Fireside Chat: Learnings & Best Strategies for Unlocking Revenue Potential via In-Play Ads.

[Music] [Applause] [Music] now we've got um a longer session for you now we have a a fireside chat I think with two speakers because uh uh Chloe from adverti and Otto from fingersoft who are going to talk about uh learnings and best strategies for unlocking Revenue potential via Inplay ads so please come to the stage uh you've got your clock there you've got you haven't got clicker that this time I suppose uh I guess we don't a very literal fireside chat so please enjoy the please enjoy the flames and we'll take some questions at the end maybe hey so thank you um I'll start so I'm Chloe

um from a um the sponsor of the monetizer session um so Avery is the leading in-game monetization platform what we do is we work with a lot of our top Studios like fingersoft uh to monetize their players in a non intrusive way and I'll let think um Oto to introduce himself and then we will take it from there so here you go yes thank you my name is Otto I work for fingersoft uh I've been working at fingersoft for 7 and a half years now that's a quite long period and uh I started as a software engineer and then after a lot of different like turns I ended up working with the at Network sdks and got an opportunity to jump on the business side in in 2019 I was doing alone at kind of like managing alone our ad monetization operations and uh was able to start build a team around and then for formed

an admon team and beginning of this year uh we formed this uh team called game economy team which consist also the IAP monetization and uh uh which the IAP side of things are doing pretty much the same things uh what you heard in the previous uh talk which was very good good introduction to that but uh now now running kind of like the whole whole monetization operations uh teams and yeah I think that's the introduction such an amazing journey he yeah we' we're both in gaming for like 10 years yeah so we've known each other for a long time and we literally want to just made this session like you know like two close friends having a chat and hope you guys are going to enjoy it uh so we're going to uh dive into Inplay which is the new is format uh a little bit more and so we we as a

company we were founded in 2016 and then there's a few other companies uh doing the same format and then there's also other new is formats like AIO Etc and uh there we've been like competing with traditional uh formats for a few years now and then it's picking up uh since the end of last year so this session is to um basically find out your EXP experience about this format any pros and cons challenges and recommendations so I will start the first question so can you start um like telling us what's your overall monetization strategy for your games at fingersoft yeah so fingersoft uh we are having uh first of all uh Hill clim bracing and Hill Climb bracing 2 and and then boom cards are are current like live live games and the monetization strategy is the hybrid hybrid model so

we monetize with iaps and advertisement and that's kind of like if you would ask the overall split uh it's kind of like 50/50 so we are a little bit and that's like different it's it's that that's not very usual of course there are like differences within the titles and within GEOS and so on and and since like uh Hill bracing the original one was released in 2012 and uh we already then started with banner ads and uh we we've been using banner ads ever since in Hill CR bing one and also rewarded videos and uh then we actually introduced intertial ads in Hill comping 2 and then started using them also in HC comping one like 2020 I guess quite quite late in in Journey of like old game and that was like a quite successful story and also we've been uh then on on Boom Card side and also Hing one uh been using the rewarded indal

format and now kind of like the latest is the in-game in-game advertisement uh in boom cards which is like the 3D game uh so that makes makes sense but we have already kind of like this Banner background which is the has the similarities a little bit Yeah it it definitely is um I always just say ingame ads are basically banner ads but they're in your game SC so they can be uh better designed in your game things which can make it like less uh non intrusive well less intrusive um so in terms of ingame in playay ads when did you start using it and then why was it CU you started quite early you know compared to other gaming Studios and who gave you the ideas it might have been you no uh yeah we started last year I I think like year and a half ago uh we kind of like in in a racing game we we

have been doing for example in boom cards there are fake ads around kind of when you have a racing track so it kind of like fits into the scene that there are advertisements around them and we have like H in Hil braing to having like uh fake advertisements over there and now we are building kind of like a complete lore around the kind of like uh imaginate kind of like fake brands and whatnot but they are there and we were thinking that it's quite obvious to have like if you have a 3D racetrack why wouldn't you replace those fake ads with with like real ones with monetizing ads so it was like a perfect fit in in that sense that's good to hear yeah that's usually well I'm still you know a salesperson that's my one of my sales pitches as well like hey you've got a racing title there's already build wordss in your games already why don't you just Swap and then we can show real ads so for developers um they can for

