AskGM #5: How to Make Mobile Apps Safe for Kids | With Super Awesome

both Paul and I come from pretty deep like free-to-play monetization pay to win so that's alright yeah background bit to the extent that we can help we'd love to try I mean there's certainly other techniques and and you know concepts that we know that could potentially be helpful to you from a kid's perspective but you know our our main specialization is primarily and you know like hardcore monetization design and things like here here's Paul hey guys hey hey but I thought we could start by just kind of going over if you guys could tell us a little bit about yourselves and then about super awesome kind of like you know the history of the company the kind of products you guys are working on and then to then transition to like you know what what are the specific problems you guys are looking at and how we could potentially help out yeah for sure sure yeah

pon do you wanna kick us out by kicking us off yeah no I can go so I'm pulled on i'm chief strategy officer super-awesome I find my help myself here fight by a Alfie 7 so I've been director about V 7 so I was in the same area as you making making stair scale apps that had lots of monetization solutions even had a very broad audience a very large audience not not specifically focused on kids it's quite interesting how Tim and myself have found ourselves both at super awesome looking at the kids market because we both came from different perspective he came from a specific developer who was looking at the kids market all along talker one of the leading companies in the world making app specifically for the kids and family market and I found myself here via an app company that found himself in the kid space by accident we made an app which was based around a talking cat and when it exploded in terms of audience we found ourselves making well I was releasing YouTube channels and making animated content and cartoons on passing

Network and Netflix but we really didn't intend to be making kids kids kids content business alongside the app business and we didn't really intend for copper to come in and regulate that we had a huge two distinct audiences that we needed to manage very differently so I found myself in the kid space buy buy it by de facto cause of having a huge audience at a global app audience I guess but both of us now work in the in the kids space I was was working at alpha 7 I was looking at how to deal with this huge kids audience we had and I was out there searching in my role for anyone who could help us to to educate us more on on copper we had lots of lawyers telling us about it but I wanted to know about the technology available what options there were for social for our wife for all the build tools that were required and I found myself speaking super awesome and then cut to a few years later and Here I am working in the space so that's my journey I now

work as super awesome we'll talk a bit more about what we do I guess in a little bit yeah and I'm my name's Tim I just joined super awesome about a month ago and so I came from toca Boca which is as Paul mentioned it's a premium app developer it's a really big in the yeah kids came in gaming category it's a premium app so it's not one of those freemium games where you know eight years like showing advertising or in a purchase is one time pay and you're gonna play forever and you know that's interesting because most of the apps and the kids space are not like that right so it's very hard to survive like that but we're one of the few players that can survive it yeah it was a good product so yeah that's great yeah yeah so I found myself going to super awesome cuz I'm just really passionate about the kid space and making sure that there's great quality content but also you know coming to super awesome learning about like all the different challenges that you know there's so many gains that our mixed audiences right you can't really educate them out because that would be a better use er experience but also there are a

lot of kids on like platforms they necessarily probably should not be on like one of those interesting challenges as I'm looking into the space talking to a lot of like more like mixed audience companies I know they're thinking about it but whether they have the right solutions or tools you know I don't know you know where they're had heads are at so I just wanted to reach out and set up a discussion about like you guys are from the gaming like more of a free-to-play like hardcore gaming space more just like you know there are some thoughts and like it just have a nice conversation around that yeah yeah that'd be awesome so in terms of like the specific product you guys are focused on now is is there a specific game that you guys are working on and is there any specific issue with respect to the game that we can help on there isn't a specific game that we work on I think we we so super awesome is a kid tech company we would say the leading kid set company we probably traveled the world speaking about kid tech for a long time before people even knew what kid take was or acknowledge that it existed I think our

mission is to to make the internet safer for kids which I think we can all get I think I think Tim's point is very valid we try to do that by making their technology that will help brands concentrators that developers to have to make the best kids experiences they can I think for actually that is split into two categories right there are people that are trying to make the best kids games and apps that they can and there's some great people trying to do that and our job there is to to make sure that they can have a sustainable product to make sure that no idea dies because there isn't sufficient technology or ROI potential for that product to thrive in the world we share that with the big platforms but we've kind of taken on a lot of responsibility to try and make sustainability and ROI of work in the kids space and then there's another category where you have huge huge platforms and huge games who end up with a kids audience without really aiming for it you know new tubular 39th grade a

fortnight I think but lots and lots of others in pretty much every platform in the internet and in those cases we really have the role to to make sure that kids aren't seen as valueless because I think that's the biggest threat you know like we always talked internally about the three stages of the internet when it comes to kids like the stage one is just pretend they don't exist every platform made a 13 bust privacy policy every every social network every game has all of everything regulated for 13 plus because of the copper stringent copper regulations we would say the second stage is to is to kind of use all the technology we already have and try and make it applicable to the kids market and that has seen huge fines for people using an appropriate technology collecting data when they when they didn't mean to when they don't want to but they've just got ecology stack and then the third stage hopefully we're working on which is to build specific technology specific video players are all items like add servers specific game building technology and platforms that allow you to build safe

