive calculations on device and then shares only like uh information that we can attribute on a creative level by creative um on on on iOS and because we're not using scan we're doing everything in there we're privacy compliant and at the same time um everything works in real time which is which is quite cool uh and then for attribution we utilize any any kind of more things from e-commerce I guess so conversion API on meta and and things like this on the self attributing

networks uh to then allow them do their like probalistic matching and so on to to attribute correctly but uh yeah that's kind of the high level picture of of of what we did does Apple usually say about circumventing scan yeah like but we're not we're not touching any of the things that scan is kind so that's that's kind of the the thing we're we're we don't care about like what you guys specifically for breakfast we we care about what do people that eat cereals as a whole have in common right like so that's kind of the mentality in there yeah because you don't really need scan or just bypass the scan at all you know like Facebook is doing it Tik Tok is doing it so kind of easy but yeah we already have a question so when doing yeah when doing a soft Lounge for a new casual or hyper casual game is it a bad idea to put the game at app in all major

countries up stores and then Focus UA efforts in the countries you are testing honestly it's not uh a problem or bad idea there were times in the past where um this would lead to not getting featuring maybe now it's also leading to that point where you can't get featuring because the game is out there already but what if instead of doing this you just go to to a beta testing on Google and you can do basically the same thing just go to all the countries but then uh you are still in the beta so you have that t tag which is called you know beta testing and you don't really get reviews or ratings and still out there and you can test it out so I would do that your your mic is scratching your sweater a bit if you're going yeahor I thought you were I thought you were

I thought you were you were you were writing something like you should write if I I I try it like this I don't know it's fine better that's perfect that's good I can think again I'm sorry um yeah in regards to that uh hopefully people can still hear hear what you were saying with this is perfect no this is good yeah this is good awesome uh but also like uh around BGC London there was this Google for games event and they were like actually going through uh a ton of like pre-launch strategies and pre- things pre-launch things that they have I can try to pull up I have horrible memories I Can't Remember by heart but uh they were going on about like as an example how you can actually do different types of of of sort of because they have like the internal testing closed beta open Beta stuff all these and you can do those separately in separate GEOS as well so you don't have to like kind of do it one for everything but you can kind of Define what your what your goals per per for like

specific go is and and go from there which is good that's uh I think we discussed this also on the think games in Istanbul where I was uh with with NR on the on the stage and he was talking about exactly this going from the internal testing until you actually Global launch and I use it all the time so that's that should be easy that should be easy okay so we have summize it so yes like well what summer is like you can you can launch worldwide but you don't need to because you can be in in different internal stage testing Alpha Testing and beta testing stages for different GEOS and and you're you're basically doing the same thing but you can then have actually a chance to get featured afterwards and get sound bite for LinkedIn boom and and I have to I have to quickly tap on that like yeah you might not be

able to get featured anymore and I might shoot like all the ASO like people in the leg here but like honestly what's the what's the actual like it used to be featuring because the ecpm is terrible right yeah but you know why it's terrible because you you get shitty shitty countries that's why it's terrible if you if you get the majority of the the the countries it's tier one then it makes sense but now it's it's kind of tough well we have question yes so I heard that special characters like what's I guess it's dot in I iOS ASO titles could count as double count as double so special characters you mean like or coma or something uh is it the bu still is this bu still a thing I got recommendation to avoid using all three characters if special characters are included we haven't we haven't at least like uh it's not in my radar that that

would would be be an issue yeah this is the first time I'm hearing it actually yeah happy toat more on the on the on the slack Channel though and hear more if if that's a thing M I have a u question that I've been waned to ask so this scan update that search ads did or apple did yesterday that was all over LinkedIn what's that all about the view through can you explain to me me you mean the the Apple okay so well they're adding view through attribution so basically if if you saw an ad then you can be attributed to that ad but it's like these days Facebook is almost claiming all the all the installs because you know you you check your phone and you see the Facebook app icon and then suddenly you're counted as an install oh jokes a side jokes a side so it's it's basically they would be counting now almost like all the impressions in the world as as an