players they can see they might see Coca-Cola ads and then they on TV and then they see the exact same ad in the games that they're playing which is quite cool uh for Brands to drive their awareness yeah so so you mentioned about like swapping the Billboards with real ads right uh can you tell the audience like how long did it take you guys to finish the integration was it a hustle because there's no mediation as we know yeah it it's uh kind of like I would say that it's still on the way so it it's not ready kind of like you could optimize the placements but the I feel like the overall implementation it's it's like one to two days like you you are just adding the ads to the unity scene for example if if your game is made by unity and and uh then what what comes like after that is the like Q QA we've been having like good good like

help with the QA also like how it should be done and how the gun like the viewability and and that kind of things we takes like a more time to test different placements to start thinking about like where you actually place an ad so that it gets most view time the viewability of an ad if you place it like next to a like Racetrack and you're driving fast by it you are not going to uh record an impression so thinking about the play ments uh that so that you are driving towards them long enough so that the ad will get enough exposal time uh to record an impression from that so that has been like the kind of like a longer uh development and learning process other than just like well throwing in the SDK and and creating a plane that's something I even can do still even though I haven't been in the development in five years yeah that's usually why it says well because I I definitely know how to

create a placement um with the a t SDK so I can I can do it in five minutes but it's the optimization after that it takes a lot of work and you mention viewability which is very interesting because um in play ads we are are for Branding ads um most likely still like until today because majority of them don't have clicks and we sell by PMS so we don't really get interest from performance advertisers so viability is some Metric that we are really looking into uh right now when we speak to uh Publishers like fingersoft like hey maybe we need to abandon some placements which are not making money because of viewability so I think that's a very interesting point and a follow-up question how long did it take you to

make you feel like okay that's it optimization done as I said it's not done so we are still still working on it and kind of like learning and our approach has been like since the beginning has been the learning getting the learnings from this we we didn't have that like high Revenue expectations or that but we I think we saw that uh this is like the uh upcoming like uh not a trend but kind of like new format which will be there and what I've heard it it will be it will stay so we wanted to get the learnings as early as possible and that's kind of like we would we wanted to invest on that so we still still experimenting and and changing the placements and kind of like the placements in inside inside scenes to get the most out of it so it's not ready yet I know I know you know we are we are growing this space together um with all the public fers and all the

providers as well um you mentioned um getting in there early um so my question would be it do you think that's one of the benefits for uh developers because you said Revenue probably isn't you know the the main kpi for for this format yet yeah I think it it's like with with the formats that uh are coming up like trying out and seeing how to work with them because obviously we are and and how seeing the strategy how we build our new new titles is that they will be in 3D so and of like trying out those formats that are fit for that type of game so definitely makes sense sounds good yeah cuz you Shar the new title I don't know if I'm I'm supposed to share that but the new title with the Big Brand yeah it is but yeah yeah yeah that's that's announced I didn't mention the I mentioned the live games but we are uh we have announced the beginning

of this year that we are uh developing Lego Hill Clum Adventures game so that's kind of like already branded game and uh one one thing with the in game advertisement is to work with Brands and kind of like uh adding adding brand advertisement inside a game so that's kind of like a lot of things happening around brand and that's like one project that is is like well branded in a sense even though it's a collaboration nothing brand brand itself yeah it's very good to see all kinds of in uh collaborations between games and Brands cuz uh like myself I've been in the space for for 10 years in Mobile gaming specifically and like the the there was so many years that we were trying to speak to Brands like Mobile gaming isn't dirty so you know at least speak to us um but now probably since last year is definitely

