Device savvy, Growing Gaming Competition Along With a Volatile Economic Climate - Duncan Blackett

foreign [Music] [Applause] okay so coming up right now we've got device Savvy growing gaming competition along with a volatile economic climate with Duncan blackett from digital turbine they're one of our Platinum sponsors so please if you can give them a round of applause yay so uh device Savvy a growing gaming competition along with a volatile economic climate uh good morning everybody my name is Duncan and I'm the

head of sales for the Amaya region at digital turbine but don't worry I'm not gonna be selling you anything this morning in terms of topics they're threefold this morning number one the macro environment has changed completely year on year advertising is down by around about 30 percent but the good news is that advertising is always the first thing to come back topic number two along with this economic change the landscape of the mobile ecosystem has changed profoundly as well feed them into this we've got changes in user Behavior we've got changes into data and privacy but also we've got the emergence of new methods of app distribution that I'm going to be walking you through and topic three and most importantly what we're seeing a merge is a new paradigm in the realm of app installations in a new paradigm called direct to device and I want to go quite heavy onto this topic first of all and quite alarmingly roess

is down by 36 year on year there's quite a few reasons speeding into this but I'm going to hit the two headlines number one competition is increasing as a result of competition increasing across different u8 channels campaigns are having to work harder to perform but also on top of this as well we've got quite Stark changes in user Behavior gamers in particular are less sticky than they used to be developers having to find new and innovative ways to keep them engaged and to retain those users but equally along with this as well you've got the fact that people just are going to be looking at new opportunities and new methods of app installation so if you're previously Reliant upon your Tick Tock campaign or your snap campaign for example you can't just rely upon your traditional media mix with all this change it's brewed in Innovation and UA marketers really have to adapt and raise their game if they're gonna capitalize

so the skill set of a UA marketer is changing and it's changing quite uh starkly reasons for this really are our data and privacy-led we're seeing the significant first party data moves and UA managers who aren't on top of these changes really are going to be left behind you've got to navigate these new policy privacy Frameworks that are out there you've got to be on top of new entrants into the space but also UA marketers have got to become better forecasters as well without adapting you really are going to be an industry Relic and you're going to get left behind as a result of all these changes we're also seeing significant growth in the size of UA teams now I know there are varying degrees in terms of the size and shapes of games developers out there but by and large as an industry average UA teams used to average around about three in total and now we're seeing this increase to around about four people per team per developer which is adding headline costs to every

gaming studio that is out there unfortunately these challenges are only going to get tougher data and privacy they are the key watchwords here and it's these influences that are shaping the industry the most I'm going to call out a few Marquee events it All Began here in Europe with gdpr in 2016. we then had Google's introduction of the Privacy sandbox the US they're not ironically called our cold for once and introduced illustration by way of CCPA we then in 2021 had Apple announced ATT and of course those changes were introduced with iOS 14.5 and just to put the cherry on the cake Google then announced in early 2021 uh 2022 that it was bringing through um the Privacy sandbox onto Android as well and why is this so significant ultimately it's leading to the depreciation of third-party identifiers

and the growth and importance of first party data this is a familiar theme throughout this discussion the reality is if UA marketers are not on top of the importance of utilizing first party data you're really going to struggle for growth dual turbine often conducts surveys into the marketplace and we regularly speak with developers and ask their UA gaming Studios a series of questions and principally what we want to know is where are you investing your UA dollars quite surprisingly we've actually seen that the majority of gaming studios are continuing to invest in traditional channels be it web to app be it search be it ad Networks if developers don't start to diversify where they are placing their ad spend they're really going to struggle in an environment where depreciation is the norm

now are you too reliant upon your traditional u8 channels it's a known fact since the dawn of time that media dollars follow eyeballs and where are these eyeballs right now the eyeballs are on the hottest real estate in the advertising world your mobile phone what's really significant about maximizing the opportunities that your mobile phone presents in terms of acquiring and engaging new users is known exactly the type of user Behavior you want to attract in the Android ecosystem there's 2.5 billion live Android devices and of those 2.5 billion Android devices 13 of what we would call new devices now these are devices that are three months old or less and why is that really important well if

you can hit these new engaged users when they've booted up their device for the first time that's where you find your most valuable user ultimately when people make a big device purchase it's very considered it will often coincide with a major life event be it the acquisition of a new house you could be purchasing a new car you could be getting engaged or married or indeed you could have at the birth of a child so quite strongly there's a correlation between a significant life event and people making a big purchase like buying a new device and this is when users are most receptive to app discovery you might be looking for a new Finance still you might be looking for a new insurance deal you might be looking at a new streaming platform this is when the new user is most engaged when they first unbox their device so of course as a consequence of this they're more receptive to different methods of app discovery now when users are looking to acquire and find new apps for their purposes

they will still rely upon word of mouth and of course they'll still continue App Store search but increasingly what we're finding as is that users are more receptive to apps pre-loaded on mobile devices as I said they unbox a new device they spend a lot of money on their device it's when the user is going to be most engaged so it gives app developers and gaming Studios a unique opportunity to acquire a new user when that user again and I stress this is the most engaged and what's really telling is that our surveys suggest that new phone owners install up to three times as many apps as a regular phone user I.E a user that has held their device for around about 12 months or so and this really is important I'm going to give you an example please just allow this so if you look at someone like my mum she's in her early 70s she doesn't install apps she can