install is like basically driven by a apple search which is obviously not true so basically what you're telling me is that if I saw if you run a campaign and I saw an ad for that and it's Apple search ads then basically if I download that game two weeks later they're going to be like yeah that was actually us could be yeah sorry we are experiment experiencing some some issue but it's it's solved it was uh it was a problem yeah right and I I understood that for some extent it was available but now they were like kind of pushing through the at attribution API which mean that yeah then yeah like they're they're part of the attribution game now as well so not only the self attributing networks and and applin and but literally every network is now yeah yeah

oh we have another question from syy uh have you ever experienced CPI campaigns outperforming roas campaigns should they ever run at the same time yeah 2014 when there was no Ross campaigns yeah I guess okay good answer maybe scale would be the only like if if you if you have like very very very very minimal scale so then it could be that uh you know you could achieve CP like better results with CPI campaigns as the attributions like you would get more conversion events back to the network but up yeah that's the myth I'm I'm hearing always like ah you should run CPI campaigns to feed the the vo or the Ros campaigns like I'm not sure like how that kind of works but then the part of the question is like should they run at the at the same time well look I I run all optimizations cpis up event optimized campaigns R campaigns doesn't matter and until they're kind of meeting

the goals right so if they're producing results yeah why not rarely they do usually yeah usually the CPA compan are quite bad in terms of cross cool all right so uh Honor on has a question really cool name by the way like it uh hi there I run campaigns uh install campaigns on Facebook for my mobile game we sent Impressions to Facebook but I don't use a third- party solution such as adjust uh or Mmp I sent these events from Facebook SDK but Ras is still locked verified account what do you suggest well what do you want to what do you want to do I mean do you want to run the V value optimized campaign if so you need to get data so you need to have for Value I think it was with like 100 purchases so that is unlocked and it doesn't matter if you if you have adjust

or or whoever singular uh you can still do this tracking with the Facebook SDK which is fine uh so what you need to do is try to run up event optimized campaigns for purchase uh and then that's going to unlock you or help you get unlocked the value optimized campaigns afterwards if this is around addas campaigns same thing only this case is that you you're actually going to get the the campaign unlocked quite quickly because you don't really need 100 purchases purchases for that you just need some add Revenue uh coming in from the campaigns in the last seven days so Homer if you if you or owner if you can specify if you're looking for vo that will be awesome don't know we don't know I actually wanted to ask you a question as well M because like uh I remember when

we first started this podcast 3 years ago we did an episode on like soft launching and everything like or like testing for ideas of games like the really early stages and basically I think your advice back then is just run campaigns on Facebook to landing pages is that still the recommended thing to do when you're ideating a game well it's a good thing ofs over here because it was it was back then uh because well was us still can do multiple things you can have the landing page but then you won't have the additional data right afterwards after someone clicks on that landing page because there is no tracking well we you know I work very closely with with GE had worked before because you can run you can create that landing page or fake store Page uh in gek club as well and then just use that as a link oh my camera is shaking uh and then what is really interesting and well and important to do is to run actually a

conversion based campaigns because you want to kind of simulate the CPI campaign as much as you can and with clicks you are not doing that not even close not even close exactly echoing 100% like with clicks you get like um the conversion rates like on the actual landing pages uh for inst with not nothing like it would in the real world you get completely different audiences um so that Loop is important and then what we often do it's it's still a thing uh in in short like uh but also depends a bit on the stage as well so um I guess now there's a lot of like more opportunities with Google as an example so if you have a like someone of a data out so you can actually then go for Google for these things where previously was only we were kind of the only option but in the very early stage you should still should do it and then after the landing page you you can have like a survey where you can you can ask like motiv and actually start to pay like build up

your player profiles and and understand like what type of users like are actually coming through are doil to yeah yes exactly so what would you be your advice if you're starting you do you have a couple of ideas for making a game like what's your best advice how do you start just test honestly and now with with AI as well the thing is um when you say test you mean like test running it on Facebook or test like setting it up or what do you mean yeah yeah exactly just test running it on Facebook uh then like if if you don't have the the resources uh so even just doing it on Facebook is better than not doing it at all yeah uh and uh and if you have the resources so use us use split metrics they they provide more less similar Services um so so just do that so that you'll get like the good picture and and and uh well you guys know this even better like with AI now like you're able to actually get to that testing stage a lot faster yeah and the thing I would say is