products for kids or allow to allow you to build safe features into your products for the for the kids market right so maybe I could share my screen real quick and just kind of looking at your website can you guys let me yep yeah maybe we could just talk through some of your existing products it looks like there's something called awesome ads pop game kids would like right now what's what are the one or two products that have the most traction you know maybe you could describe a little bit about what those planets do of course yeah sure I think generally speaking our products are split into three categories there's this stuff that is aiming to provide ROI so that's one of the main problems you have in the industry so awesome ads at the top there is an ad sir obviously has two sides for us it's an ad platform which is built this is specifically for the kids market so the first point there is as you can see it's got huge scale because a lot of developers and a lot of sites and apps and games have integrated it because they want specific kids ads yeah the

there's two areas that require special treatment in terms the ad server first of all we built it completely from the ground up for privacy no PII is traded within our ad server it won't allow any child to be tracked none of the usual measures around ad tech data on the user that's one big area from the legal perspective and then the other side is kids context is required right if you've got a great game this built for kids and you want to use ads as a source of monetization which is prevalent in television and everywhere else and you really want kids ads right you don't want beer ads you don't want content context in a mobile ads so all of the ads that go through our systems are vetted by humans and they adhere to all of the regulations around advertised kids but they're also contextually right for the kids audience so ROI is there if you look down the list actually so stuff like in the list at the top of our products if you look at stuff like the influencer influencer activity that's again stuff that is used for marketers

and advertisers to reach kids safely that's a another big area of the industry that we work on is to build a tool so that the CMOS in the kids space can work safely within the environment and environment we live in today where kids are fractured all across the internet in third party platforms like YouTube or certainly not in the places there used to be which is just on five or six TV channels and most kind of thing so we those tools are specifically to drive ROI into the kid space and distributed to developers sites at virtual worlds those kind of places where kids are now going just so I understand kick the Windsor so you're working with influencers that target kids and you're just making sure of that yes an advertiser wants to work with them these are sort of super awesome approved safe that that sort of thing yeah exactly that kind of thing so we would step in the middle there and we we we don't represent any talent but we work with talent to educate the market on how they can work with brands how they could make how they can make content safely how they can navigate

YouTube with the platform around them changing the YouTube the YouTube platform is built for over 13 it's explicitly not got any kids on it but it's got lots of kids content so it's about educating the market helping they're helping those people to navigate and then you have pop down there which is our social tools this is a really good example of how this is required is stuff like a YouTube embed video player in an app so lots of apps would extend into video content they would have video play buttons to engage in a deeper level with the audience we did their outfit seven when you have a kids audience you can't use a YouTube MN anymore because it collects data at the back end you can't use any social plugins or tools so what do you do like you knew there was a void there so we we created we actually acquired at the start a product called pop jam which was a kind of an Instagram for kids social product yeah we rebuilt it at the backend to be a series of plug uniball tools for sites and apps you know you want to create a really vibrant

environment for your kids audience with like buttons and shares and comments and and video and those kind of things we've ranked the tools so that you can do that so there is a front-end kids experience an app that they can use but there's also a load of back-end tools that the brand's can use to engage with kids audiences in a deeper level okay and then of these products what's the product that's got the most traction would that be awesome ads so also about is probably the widest used we have a marketplace which extends to hundreds of publishers including lots of app developers and sites and games that everyone also so very the largest kids marketplace in the world so that's definitely the widest used product I would say one of the fastest growing and the area that Tim is focused on more is our licensable sassed also the stuff you see there for kids web services this is the other big challenge in the kids basis it's just simply harder to build stuff in the kid space right if you're a if you're a developer and you want to build an app for adults you can build one in a day if you you can take third-party libraries you can take a video player take an analytics package take an ads package you can use any number of different

toolkits and and tools to build your product whereas in the kid space all of those are redundant you know they all collect data they all don't really think about the kind of compliance regulations that are adhere to the kids environment so a set of tools that people can use just exactly so the idea of these tools is you can go on make make the product that you want for kids will abstract away all of their legal complexity the data storage the parent portals the permissioning the authentication the verification and will will take all of that away and make sure that you can just build the best product you can for their audience of kids that you have young sounds of the stuff that you talked about it definitely seems like the one that's closest to having product market rated scale is also enhance just because there are a lot of you know what would be considered you know kid directed or that sort of a game because it's using like but let's say choosing a brand that does attract a lot of kids

and so you know whether it's like a sonic which is you know brand I work with when I was a delegate or minions for meaning rush like having being able to be very careful about the ads that are being shown sounds like that would be very very valuable and useful I just wonder though how are you guys getting distribution because you know when I what you know when I you know in the previous companies and I've been when we talk about trying to you know integrate ad Mon into the game you guys unfortunately have not sort of come up as a name and wondering if you guys have thought about you know so so one are you guys you guys are basically acting as an ad network is that am I correct in that well how do people plug you guys in yes I think well first of all I think that you're quite right that the first I suppose the tip of the arrow when it comes to speaking to to publish is about the kids base is usually the are alive proportion right we need to prove the value of the of the audience to try and

