Diversifying your Mobile Game UA with Influencer Marketing (real data included)

and then we'll uh you know look at the the performance analysis again looking at retention and you know the the the the conversion rates the average revenue day seven per user CPI and then start to look at the track data I'm not going to all in detail now track data pairing that uh to understand the Organics uh separately then looking at the Organics plus the tract and then against the the audiences so let's see what the correlations [Music] are this is a no gaming show where we talk about games and their revenue in great detail powered by our ad monetization game design and user acquisition Triple Threat expertise welcome to the two and a half Gamers the unfiltered truth served with a side of giggles

let's not forget this is a 400 a.m. conference discussion Vibe so let's not take it too seriously tune in now and stay two and a half steps ahead of the gaming industry cool I think now it's a good time and so yeah great well thanks everyone for joining us today today we'll be covering uh diversifying mobile gameway with influencer marketing um just a little bit about uh who we are so I'm Ed I set up media bodies around 12 years ago now uh always been in the influencer marketing space starting probably in YouTube you know these days you know Diversified into podcasts uh Tik Tok uh twitch Instagram some creative but today's to focus on the performance side uh in the past eight years really been focusing on mobile games as a as a whole as a business making up the vast majority of of the work that we do all the way back with

clients like Moon active when they were sort of a very small team and we still work with those guys today through to really you know clients around the world from NES to polarian and sort of everyone in between you know we've ran um you know hundreds of campaigns over 70 different mobile games that we've worked across uh this year very uh proud to say that we won the best marketing team at the PGC Awards in Gamescom which was super nice and unexpected and look hopefully today we can we Prov something that is useful for people joining us that allows them to see how influence marketing can be used as a tool uh and and as a service that generates sort of uh tracked scalable and profitable source of Roi and so that's me and I'll just let mat introduce himself yeah thanks Ed so my name is matate I've been in the industry for more than 10 years Consulting and my life I'm the connection is not stable okay good never

mind I'm back so um I worked with like 50 plus games soft launch and Global launch them uh with substantial budget uh and I'm actually I have my own creative team I still work with a few companies on the UA and creative side and then uh we started uh two and a half Gamers so I'm the host of the of the podcast and uh I also publish Weekly Newsletter which is called brutally honest I like the leading voice on the mobile game growth thanks for for putting it there H love it so we are here today to just talk UA influencers and all the all the fun stuff if I disappear Suddenly It's because like there are floods in in Slovakia that there's the weather is absolutely terrible like storms for five days but I will be back don't worry I will be back perfect okay so in today's session yeah here are the the topics that we'll be covering uh in the uh uh

on on the on the software you'll see that you can submit questions those questions will just go directly to us as the sort of Administrators and uh we'll get through those at the end but the the topics we're going to be covering are uh why alternative UA channels matter when is the right time to introduce influencer marketing to the UA mix does influencer marketing work for all types of games understanding different platforms is one influencer platform best for UA traditional UA versus influence marketing and the key differences influence and marketing misconceptions budget allocation and a diverse UA mix how much does I cost and exam examining data and examples from real influencer campaigns it's quite a lot but I'm sure we'll we'll get through it so the first question that we're sort of going to hopefully give you guys a a answer to Is Why is it important to include alternative UA channels in the market marketing mix and so you M from

your side you know when you you're from a background which a bit more sort of uh UA Focus out and out you know I guess we're of more influencer Focus so it be good to get your sort of thoughts on you know more s of classic UA channels and then I can touch on a little bit the influencer side yes uh so the thing is right now I mean right now it's been some time where we don't have only Facebook and Google as as the main UA channels as it was like a few years ago few years like five six seven years ago then idfa happened and all the fun stuff so now I've kind of trying to diversify or add the new channels even in soft loue uh when we soft Louch a game don't only run Facebook or Google just not to make any any decision based on only one channel because that's kind of not ideal I had this uh case where we ran Facebook only and then we almost killed the game and then suddenly when we added that

Google and then Unity we saw way better numbers and the performance improved and it so it wasn't really about the game it was about the channel so that kind of leads me to to another point if one channel stops working and you don't have enough uh backup channels then you are kind of well in a very bad situation and position and there I had this like idea of adding new channels and as soon as I hit like 1 million spend on a monthly basis but it's again like a long history uh I'm trying to do this like diversification as soon as I can so anything spending 20 30 40K per month hiding another Channel another source of traffic is always beneficial for diversifying and getting the different types of players on the different channels and you know like with the the main channels being still Facebook kind of to certain extent Google Apple and then Tik Tok until those four definitely