that if everything is equally unpolished so then the test is valid so you don't have to like kind of make the most polished final art whatever if it's unpolished enough like equally it's a valid test uh for the case all right so cyx is back with another question what up what up uh how are companies scaling tier three regions from our experience the MMP feels like T3 Reg is not profitable is there something we're missing of course it's not profitable when you you pay 5 cents for CPI or for installs and then seven cents for attribution yeah I I remember last game uh back when I was working at roio that we like or I was part of like team launching was dream blast and back then we were like trying to do stuff on on on India and uh that ended up costing us more like than like actually get any any

like essentially at revenue from there uh I I remember you guys have been talking about this too earlier where I think Felix you mentioned something about having great success where the timing was right and then there was like a it's every four years and it's during the Cricket World Cup which is right after the kabadi World Cup and then for like for two weeks basically Indian cpms become I want to say Romanian but not really Romanian let's just go with maybe Egyptian okay yeah no but like to back to the the actual the tier threee regions non profitable yes of course like that adds a lot of um the burden on the CPI if if this is the case for attribution what we did or we doing with different gaming companies it's just turning off the attribution for tier four or tier three countries you don't care right or I don't exactly I don't care I just you can just use the SDK of

Facebook or go or Google Firebase and just turn on the MMP and then use the the solution that provides the the UA Channel because that's yeah that's really helps with the CPI and LTV equation all right so makes sense oh sorry yeah Facebook R campaigns via ads we don't have an option to send ads Impressions on Facebook well it's like part like only half kind of pro like half of the problem because we don't have the full picture what's the like what option you are you talking about if you just need to send event which is called add impression event and you send it either via Facebook SDK or you send it via MMP period there are different uh methods or just guidelines how to do it on UPS singular and adjust but as soon as you have that event sending which is let's

for simplification let's call it add impression event in the MMP SDK you need to pair that with Facebook ad impression event and send value as well you do this you're fine I just did it with three different games in last last two weeks and it works you just need to set it up correctly if you want hit me up on our slack Channel and we can we can discuss it all right all right good answer so Martin from Eminem games nice uh everyone everybody seems to be discussing UA in monetization segment segmentation in hybrid games these days but nobody gives any insights how it's done any idea deves how and where to start things like having two monetizing segments in your game the ad monetized segment for non-paying users versus I AP monetized a one for example how do big casual and midcore games usually do that

o that's a very good very good all right take a sip and then just we you can you can talk for 30 minutes yeah I'm gonna talk I'm gonna talk okay so uh basically the key to actually start doing segmentation right is that you just need to have I AP revenue and AD Revenue so like if you have 100% ad Revenue it's better to segment on things we had a really good podcast you can check from Anatoli from Bernie games where essentially he kind of opened up the kimone a little bit not too much but basically the hint that we got from that conversation is that they segment users based on ecpm which was a bit counterintuitive because essentially they actually decrease the amount of interstitial Impressions if they have a high ecpm because they want to have a user for longer so basically what they had built in was logic basically that checks every time an intertial impression is served and then if it's

above a certain level then they decrease the frequency so it's not after every level but every two levels so basically that's logic you need to put into your code on your ad serving and when you put in kind of the the the serving logic when you have an interstitial in game you can put that in on some code so it's like an if and then statement where you pull the data from your mediation platform so if ecpm is higher than $40 don't show interstitial every level for example uh then kind of the gold standard which I actually don't know how to do technically maybe any one of you guys would know but basically that is if you have a little bit of AD revenue and a little bit of Ip Revenue together so it's hybrid casual basically that you segment the users based on the type of user acquisition campaign you're doing so basically if a mati brings a user using an iip campaign that means that that user is a premium user right so then you usually don't show for the first 3 days let's say and then if a um

you know organic traffic which we said has bad acpm or if a ad Ros campaign brings a user if you see that basically the string that the campaign that you're getting from the MMP comes from that user then essentially you don't you show ads as quickly as possible like well that's the technical side Felix that you have the the source and you have the the attribution the campaign as well and based on the campaign you can show different add experience how do you guys do that on iOS ah oh that's a great question Shameless plugin here uh yeah you can try our attribution and analytics solution nice whoa oh didn't see that coming but smile that no but it's amazing because yeah like how would you do that if you if you don't you know you can't use it on but well that's the thing you can't use it on user level but you can do it on campaign level exactly and even creative right yeah so each creative can have a different