derive some ROI and then we kind of lead to the wider conversations that lead to the the social tools and the build tools to open up new features for engagement with the audience first of all you need to provide value which I said straight off the bat is what we aim to do around the kids audience that developers have I mean a lot of the people that you mentioned there including a lot of places used to work we currently work with them so they do they do get to that audience I think increasingly the regulation around the world is pushing people to value the audience of kids in terms of the way that they treat them the common a kind of assumption that ignorance is bliss around this stuff I know it because I was a developer myself you kind of put an age gate in years ago and hope that they're the kids audience was very small because that was going to remove a lot of the ROI you were going to get from the map the main audience was is kind of a bit more redundant now I think people understand that their privacy regulations the the recent apps or changes I suppose they're another example of the the kids base not going anywhere it's going to become more and more apparent that developers need to

treat the kids in their audience isolate those those users and treat them in a different way and I think that in terms of providing evidence of the value we have a ton of growth a ton of growth in the space one of the things that we do is obviously but as a byproduct of integrating our technology and a number of publishers is we facilitate the move of ad dollars into the space from the TV market TV market is declining in terms of viewership the ad dollars are catching up very very slowly it's probably one of the last spaces where the digital transition of marketing budgets as has not moved across a significant rate at this point and as that happens we're providing more and more input in terms of revenue to developers to sites and apps who have kids audiences and we're kind of facilitating more and more and more of a conversation around this audience but I'd look I think if you if you line up the ROI get you get from your kids users to the ROI get you get from your adult users it's there isn't a competition at the moment because it's a completely

different space it's really a different time and yeah I guess one thing I worry about is if you know for example in a kid directed type of game or app whether you know all all the developer would do is basically turn off behavioral targeting and then you're just kind of going in as just another you know sort of ad net competing with the other ad networks either within the waterfall or in a programmatic sense whether and then sort of you know had or been inhabited environment I mean there's a yeah I think that's a legitimate concern I would say that's that's very much offset by specific publishers you know the description that you made of allowing ad sources in from the open market based only on the privacy concerns completely belies the fact that you could have any number of financial services you could have inappropriate ads in terms of context flowing into your product you could devalue in a great way you mentioned some so certain people will just do that and do like some black

listing you know like okay we're not gonna allow you know alcohol base to not go blah blah blah blah just like he's like using you guys obviously would be a safer sort of choice but I'm not sure but if in practice I've been seeing people who would like you know even in child directed apps you know say okay there is is there like you know some specific setting where it's just like you know kids safe and you know pulling all the super awesome and enjoy or whatever yeah I mean this system completes the under that so the current situation you describe relies on the the honor system of the copper flag which is getting regulated better obviously but he still isn't perfect we don't train an API our ad set up if you're if you're a publisher that is really valuing and being future-proof we would argue then you're looking for solutions that have zero data and not trying to use out all technology with the flag system you know we know that's broken we build tools that have looked into the other market in terms of programmatic advertising and

there's any number of daisy-chained pixels and trackers within any every ad creative we built solutions to protect brands against that kind of thing in the open market our tools are very varied in terms of music for the for the publishers you describe but again I would say that the market is moving towards the fact that you value your kids audience and like when we we built the mediation stack for alpha 7 one thing we did not want was less options in terms of that stack you know yield optimization goes up when you have as many parties as you can your inventory so if you two the rate that we're growing then we're just going to be a voice in the argument we don't argue that any developer particularly switches off all of the stuff around us and just uses us it's what we argue is that they listen to what we've got to say well they use our technology and our tools to safeguard themselves and their kids audience to provide more roi over time yeah so I mean one I I feel like the mission that you guys are working on is fantastic right just generally providing a more

kid-friendly kids safe you know sort of ecosystem so that you know kids are safer more and more kids are playing you know sort of phone and tablet based games and so I think it's great what you guys are doing what are there any other sort of products or ways in which you guys think that you know you can provide specific tools to help develop Swift you know launch and help monetize kid directed apps yeah so one of the things I can jump in on this that Paul is not saying about kids web services so we're noticing that as a lot of app developers are creating like richer deeper app experiences with kids there comes a point where you need to collect you know PII data to make the experience richer so whether that's like you know minecraft is coming out with that minecraft birth right and so that's geolocation anytime you share geolocation it's sensitive data you need to get your parental consent and it's

not just that you need to say hey mommy can you let me use it you actually need to verify that this parent is actually a parent or you could just take you like you're your second email account just verify yourself so we are kind of looking at the market and saying okay a lot of companies are trying to create richer experiences but some of them are complying maybe some of them aren't or maybe they're not doing the best way how can we help and so that's that's kind of the product we really feel like has a lot of growth and a lot of potential so even even folks in the gaming space as they start educating like even like tick tock I don't know if you heard about their fine earlier this year where you know they pretended that there were no kids on tik toks and musically yeah you know I I'm familiar with the product I'm not familiar with the specific legal issue they yeah so they got fined five million dollars by the FTC for a couple compliance issues so you know they have they have the terms and conditions which says only thirteen above can enter but obviously people don't you know

