Best practices for mobile game ad monetisation

all right hello everyone um so yeah monetization with ads and understand there's been plenty of talks about that I hope I can give a little bit of a different perspective by really looking at um our experience as a game publisher we have more than 100 games live in the Google Play Store and Amazon store uh and from that we found a lot of we found out a lot of interesting things about about ads and uh that's basically what I'm here to share with you um as a bit of an introduction um we do mainly games for casual gamers and casual gamers have a slightly different behavior from for example midcore Gamers hardcore Gamers um so just just you know a few stats to basically keep in mind during the talk uh where you know casual gamers are often new Gamers like they

they haven't really been they don't have a lifetime experience of playing games you know it might be the first game they ever really pick up um and uh they have very long game sessions uh but what's really interesting is that it takes them a long time to actually convert to being a paying user if they really really love a game they'll typically play it first for about two weeks before they finally decide to make that in a purchase um which is why when we look at advertising uh what is really uh interesting is is um you know basically those two weeks using them to to show ads uh and typically rewarded videos I'll be going a little bit more into detail about that later but like I said just some stats to keep in mind um there's more people who watch rewarded videos than the people who actually buy something in the game um but you know not the first day it might take a few days before they finally finally see the added value of that rewarded video like all right I I'll watch that I'll spend 30 seconds watching that so now looking glob globally um this is the top 25 countries

when it comes to revenue at Revenue so let's just have a look at the top five here United States India Indonesia South Africa Argentina so this is like I said this is uh the ad Revenue next one um this is uh Bally the the ad uh the amount of ads shown us China UK Japan Germany so apart from us a complete different top five which again shows that um the the volume in a country doesn't necessarily mean that that is uh also going to be your highest gross in country when it when it comes to at Revenue um and that's kind of important information to keep in mind so you think of where am I going to show ads to which users or in which countries am I going to show less ads uh to kind of annoy players a little bit less and you know more people might decide to actually

uh buy something in your game you know to keep people engaged a bit longer so there's there's a huge differentiation between that um also again not every player is different uh sorry not every player is different not every player is the same that's what I'm trying to say uh when we look at the group of users that spend a lot in your in your game uh you might not want to show them any ads at all because you don't want to piss them off you want to keep them in the game you want to keep them engaged um and you know you might want to think about frequency capping uh on on your on your ads um another group is the group of players that don't really spend anything in your game but they are the hardcore community of your game they spend a lot of time in your games um so again not a group you basically want to piss off so you might want to think about you know C again capping the amount of ads they see keeping their their engagement optimal um and there's the biggest group of players which are just the ones who download your game and they check it out for a little bit um and they they drop

off um and for that group um you know this is kind of the harsh reality of the graph of it uh you you will lose about 80% of your players uh within the first the first day uh or the first few days um so I see a lot of developers are very cautious about showing ads in the first day uh of of user engagement I'd say don't be too cautious because you're missing out on that 80% of of your users um and you know you won't you won't they won't spend on in a purchases and if you don't make any money from advertising as well then you you need to get all your monetization from that sort of 20% that really enjoys the game and plays it longer and those are the people you kind of want to keep in your game want to keep happy so uh you know just there's nothing wrong with showing ads on basically the first day of of of Engagement um and again you know haters going to hate uh if you show one ad per 5 minutes there's going to be people

giving you one star reviews because of the ads if you show one ad per hour there's still going to be people giving you one star ratings because of the ads so there's just no way to keep people happy I think if you completely give a game for free and no ads you're still going to get you know you're still going to get haters um so yeah so don't be too cautious with uh with that and yeah AB test you know try out some different versions of your game in the store and see which one gets better better monetization better retention and try what what the optimal balance is between uh ads and gameplay for your game um we get about half of our revenue from advertising the other half from inner purchases and often when I talk to developers they don't really see the potential of advertising you know they're like oh in game Revenue cpms they're low anyway it's a lot of work it's not worth it so I made this very very crude calculation not a real life example just a very crude calculation to kind of of show the potential of ads um