the the strongest ones but it's you know there hasn't been like a lot of innovation on the UA Channel mix in in the recent recent years so that there is definitely a need for diversification yeah no absolutely and I think with our clients um when we look at the wider marketing mix they aim to allocate somewhere between 15 and 20% of their budget to influence the spend we often recommend starting with YouTube as the sort of the tried and test tested uh method especially for mobile games it's something that um you know can be you know tracks but it's also important which we'll get into later to understand the organic side of it so you know just using your MMP and the links and you know in the link in the description but then also creating that model to get uh to get the data that you need to make confident decisions to sort of scale uh is you know is very uh you know valuable and with um you know YouTube you know as

well the the the size of the opportunity is is significant you know it's um there's a lot of different types of creators out there acoss a lot of different verticals it's about testing and iterating and ultimately um you know this is something that you know a lot of our clients all our clients clearly um are utilizing and and scaling and running it alongside as a as a monthly source of you know profitable UA YouTube these days you know it's no longer a you know as as you know perhaps Tik Tok is is taking its place and that younger audience you know YouTube audiences do have a lot of 35 plus there's a lot of people watching YouTube on their televisions now it's that older audience that we can tap into and often you know those guys come with really nice ltvs when executed uh correctly nice okay so but you you know started to jump in into this because when this is the the important question and you mentioned this 15 20% budget right

like some percentage of the budget goes to influencer like is there if I I mentioned like 40K per month like 20% it's not a lot of that yeah no so from our side you know when we sort of deciding the budgets we don't sort of use arbitrary um sort of figures what we look at is our clients key market so for example the US is often where people uh you know want to focus for obvious reasons of the of the TV of the players over there and so what we'll understand is the daily Organics in that market and once the daily Organics that the that the game has in that space then we can say okay enough to you know what do we need to spend based on the CPM of that vertical within uh that we're looking to Target in order to see that uplift and if we see as mat was saying at the outset that this is a you know a channel you know other channels might be flagging it could be it's not a strict 15 to 20% it could be

larger it could be smaller depends on the results we get everything is performance driven and not everything is it's not a one size fits all and so yes you know 20% of 40K isn't enough but if it's enough to see you know the data that we need to have the confidence to increase it to you know 20K of of the spend as long as it's profitable as long as we can stand behind the numbers that's that's what matters yeah because I kind of usually try to allocate like at least like 10 20K to like a proper test for influencers and a proper test meaning like you said like kind of the numbers I can evaluate properly and for 10 20K would be at least in my opinion kind of like okay or decent budget for testing purposes yeah I mean it depends so we talk about here you know when is the right time to introduce influen of marketing you know we've been bought on board throughout all stages of yeah it's

St launch you know we might not look at the us we might look at you know markets where the cpms and therefore cpis are lower so quite often we do our testing phase in in countries like Brazil uh where we okay understand the model of you know what's working you know what what you know content is working you know is the is the game monetizing it's all part of the uh the sort the soft launch strategy whereas we've worked with you know titles like um you Heyday for example client that we started working with uh and other sort of more you know games that have been in the space much deeper into their into their sort of um existance you know eight years you know perhaps the game may have been around and then they going to have a you know significantly higher um you know daily Organics and so we will we will have a different model in order to understand that um but yeah the the the you know the right time and the spend is there's there's a lot of variables and it's you know really tailored to each individual game and what the objectives

are um but you know always with the you know with the the premise to understand you know what's working and then iterate and then hopefully you know scale if all the metrics look good yeah I now work with one game which entered soft lounge and uh we are also kind of thinking about adding some influencer um campaigns when we figure out the the monetization and then just enter the monetization stage of the of the soft launch yeah precisely I think that's it I mean even with you know you know games can can improve their monetization you know almost you know consistently you see what's going on the squad CLS right now you know you can see the you the data on sensor to and so on and so you know it's um it's you know it can be uh reactive as well to actually you know we've launched a game that initial metrics were good but perhaps you know player attention is not what we thought it was yeah you know we need to go back of monetization isn't what it you know

what it appeared to be after you know the first three months of of all marketing channels being on and so we're going to sort of take a moment to pause we're GNA you know the the deps and so on going to look at that they're going to you know make those adjustments and then we'll start it back up again so it's not pressure on it and and again always going back to making sure that all the other things that need to be um you know aligned in terms of you know of players and retention are are where they need to be to be profitable yeah that makes sense um so work for all types of games so well not in my opinion I mean I'm doing it for eight years so in my uh experience uh very tricky with Hyper casual uh yeah you that's I guess that's a given uh you knowly super low ltvs I think the the lowest sort of ltvs that we might look at for a game where think you know uh as as a sort of a a