you know people lie to get where they need to go and you know I've done that everybody has done that but really how do you protect kids how do you so we have that kws platform that really helps ensure like kids are you know given permission it's not that you can't collect data it's when you do collect data you have to ask for the permission and get it done in the right way yeah I even wonder if there's you know just mean at this point just kind of talking out loud in terms of brainstorming ideas but just like there's like a Facebook Connect if there's like a super-awesome connect where instead of an H gate you have to register three super-awesome and it actually verifies your actual age so you don't go through like self-reported hey I'm I'm ninety-nine even though it's like a six year old kid which you know my kids knew you guys could actually act as like a certification Authority at some time as well yeah there's a some interesting points that you make there and I think that there's a lot of our a lot of the work that we do in the background facilitates that same kind of experience so the first thing to point

out is when we build their compliance tools in kws we have many instances and many large developers and publishers using it we are able to facilitate some of the stuff you're talking about some of the fluidity some of the kind of the removal of friction from the user journey in that in that way at behind the scenes so if we have an instance of kws where we know that an email address is attached to a verified ad or we don't have to go back and verify that at all again that suits the user because they don't have to have endless emails endless credit-card requirements to verify that they're they're an adult and they're buy it legally seen as a parent and we can create a much better environment for the whole market you know everyone gets a much better conversion funnel for getting the consent of required and all of those parent pulses are built so that users can change their mind everything is is legally sound but it just creates a nice a better environment for everyone I also think another thing that you touched on there which is a very

a sigma significant issues in the kids market at the moment is that particularly as the legislation ages kids up which is so G GDP arcane K came in in Europe last year it allowed different member states in the year to state the age of a child which is something that's flexible you have some markets now saying that ages is a child is 16 not 13 and now you have us debating whether or not they should raise the age 16 and I think the Common Market driver here is that there will not be less regulation around privacy for kids or in general there will just be more so the feeling is as that group of what is defined as an under consent a child it grows to 2 up to 16 it creates more of a push for a more of value in the market more of a push people to identify enter and to shape their products for those users but it also creates another interesting area which is kids lie all the time to circumvent the rules that we put in the internet okay when when whatsapp rolled out their

new policies to fit to GDP our I'm pretty sure that no fourteen-year-old didn't swipe across to say that they were actually 16 so that they didn't lose so one of the things we're looking at the moment is how can we do that more cleverly you know we've got some products in R&D at the moment we're speaking some of the largest developers in the world about how could you find out if the user was a kid without asking them so we've got a new kid switch product where it's in development at a moment we did some PR about it last the last couple of weeks but basically we're using all of the signals we have in our marketplace a great deal of data that we trade and we're using AI to try and figure out whether that user is to a high degree of certainty a child we're obviously putting in a ton more input in terms of how they're using the device and we're going to come out with something which we think is going to be very robust to allow developers to figure out who their kids uses without being a an age gate there that's easily navigatable at least by a 14 15 year-old right so I think that product is very

interesting because it leads to conversations about how can isolate in your kids users provide you value overall and not just value in terms of getting or away from them in terms of that you know think about situation where huge developers have mixed the if they were to able to isolate those kids users they could clean their analytics they could have a much cleaner view of what was going in in their products if they could just take away those users who have no ability to pay you know they have no ability to control the ROI levers that the adult users do so there's a lot of value we feel in providing solutions like that doing our research and development and deploying it in products that are going to make the internet safer for kids but also provide value for developers even if it isn't directly providing ads or doing certainly I think the age game age verification issue is a problem but I would say like for you guys to be super super successful probably the the biggest issue if you could solve for developers is then how would you monetize kids if not some ads make sense

but to your point you're not going to be able to monetize them as strongly as you would adults in adults in you know specific category so it seems like if you could come up with a friendlier way but that does help monetize kids in some way that that would be the ideal scenario have you guys put any thought around any ideas around that yeah I think it's an interesting point for me that leads to the conversation around how compliance regulation can positively that can be seen as an opportunity rather than a threat you know one of the things we talk about a lot is if you have users who are who require parental communication it's seen as a really big issue right if you're a developer and you guys will know this well all you want to do is remove friction you know you don't want any barriers to user just getting in and playing with your products anything that puts anything in between that journey is just problematic and you want it all out so when you start talking to developers about how

you need to send an email to the parent now to get permission to unlock this feature it's like is that dynamite amongst that right so one of the things we talk about a lot is how can we flip that narrative and see that as an opportunity you know how can we look at how engaging that parent is actually going to build the communication track with the parent in the room and lead to better ROI across your other products you know if you're a big studio and you're building the narrative with a pair then when they have the time could you work with that parent communicate to that parent send them off as for the product that you're selling talk to them about the movie releases that coming up could you know that it had more data on the adults and the family units who are your core users you know a lot of parents at the moment they have the opposite problem they literally don't know what they what games their kids are playing they don't know that their favorite their kid's favorite character is Sonic the Hedgehog he plays the apps every day they just is kind of a an unknown to them so how can throwing visibility on what what apps and games are enjoyed by the kid actually be a

