Audio is the New Video - MUNIB TAHIR, AudioMob

[Music] thank you [Music] here a new presentation from audio mob who I know really really well one of the first rewarded audio providers and they're going to talk about how audio is going to become the new video which is a bold statement come on join usmania back onto the stage um so many of his here from audio mob

um and he will start talking you through the fact that audio is the new video which is all about the great benefits that this new native ad format brings um I'm going to hand over to you if you need anything give me a shout I shall wave at you when there's five minutes ago so just checking all good it worked really well all right so hope everyone is able to hear me and uh all good so I'm munib I'm head of gaming Partnerships at uh audio mob and what we actually do is uh we're trying to bridge the gap between uh users Publishers and advertisers how we do that we do it with audio ads so before I get into detail and explain more as uh mobile game players raise of hands for anyone who likes uh video ads

all right so that's just one person I have to talk to after my presentation but uh so I'll just give you a little overview on what we do and how we do it and why we are in the industry so the whole idea of audio mob came up when our founder who was a game developer both of our co-founders they were game developers one of them was a music producer as well and uh they wanted to stream their music while uh playing their games and one thing led to the other and they came up with the idea that why not have audio ads uh within the games and the main reason being is just that with the current uh how games are developed and how they're monetized it's bombarded with video ads interstitials it leads to a very bad uh actually user experience for the game player so the

whole concept of audio ads is that you continue to play your game and in the background you can listen to an audio ad and it's it's sort of a win-win situation for all the key stakeholders uh in this whole ecosystem so as a user you get to enjoy your game continuously without any Interruption without disruption without all those intrusive ads you don't have to wait you continue to play your game and some of the examples that I'll share in a bit uh we kind of make it as contextual as possible that it enhances the overall experience of the user as well as a publisher or a game developer you're able to add another incremental source of Revenue so we are not currently competing against uh video ads or other form of ads we're just having it as an additional source of Revenue to how you're currently monetizing on top of that you know it's another source of revenue for other games who

are not monetizing currently why they don't monetize just because the ads are non-intrusive not the best user experience so in terms of other than in-app purchases they can add in as an additional source of Revenue to how they're generating uh revenue for the games and then more importantly we are bringing new slate of advertisers to the industry who traditionally were not advertising in games so for example music studios we have Warner Music Universal Music bunch of other uh advertisers as well so the whole goal is to provide a very user-centric audio ad format which enhances the overall experience we work directly with advertisers I'll show you some examples whether it's Disney Plus or Universal music studio or a lot of Brands so it's very curated it's very

contextual so as a user you really really enjoy what you see it enhances the experience and helps both as a publisher game developer to have another source of Revenue and for advertisers to reach new audience at a lower cost compared to video or other formats and as Pioneers we are just building the whole laying the foundation for this format connecting Publishers bringing on board new advertisers setting up the technology so that it's very easy and seamless for all the developers to sign on and integrate with our platform and start with audio ads uh as I mentioned it's non-intrusive very user-centric we are able to do programmatically a lot of direct deals as well and also we provide in-house tools such

as audio pass audio pass back which I'll gonna talk about in a bit how the whole actually Revenue stream and placements are managed and uh in the end it's supposed to be a complementary incremental Revenue source to how you're monetizing currently now just to give you an example I'm gonna show this video it's a puzzle game and what you will hear is it's a contextual ad which is related to the game and it shows some sort of a word puzzle so let's let's have a listen uh let's see actually one side is can we play uh click doesn't work it's just yeah

okay there you go thank you here's a word q u e s t whether a quest for knowledge brain training and a new word life high score or a quest for strength physical training and a balanced mind body and soul quests make delicious athlete worthy nutrition cookies chips bars shakes and more protein forward recipes that aren't packed with sugar and net carbs Quest Nutrition it's way bigger than a protein bar it's a quest so it's a puzzle game as you can hear you know the ad is contextual it talks

about the word and so kind of really adds on the experience of that and what I'm going to talk about next is actually I think this question we get a lot is uh what if it's the device is unmute or what if uh you know there's some other apps being played so we did our own independent research and we found out that 61 of the percent of the players between the age range in 18 to 24 usually they're listening to some sort of uh music app or any other audio app in the background while they're playing their game so for example Spotify so whatever technology enables is firstly detect the volume level of the device secondly if you're listening to something it's going to pause that background app let's say Spotify and then it's gonna play the ad once the ad is complete then it's going to unpause uh the other app which

was playing already so it's a very seamless experience as a user that you continue to listen uh what you were listening before and I'm gonna show you an example of actually a rewarded ad where it's a runner's game uh the user has an invincibility cloak on and to have their reward they just tap and they listen to an audio ad however if they reduce the volume it gives prom to the user that to continue to have your reward raise your volume so they just have to tap it and these customizable prompts are very easy for all game developers to add into the game through our platform uh so yeah let's let's take a look at that if 24th of March say hello to Disney plus start streaming the most talked about movies series and documentaries from Marvel plus Star Wars plus Disney