threshold where we where we feel would be that the lowest in order to get profitability LT in the US somewhere around three four dollars would be you know the the the minimum that a game would have to have and for us to confidently think okay this can work and this can scale there's other apps out there like Social Casino Social Casino is super interesting nice because you know it's a great it's a huge area you know there's some fantastic games out there but you know we're talking about YouTube here but I think what's been a real game changer in the past through a couple years is the the podcast space and so the the YouTube Community is a little bit and understandably very protective over their audience there's a bit of reluctance to promote social casino games even though it's not and out you know paid you know cash apps as it were uh you know paid casino apps uh and so you know that the opportunities to diversify the mix of channels and the and the the you know the the content verticals is is limited so what we found

is that you know podcasts is fantastic you know it's that older audience um you know very heavily 35 Plus and we can find you know much wider sort of profitable uh channels to scale through um and you know in terms of the track KCK which we could do on a whole separate webinar to be honest but it's all yeah but but it's again through the MMP and it's done through IP addresses and you know have your own dashboard super nice way of doing it so largely you know those are the two I would flag for like classic influence marketing on YouTube hper casual very tricky low low ltvs sort of uh is is tricky and then social you know you can but you know you're not gonna really going to get up to S of you know five figures consistently of um or or six figures rather consistently of um of yeah when when I run infl campaigns for one one game one cas game with

female audience mainly it was absolute flop but it was kind some kind some time ago so I and then I had like everybody had this idea of oh you know like this game needs to be you know watchable on on YouTube and PE people need to like you know want to watch like the like influencers talking about the game playing it playing the game but now when what you said with the podcast and kind of makes sense for the female audience which can promote the the Casual games quite heavily so would you agree this also kind of applies to the Tik Tok influencers and even maybe Instagram influencers or twitch for like every every genre there's a different types of the the influencer I would say platform I guess yeah I think with with podcasts where we seen you know um how and how the best sort of results are the games that have a a really good storytelling narrative I think that lends itself to the sort the mindset of a podcast

listener you know often podcasts are essentially human stories quite often and True Crime being a everybody loves True Crime podcasts anyway speak my dad is's telling me a new True Crime documentary round but uh he's watching but uh anyway that's a whole another thing but uh I think with different um different platforms I think Tik Tok you know I know several Studios who have worked with that I think that's it's good on a on a ugc basis uh and a completely sort of different tactic much more s creatively LED less black and white you know in terms of input and output you know we're work with these influencers it's less about the number of followers it's much more about the quality of the content you produce Instagram uh you know it can be okay i' would never consider it sort of a major Channel a little bit of a you know if you might want to bundle it into a YouTube deal but I try spit that out I think really the two

areas and we've tested them you know we've done Tik Tok campaigns with several clients with Instagram over the years really the the value in terms of you know hitting your Roi targets is um is you know YouTube podcast but then specific games uh you know really need to be tailored as to which is which channel to use Al I guess uh yeah different uh different platforms different objectives different run has different objectives as well as you mentioned before like the the main not problem but always kind of um discussion point was like okay well let's run influence marketing but how can we measure the ROI properly and everybody's like oh you know there are these T techniques we can we can try very similar to what we've done with TV ads as well but it's not always like super accurate but then idfa happened and nothing is accurate anymore so that's even better it's absolutely and I think you

have to you have to take you know a stand somewhere you know there there has to be you know some metrics that you do trust and I think ultimately the the the look of uh you know the classic way of what we do is you'll take what we call a comparison period so if we look at the US again sort of Market you know there's a period of time usually ideally two to three weeks where all marketing for that game remains stable you don't have to switch it off this don't increase it there's no featuring and so on so we understand okay you've got a baseline of a thousand daily Organics in the US and so in order to see that uplift we want to we want to hit you know 25% on top of that and then we'll work backwards uh in terms of um in terms of uh you know what we need to spend uh in order to to hit that based on the cpms of the verticals in the market the the the the measurement side you know because it's still looking at the the the data you'll get through the MMP we're still analyzing and and making

expirations based on the values of the players looking at the ltvs looking at the retention looking at the day seven revenues whichever one you want to to to sort of um align yourself to but really those are um let's go back to that slide a minute sorry um if if those are the uh they are the things that you know will stand behind and then we'll what we'll do is that will be the track data and so okay you know we can see the the track side and then proportionally allocate the organic side you know against the incremental uplift that was seen during the campaign period and we'll run those campaigns over a very concentrated window so ideally all the influences going live over a two-day period so that we can properly attribute that you know nothing else changed except for the campaign and this is um and this is therefore coming from that traffic and we can say with confidence that um you know those installs and that you know

