Breaking Silos & Boosting Growth: Metica’s AI-Driven Edge

[Music] Pocket Gamer events are all about networking and new faces and that's why I'm always excited when I have a new face and a new company and a new company with funding so Meda Phil first of all congratulations on that because it's not the climate where it's easy to get funding and you certainly did prove it thank you very much so thanks to our investors uh particular play Ventures they've been amazing helping us including 30 books as well so um and maybe a little bit about metica so the mission we we're here for is we're helping go games to grow faster and we do that by through personalization um everything in game making the game more personalized and then connecting everything we do inside the game and taking the data to then help um bridge the gap between what's

happening in the game and UA funding and the UA side of things so breaking down UA silos also a little bit in a way forecasting on steroids because I'm getting the data but I'm getting actual insights from the data and what I think is pretty cool breaking down those silos because part of it is about democratizing the data which is what you're attacking head on yes so one thing we offer for instance on the website is anyone can come um give us access to the MMP data and we'll actually provide a proper report that gives you insights how well your UA is doing how well the game is performing and then based on that we can help you either increase the LTV inside of the game um by optimizing your inner purchases um optimizing rewarded ads gam play um through a new way of personalization and optimization um through what's called contextual

multi-and Bandits um so that's inside the game but all that rich data we collect is then being used to predict um LTV on an individual player level and that again has been taken and fed back into the at networks once it's in the at networks you can run much more targeted in better campaigns that Target much wider audiences and from there through the attribution that happens through the mmps we can take that and then person the game depending on where you're coming from but also other contexts like what country you're in if you're a spender um no nons spender um if you've played similar jres before um so when you say personalization when you're talking about personalization it goes beyond Dynamic personalization there's a level of context I'm hearing there's also a level of um yeah the Persona perhaps as well so you've got got Geo

you've got context a little bit of how they're playing you got player types bringing that all together is that your IP um yes so then then then that's smart IP yes so we we do that and I think you're you're quite right personalization is a big topic and a lot of people understand slightly different things by that a lot of people think segmentation is already personalization um so our first company we we sold to King so we worked at King um for a while and build out the CRM platform and at that point we did a lot of segmentation we went to even more than 15,000 segments at a time but at that point um segments start overlapping and you don't really know anymore what treatment the customer is getting so we are doing all the learning and everything we do on an individual player level and from there you can then do pltv forecast you can tailor the game to an individual and you keep adding to the Contex

you have about an individual player and when you're doing that analysis that initial analysis I'm just curious you know you're not just saying this is the LTV that you can aim for so you're giving me I can set my goal much more clearly are you also giving me sort of like the red flags and the green flags like hey you know your AI your your UA rather hey you know your UA strategy is hitting here but missing there so it's not just the numbers but maybe what I need to fix how I need to fix yes so it's it's the what is potentially can or what can potentially be improved so we give you that um but we do what we call actionable insights we then also give you the tools to improve that so not just the insights but we also help you how to do that um so for instance if you're optimizing your levels um and you put that into our contextual multi Bandits um we then can

have you add a lot of different variants and the Machine automatically determines which variant works for which types of players um and it will tell you which ones don't work and we believe especially in the era now of generative AI this is super interesting because instead of running an AB test where you just have four variants you wait for a month or whatever period um and select a winner here you can keep adding variants over and over and over again and the Machine will give you very quick really good feedback what works and what doesn't so your production pipeline increases in speed dramatically very cool so it's not just the speed of testing that's obviously something you want to increase but you can increase all the variants and say well what about this one and and a couple of the ones like from Serendipity which which often turn out to be the ones you know I've talked to a lot of Publishers it's like the one thing they tried that they just thought on a whim was the one you've had a lot of experience you know obviously

doing the CRM at King and you have that as background so in a way it's like bringing that knowledge bringing that experience out to all the Publishers otherwise of course they wouldn't be supporting you as well that's true but even even then I think a lot of things have improved and and have sort of really moved on um and what we see is the teams that are going from a mindset of individual testing to a genuine optimization personalization mindset are the ones that are winning because everything improves um and as I said with generative Ai and everything else that's coming you know you really need to be data driven the Cycles are only going to get faster and it's going to be harder and harder for humans to make the decisions um because everything is getting so complex if you truly believe in personalization you need a machine that is helping you to do that I mean in a way Phil you could have stopped with just personalization and intelligence

but you've also gone at the level of the organization you know that you had to look at bringing it to all the parts of the organization what's the thinking behind that is that saying that you know knowledge shared is uh knowledge that's going to be multiplied that that is definitely one but a really big point I think for us has been is there's just been so many silos especially between UA what's happening ingame the CFOs that do the strategy the forward planning um and we just see a massive Opportunity by actually connecting all of them through data yeah and that they can actually work with each other um and often not just alongside of each other so we believe that is sort of a a big area where you know Improvement comes from and we're already seeing it by connecting the dots um we're already seeing very considerable uplift and you mentioned CFOs so I met your company everybody hanging out at the mobile

Finance Collective so this is this idea that you know CFOs in games companies have to have a deeper understanding because games start as most times a great idea and then a great business so what role does the CFO play in this are you trying to give that CFO more visibility and for what reason so obviously the game team making the game you know they're absolutely pivotal to a gaming company because other without a great game you you don't have a business but then they're also other very much unsung heroes often within a gaming company which is on the UA side driving the installs um and growing the game but also the CFOs because they do the forecast they make sure the money is there to actually scale the game and as you said you know it's important for them to have insights but also for them to be able to predict and forecast how the game is doing going forward especially if your game is I AP monetized often the payback is is over 180 days