really positive effect on on for use in the environment of the parent which is much more free in terms of the data you can collect the profile you can do in the targeting you do I don't think that there is a cast-iron answer to your to your question in in in the world yeah I think we're waiting for a lot of those answers as to how to derive ROI how can the mobile and market and the app market catch up with TV you know we don't really have a conversation about how can you prove value from the housewife or kids buying TV it's been there for 50 years and lots of people have spent all their ad budget on it and lots of animations and kids content has been created forever on the back of the revenue opportunities that come from the retail and the commercial from advertising around the kids market I think when that catches up it will provide an answer to your question but mainly the main one that we would look at is how can compliance how can all of these things be taken as a way to connect with your users and the parents and the kids that you're you're connecting with your your brand would connect and just just for our audience for people who might be watching this

video later could we talk about more specifically like with respect to gdpr and Coppa could you talk about what are the sort of developer requirements from those you know to things because it's just some people they're not quite sure so if I'm creating a kid directed out what does gdpr and Coppa specifically mean to me what would as a developer do I have to do well the basic underpinning are is that you cannot collect any personal information from that user this that's in simple terms you cannot if you have identified a user as under the age of consent in any market covered by the privacy regulations like gee DPRK or or copper you need you can't track that user you can't collect any personal information without collect without depending on what type of information or data you're collecting and how private the information is you can't you have to get varying degrees of consent from the their parent or guardian so for a

developer that that really creates huge problems because if you look at the look at the world of app development and all of the tools that are built around that to facilitate that a ton of them create data collect data so from we've obviously discussed the ad servers involved they obviously profile users they collect a great amount of data we always talk internally about the fact the internet was created to collect as much data as it can and then figure out how to use it after so all of the analytics packages that you use a great deal of the embeddable features that you want to use like the chat functionality gives the opportunity for users to share personal information obviously features like geolocation if you took a Pokemon girl or a Minecraft world in your day looking specifically for data which is personally identifiable and they they therefore require the consent of the parent for that user to enable those features and if they don't then they're they're breaking the law so I guess not collecting data not profiling users it is the big thing which cuts across all of the tools that are developed would

use to build a product right in the way that that specifically manifests is generally in each gear and so like the developer especially where the child directed up would have to put up in each gate where it asks you for your age and either whether it's a slider whether it's a button whether it's like a calculator input how that's done and you know I've experimented with a hundred different variations of those but then if they are below the age of consent then to your point can't collect any data turn off all the behavioral targeting stuff turn off all you know whether it's social features other features like that and then I guess what you're saying is in some cases you also need to get like this parental consent as well right yeah depending on the functionality of your product I think the main point is yes an age gate is a solution but I think there's a there's a slight difference in the two regulations when it comes to that like the copper regulation states that you need to sure that you are if you have if your if your content is targeting kids then you

treat them as such and and you and you uphold a couple or if your if your and gdpr regulation in reverses you you can only treat your users as adults if your site is expressly aimed at only adults so there's a subtle difference there but it makes quite a big difference what it leads to is almost every product needs to be under GD G DPRK needs to be cognizant but they could have kids users in their product and they need to therefore divide their audience as you described so yeah generally speaking we're seeing a global everyone has followed suit in terms of the privacy regulation so we're seeing a more of a global standard now that under the age of consent everyone cannot be tracked and you cannot collect any PR I think to Joseph's question I think there are certain data sets there were data points that it's not that you can't collect it is that before you collect that you need to get consent right and so it's it's not that oh I I can never know the the age of my you know audience or like their birthday so I know because maybe knowing the birthday I can send them

like a birthday package or I can send them like you know something that purchase thing for you know during their birthday but it's that before I do that I need to go through certain steps and then I think one of the requirement with gdpr is you need to build in a facility so that if a user does ask hey get rid of my data that you're able to scrub all that data right and then I think I think even from like any ad network that collected any data on human so yeah it's funny because some of these ad networks have like because of your house specific genes that are there waiting for developers to reach out to them so that they can scrub all that data but nobody I don't people are actually you know yeah I mean I mean that the gdpr is their specific areas GDP okay for kids but a lot of this we're talking about now is just general privacy practice right there the the general regulation I like Tim's quite right you need to a lot of this the work that we do in these areas for for large partners is to

create the parent portals that are necessary because not only do you have to to gain consent but you also have to give kids you have to give parents a route route to revoke that you know they need you need to the units have the ability to create a a two-way dialogue with the parent or guardian so that they can navigate their their child's digital journey as they please right yeah and just kind of like I don't know if this is a crazy idea you know just just trying to think of ways to help but would it would it be interesting I'm just kind of you know just thinking about being kid-friendly and safe I wonder I think it would be useful if you guys actually came up with some kind of rating for different apps right so one of the things my my wife will sometimes ask me is oh you know one of our kids want to download this game is it safe or not and whether it's safe from a Content perspective game play and monetization perspective but also like the ads that are going in there are those safe as well I mean I don't think there's any sort of readings agency right now that's tracking that I'm wondering if that's something that you