that Revenue was associated with the with the influence campaign yeah as always this uh this approach to have the link in the show notes obviously not like what like 10% of the people actually click on the show notes everybody's just searching for for the name of of the game and everything and then I think I saw overall when we had the track installs there was like let's say thousand people but then re in reality it was like 4,000 people it's always like 3 to 4X more than than the actual track installs and then that kind of changes the whole equation quite nicely exactly and I think that's such a a classic um you know uh thing that happens with influence marketing that if you just focus on the on the tracks it's not going to be you know fa you know in terms of you performance but as you say we we usually as an industry it depends on the genre of at 3 to 6X but we won't just arbitrarily assign okay your game we're gonna multiply everything by four

it all goes that be nice I mean that was very simp very much simplifying the whole View at and then we'll be able to you know give a you know much more it's 3.2 you know apply that going forward uh because really the vast majority of the traffic of the performance is organic and that's why um it's so important to do that first test test uh not immediately just go in and and scale and okay first campaign super big it's like no you know let's start let's understand what the organic what the k factor is and then we'll build out and and iterate and get to that you know three months four months down the line we'll get to that phase where we are consistently spending at a a level that makes a difference to to your overall marketing spend and perform yeah are you uh do you have different uh Roi goals for info answerers let's say if if companies or

games see um they 180 profitability or like 180 payback period do you have the same or it does take a little bit longer so for influencers to kind of pay back it it varies from client to client really okay and how the game is monetized so you know certain games will you know they'll see the majority of their revenue in from their players in a in a shorter window so they model accordingly we let our clients do that side of the modeling because they and they know the data so we we get influences through the door and we get the data we do modeling on the attribution of the of the of the installs and um and then they'll look at the the revenue modeling based on their understanding of player Behavior yeah because uh we had this this case where we had uh the retention on Facebook for for one uh one game which was like 40% day one and then let's say 20 20% day

seven on Facebook we launch uh we launched influencer campaigns and day one retention was 70 I was like whoa I've never seen this before and then like day seven was like 35 or something so it was like super super super good but then eventually was this was I think one or two months long um long Campaign which was amazing then we we were kind of stuck uh of like finding the like the similar kind of influencers for for that game which would kind of fulfill the same uh same level of performance yeah no it's a good point so I think with the uh with the retention side yeah it's going to be it's a different platform with different kind of user overall U got some data somewhere I can share on sort the average value of a of a user coming through YouTube is is higher and I think that comes through you know uh the fact you're being recommended a product by a trusted voice you know they they're

telling you this is something you want to spend your time and money on and therefore you're sort of bought into the whole brand you know on a deeper level than just seeing sort of an ad on on meta or Google so it's uh it's a um yeah again you can't just take what the exact metrics you're getting from from Google or meta and saying it's GNA be the same for for of course you need to understand absolutely so this slide here um this is yeah this is just looking at uh you know just some very Topline uh you know metrics here there's going to be a a slide nxl we'll look at later on in the presentation but you know these these are some uh you know basic numbers around okay the the conversion rate overall so typically what we expect you know if it's a casual game you know on the first s of campaign we might be looking at s of 0.3 to 0.5 you know we

haven't optimized yet uh and then sort of the you know perhaps the the second um you know campaign looking at 0.5 0.8 and then 0.8 upwards you know ideally as sort of um as a really good performance uh this is sort of a a campaign which is sort of in its infancy um and I think sry to interrupt I think we need to mention here one thing because I was looking into the Excel sheet and uh these ladies or these YouTube channels these are not gaming channels it's you know lifestyle it's what like True Crime fashion history and something else because everybody is always like oh we need to run only gaming and gaming uh channels nothing else because that doesn't really work so it's like that this is really important I think you need to find the overlap between the like where the audience is Right absolutely I think out of all of the channels you know gaming

is one of the you know it's probably I don't know if it's in the sort of the top five in terms of content creators and in genres you know female games in particular that's that's more relevant to you know you look at True Crimes you look at uh home renovations you look at um you know you know Fashion Beauty all those sorts of things uh they are uh parenting you know they are all really relevant audiences and high performing audiences um you know the female side you know simulation games work well some cozy titles you know creators making cozy content um you know can work you know very well but absolutely you know it's the the the one I always think is is the is the diamond of it all is true crime is we saying earlier you there seems to be a huge uh correlation um and I think that's maybe because true cries long form content people best in games you know it's something they might do whilst listening to a or watching a true crime YouTube channel so it's a really good point and also like for people

listening all of these um different channels which are outside of gaming like you can use these these videos for like inspiration into your creatives because we had one game which was um a home renovation game very similar to ricor and we're talking talking about like okay what what actually Showcase in the in the creatives and then we were trying to find like different YouTube channels and found all these like parents were absolutely stressed out after like the whole day being with the with the kid and then like okay now they want to just relax and then you know like okay well let's play this game we kind of use this angle Absol like immediately the creative winner like the best creative of all and there was just like kind of idea outside of games found on the on the YouTube for like the overlapping of the like the audiences on the different channels as well outside of games absolutely and I think that that's what yeah again look at SL is is the creative optimization you know when