getting their brand advertisers especially for us for service providers we feel like they are so much more ready to even just understand gaming and then the audiences behind games as well so that's really good to know for us right um so I'm going to dive in a little bit you know about the performance so feel free to be transparent I I try to as much as I can um so we know there's a few providers in the space and we also know that you've tested a few um any thoughts on that anything integration or performance wise yeah I I can be transparent on that because you can find it from our internet that we are working with B stack and and adver currently and uh the integration well I don't know if there's a big difference in because the

technology in a sense is the same but there are like differences like a little bit on on the QA and and kind of like how the viewability is defined and that kind of things and with both we have gotten like quite good support on that like in the development phase that uh how this should be implemented so and and we would have wanted to try like all of them but since there is no mediation and we should have built some kind of a logic around that that how how they add are shown or so we have like stayed in this like two two providers and uh well hopefully in the future we get to like explore the field more on on on different providers but uh so far it's been good like for the learning purposes also have two not only one so that we can like come up with different thing Solutions and and maybe maybe also like well you could like if you want to go further a little bit uh making like manual uh mediation kind of set up that

if there's no field from one you can like go to the next one or uh you can like prioritize actually we did that kind of mediation like 10 years ago when when we started working with the ads we had our own solution which was kind of like on the server side like that so it's it's not that far away either yeah um I think definitely a lot of people are talking about this mediation for in-game ads um cuz is for some studios the resource is so tight and then they probably want to try it but they either don't have the resources or they're not sure about the results but with the mediation it's it's kind of guarantee you know the field rate is going to be higher Etc yeah um if anyone has any you know suggestions of mediation for this for I'm really I'm happy to talk about it after the session as well um what about the performance cuz for some students were thinking about to try this

format they are thinking about the revenue goal right like incre well I mean for us we always say incremental we use the word a lot but how much incremental that's actually what it is for us incremental for like our IAP and kind of like this traditional uh video ad formats uh so I would say that that's whatever kind of like the idea was that whatever comes there it's it's it it doesn't have a minus sign uh if it it wouldn't affect on retention and it didn't so so everything is on a plus sign and and taking into account the learning so that's good to know yeah cuz retention you just mentioned is actually one of the most uh hurt push backs uh for me and for the team as well they'll be like yeah but the Billboards are in the games worry about my uh retention um don't want to upset the players Etc so it's really good to hear from a publisher really wellknown gaming studio

mentioned the ret you you don't see difference in reten and if you make a comparison that which one would you take would you take like intrusive video ad or like five Billboards over there which don't interfere at all so I don't know I would be happy to take the Billboards that's well that's mus it in my ears um okay that's well okay the next question would be in in terms of performance um and you mentioned optim optimization as well what have you done um other than just viewability do is there do do you increase the numbers of the Billboards or decrease or you try different sizes like what have you done yeah kind of introducing uh more more of those like those Billboards which which are working and then what we noticed that we we didn't have much experience when we started exper experimenting this and we

just like added somewhere which like felt that that's placement is natural but then we started adding like okay now we start to like optimizing this so where would we put it and and it's like on on a on a start line when you have this like traffic lights behind them can be an advertisement because that gets the most exposure and then we had those like longer Banner rolls uh next to track we didn't make much sense because they are going so fast that you are not going to record an impression so instead of using those uh changing them in the billboard or kind of like something balloon on the on the sky or whatnot so that uh they will get like more time in a camera so that the impression will be recorded so that kind of like optimizations and also what uh was for us very important that even though they are like uh like immersive in in sense that they are belong to the racetrack

and we wanted to make them fit into the scenes that we started with those scenes which look like they could have like those real world ads and and then started like think thinking that uh maybe maybe we start doing kind of like frames and things with using the assets uh which are already there so that we could like introduce these kind of like ad placements and and and doing like more work from the from the uh stage design or level design perspective yeah I think it's a very interesting process for us as a service providers as well because there's so much brainstorming that we can have uh like you said like balloons and we even have seen like drones and racing titles as well because racing titles is you know viability for this format is probably a challenge and especially when we talk to agencies directly they want to see high or higher viewability so