guys could do and monetize that somehow there are a lot of people that are looking into this space you know there are there are several safe harbor programs that work with with large producers we actually go through all of our technology goes through to safe harbor programs mostly to to give us every every directional input in terms of the regulation as it as it develops but but also to ensure that every partner that we work with is very reassured about our credentials I mean we only build technology for this specific purpose of dealing with the kids markets and we always fly through those tests but the ESRB is an example of because so far the program that does certain amount the ratings that that you're that you're talking about one thing I should mention is that is that we actually provide a lot of safety standards for the market okay if you look at the safe add there's the the safe fan program we run for influencers all the way through to actually the safe add watermark that we stamp on every creative that runs through our awesome ads ad server that's a mark that gives

the the child and the user and an identifier that they're watching an ad because you're dealing with with kids but it also gives a mark to everyone from the publisher to everyone in the ad in the ads world that ad has gone through our procedures gone through the human vetting and gone through our technology so has been provided with with no data collection and with the right context for the audience who's going to receive it it's a mark that represents something to the carriers and the caps of this world who are trying to regulate what advertising is seen by which specific demographics within the kids audience and there are differences where I priest guru is very different to a fourteen year old so that stuff does matter so we do do a great deal of certification and regulation within there we also run a kid aware training which goes into brands whether you're a publisher or an advertiser or anywhere in between in the kids face and just highlights all of the regulations to you talked about all of the the ways that people have taken missteps and received fines talked about the regulations in great detail when applied to those to those partners to help the whole market to move along and

navigate better okay and so just to try and be as helpful to you guys as possible like is there you know so so Paul and I are probably you know the type of guys who will create the most nefarious monetization tactics and schemes to like you know to get money from from players so you know from from from you know kind of I think we understand that concept pretty well and from your perspective trying to you know keep kids safe and things or things like that but is there anything specifically where we're you know maybe Paul and I can put our brains together and try to help you guys out in some way whether it's you know product related or a game design related or anything like that from my side I'd loved I mean I'm not sure I think any tips or hints but I'd love to hear what your reaction was to the announcements of both app stores in the last couple of weeks about about specifically the kids the kids section of their apps and games it does have an effect for large developers and for

games developers actually you know I'm not even aware anyway it's been any advice you can give us about navigating from your perspective what the large challenges are but you've input a bit already right how can we yeah I think the trickiest part is you know since you do have an admin product is you know for people to be aware and then for people to not just do exactly what I was saying because I think that's what is what's happening it's just you know h KN o h gay or sorry H gay and if there you know under the age just turn off the behavioral stuff and then you know just you guys would be another ad network in the mix of other ad networks and then whether there's a good reason to like plug you guys in specifically to make sure that you are you know in the waterfall or we're getting access to your to your inventory yeah so I did have a question on am I in is that from Paul and oh so your guys's perspective

since you guys created these products you guys are in the business of monetizing you know off your audience that's perfectly fine but how would you from your perspective if we were to come educate people like in your shoes and you guys know you guys have a directive to make as much money as possible but what kind of messaging to you would you feel like okay that makes a lot of sense I'm willing to do that for the kids audience because currently a lot of people are like ah you know we're just we'll just pretend kids don't exist we don't acknowledge them so therefore we won't get in trouble so what's the most palatable message for you as we go out you know talk to you know folks like even like NBC Universal I saw that they had a happy a our game that you can like use a are to like locate something and it says like you know no no person on the 13 should come in but clearly like if I was under 13 I could still I my wing in right and so these are the questions are like how do i educate people and make sure people or you know thinking about kids i can i can speak to some of it you know just a little talk about monetizing users

free-to-play for me isn't all about that it to me for your play is very complicated each part that allows the user to decide how much they want to spend it's extremely hard to do well clash royale my nephew played it three years he's an alliance leader he's never spent a dime but bottom rails at grossing app so somebody instant so that mean piece of art that can actually allow someone to play and have fun for a long time for free and also to play and spend as much as they like and still be successful that's the key word it'll be simple and super fun I love that I love the art form once upon time I think about four or five years ago I was making a tutorial and I started to find all these techniques and then I used to experience and getting a tutor and I was in a class where there's all kinds of people receiving many many different special needs there are some people who needed to have colored coding over the books

some people needed audio feedback people need to do repetition they need positive reinforcement and all of these things I started to say to myself you know what if I if I was really good at like teaching a special education class then I would probably be one of the best tutorial makers in the world because video games what they have are these tutorials and tutorial really mimics that supports tutors bring in all methods and games there's this really fine line and it's it's a dark line at night and I and I'll do my best to dispel it my entire real career then free to play is like this big money grab and it's not looking out for the user and it's just trying to get everyone right it's supposed to be really dark but it's actually you might not you know the things like stars bursting repetition color coding green arrows bouncing the job you're making progress this is actually how people learn when you have someone on a bus there's a glare on the screen and they can't see what's going on they're getting