we're when we're doing the campaigns with the youtubeers so you talk about those moments that people can sort of consciously or subconsciously associate themselves with so when we're briefing those YouTubers if it's a casual title you know it might be that most casual titles are played in the evening relaxing for bed so the YouTuber will be in situ playing the game and it will sort of set those oh actually you know this is what I did before or actually this is what I could be doing and it's those little details that really are going to make the difference between you know a good and a sort of a great campaign yeah nice so best for uh yeah I'll let you start with that one M well I think it we kind of touched the this um really uh I'm always kind of um used to like YouTube influencers but you mentioned podcast and we had um the the great um episode with uh with you uh n on um vuga um uh anniversary and I

think we kind of touched also like that they around different podcasts and different like YouTube shows and everything else so again kind kind of comes back to the the actual genre of the game where the audience is and you know if we if we want run let's say PVP mobile or like or or shooter or whatever I guess H it's most I mean it's going to be on YouTube quite heavily but there will be and other channels that that can help quite well for like and like growth and I would say I would definitely add Tik Tok in that in that case into the into the mix podcast not really oh oh for you way I mean our biggest is um our biggest performance-based spending clients podcast now you know I won't mention the figures but it's um you know size B and you this this um this nice we've had over 12 uh new uh podcast

um campaigns for mobile games so you know so that 12 you know either existing clients or new clients testing it and you finding this working and continuing to spend so I think performance as I say the other side is you know twitch if you're a sort of a a crossplatform game uh you know you have a web side you know to the you know brownser version uh that is also very very nice with the the twitch side you can that makes sense yeah and the thing is with twitch on on the sort of the the structure of the the fees as well is slightly different so usually on on YouTube uh you know it's largely sort flat fees based on the CPM of the of the YouTubers you know against their average views or an out andout CPM deal whereas um you know on Twitch you can do uh you know a a minimum sort of guaranteed fee but then performance Targets on top and that's because uh the

you you can have the widget on screen it's live you can have a ticker it's you know it's much more um you know the tracking's more less of the organic side so yeah in terms of UA um and best platforms for for influencers I think yeah I'm not knocking Tik Tok I just think it's hard so it has its place 100% it's just everything we do we are sort of sticklers for being able to show our clients you know specific results against you know actual data whereas you might be able to see the um the organic side on on Tik Tok it's very hard to attribute it to one um yeah one one person yeah that's what I want to mention on Tik Tok especially thanks to kind of like stick still viral kind of uh growth on on Tik to you can you can get quite significant amount of views easily or well easier than than YouTube which kind of uh is a nice bump in

Organics I mean we have the the dualing case we have the uh dump V to Die case as well where they just don't run any UA and they just kind of focus on their own social posts on on Tik Tok which got them into quite a interesting ranks in the in the US US App Store and for free but still I mean is easier than the YouTube or Instagram or anything else but again it's very yeah Case by case I guess yeah I'd say so with the with the Tik to side yeah if you get it right on the creative it's just the um the unknown you know it's it's not as um black and white you know you think you might have amazing creative you can run you 30 40 pieces of creative and none of them you know do what D wased Ed or uh yeah and that that's where you know it depends on the client's brief if they just want to have stable consistent Thing YouTube podcast if they're wanting

to do a little bit sort of further outside the box take some like risks or have or do a bit more experiment experiment a little bit more then perhaps uh you know Tik Tok is something that's worth testing it's again it's something that we do um but not as an out andout performance side it's a bit closer to sort of the brand awareness kind of thing okay well there's a huge difference in traditional us influencer marketing and a huge difference being uh you know it's as we discussed like basically the the tracking is quite easier and uh and also there are self served platforms where you can just log in you go there uh you run you create a campaign you run it and then just connect it with uh with the MMP any attribution provider with influencer marketing that's not very easy thing right yeah I think yeah with the um with

the yeah I think it's it's clearly you very different you guys you know a little bit more always on as well you know influen of campaigns you do want to have them concentrated um you know over like a over a weekend typically on a monthly basis uh you know on the podcast side of things very different again you know the type of media you have the host red ad which is um you know the host obviously of the show in the ad uh you can have that baked in so it sits within that episode sort of indefinitely uh or you can buy it dynamically you can buy it programmatically uh and typically minimum flight time is sort of or campaign length is as a minimum would be two weeks okay more relying on the on the track data and the modeling in a in a slightly different way and so um yeah from yeah from traditional UA as you say very very different but um you know as long as it's clear post campaign that what came from traditional UA and what