experience if if you want or if you so okay nice yeah there you go easy easy I mean uh obviously I think you were you were discussing this campaign uh at segmentation multiple times feeling that it makes so much sense yeah yeah I mean like there's a there's a company in London also that's uh doing some interesting things uh where basically they're using AI to determine how many ads you should show to a specific users based who doesn't use AI these days I mean I am artificial and I am intelligent is it because of Botox I don't know or is it because I'm clever and do you want to see something funny actually I do of course you do of course you want just let's uh let me bring something up quickly where do I have the here

so Anon from saying games was indeed the first one to talk about that Martin I'm uh I'm glad you took something away from that podcast glad glad you enjoyed it can you hear the sound of the guys again yeah the previous UA killer articles were super successful so I started writing a UA killer tip segment I will keep sharing these tips don't worry keep reading the tips not you of course it's not English is way too good yeah the English is way yeah that's that's the problem that's the problem but this is my AI Avatar basically so I created myself uh and the lip syncing is insane of course the the English is too good to be true but I'm working on that I'm working on that they didn't clone my voice no and brutally honest yeah like it's obviously it's not me but still uh I I will I will I will definitely nail this because um as you might have noticed I'm talking about how this year the UA is more about creatives

and how people need to be able to write script to um a little bit of story here and there and obviously make a video so I want to be you know I know like I I I really shoot a lot of videos when I was on the on the vacation and even now for the the playable Trends and for some games like for a for a game which is Modern Combat Mayhem I recorded myself playing with like a toy soldiers and like stuff like that man it's killing it like that creative is really working well so so I'm yeah I'm doing all this crazy stuff because well this is what this is what you need to do J Jess it yeah oh sorry go go go sorry I was just quickly saying yeah and kind of the pattern that we've noticed both work and then when we look at like what's happening in the market is that like you have that like uh normally horrifying CTR add like kind

of be in the core of it but then you add something in the beginning which is like a very solid hook could be even like a meme if you don't care about copyrights uh but uh like that's the interesting thing for me is like as soon as like these these video models and we've been trying this out it's not quite there yet but soon it will be so you'll be able to create like very actual meme like us like that looks something completely out of like the the funny fail army videos or whatever that you have seen and then you can put that as the hook you have all the copyrights you can scale that up you don't have to care about your like a legal department getting tons of messages it's crazy good yeah yeah it is yeah I wanted to ask more about the question we talked to that Martin asked about the segmentation on iOS and stuff like are you allowed to without naming any client names or you can like what they're doing and how they're doing it because I'm just very I was I was that was a bit of a Shameless plug there because we actually haven't done that too to too well yet but it's a technical

capability yeah so so yeah so what what essentially just to to paint you a big very high level technical picture uh it's an no like podcast so I can't you guys we' done something we haven't yet when I followed up with a question it came clean but uh but but yeah technically again what we do is that we're able to like we send back to the SDK a creative token uh that like essentially tells from which creative specifically the user came from and then that start locally and then you're doing all the like stuff for that creative token right so so you can do whatever you want with that like we're we're able to share that we have the ways of of of sharing that directly with you so if you want to build logic uh within your game uh to actually have different things happening based on what type of a creative token it is that's something that already technically we allow you to do because of the the the entire data flow that we

have but no one's done it yeah YOLO with a heavy question wait did we did we talk about the the previous like the future hurdles or issues we see coming oh yeah for the idfa and cookies like are removed to track users and devices like is there trouble on the horizon for tracking I mean duh obviously like every's valuation is looking very big ah look there is there is the maybe the Google PR sandbox privacy which was supposed to kind of come but I'm not sure when is gonna even happen and there's always something cooking under the under the hood for for privacy yeah but I mean at the same time they they just like re like Define their policy in terms of IP address being used in terms of finger printing as well uh and and it's funny because you have like all these regulations saying one thing on the other side and typically they're saying no to everything right but then truly what what kind of

