App Annie on demystifying an ever-changing games market

[Music] we're here in the early afternoon off Pocket Gamer K'NEX 2019 in London I am joined by Nicolas who is the we're gonna say what will you choose the time I was managing director of a plan iam year as of a week ago and now as VP of global partnerships Farah congratulations thank you thank you I had a lot of different tiles in the organizations well for those people who maybe aren't familiar I'm sure everyone does know of a penny but just in case they don't what is it that you guys do ok so a penny is really the I mean you should see us as the leading market intelligence and analytics platform for for apps globally so of course we know very focused on the gaming sector that's where it's kind of like up first love but we also work with a lot of different partners in a lot of different verticals and Industry helping them built a better happy and successful

indie in the app business well I mean you guys have been around for a long time now as long as I've been with it I remember a penny and I've been talking to a lot of people who work with you know publishing or ad networks and it's always comes back to information always goes back to analytics and where you're putting your data from and where you're grabbing your UA info formal yeah not so in the long time that a penny has been in the sector a how do you feel it's remained successful what you guys had to do to adapt to the ever-changing marketplace and B why do you think that it's so important for for example developers to approach this stuff and factor this kind of information analytic stuff into their design when they're making again well I mean they think I mean there's different things so I think number one it's extremely important to understand what are the markets dynamics right I mean today if you are a publisher in in Eastern Europe or in you know

continental Europe or wherever and want to get an understanding of where is the market going what's going to happen in the future it's really important for you to to track how the market is evolving potentially in Japan or in South Korea or or other region and get a little bit of an understanding of what is happening over there as you know a lot of trends especially in gaming are coming from those markets in in Asia a little bit more mature because of the PC and console era how they all evolve them on those dominant platform at the time and and being able to track that and how this translated to mobile and high to have impact Mobile is extremely important so that's that's I think is one of the most important a piece of you know why a penny is is definitely something that can help you create a better product and it's not just in gaming again gaming is a big part of our business but it's also you know the coca-cola of the world or the Walmart of

the world or the you know Carrefour of the world that are building apps today I need to understand what is one of the trend that they are seeing you know on gaming for example while in the social networking to actually bring into their own ABS to be successful so when you're talking about - just like the second part of it when people are developing apps or games or whatever it is and I feel like sometimes and I think developers admit this as well they focus on the game that they want to make or the app they want to make and then perhaps the idea of how we're gonna monetize this is kind of an afterthought rather than being integrated into the core design at the very very beginning where do you think that the best place to get the information is from I mean in terms of obviously gonna say yourselves because that's quite useful what does it what are the bits of information if you're making you're making your app you're starting out from scratch what's the key first thing you should do in terms of what's the what's the metric to look at what I don't like should you be searching well I mean there's a lot of different metrics okay that you need

to look into of course you need the most basic metrics you need to look at you know the downloads and revenue in a specific market for example but you also need to look at the monthly active users the daily active users there are two and all those type of metrics that you're probably very familiar with that that needs to be analyzed in every single market and in specific subcategories that you want to get into you want to create a racing game well hi you know could have compared to the top to the top of the of the market what other top racing game how do they monetize right how much time do you are our users gamers engage with the game with the game what is the average is it you know is it 60 minutes 20 minutes 10 minutes sometimes very different and RPG for example so every single category have their specific kind you know dynamics that you need to better understand to create a very successful game and that's the kind of thing that would that we produce and it helps you better

understanding at the end of the day because you guys have been around for a while I imagine you've seen a lot of changes in the types of games that genres that have been successful I've been talking to developers and publishers today and hyper casual is a fun new on this emerge recently with Voodoo and the like so what's the biggest sort of shift you've seen in the last 12 months that's very good question actually I had a presentation this morning about this so there's really two categories in 2009 18 that that's started to grow and grow a faster than other categories in the gaming genre right is battle royale is one for obvious reasons and and also the you know the hyper casual what's interesting if you if you look at those two subcategory and and then eventually look at the different countries globally there's there's a different dynamics happening okay there's if you look at the AIPAC market these these a park markets are usually I want to say more

in the top five battle royale are usually a John right that we see a lot and in EMEA it's more hyper casual especially in France but both you and the lights where you would see a lot a lot of hyper casual so we we start to see a different dynamics between EMEA and an Asia Pacific and then there's also interesting markets like Brazil or India for example emerging markets with where you know in terms of look at the downloads you're not necessarily going to find in the top 5 you know some hardcore games okay however in terms of monthly active users you'll see in terms of hardcore games the monthly active users are being extremely extremely high especially India much more than in developed market like Japan South Korea or or North America which means that we have a feeling that a lot of those users are

our arts are getting more active with hardcore game for the first time on mobile and really spend a lot of time just on mobile because they don't have either console or PC and jump straight to mobile so the monthly active users is much much higher than other countries which is the consumption is very different because in in the US when you play a hardcore game you usually have access to the game on console on PC and on mobile so so your attention is going to be divided divided between those three or four different platform where you can have actually play the game right a lot of people think is of mobile as oh it's a thing for little casual games yeah casual ones that that works but they're saying that for some people it is their sole pencil yeah and it's really interesting because because of the trend you know that the trainer we were just talking about in 2018 where you have the to spectrum of the market that are actually starting to grow much faster than the rest so again the

hardcore with the battle royale and and the hyper casual and it's it's really interesting to see this happening in one single device right exactly but it means that the device itself mobile can embrace both hardcore and very casual games and it's made for both now it wasn't you know five to three four or five years ago playing a hardcore game on on console which was extremely hard now with on mobile I mean now we the advance of the hardware and of course the networks you're getting to a point where you can really enjoy a hardcore game on mobile device and of course casual again between the chase for a very long time so it's we are a really really interesting point segmentation point in the market it's really interesting so you've come to the conference today what is it that you guys look for when you come to these kind of big events are you meeting with existing clients are you looking to find new people to work with what's what's the angle for you guys in a little bit

of both what I would say is really the most important thing for us is to be seen as the leader in the space we've been in that space for a very long time we started with a free product and you know what was really important when we started the company for us was to give game at the at the time gaming publisher access to data at any type of level and that's why we started with a freemium product that allowed us to of course create a paid service but people tend to forget that we start with the first a free product so that independent Studios could get a better understanding of what was happening in the marketplace and I think it's very important for us to still have that approach and that's why we come here to really tell people okay yes we are the big company in the space but that's where we started and and we want to embrace the overall spectrum the market whether you're a big player big gaming player or you know a small

independent studio that is just starting good to know I'm sure people can find either have the link in the About section below but Nicholas pleasure to talk to you - oh thanks thanks so thanks for your time [Music]