came from influencer that's that's the sort of Crux of it really as I always say I mean influence marketing is a great Channel but I I wouldn't run it as a like the Standalone UA pillar I would always combine it with any other like UA channels because that's like it's good addition to to the U Channel mix that's I how I would kind of characterize the the difference between the the house I agree yeah there not many of our clients solely do influence marketing you know yeah as you say 15 20% is is a is a broad um sort of O overview of an average uh and it sits alongside um and it takes a while you know to get there but ultimately um you know when it's up and running you know I think you any given month we're doing 30 to 40 different uh Mobile gaming campaigns um and it sits alongside with doesn't um doesn't take the line share

unfortunately yeah also the the nice thing about YouTube videos and and everything it kind of sits there for from the the moment that it's it's kind of released and I see it on on our YouTube channel people are coming back to different videos from the past so you are kind of like getting additional inst it's obviously it's not is exactly the same as when the the video is released but it's still it's still there it kind of point points in uh to your uh store and it's still like kind of also a nice brand awareness after after the video is is out there yeah and then there's another point on that really we talk about soft launches and you know and game and then and then Global launches actually in in particular you know when you're building uh you know your community of players you know they'll want to have a resource online so the second you know the second most used search box in the world after Google is YouTube and so they're looking to find out you know reviews about your game

they're looking for walkthroughs they're looking for tips all of those sorts of things you know the byproducts is you know also you know seeing that there's this existing community of influencers it's very searchable you could look at you know as a as a different way to use YouTube on on those global launches creating with um you know high quality but Micro creators dedicated content to do those you know you to control that narrative so you say actually uh you know this is the the new uh live op coming up and you done this partnership with you know SpongeBob square B or a big IP and and it's a really good place to sort of build that side which has a a less measurable effect on on the retention also going forward so there's definitely you know byproducts to to the benefit and then of course you can license the content to UA um yeah yeah which which is a you know we seing clients spend you know tons on on sort of very you know nice looking

you know ads but actually it was the it was the YouTuber who um and they creative that you know when they turn it to UA performs Super nicely and uh we like all with the budgets uh that I the approach I usually have uh is you have certain budget for a year right but the companies what companies do they try to have like every month either like increase until the end of the year are just like very flat like we are going to spend every month like 1 million doesn't really work in reality it's always like seasonal stuff you want to spend a lot like in the First q1 on UA then Q2 as well then Q3 and Q4 it's more like I would say remarketing rather than just pure UA so it's always kind of interesting approach for like for budgeting reasons and then I also kind of don't really test a lot

of new channels in Q4 around uh Christmas because I mean the UA it's always tough but on the other hand as you said like kind of liveops situation where where I then have a group of influencers uh actually talking about new updates and then pointing to like this like new new event new um special offer season where I have like every week new special offer which can be quite quite powerful yeah I think the the the appropriate budget is um depending on yeah yeah time of year as you say you know Christmas time you're competing with a lot of DTC Brands is is one thing and so you know cpms might be a small premium at that time um you know there's you know we often see uh if you're um a mom and uh you know in the femal OR Le channels you know quite often if it's a um school holidays you know the you know

the performance might be affected there um and so there's there's definitely um you know insights to be had around timing and when best to to to allocate budget and it's always great you know if there is a big live upcoming that's also provides you know another incentive for someone to download the game you know participate get you know build that um you know that that familiarity through the game through that live Bo so it's uh you know as always on as it can be but it does change you know some of our clients are flat some of them might say you know we're going to run it you four times a year could got four okays or key events it really depends on you know their internal decisions but also you know little bits of insight that we might might be able to provide to help steer that as well yeah I see the the budget and uh and stuff for the the definitely if you go back to on that slide uh check the QR code that's very

very interesting insights that are there which one not the Q the QR code on the on the right hand side so how how everything is calculated for influence marketing there's the the nice sheet oh yeah absolutely yeah any resources that people um wish to receive afterwards we will um be more than happy to share those and and and talk separately with anyone sort of in depth around you know how the modeling uh sort of works or how the what data we're looking at and so on but um yeah it's uh it's all it's yeah it's all it's all there yeah how do you even how do you even look at all these all these data points after after running the the actual campaign because we uh there is definitely a case study uh and Sheet after afterwards that we can we can look into because that is important for like the ROI um evaluation and that's what we all are eager to eager to see yeah I'm just going to

share my screen actually here uh can you see that now absolutely yes perfect great so just on here this is sort of a a campaign sheet that we would send typically to our clients just to quickly run through you know this um you know got the name of the influencers yeah obviously you know the channels that where they're based the content vertical and content vertical which is important because lifestyle is very broad um you know even you know off per can be farming and so on and then also past collaborations is important as um so using tools like tubular and so on that you know we can see okay pre-campaign you know we we as a company work with around 300 creators on YouTube every month uh on behalf of mobile games and a significant amount on podcast also but we might you know in the and you know what's also good is to further validate you know the performance of a channel so