defines where the industry gang Go is is what the platforms say what what actually Google and apple say honestly uh and uh and now Apple's been kind of vague when it comes to all things probabilistic right uh and they've said no no no you can't do this but then on the required Recons API like it still has like stuff that's very well IP isn't there um and uh and now Google just said okay this is actually fine this is sort of the limit uh what we're gonna like put to to fingerprinting I guess uh so hard to tell can I uh put on my tin foil hat and share my theory by iOS here yes please do so basically Apple was getting worried that Facebook was taking over and the iPhone would basically meta run because they were doing all the UA on iOS right so that's why they kneecapped by basically taking away the idfa right so at the same time Apple search ads scaled up

right a lot and in a perfect Apple World you'd be paying all your UA money to Apple to get users to download your Apple ads right because 12 they finish here 12% of the Apple uh income like the revenue comes from the App Store in terms of iaps right so they're dependent on people finding new apps downloading and buying stuff right the trouble was that Apple search ad you can't scale campaigns there correct M to a certain degree because there's not enough ad placements right it's not enough it's not about out placements it's because it's different channel it's intent based if if people don't really search for certain keywords you don't have the Impressions that's the thing yeah so my theory is that they still allow fingerprinting to occur on iOS because otherwise the IAP revenue on the Apple platform would go down by so much that

it would hurt Apple's bottom line so Apple logical move the logical move here would be to build a DSP and open an audience Network so Apple search ads would be inside of an ad stack because that would take away the intent problem from Apple search ads and basically start competing on the open market then since they allow basically tracking for Apple search ads that's when you take out uh probabilistic stuff and that stuff in its knees meaning that everything would just go to Apple search ads because they have an audience Network all right let's see what you hear because yeah all right great Theory yeah I mean like a ton of it makes sense but uh um well at the same time uh in meta like they have three billion people using their platform like one of their a month that's such it's

such a vast like audience that uh like completely pushing that outside of like profitable scaling and marketing would would would like it's hard to think that that would actually Apple could do that and secondly for them to to kind of be able to completely cut down probabilistic uh like technically that's not they can't like there's like well practically because there will always be a possibility for the developer to do some server to server side of things together with with the networks and and there always be these options um the only way would be to basically Loop all the traffic coming in and out of the games uh through their private relay uh which essentially would cost them probably more that they could profit out of owning the entire ad space right so that's my take on it but yeah yeah look um the The Audience Network and the DSP

I think you were talking about it a long time ago yeah yeah I know yeah yeah yeah like oh you know how long it takes to build a DSP two years four years four years four years four years years that's what I've been told from scratch takes four your inability it's coming okay then we have uh one more year to go can then we can we can discuss this I don't think it's going to happen what do you mean don't I don't think it's they they're actually building it is this based on the the truth B on they hired 30 people all demand side platform related in 2022 I don't know if they're still there but I Haven anything about it yet exactly so we don't know and also it's a good theory though admit it of course yeah yeah sounds sounds and feels good on paper like and honestly I think that can happen apart from the fact that they would be able B to actually pull the PLU on all things probabilistic but I'm like

definitely them becoming a DSP essentially or open then because then we could just buy all our ads with tracking from Apple but but still again three billion people on medal like Network it's it's a it's a lot of people uh and uh yeah yeah you you I don't think they're going to have uh even close to the same amount of um people like upin has on Max 180,000 games which definitely helps with algo right so even if they build it in four years it doesn't really mean that we're going to be able to use it to certain scale and certain quality because then you would still need to have a purchase optimization an even optimization R optimization all of this fun stuff which some of the some of the bigger ad networks just like added like recently and they're on the market for a long time so is not that easy if it's

happening it's going to be 2030 2028 let's call yeah so 4 AQ H A2 he said it's true he's building it so it's confirmed hero I'm you heard it you heard it here first yeah you heard it here yeah yeah speaking of by the way what do you guys think about alternative stores like now with with uh specifically on EU lab like regulations pushing it there now now alternative Apptoid I think just actually opened up publicly yesterday I think or so what do you guys think yeah well I mean more stores more um traction on the on the UA side of things I can uh and also pretty good deal for the developers so I don't honestly hopefully good for everyone but I I don't see that as as easy as it

sounds again whywe try to do this with a lot of money and they failed Network effects yeah Network effects are really big right so let's see exactly and on Huawei like it was already even pre-installed in all the devices as well and yet they still couldn't like get like big games on boarded even with the rewards and incentives and everything were paying people crazy amounts like there was like rumors that player got offered like Millions to rebuild the game on wway stores and stuff like that and it's still it's like that Meme try to make try stop making a thing it's not going to happen you know yeah yeah but still I mean I can see uh a world where this gets some traction but if it's going to like compete with app store or Google Play most probably know the same thing with like Huawei or Samsung it had and has still has some da and some games but if you want to