barely work the TV however a few weeks ago she acquired a Samsung a53 and pre-loaded on that Samsung a53 was a news app a weather app and a game my mom can now digest the news on the update news app which you can tell and predict what the weather's going to be on AccuWeather and she's on level 53 of Candy Crush which isn't bad for a 70 year old I don't think so what's really important there is that you are acquiring new users who ordinarily wouldn't have gone on to install and play your gaming title and this really where is where the power of app Discovery and pre-loaded apps come in feeding into this trend as well we can see that users are becoming increasingly agnostic or agnostic if you will in terms of what apps they're looking to seek out studies suggest that the average user

unlocks their device 250 times per day and equally users will open up their device 50 of the time without a known destination in mind so if you can not only acquire a new user on the first day that they unbox and set up their device but then also acquire a new user throughout the life cycle of their device you've got a very powerful solution like I said advertising dollars follow eyeballs and these eyeballs are on device so what kind of opportunities are there at the device level well they're multiple and they're varied headline digital turbine install apps on devices and in the main we've got two products we've got a product through which we acquire users on the first day that they unbox and activate their device through our Dynamic installs and our app widgets

and we also have opportunities to acquire new customers throughout the life cycle of device ownership through notifications by digital turbine have recently bought ad Conley fiber and the appreciate DSP in-house and we can now acquire users throughout the life cycle of device ownership digital turbine partner with carriers and oems across the globe in the US our largest partners are Verizon and atnt and in Europe our largest carrier partner is teleponica and we also have a global relationship with Samson as well we often liken the development of digital turbine to the Playbook adopted by the likes of Facebook or snap so first of all Facebook and snap they had to build an audience well digital turbine have done that because our technology is on 800 million devices globally and then just like Facebook and snap we had to then engage the audience and digital turbine does that through

our unique content Discovery platforms on our minus one screen where we serve things like Showbiz news sports results to keep the customer drawn in and engaged but then what's most important is how we monetize that audience that we've built and we can monetize them through very unique user acquisition Solutions which I'm going to come on to now the main product that we have is called Dynamic installs this is where we preload an app directly onto a newly activated Android device it's got some very powerful advantages number one it's 100 fraud free so our software is on the device it's a closed ecosystem there's no opportunity for uh stolen clicks or click injection number two there's zero saturation what do I mean by that well because our Tech is on the device we know exactly the type of apps that a user's got on their device so we would never duplicate an

app that's pre-loaded on a user's device number three it's completely frictionless we sit outside of the Google Play Store because we sit outside the Google Play Store when a user clicks on an app for the first time the user goes directly into the app experience there's no drop off there's no redirect to the Play Store you don't land at the Play Store and have the further click to install your app and you're not met with competitor apps that will take away your conversion and ultimately reduce your the efficiency of your campaigns but number four and probably most important is that we're future proofing ourselves in an environment where there's depreciation of third-party identifiers digital turbine are unique because we can pass back device identifiers to our advertising Partners so in a landscape where third party depreciation is taking place digital turbine can still offer unique attribution versus other channels

in the landscape this here is our app recommendation tool that we call app select essentially it's the same as our Dynamic install product but rather than just placing a pre-loaded app onto a user's device it's a little bit more targeted because users can choose which apps they want to install so the app widget or absolute product will kick into life as the user progresses through the setup of their device so they can choose to install Amazon or Netflix or a Starbucks app for example and once installed the app then sits on the home screen of that user's device but perhaps what's most exciting is the direction of travel there are very strong legislative Tower wins supporting alternative app stores why Android iOS they have the Monopoly now back in the days the carriers used to have a very strong presence in the App Store space they were the originals they

used to sell you ringtones does anyone remember the Crazy Frog they would sell you wallpapers but equally they would sell you Java based games Java based games aren't coming back anytime soon but alternative app stores are and they're here with a vengeance digital turbine is partnering first with US carriers to introduce our games Hub and essentially it's a folder that sits out of the Google Play environment and letter in the year will also be progressing onto IOS as well so essentially this games folder sits on a user's device for the life cycle of their device every time they go into the App Store they'll serve different game install recommendations but on top of that we also serve the user content editing content to keep the user coming back in to keep going into the games folder so they can install new apps and what's really exciting here is that because it's an alternative app store we can

also explore opportunities such as alternative billing this really is the direction of travel and digital turbine are very excited to bring it to Market so thank you for listening I hope you enjoyed the talk there just to summarize the landscape is changing dramatically UA marketers need to be on top of their game and need to understand the importance of first party data and I would encourage all of you out there to engage with your existing channels and your partners to make sure that you are on top of all these changes that are coming through thank you for your time if you have any questions please fire away any questions for Duncan yeah we've got a question at the back here I come with my make an easy one Annika Rai Style microphone and like show my age hi um thanks for that uh how do commissions differ with digital turbine so if it's a sort of a third-party platform the commission's the same as

still 30 on IAP it's a good question so it that's more of a a to be determined I mean the Google tax is quite significant right and I think that if we were to still share from the incumbents we'd have to make it very enticing but uh that that still is a TBD um but yeah it would be encouraging it is all I would say I've got a question um and it is what is the most exciting thing that's going to happen to mobile this year we've gone through a massive like drudge of just basic crap over the last few years of the same old same old so what's exciting and new as you see it for me personally I've been holding off from changing my device because I'm I'm actually waiting for a USBC port to be put into my phone so for me that's going to be the most exciting thing that's going to happen later in the year for me um but I don't think it's the technology behind phone so much I think different iterations of devices uh that they change slowly you might get a bit more data you might get a bit more power with a new chip but for me most exciting

thing in terms of gaming it's the you know the Advent of metaverse and everything that can be exploited on on the mobile phone as a result thank you very much Duncan thank you very much indeed please give it up for Duncan he didn't get a massive Round of Applause to start off with and now you should Rock [Music] [Applause]