we could see actually this channel has worked with another casual game which is deemed a competitor of of our clients and that and they have been booked multiple times by that brand by that game you know the the chances are that you know that they've gotten good results from that influencer and you know that's another indicator that they should have a a good chance of sort of high performance we also look at the day seven average views because you know most of the performance is is coming from the first seven days we'll be focusing more on those average views as opposed to just overall average views cpms you know again day seven cpms rather than overall cpms they'll vary you know significantly obviously depending on the market then you know the genre Tech channels very expensive you know the more the younger channels less you know less less less so um and then we'll have you know the audience break down you know the the the share you know this is largely us

and English speaking uh and then there just the the breakdown for gender uh split into um different age brackets y then the and then the other fun part is always you know with influencers you can have everything signed uh but doesn't really mean that much right I get interested for no reason like two hours before which a lot of my team uh you know I spend their their evenings you around a campaign launch you know you know chasing up people over whether it's in the US or wherever it may be so us as 70% of the influencers we work with are us-based sort of 20% s of you know Europe and 10% markets like Japan and Brazil um and then we'll uh you know look at the the performance analysis again looking at retention and you know the the the the conversion rates the average revenue day seven per user

CPI and then start to look at the track data I'm not going to get all in detail now with track data pairing that uh to understand the Organics uh separately then looking at the Organics plus the tract and then against the the audiences the infuences so you see what the correlations are uh and then finally you know doing our sort of content creative analysis so you know real little details but important details around you know what was the what was the game play that was used was it self-generated something themselves was it something supplied were the assets supplied by the client um you know also you know contractually we ask each influencer to play our clients games for a minimum of an hour so they can talk about it organically all these sorts of things you know ultimately come to allow us to then present where do we want to you know um provide uh you know recommendations for for future campaigns

uh again everything from from the from the data side is where is where we um build our our optimizations nice uh you you showed there like the the ad or you the game was shown in first 10% or first 25% of the video is that important for the the performance or doesn't really matter that much it's hugely important and so yeah I think that's one of the biggest optimizations that are are needed so and it's you know it's a classic because if you've got if you know we you know we've managed YouTubers and so on and you can look at their retention rate of Their audience yeah oh yeah if you're half you know you're halfway into a video you probably lost 30 40% of what you're paying for yeah that's true and so yeah you really want to stick at the beginning and then there's other details I mean you know when we look at working with big big creators in particular um you know you look at someone like Mr Beast who's obviously the bit controversial these days

but little bit but you know you can see a lot of um you know his Integrations he'll talk about the game you know he'll turn back and do something about the the the challenge happening in his video then he'll talk about the game that's like interrupted you know we would never want that and you'll see on his on his um on his on his uh on his channel this sponsorships quite often that's what happens and they're really um but you know what we do is really sort of very adamant that it has to be consistent dedicated 60 seconds as a minimum for our game so that they really get the opportunity to engage the the audience about um about the the the game so yeah and when I look at into our YouTube channel of Two and a Half Gamers I see that the retention for the the well listeners Watchers fans Subs subscribers everything and the end like half of the video it's always or like maybe like 75%

that's like that's the light last kind of resort for any AD shown in in any of the episodes that I would kind of consider yeah almost nobody's there anymore absolutely and if an influencers you know if you think wow this influencer is really great and it's such a good fit but they're just being so adamant that it has to be halfway then you just have to get you have to get a very good CDM for it they just have to accept that otherwise the performance isn't there so you can trade it off if if there's someone that says look all of our Integrations are Midway then okay then we're paying you $15 instead of $35 C so on yeah also do you think uh or do you see the the game play kind of makes difference as well like what kind of gam playay they use yeah absolutely so you know you look at um you know if you look at like a a uh match three for example if you're look at match three it's those winning moments that are really nice to

have and important to have so that the the influencer you know completes a level they've always been stuck on or or oh yeah or something similar to that where they sort of show the joy and it's very sort of emotive that they've achieved this you know this in-game moment something that resonates and so that's a really you know little you know small insight there there's other games that are but you know you know how we like how we works with with creatives these days like you need always need to fail you fail you fail and then they didn't ask the the audience like can you do better so you know exactly but and other games might you know you look at some well-known RPGs and they've got super nice Graphics so you might want to focus on Graphics you might want to focus on Hero Collection if that's a big you know thing for the brief should really you know have a little bit of um you know iteration depending on the vertical so you know if you're working you you know on a more male focused sort of RPG title or or whatever it may be and you're