scale there it's like it's not possible it's just not going to work right I a fun thing regarding those is well I just remembered actually now that Felix you mentioned Hua but um we uh back when like they were really pushing this like it was three four years ago or something um so uh of course they don't have any AB testing or anything available on on Hua appall yet so they reached out to us and we actually ended up building kind of for specifically the European and the Western Market like the the sort of official AB testing platform for them so you're wasted your time for six months 100% and because okay okay I I won't I won't tell any Revenue figures here uh you're going to love this uh guess how many tests did we actually end up running through Hua four F got it right 100 points to defer like

zero oh my God okay a mile away oh man it's crazy ah oh wait wait wait we have questions actually yeah yeah YOLO games this is a painful one to read uh is there anything to be done when your app store account is terminated for getting rejected for the same reason many times and the issue is still present then the follow-up question is there any marketing thing you can do for a steam game so yeah yeah but that's that's different I mean different than but still I'm I'm really sorry to hear that by the way that sucks uh one it's very hard to get like unless you're at a certain stage it's very hard to get like actually on the on the line and and you have to be kind of a supercell to be able to actually get on the phone directly uh and also the rules are are not fair to be honest like um you in there are certain guidelines uh on the app stores that you have to follow but no one follows those and and and of course like we've seen then over and over again like if you have like a Forex

game and and you're showing actual gameplay which is essentially maps with a UI that has a lot of like different red notification icons in it it's not going to convert as well as something that actually portrays your characters nicely uh so and and and that the second one is something that is not allowed by Apple's guidelines it should just be screenshots from the actual game right and we've noticed that uh like during like when they get like a lot of I I don't know why it is but like could be I'm now this might in Fall okay but uh like uh before the summer we see a lot of rejections happening as well so it could be that they have like some eager like trainees coming in or whatever that actually go through the list like item by item yeah uh and uh yeah like we've seen things get rejected because a corner of a app preview video that had a play button like was missing of the play button whereas at the same time you have cinematic tra yeah all the AI stuff uh that

we see on the on the US and then it's it's in the store as well like how is that even connected to yeah to to the game also the the freezing families in the in the video and then on the store and the first screenshot no rejections mean come on that's how it works it's just some you know what you need to do just re resubmit no change and you're good does that work all the time yeah so many times no it's like it's uh unfortunately but it's I guess say it's just uh the rejections like these is just random and someone really eager to to make it then is like kind of doing this and that's it that's pretty much it yeah but but uh the Steam games and marketing for Steam games do do you have any any Shameless plag Mis because what I heard when I

worked on on few Steam games like you have a a solution how to how to run some some interesting stuff on the on the steam side is there anything you don't solve like Huawei AB testic we've tried a lot of stuff and and I'm happy to say that on Steve the amount of tests is not zero yeah it's not zero yeah because I I I run at least one so it's not yeah and we have some testimonials as well so on side so there must be more that's good uh no but but yeah like honestly like uh for the question itself um when you think about it uh players are players viewers are viewers so kind of the same methologies like appli to to whatever in certain extent H happens in mobile marketing can be applied in in in um in Steam as well the differences are then in terms of of the Technologies and the stack that you use uh what we've done is that we have like a a a testing like you can test the actual store layout through our like the same landing

page uh formula that we we talked about earlier here so essentially driving from from ads directly to landing page we use add to wish list rather than like actually yeah um the the the actual value to get more conversion events to better understand like kind of how how the page uh works but that way you'll be able to test out what what page actually converts the message uh in a in a good way so but in terms of the the whole marketing for steam so again the call The Campaign logic is the same it's just different optimization so I use Facebook I use Google I even Tik I even use Tik Tok there's there Reddit kind of ads that I I tried before but I need to I need to work with readys a little bit more because I was treating it almost like a Facebook where you just go Broad and then let algo to do the magic well Reddit is not there yet so you actually need to do a lot of lot of targeting on that side but uh what I'm doing usually