what what we've been playing with is either balloons or the drones and then with the billboard underneath and then that can actually follow the player follow the camera so and then you can like configure that to be there for like 5 Seconds yeah so that's just one way and I really really love uh the brainstorm session with Studios like you guys um they're just different experience and then uh you know one of the best ones I have to say on stage thank you cool and that's the performance part uh and I would like to dive in um the challenges so what's the biggest challenge for you as a developer I think one of which where like in the the beginning when we started is the challenge is how how we fit Those ads

inside this scene because uh let's say boom card is having quite cartoonish uh colorful scenes and then bringing in there like some tooth pasted ad was like uh ah we don't want to do that and it was like uh we we had to have some kind of like solution for this and we we got the solution uh that was that was bit bit stack and and why why we started working with them was that we could like hand pick those uh ads which we want to we we are showing so we were very careful on like we oh we we weren't actually careful but we were worried that what will be there will be there like a real world humans uh kind of like characters or what that doesn't fit in the cartoonist environment and that kind of things but then when we were accepting Those ads for a couple of months we noticed that well it's not that bad we are still accepting everything because uh they were like let's try this

and this could be okay and and it usually was and uh but what what was the problem with them and usually overall in in in-game advertisement is that you can see In Those ads that they are not designed for the game environment so that's that's I think one of the biggest challenges for us with the kind of like those ad creatives that you immediately see that this ad would work uh would be fine on on a web page but not not in a 3D scene and that was something that should we actually like cancel this ad take this away because it's just like well it's it's having like small text which is rendered there and when you're driving a cting game it doesn't make any sense no one doesn't stop reading any text so that's kind of like maybe maybe the biggest feedback for the for you and kind of like providers that are telling the advertisers where the ad is going to

be shown and and making them understand that you might have to be like think the creative little bit different when there's like a big uh logo or whatnot so that's easy like that's that's looking very good in in 3D environment it can be pretty much whatever brand but then when you add a text on like under the logo so it goes like Blurry and and it doesn't look very good so that's that's one of the biggest challenges for us has been like we we would like to have like qu high quality ads so that's but I heard you I heard you it is the actant yeah we we get that that from from you know our Publishers um and this is actually uh I feel like it's a it's a industry challenge uh for gaming actually um you know those like bannner is at the bottom of the game right 320 by 50 and 10 years ago advertise literally they don't want to make another set of creatives they

literally just use the web one in in games and then you couldn't even read it because the phone screens were a lot smaller 10 years ago right uh and then it trusts the service provider we speak to advertisers every day do another set creatives please uh yeah so for me on my side I actually see Improvement especially for direct deals there are better you know there's Improvement on the programmatic demand um especially for bigger Brands they actually they because they they've hired more people from the mobile um uh space so like for example Amazon Disney I've seen a lot of good creatives from them when they buy programmatic uh inventory still a long way to go I would say but it's getting better but yeah we heard you and then we are doing everything everything we can to make it better and another thing to add here for

games like you know but to not like more cartoony one thing uh Studios can do is apply shaders yeah that's something that we were also thinking that how much we can actually modify the advertisement because that's like is it is it okay if we add something on top of it or kind of like alternate the creative that feels like okay maybe and also you should know what kind of ad is coming before you add something on top of it so yeah yeah wow you can start from 10% yeah I I would I would say no more than 30% because from advertisers point of view they don't want their ad content to be too dark you know not readable but a little bit you know shaded is it's fine cuz it have to fit in your game S as well yeah yeah it do doesn't look very good if it pops up like in in a

wrong way yeah and some ad content can be really bright yeah yeah so yeah do it we can run a AP test yeah we should def cool and the next question would be like you know if in challenges Etc and then for example like the ad content isn't something you know like you or me can control but for challenges that you can control on your s do you have any advice to share with Studios that you know maybe are thinking to test this format I would say first of all think about the in-game advertisement that it's it's quite uh centralized in some countries so that uh there are like it depends on the network of course but uh what we've noticed is that uh well if you're big in like India or Indonesia so that's not much Demand yet o over there