working you know you're looking you're working with gaming influences maybe they League of Legends Channel as as an example League of Legends has lots of Champions it's one of the reasons people play it you might want to um you might want to sort of focus on the champion the collecting side really again something that we would work on with the game to understand what they might have seen in their UA ads as as as working so if it's that failure thing that you mentioned that could be a a nice narrative to have but uh yeah I think it's uh yeah stop rambling some a little bit long no no don't worry I'm just looking into into questions because we have three questions and I think they are quite uh quite interesting second uh I was I think two connected influences one is CPI testing so at uh when when we work with influencers we usually also include a buyout for a certain number of days is it possible to use audio content podcast

in UA ad campaigns like how would that work yeah so what we always recommend there is to do that post campaign so if we've got a campaign going live and there's you know 10 different influences in that campaign we don't contractually have that um that we want to license the UA uh the the content for UA purposes up front because it may be a case that post campaign actually we want use three or four of them so you could possibly end up uh paying for things that you don't need and a small premium on top often also post campaign you know the relationship between the brand and and the influencer is is stronger because they've been paid and and uh and they are you know they've had a chance to you know see the campaign go live so the influencer might actually just give it to you for free and so it's something that um very easy to to sort of um ensure that we get those uh those assets to be used by our clients and you know be used for six months deals 12 month

deals but typically we'll get them for either free or somewhere around 10 to 20% on top of the um or the associated fee okay nice yeah I kind of mean not um directly to podcast ads but I try to get the UA well the videos from influencers to use them in the UA as well because it's always always kind of works um then yeah I mean if you want to add something to that no I think we okay there is another question regarding uh like what about timing what time of the day week year do you recommend I guess to run influencers and also if there is a if you prefer running shorter or more intense uh videos or longer videos or like what's the the duration should be sure so in terms of timing um you most influencers have like an upload schedule you can't always stick to that

so we always recommend campaigns over the weekend and so we see best performance on a Saturday as an example Sunday is also very good so we'll tend to run a campaign if it's a two- day if it's a 3day We'll add the Friday so Friday days of concentrated campaign on a monthly basis is typically what we do and then we'll have it on the um the same sort of you know the third weekend of every month as an example and then going back you know if we've if we've done all the leg work we found an influencer and for whatever reason they couldn't make that they drop out of the last minute that they say we still would love to do it we know that we just say something okay you know we can we can fit you in sort of next month with regards to the length of the content you know anything sort of under five minutes is is not something you know YouTuber making you know five minutes or shorter videos is something we tend to avoid mainly because if you've got 60c ad you sort of dominating that content the play

the the people watching that content you know they're not sort of um yeah they're not often the sort of the high value users um and then no real sort of um no real sort of uh limit to the length of the content so you know when we true Prime influencers you know their videos like an hour long and so you know we'll still stick that 60 seconds in the first sort of couple of minutes and that that will do um you know that will do the job it's just the shorter content we try to avoid but also like uh I think well at least the question from my end would be 60c ad versus two minute ad 30 seconds five minutes in that hour long content yeah so I mean honestly that so it's the same with with podcast so we we've looked at all of these data points and and you know gone into sort of to the the correct ve podcast is slightly shorter 45 seconds is is okay is the

optimum amount of time for for performance YouTube uh 60 is a little bit more visual a little bit more to get through so 60 seconds even you know with regards to if it's an hour long uh that's that's not a factor that should the integration okay yeah nice yeah that's that's interesting thing and then we have uh the last question here so we are testing a tycoon game with the publisher for Creative assets mainly in the US uh yet testing in India for trial CPI so we plan to use the lowest CPI creatives in the US market should we explore other markets for testing if so where else can we effectively test them so I think that's for me in terms of the CPI testing I and and the creative tests I try to have both India or us or well both at the same time and and try to see if I can get the

creative winner or the same creative winner in India and us because not every time the same creative winner kind of resonate with uh India or or us but if I do in the ab test and I see India uh is giving me the same creative winner then I test the creatives in India only because then it's quite cheaper and you get the answers uh answers quickly and then you can uh kind of um offload these creative winners into the business as usual campaigns as well so this is a good approach but I wouldn't really go in any other countries I sometimes I use Brazil but usually India is the way to go depends on the runner obviously but yeah this should do the trick I think that's it nice I think yeah that's that's it thanks uh everybody for coming thanks that for for having me as well pleasure yeah thank you for everyone for joining it was hope it was useful and um

you know I'm on LinkedIn you can find me just uh Edward Fuller on media bodies is the business and so if there's anything you want to chat about separately I am always uh ke to to chat so thanks again and thank you for your time I say thank you very much Cheers Cheers byebye [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]