is either landing page uh where I track the the buttons and basically like you said add to wish list and send it back to Facebook Google and and and Tik Tok as an event and then optimize for that in campaigns so it's kind of it's almost like an install R event optimized campaigns on on on mobile so nothing that that different you just need to know that know you ran the the landing page instead of steam because there's basically no steam well very limited steam attribution you can use the UTM tags to just identify the the campaign but the event optimization on the landing page brings you better quality of the users rather than just using clicks and sending people to steam page so you you add one step in the between the the actual steam page and and and your ad but it's worth it it's

it's absolutely worth it because the quality increases dramatically yeah and then you need to do a landing page uh conversion optimization and landing page testing and you know it's it gets a little bit more complex but still I remember those days it's basically like you you're running a a landing page for any any other web based games it's you know you you run short landing page long landing page different buttons layouts visual designs and all of the fun stuff so but yeah the campaign logic basically the same all right Felix Martin was wondering if you heard about any games doing these segmentations and the numbers of different segments present in the game because it's also quite the big amount of work to do for a studio I mean look

like if you have a small Studio you don't have that much like the easiest thing is just you basically change serving logic by country so like I was operating a game at one point that was making 50 to 80k a day and basically it was a very lean team and basically all we did was just increase in GEOS by 25% the intertial show rate so the timer and basically that segmentation but super simple and then we just looked at the retention right so like if if you don't want to make it complicated you can just change that like for example go to Indonesia and increase the amount of interstitials and see if the retention is the same like that's still segmentation right so like most games that are ad driven that I work on they do have some sort of form of segmentation but it doesn't have to be hard right like it can literally that is segmentation in Indonesia just show more ads like have a lower cool down period in India in wherever like that's okay too that segmentation but the thing is once you start it's usually easier to keep going

with the harder stuff because you know it adds value so just start with something simple uh like yeah Indonesia like all these ones that work they don't care as much about ads and see how it goes yeah oh there was a message deleted I hope uh you will repost it okay we are small oh now it's it's just jumping okay now it's okay retract it anyway so we have that two apps being relatively equal audience gameplay retention Etc why could one game have only half ecpm of the other would it be because of placements so basically ecpm is 100% decided by group of factors so uh algorithms for networks are all decided by various factors Google uses 994 factors to decide ecpm

rumor has it that one of the factors is the weather so basically they link the weather with whatever you're doing uh applovin has 60 71 different factors and apparently what their algorithm is weighted towards is device quality so how expensive your device is iron Source has 61 I was told by someone but basically there's like seven or or eight main factors that decide what your acpm is and everything is tied back to the performance that networks see of the ads that they show in your game on a 7-Day rolling basis so if the performance from the ads that they're showing is not converting giving them money they will pay less for your users that's all it is simple as that right it's not a conspiracy it's just capitalism at work right so what are the seven or eight main fact factors to contribute in the most waiting and those are the ones that

usually every network has access to so the first one is Geo very simple are you in the US or are you in Angola that will be different ecpm that you're going to be paid out for those users because of the purchasing power right the other thing that is also given a lot of weight is are you running a lot of UA and did the network that sees the UA or the sees the user in the mediation that they also bring that user so if Maier buys a user on integral and then basically it shows up in my app and then inside of the mediation platform mgrl sees that user they have data that tags that g or idfa with a bunch of data in their platform so that becomes meaning that they can bid more accurately so higher or lower for that user so basically are you doing a lot of UA or not then also are your users converting a lot so basically do you have 80% I AP are you showing those purchasers also because that's valuable

to let's say a Forex game that will bid a higher acpm then you get into the other things right that's also has an impact uh one of the biggest things is also the recency effect and what does that mean that essentially means that networks assume that we're all stupid because we basically lose interest over time so basically that means that the first the first impression that a user sees per day is called First Look and that is worth more because essentially users have more attention so basically the value of each ecpm per impression on an impression level decreases as you show them more throughout a session or day so an idle game which shows 18 Impressions per day the 17th impression is going to be worth pretty much like so much less than the first one some things you can do to kind of spoof that that apping tries to fight but B basically those are the main factors that decide like what it is so