360 sometimes even 720 so they do need to have extremely good forecast and accurate data um to make predictions and make sure the right investment is is being made so how long exactly have you been around now and like what has your experience been what have you been seeing um maybe also some surprises in the types of companies that want to work with you so we've been around for years um we've been very fortunate that we had quite a few um gaming companies we could actually develop the product with um so big shout out to Phoenix game starberry and quite a few others um who were great from from day one um so what what are we seeing is the message resonates very well I think breaking down the silos um people totally buy into they see that um generative Ai and everything else that's happening in that space is really accelerating um development

um and what we're also seeing is that some teams are extremely hungry to change their mindset get faster do more optimization personalization um but not everyone um so we get asked quite often you know what is sort of the ideal genre for you to work with um we're now working with games from Social Casino all the way to hyper casual um so we can work you know with any genre but what's I think more important is is um and that's often something to think about especially when you build a new game is how configurable is the game because if you start personalizing the game needs to be able to make these changes adapt to each player um so that's sort of something we've we've seen that there is a big divide on what some games are being able to do um in terms of making these changes um and others being quite static hardcoded um and that's that's something sort of we we're talking a lot about um especially to Newgate developers how can

they start making a game more develop like like more Dynamic from from day one what I'm also hearing here is we used to think about you have to build your monetization model in at the start and I think increasingly because segmentation is so important you needs to build in your personalization your your personas how are you going to make it possible that the game is tailored to the player so starting early with that data and I think that probably you can play a role in backwards engineering that I don't need to come to you with all the data I can come to you with some of it and then you're architecting my personalization strategy as well yes so it's a very good point like most games have very different data they're collecting I mean overall it's it's it's similar but there are always differences so one is we can actually look at your data and help you understand do you need to collect something else or we've actually built a layer where you can just give us all of your events um and

we're basically combining them um and doing sort of cleanups and and and conversions in in real time so we can do that for you but I think the more important bit is really about when you look at for instance rewarded ads can you change the reward what placements do you have how is that controllable um directly on the client or through your back end I think that's something we'll we'll be seeing more and more that games just genu become more Dynamic um so things can be changed development Cycles are a lot quicker as well and that's interesting feedback to put in there because it is about understanding where and when to motivate rewards are one way of doing that then there's the player progression all of this comes together I mean personalization is clearly a lever that we have and we're not using it as much we heard about creative now we're getting like to personalize creative so it's all going in that Direction could

you give me an idea of working with companies like the uplift you've seen the benefit you've seen trying to quantify why it's worth the effort and what we can aim for yeah so it's a very good question and um I know that a lot of Studios have been burned to be honest by quite a few vendors who promise crazy things they say we do this little thing or we send one push notification and you I'm exaggerating a bit while you get 40% uplift yeah and and clearly that's not the case um so what we've what we are doing is we're looking at the whole grow Loop so from what's happening in the game how's that data then used in UA how do you drive new installs and we are seeing the best results When We Touch the game at different touch points so when we help you optimize um your ad targeting for instance then welcome these players through great real-time attribution in the game with a tailored

experience great conversion offer for instance getting payers to reveal themselves quite early on in the game and then putting things in front of them that are relevant so when you follow these things they start building on top of each other so you get the 1+ 1+ 1 equals 6 7 8 because it's a feedback lifp yeah so what we're seeing is anywhere uplift between 16% to over 40% um but again it's not like something you just turn on on day one and it magically you know fixes a leaky bucket or improves your LTV it's really about working in a partnership with the game teams looking at okay where are the biggest levers um and what can we do um over time to to get to that number and optimize and working in Partnership which is what you're doing you're here talking with publish building those relationships those

Partnerships as well what is it that you have taken from the show that you're going to take back to the office maybe potentially to improve what you're doing at Medica um so I think first of all it's it's amazing event pocket Gamers put together I think it's probably one of the biggest ones in London ever I it is it is the biggest in 11 years now so seriously it does feel like the biggest show in in in Europe at the moment um so I think the buzz everyone is Keen um I think we also really like it's in January early on in the Year everyone is buzzing um and there's a lot of momentum um I think what what we'll take back is that the games are looking for the next wave of where can they improve um you know ad buying is still very tough out there for everyone um so everyone is looking for the incremental gain I think the time of where there's a silver bullet you turn on a new ad Channel and

suddenly you know everything is good I think these times are over so everyone is looking okay how can we be more strategic with data where can we make changes um and that's not just you know through us but even you know I've I had quite a few conversations with people that really changing all of their Graphics inside the art style so people are actually willing to make really big bold changes to to compete in the market and and that's exciting to see I like that I like that big bold changes that's a that's a perfect way to end this because it is a very big bold move at Meda I'll be watching you and yes you have your funding just very recently I believe correct yes we just closed before Christmas so was the best best Christmas present exactly the best Christmas present ever I can imagine those celebrations nothing like that so absolutely feel I love to hear more from you maybe later on in the year and uh yeah thanks so much for a bold com ation as well thank you

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because we have a companion post for you as well on the pocketgamer.biz website tune in again for the next edition of the pocketgamer.biz podcast and we look forward to speaking to you in the near future until then I'm Brian Bago I'm Peggy and saltz and that's a wrap until next week