notifications their attention spans really look and they kind of have the mind of someone really young in that moment right somebody who may have trouble performing thoughts and so forth when you when you guys when I was going to meet with you guys today and I was like oh these guys expertise and kids game these guys are probably freaking killer that helping people make games help people understand those games because somebody who understands the kids market in my opinion would be extremely useful in getting a game to make sense to everyone because you know that games are extremely difficult to make to teach take a very complicated idea and then you give it to somebody who'd never heard before it's like teaching kid math and the day you have so much time so I when I was five I was thinking about what you guys do I'm not sure when the team is and how much of the video game experience you guys have but with all these games coming through and you guys are so passionate about kid games and you know in kids games are

like the heart of tutorials I teach things I think there's probably this whole other side of what you guys may have that you may not even realize is that everyone needs to understand how to work with you know a younger audience and an older audience and you may be able to provide some insight to helping people with tutorials help me understand what users you know like when like how we tell you young what's the youngest of spenders that there is and how they actually actually were spending and if they did like how much and like how to provide the entertainment on a global value and like all of different things and fails is that you soon so like in some ways I was thinking about like is there is there is there things that you guys can tell you know if I were to being received your message as a provider to my company if you were telling me like look all of your users are basically kids at some point when

they coming in the game and we know tutorials you have the safety things and we can take a look at your app and provide you not just safety but even extreme I'm saying details expertise on how to get everyone through your funnel because just put the app state they're gonna come through kids are gonna hit the wall man because the tutorials like press here good job I do right so and then on the other hand I was thinking man you got it sounds like you guys should be a button built right into the phone you know it's like something that like just launches with phones now this is way bigger I don't need to understand how to do this but some people work out deals with like Android and they get their app pre-installed on phone when it like when they open it it's there yeah you know and I was like I couldn't help to think of that but that is kind of strategy way beyond me and I don't know how people wheel and deal that counselor but if super awesome was pre-installed on phones and then like parents to do about it and they had to press it and they gave they said here's your phone and the kid was like god dammit my mom

turned this on right and now it's just a part that's also interesting but I think if you were to come at me from a company from a position of how you're useful I would want to know all of your techniques and all of the games that I'm seeing and how you can help me make the game understandable for all those audience and be safe I could turn that 13-plus off and have a like a whole sweep like I don't know how I would do it but if I can make a game for literally everyone and it still works that's kind of interesting to me you know I would just to kind of riff off of Paul and just if I can might try to synthesize me I think there's two things that you said that are really interesting one is so you know guys like Paul and I are more into that hardcore monetization you know sort of mental framework right and so for us to think about how do you monetize a 8 year old or a 10 year old or a 13 year old it's

gonna be a lot more difficult so like if you guys were to actually come up with best practices or ways you know whether it's subscription through Cosmetics whatever and come up with like specific monetization techniques and practices I think there could potentially be some type of like consulting practice or things that's something like that as well as adding on to your existing products in terms of tools to enable those types of monetization techniques so that would be useful and then secondly to Philip sorry just to complete this this thought though to Paul's point about you know having an app pre-loaded or something but it like it might be interesting to have an app that's like a parent app and I don't think you do it for iOS but more Android like you know so my nine-year-old son has an Android phone and we're going to install super awesome on it and super awesome you know we'll basically track all of the games and apps on the on the

phone and it's connected then like I've got an Android phone with super awesome and I'm got the parent account and if if you know my child installs you know a game that's rigged that's rated you know unsafe then I get a ping and it's like oh do you approve that this app is that you know Johnny could actually install this app or not and because you're going back to that other thought about potentially reading different game and apps in terms of the gameplay monetization and the ads that are running through it if you guys actually created like you know a system where that stuff was rated and then then I'm on my I'm on my phone with my super awesome app I've got my three kids and I I can kind of you know make sure that they're using super awesome you know verified apps that that might potentially be something interesting yeah I think we're doing more and more work with partners and directly

ourselves with the main platforms and I think a lot of people are thinking along those lines I think we will end up with much much greater solutions I would I don't say that the best the best hopefully you guys and the best people in the mobile market I've met some of them they're just focused on engagement and usage you know monetization comes if you know those things like if you get users loving your product coming back every day if you're like like all of the big guys talking about retention stats out into the future and usage stats that are huge then all of the monetization solutions that are that exist in the stores and existing products are open to you depending on which kind of product you have because you will retain you will keep those users you will keep me the kind of organic growth of those user and you will keep the momentum of your product moving forward and the monetization comes on the back of that and I think it's a really interesting angle to take because if you look if you actually looked at a lot of those products if you took your pool if you took your nephews on clash Royale was a really great example I think if you actually found the users and the users in those products who were kids you