imagine you have an app um 5% of your players convert to to payers so well done 5% is very good um but you know like like we saw in the first Slide the example people only convert after about 2 weeks so they make their first purchase after about 16 days um let's say the average revenue per per paying user to our PPU is $10 you know some people buy something for 50 some people buy something for $2 average is 10 so then you you know in in that span of 16 days you make $500 and of course 30% um obviously goes to the App Store now looking at at Revenue um those 16 days maybe they play half an hour a day or something that's eight hours of gameplay um if you show 10 ads per hour which is well one one every five six minutes it's it sounds like a lot but you know it's not that bad actually 5 six minutes is a lot is a lot of gameplay um so yeah you can in that same

time span show that user 80 80 ads now if you have an ecpm of $5 uh which is you know high for interstitials but lower for for videos especially very low for rewarded videos um you make $400 of of that batch of of users um and that's only looking at at the daily actives so you know that's that's basically it becomes an interesting Revenue stream when you actually treat it like like a viable Revenue stream if you invest uh some time into into optimizing your ads um I've seen a lot of bad examples of ads also um so I've seen some ads that use ads as roadblockers so you know for example an episodic game uh where you cannot progress to the next chapter without watching a a very very long non- skipable ad um you know I think when people are really engaged in a game they would you know they they might rather

have a full experience full premium experience um when you look at the concentration Arc of people U you know that when they really into the game it's often longer than the ad intervals um and then an ad can really break up that game experience um non skippable interstitial videos for example you're playing an endless Runner and in that endless Runner you basically die every 30 seconds because it's a really hard game if after every 30 seconds you have to watch a 30 second non skip able ads that's going to ruin the game experience pretty quick um no targeting um I'm I'm sometimes a little bit guilty as well you know I uh I I serve only casual games and sometimes when I'm playing my own games I encounter ads for you know game of war or Clash of Kings or something and it's like it's not very likely that my users will click on that so you know action points for me again uh targeting make sure that you show really the right videos not only like

the right type type of games you know it doesn't necessarily need to be the same games but for example think of Brands um you know like uh just household brands or you know some some uh like new Hollywood movies uh those are actually kind of the type of ads that convert really well in uh in my games um low fill rates which is typically the result of just implementing one ad Network and then thinking w i implemented one SDK that was a lot of work job done uh let it run don't optimize then you probably get either a low fill rate or just very bad quality videos um and game over ads is one that I specifically want to point out um for example if you are uh playing you know let's take that endless Runner again as an example um and every time after you fail you already have this sort of Rage Quit moment because you failed again and then you see an ad you know that's that's even more likely to push users out of the game at that moment so try to

think of making ads more sort of a positive experience um and rewarded videos is a good example of that um when the user just uh did something really you know really that they feel happy about for example they got a new high score they unlocked something that is a good moment to U show an offer like hey do you want to watch an ad to maybe u double your score double your reward uh get some extra coins whatever um you know it's a happy moment and it's it's more likely to have a higher uh you know higher engagement rate um and you know just there's been companies that Lots did lots of smart studies about this like Delta DNA um and they found out that about 30% of the the top ranking games actually actually do this so you know try try to learn from the guys who make lots of money with it um so this is an example from one of my games uh Jimmy Dean is one of this terrible horrible Burger chain for in

America uh but I like kind of like them now because they're giving me a gem and gems are really rare in that game so you know it's it's again a sort of a positive experience with that brand um which is also a reason why why Brands love to love to uh kind of serve these type of ads as well and I'm pushing the wrong button um and another type is a rescue ad where for example I tried to finish a level but I ran out of time before I could um but then there's a brand who actually want to help me and they want to give me uh some extra seconds like 30 seconds extra for me to to finish the game um so you know okay I'll get 30 seconds extra um you know I'll be able to finish my level yeah all right I'll I'll sit through I'll sit through a rewarded video for that it's a good trade-off um little bad example um giving away a free game that was already free because it's a free to-play game is uh it's not really a great offer now I don't think many people are going to going to fall for for that so it's it's

important to actually give give something meaningful to to the users um I I try to basically come up with a list of things that rewarded video should should do should have um optional it shouldn't be forced it should be completely optional to the player like a popup do you want to watch an ad yes or no you know there no no steering just a Clear Choice yes or no um the thing that the user is getting um it helps even more if that specific type of gift cannot be obtained in any other way um so you know it could be just Gems or coins but it could also be like very a special item that the users cannot get in another way than just watching an ad um immediate as in whatever you're promising the player they should just immediately see it and that's also tied into the next point of visibility um most complaints that I get in my games about reported videos is people not see seeing that they actually got that gem