in summary like what's happening in your two games one converts better than the others for user acquisition campaign than the other one and that's where the delta in the ecpm comes from or maybe the weather maybe the way so we have uh two more questions but I will start with this one which is which was retracted but now it's finally up there so we have a daily budget of $1,500 daily budget it's not not bad actually does it make sense to teste different UA channels or stick to one we are we use we are using Unity ads currently and mediation is level play we create puzzle brain games Felix well what I say Felix as a second best manager on UA manager on the podcast what do you think should they use only one channel or more you need more channels and you should maybe switch you should May Swit mediation

yeah yeah yes it go and I will I will go I was I was just about to say there was a rumor going around that uh said according to it was something that leaked out of something in meta that showed that if if you spend 1,500 bucks a day which again like it's it's a good number but it's it's it's of course like what that that's up to half a million a year no no well sorry too late math yeah anyways uh but uh according to that you would have you would have been in like a a segment that met call like the top 5% which that was actually going around in a lot of these lack groups not sure if that's the case that uh you would actually be part of the top five Spenders in meta with 1,500 a day uh okay interesting uh but the thing is with one 1,500 a day running Unity only good luck obviously as you have the the level play which makes sense we if you

run Unity I would run iron Source rather than unity in this case but okay you should definitely try other channels I mean there is the UA diversification topic that I'm talking about all the time I mean what if Unity dies you are screwed so I would take 20% of that budget it and try Google try Facebook app is not going to work but then other channels as well integral and I mean slowly step by step uh diversify this so you actually have that 1,500 what's going to happen I believe this is going to increase because you will get better results on the other channels uh so you will have more money on your bank account then you can and more so definitely makes sense to test STS if you can say what kind of

monetization you have that would be also helpful because that can allow you to pick uh the right channels for you yeah is it uh is it like puzzle brain games that are like impulse where is 7030 or is it like puzzle games where like 100% ad games when how is puzzle brain games like impulse right that is a brain training game I don't know if it's a brain training game but it is a game yeah it's an app which is a game right yeah yeah yeah yeah I know I know I know you you be the Arbiter of Truth here who who do you side with me who's right or M who's wrong I'm going to be a very very good Finn politician here uh on the App Stores I think the category is under educational but uh but uh in LinkedIn those are gold games as well yeah yeah I thought you going to say

like in a finish way like it doesn't matter as long as Russia doesn't invade right oh it's all ads driven all ad driven yeah in that case Facebook ad campaigns can work also Google Adas campaigns can work it doesn't matter what kind of optimization you have uh mediation you have uh so I would definitely go there as The Next Step at least then we have uh another question I think that's going to be one of the last ones I've heard that applin is much better at Adas campaigns compared to others for an idol game is this true if you're on Max mediation then yes if you're not then you're yeah you can't run ad campaigns well for idle games I think that was the case for a long time there was a very large portion of games idle games running napin with quite big success so I would say I would incline to say

it's it's kind of true because yeah but I would also run other channels for Adas because the Facebook has it Facebook will soon uh Implement uh day seven Ras from what I've heard uh on Adas so that can proove some numbers cannot or deny cuz I've never run a u campaign but this has been a lovely [Laughter] episode that keeps get me missing object notifications okay so last comment meta keeps giving me the missing object notification for meta ads how do I get past this log out log in first thing second thing uh create the campaign from scratch don't duplicate anything and also uh might be just a bug that disappears tomorrow because that's what usually happens me all the time yeah so yeah and there was

so I I kept this for for the end because there's a person hi guys I got here late can I know what services geek clap offers so oh love it yeah there you go well this is going to be write this Jessie did you write this so how much do we have 10 minutes okay no I'm just going to keep it very short thanks thanks though uh but yeah so so first if you're about to launch a game we help you with concept testing validation understanding who your audience is and then when it gets to actually acquiring users specifically on iOS where you have issues with attribution and analytics uh will will help you solve all those without scan uh without uh actually even MMP as well so it's completely outside of that nice awesome yeah thanks for coming yes it was great uh we we will fun yeah we would love to have you again at some point uh yeah was actually learned ton from Felix and and you as always so thanks thanks to T for for for having me

as well awesome also dear listeners thank you very much for coming we will do this again next next month actually and we will let you know a little bit more in advance uh because I will be at GDC but then after I come back from GDC we should do it so it count with like end of the month uh see you there thank you very much Chia Chow thank you okay