which we are for example with Hill clim bracing but um uh that's that's one thing and and also like uh think it as an incremental Revenue Source it's it's not a gold mine yet I can tell but uh it definitely can do with with the good placements and good deals and also how I would like to think about it as I said already that uh think about it like bringing the brands into game so how would you like to show those brands in a game so uh if if you are able to like uh pick those ads and and start kind of like carefully and and then if if it works go going towards the like the programmatic that you are not controlling so they could be like different placements also that there could be placements where it doesn't matter that much uh is it like well is there like a car or is there like a toothpaste and and then there could be like these premium placements where you uh Define that okay this should have

like high quality logos and and Brands where you can show them like a longer period of time so uh also thinking about the value also what it might bring to to the to your product in in a sense that uh they might be brands that make the value higher also like okay they can be seen here so users feel like okay this this might be something premium yeah there's definitely different ways that you can do um during monetization uh sorry up ization uh for example like different AB testing and um we usually see success of Revenue scale up with Publishers who basically speak to us on a weekly basis so it takes you know both to tangle and I would definitely recommend that as well if you're going to test the the format give it a bit longer testing time because we've heard some AV testing time like like for week and I think that's

too short for the for you to see the results and then get the actual results and to compare to make a decision um and based on that what if you can start the process again what would you do differently one thing I would like to add first for that I said that it's not a gold mine it meaning that if you have a new product like you're soft launching something so the ingame add it is not going to make the numbers better you need audiences for that it's like a banner ad in a sense that Banner add needs like a big volume so that's that's something also to understand that maybe adding them the adds to uh the title that already has a bigger audience not like start to like small and saying that okay this is bringing me two cents and it's like yeah it's not working obviously it's not working if you think about the advertiser why would someone like hey I would like to show this my my brand at to five people so 500 people so

it doesn't make any sense if I would be an Advertiser like uh selling Hill clim Racing brand so I would like to buy make a deal for 500 five million impressions then I the money would start moving not not with like a very small number so kind of like taking that into account when When developing the game that hey this this at some point when this takes off this could have in-game advertisements in some areas for example uh when when you have like audience that is big enough so it's it's not going to save a small game that it's that kind of like the thinking behind this that also the game development the game developers should think like an Advertiser so that what uh from which place you would buy uh an advertisement placement if you would be the one who on the money pile that's well thank you for that yeah

I I I really like the the openness you know the the open mindset and one thing you mention is very interesting though we learn that some advertisers will only buy their Impressions from games R above certain specific amount of Theus or reach so if the games are below that bracket then there's less chance to get more budget from bigger advertisers Etc but not all the advertisers doing this but if your games are bigger then you're more likely to get more budget yeah uh very interesting um yeah so so my question if you would do it differently oh yeah yeah again I don't know I we started L slowly and and that's

something I would do again I would be more Brave maybe with the placements so that I would go with the programmatic and trusting that you are you are not selling like anything crappy over there so which you haven't done so so uh we were just like very careful because we don't didn't know what to expect now we we have more use cases you can go and and play some games that uh are having you have like lot of use cases and and in your portfolio you can show that this is how it looks and you can try it on your own phone but when we started there wasn't like many mobile games having having them so we started very carefully and now I would like be uh next time I will be more Brave and just like at at and also with the placements that uh it's it's okay to show the ad you don't have to hide it in in the scene there uh one of my favorite placements which we haven't yet done but I would like to do

it is is the when since you we are having the multiplayer game so the matchmaking screen what do you do when you're just like waiting for the matchmaking it's like okay you can you can have some kind of an ad and that that definitely will get exposure enough so yeah that's like I would put that immediately over there like the BR that's actually a good placement because that probably brings up my next question cuz when when we were talking about Inplay formats um they weren't really clickable yeah now they are do you want to put click for uh one in that scene I could talk with G okay sell done take should we take a table from the meeting there start this like sing discussion on on the new format okay but but yeah yeah definitely the clickable ads of course we had to disc discuss how it's going to be well if you have a clickable ad in a