plus Pixar plus National Geographic all in one place so as you saw the user reduce the volume to get the prompt to continue to having your reward increase your volume they just tap it it automatically increases you have a 30 threshold for ad to be displayed so if the volume level is 30 and above the ad is displayed if not then you know it could be a rewarded ad where prompts could be used or uh you know if and and relief you know if the user doesn't want it they just keep the volume down they don't have the reward and they continue playing foreign so there are three different formats that are possible uh the way we integrate there's the audio only so it's a format where a user is playing a game and the audio ad plays in the background there's no Banner nothing of that sort usually they have somewhat lower CPM

however that's one option available the other one is uh play clickable Banner so there's a banner playing audio and a user can click it advertisers like that as well because uh they see engagement there's I'll show you some example where the ad is calling to action and then they can click the banner and go on to the landing page where they want to be and certain others are just you know something to show no clickable action needed it's more about awareness and then there's the uh rewarded audio so rewarded audio is that you as a user you get some sort of a reward for listening to to the yard it's not very it could be done in a way where there's rewarded video and similarly on an offer wall or whatnot a rewarded audio is placed where they can click on both but it doesn't necessarily need to be that there are a lot of other placements possible where

as uh you're actually playing the game you click on so you tap button you get extra points or you get a special boost while you're listening to the ad and as mentioned before you know all of this is complementary to your existing monetization stack so you are not losing any Revenue in fact you're able to add on an additional source of Revenue coming from audio ads so here are a couple of more examples uh just a placement scenarios uh there's one where it's a puzzle game it's a PNG campaign Proctor and Gamble Pampers campaign so uh uh see ya have a look at that ever wondered what life is like for your baby you're already living it solving puzzles exploring new worlds now you can explore together with pampers active fit

nappies are number one for comfort and fit with up to 12 hour leakage Protection Plus we're giving away a free pack this June click the banner to find out more D's and C's apply so I think in this example you can also see it's contextual playing a puzzle game add kind of mentions that so really sometimes we are able to get some high level data from our Publishers on what kind of audience they are reaching out to who are their main age groups or whatnot and then we can curate advertisers that are can really Target that specific group so we in terms of we don't pass on data it's really dependent on the publisher however uh just at a high level for us to help curate the right kind of campaigns for the right type of Publishers and audiences foreign

can we go next actually so here's another example of in-game in-game rewarded where it's a car racing game as a user you're able to uh get a boost by just clicking on the uh just tapping on that uh audio foreign do you have a table for four tonight right I see completely booked out yeah since February forgot to book a table for Mother's Day that deserves your favorite food delivery like Namaste Lounge choc burgers or ask Italian with delivery you can track

right to your door in Watford that deserves deliveroo download the app today geographical restrictions apply subject terms and conditions foreign [Applause] [Music] integration so we have So currently we support only Unity games we are work we our native SDK will be available end of uh end of the year and IUS beginning next year so currently we just support the unity ads very easy integration very seamless we have you know the testing phase depends on each publisher but just to integrate it can take few hours and very easy to set up in terms of some of the partners that we

are currently working with on the publisher side Voodoo social Point app Nation take to some others uh big players in the industry so a lot of a lot of really good premium game developers smaller developers as well so ranging from Voodoo software to very small Indie developers as well and on the advertiser side we have music studios Water Music Sony Music PNG a lot of branding as well so really new different advertisers who were not really in the in-game format before so actually yeah and then yeah there's this game you can download it it's an in-house built game oh you don't need to play that but

uh yeah so you can try it yourself uh you can listen some audio ads you can see how different functionalities different things can uh can work out and uh yeah that's that's about it let me know if any questions also we have a boot there so you can you're welcome to come and talk to us down there thank you so thank you do we have any questions any burning questions about audio and games I have a question for you all good we have a question no okay so my my question is um it's a new format um it's been around now for probably coming up for a couple of years um creatives what's what's the sort of school with creatives what are the best creatives for audio you mentioned a few you mentioned the audio only the rewarded audio the clickable banners what do you find is the best creatives I think actually in terms of the format

rewarded ideas are the best uh it leads to more engagement and it's very user generated so a user is tapping on something so it's very user-centric also you see more engagement our advertisers kind of like that too because uh so what we measure a key metric is listen through rate and what we see is Darwin's rewarded ads there's the highest listen to rates so so yeah so I saw a case study of of audio more being used in a game for big brother for example and that's when they the contestants in the game actually went in and turned on a radio and played the advertising within the game and that was a really creative approach to using of advertising format and in just like we heard in the last panel just making it more part of the game absolutely you know so what we try to do is that we work on every single step of

the integration with the game developers what can be the right placement so that it's very engaging so it's like you're playing a racing car race game with something coming on the radio or uh so you could work with developers exactly bring your technology into part of their gameplay like that big brother so whenever they sign up with us we work through all each and every single step the whole journey we guide them on where they will see higher engagement what's the right placement and then we are able to curate or bring the rights uh sort of advertisers to those particular games as well so for example if it's a Volkswagen or some sort of Advertiser they're focusing on car racing games right you know so it's like very contextual very user-centric fabulous okay thank you thank you thanks a lot