would find some of the most hyper engaged users in any of those products you know these guys these kids have a lot of times their own device they have loads of time to spend in it they're all all digital natives they grew up with these products they're intuitive they go straight in in terms of in-depth game player and and they also don't have a lot of the roots that we have for a lot of the monetization solutions and other distractions you know one of the things we found you know I was when I was out 57 i i put rewarded ads into into into alpha 7 with the business and I really thought is this gonna work you know like is the advertisers gonna be happy that we're giving this opportunity for the for the users to have to watch these ads and it really blew up as an opportunity and when I think about that now in terms of the kids market it's an amazing thing because it's the only thing which is in the hands of the the kid you know they've got direct control over that monitoring that opportunity to get more energy or to get more virtual currency or whatever it is and they're epic consumers kids are actual epic consumers when we used to you see that on YouTube right kids content is a vast majority the vast a ton of the content and you to be honest

with you and consume and consume so exactly as you say Paul you know if we were to able to harness the power of those kids audiences and say hey hey developers if you knew your kids audience it's not about the direct ROI you get but how about testing your new features on them because they're absolutely incredible in terms of their consumption of your products and their knowledge of it and their navigation of it so I think the it all ties back to the same thing we are aiming to build the tools that allow developers to isolate their kids audience to deal with them correctly but also we're trying to figure out a path to creating as much value as we can for this audience and there is there is a lot of Avenue I think I totally agree I think it's definitely changing the way that I think nothing in terms I'm the seeker I really hadn't thought about the age the age restriction in awhile but you know maybe it's possible to pick a genre xanthines and games and things like that and then use these special techniques to try to get you know a wider audience for have

fun yeah I would say look all of this is is is we're aiming for a direction where this doesn't affect the user right the user just comes in and plays your game and enjoys it at the back end we make sure that the data collection the ads as they see or the monetization they see the the analytics packages whatever it is is tailored around the user to make sure that their their rights are infringed their privacy is respected but everything else is it should be completely oblique to them it should be able to play the game enjoy it just same as every user not see any of these things we talk a lot to developers about how to to not have a working day at great age great at the front you know we see a solution that's much more subtle and much better for the user than that and much better for the developer yeah I wish I had like a really really bangin idea for you guys that wouldn't send you our I do I do I think it's good cause and I don't think it's very complicated I just think there's a lot

of Education to me should be part of people who would need to be educated on it there's so many game developers right now watching the keywords justified like for meaning today and everyone's trying to you know friend be well out there and I don't know education is key yeah we try and speak to as many people as you can we have a lot of insight that comes from our social our social products for kids it's a lot of that is filled with Goldust in terms of product usage and other stuff so I think more and more and more will the environment around us will create a narrative where people are asking the questions and hopefully people like us are springing up everywhere to answer them this is what really is going to move the market for takers in are you are you guys gonna continue to be it seems like just looking in your product mix that you guys are a bit more focused in terms of the tools and infrastructure side it's kind of look like pop jam seem to be more of a direct-to-consumer more you know end-user related product but is that also more of like because you

mentioned that you know pop jam can be kind of reskin with for brands are you guys gonna try to make like a specific game or you know director consumer type of product at all I think it's an interesting question III think directed to cement is part of our social tools but the majority of that work goes into building the platforms and the tools for other people to use we are we are a technology company we are a B to B to B Company but I think who knows in the future there's lots of avenues for us to work towards building out the consumer piece but I think mostly we're going to be focused on empowering the guys that are real experts on this you know we work with some of the we work with the the largest brands in the kids base in the family space and also some of the largest at developers in the world so we would really probably for this for the time being focused on making sure that they are enabled to make the best products because they're the experts on the director since um the piece cool yes I mean in terms of like next I don't I don't quite know what would

could be specific next steps but I would say that one thing that's potentially possible is as Paul and I are starting to work on some you know game concepts and when I say we it's me Paul but you know that if we can get a good if we can get a good design and then as we start you know moving forward with the game that you know as we think about gdpr and Coppa that you know it'd be great to just even have like a you know public call with you guys where it's like okay here's our game design here are wireframe here's what our HD it's going to look like and so and then what could how could we integrate like your super awesome to make sure that it's you know kid-friendly kids safe and things like that so we could show people the process if it works for us because the games I have to build first aren't can't be big and they can't be too too risky because we're so small and so some of the things I have are like some final games possibly some really high potential games and I think that they would fall

right into the hands of what you guys work with so if anything maybe we're building products and we do Jude's nervous and yeah I mean if one thing that comes from this is that you don't dismiss the kids audience when you're thinking about product development or rried and that's absolutely delightful I'm sure that other than that you'll be speaking to many people will be facing challenges about how to deal with kids audiences in their games and actually yeah we actually had a call earlier today that you I think you guys could be helpful on so yeah we will keep you apprised of some of those types of conversations great well anything we can do we'd love to come back we have some of the foremost experts in the space I'm sure they'd love to join them awesome it's great to trade ideas guys really appreciate your time good to speak to you okay and yeah and congrats on on a really great name to you I mean

positivity yeah all right speak to you later guys [Music] [Music] [Music]