because their their gem balance might be uh you know 498 and after watching the ad is 499 it's it's very hard to kind of detect that difference if you don't exactly memorize your gem count before that so I was advised like try to build in a little bit of special uh visual effects where you know this gem is appearing and it's flying up to your counter for example um and uh preferably they're unpredictable as in um when your fill rate is always 100% and you always show this Rescue video when the user is about to run out of time they're going to count on it so like oh I don't really need to hurry up with this matching level because I'm going to get these 30 seconds anyway but then you know it's but then it doesn't feel like it doesn't feel like a gift moment anymore it doesn't feel like a rewarded moment anymore so we we Tred to vary a little bit where it only pops up like once once every two three game sessions to try to try to kind of keep that special feel like o am I going to

get that second chance or not um I tried to come up with a good acronym for it but I didn't really uh if anyone has any ideas that are actually unpronouncable these kind of look like finished words to me though but that's French right yeah would I wouldn't tell that to French people um actually I was I was afraid that I was going to be way over time because this talk was originally designed for an hour and then I cut it back but it seems that I already ended up at the last slide um what type of rewarded video in my little examples that I talked about I used a lot of uh you know gems and coins and stuff but actually um this was a study uh done um I think by by at colony and they find out that when you offer um just a consumable so for example an extra power up or something and actually converts better or just a combination of both like you know you get some coins and a power up then obviously uh that's going to have a much higher conversion rate

like only like almost 150 uh 150% compared to the just currency uh ad actually converts so uh also something to keep in mind when you design your rewarded videos um yeah I guess we have do have time for questions or or actually I just made up for the the lost time um if you have any more questions or if you have any more U you know want more insights on best practices of ads uh and how to implement them have a look at fj.com doe1 um and you know just shoot me an email for questions thanks great thank thank you does anyone have any questions I mean I particularly like to avoid the rage quit moment that Rage Quit is going to really cool one Nick yeah hi uh Nick as we should probably get a mic for you CU I'm uh because we got the recording it's always nice to have um have your your delightful voice thank you always

complimentary that's why they invite me back apparently yeah hi uh yeah Nick Hatter um CEO at GIF gaming so we we're a monetization platform and um I just want to say from our own experience of the last three years of monetizing people's games with incentivized ads I think Martin is bang on the money um I mean we've we've seen incredibly High opt-in rates of you know 95% with um creative mobile in their title um fetty WAP Nitro Nation stories and what we did was we we had a little button when when the player won a race we had a little button which said I'll get times two coins and they tap it and then it would say hey you got double double race Reward Points thanks to this brand um and that we saw super high engagement um and um I I just wanted to ask a question though um you said in one of your slides 4 to 10% 4 to 10% watch video ads so does that mean that potentially if

developers are only using inapp purchases and incentivized video to monetize their games then does that mean there's a large portion of players who are even not monetized well if at all yeah and that of course has to do with for example low fill rates or people playing in offline mode so they won't see any any ads at all um so I think it's very hard to get like you know 100% uh sort of monetization uh um but yeah this is what also came out of a a study that yeah 4 to 10% really um sees the popup for the ads says yes I would like to purchase it uh sorry I like to watch that ad um and you know that's that's for the users so when the users like do decide to watch an ad it's very likely that they'll do it again and and one more question as well what what what do you think is the biggest stumbling block to implementing you know more more stuff to hit that player base we not monetized you mean for the developer yeah for the

developer um well it's I mean you you you're forcing me into a Shameless plug here because I do think it's just the SDK barrier and FGL does have an automated way of implementing sdks in games so are you doing that on purpose because you know my I'm not I don't I don't have an affiliate agreement with with with FG not yet anyway just uh actually one of the slides that I left out because I thought I wouldn't have enough time is also about um brand engagement so interesting for the the brands that are advertised in the game um actually with rewarded video uh it showed that the brand engagement was about 30% higher than brands that just had their ads in games as a forced interstitial so also again with rewarded videos people kind of remember the brand better and they have a more positive uh positive experience with that brand