matchmaking screen and if you by chance get away from the game you are getting like punished by the games a logic because you are leaving to multiplayer matchmaking so that that placement isn't not isn't correct for that but then when you have uh for example in-game at which you can click and then raise to the end and after you have finished the race then happens the action so that would be the I I think we have this discussed like a year ago about this already that how how it should work when it's clickable so I'm really interested in now so I can I can share how it works now so it's like a a a banner so it directs you to a web page so it's exactly the same um yeah but I agree with you I don't think every play every Inplay billboard should be clickable um because because like racing things it probably doesn't make sense

they're so busy you know racing each other uh but for example you know a gar scene or a menu scene that could make sense because you probably already have the Google Banner at the bottom of the game scene already so why not just you know add one the scene if it makes sense it because I think it have it has to make sense um okay I'm conscious of the time so well I know uh so we touched based on mediation a little bit yeah do you think that's going to happen anytime soon uh I guess not anytime soon but in the future uh I think this is a format that there's a lot of interest in this format so someone will come up with solution for that I'm I'm quite confident because like making everybody making their own manual Solutions it then in the long run long long run it doesn't make much sense

it's it's quite a lot of work and deciding like what the logic is and you should know beforehand like which which uh impression is the most valuable so it's it's not a bidding it's some kind of like a guessing game yeah I agree because uh there's definitely more Studios doing manual configuration um you know either having different placements using different two Prof is in the same title or manual uh mediation is like first e call to a provider the other one and then second code to be provider but there's a lot of manual work behind it uh so yeah and well for me you know I'm biased I think the the placement is here to stay and I would love to see mediation happen um and yeah that's actually my last question do you have any notes you would like to add well I would say the be braen experiment

with new formats whether it's in-game advertisement audio ads rewarded inds and there's many more coming I I really like how the industry is now evolving everybody knows that the market is getting more challenging so early adapters might be like the the winners here to know how to how to work with these new uh new format so definitely experiment with them love that and um so thank you for your time today it's being a nice chat and well a round of applause for Chloe and utto I think there was very [Applause] good great we you know um if you want to take a question from the audience we probably yeah we've got a minute we can take a question anyone got a question we maybe got time for one uh difficult to see any questions oh yeah there's one in the row here we got a mic coming your way thank you you very much both can I can't can they hear me yeah yeah no you're good yeah

odd um I'm all in for the ad that format um spoken with Yus many times to work p Matic totally get it the challenge is a scale particularly with brand now you say you have the brand now you just need Supply you're lacking quality Supply have you thought about leveraging let's say I want to say Ad formats but the other sizes within let's say h racing too for example you have banners scrolling across like football stadiums plus also what do dreams have in driver head is a massive Banner in the middle H utilizing all that retail space lowering the opacity or the filters like you said but just leveraging the existing demand but literally spamming in the nicest way possible the the inventory that is available have you thought about in that perspective or was that already been done when was last time you had a conversation with your owners um probably Gamescom last year

all right so there's a lot of changes and yeah sell sell us so what I would say is um you were looking at probably fi rate globally over 30% from the providers that you're speaking to uh United States over 60% and there's a lot of resellers right now compared to last year probably 10 times more globally selling the is form my to different advertisers locally so the demand well supplies there and then the demand is definitely higher than before and this year is the best year for this space yeah I I could say that the field rate is something that is is now going up and that's something we don't want want to have like empty ad spaces over there so that's definitely something that we need we need the demand also so I got one more okay we that we'll take we'll take it quickly go on no don't worry I'll chat with them no no it's okay no go ahead I'm sure it'll be

interesting for everyone so much pressure I forgotten what the question was oh no don't worry about it okay okay well thank you though no no thank you and so yeah we are out of time so another round of applause for Chloe anotto and if you uh yeah thank you thank you that really interesting and um uh if you yeah you can follow up with the with these guys and if any of you have questions for them please do look them up on meet to match thank you again [Music]