Gamelight: Power of Game Recommendation Apps, Valentina Bailly & Kathleen Sherman, Gamelight.

[Music] [Applause] [Music] our next session in a few minutes time is going to be um from Gamel light we're going to talk about power of game recommendation apps and that's going to be Valentina Bailey and Kathleen Sherman Welcome to our session we are super happy to see you all here today hope that we are enjoying as well as San Francisco because we are we are enjoying it a lot to be honest like all the parties all the cool stuff that we can do hear a lot of things that have been recommended to us as well that we are doing in San Francisco so

topic of our session today power of game recommendation apps and my name is Valentina I'm leading business development team of game light and next to me is my lovely colleague Kathleen who is responsible for business development so just to let you know what is game light game light is the largest rewarded app Discovery platform game Discovery platform primary for um yeah for game Publishers so what we do we are selling mobile traffic for game developers we are selling installs uh in a very simple way to say that and at the same time like yeah basically what we are selling we selling use acquisition campaigns for game Publishers we are living a dream truth to be told because game light has been created only over a year ago during this year during 2023 we became top traffic

Source by UPS performance index plus we became one of the top largest ad networks for like according all the gaming verticals globally according to singular market snapshot with a total ad spend share of 12% for match Rec titles honestly we are super proud of our team we are working hard and the only thing we want to make it last and hopefully will so another thing what makes us so special right now what makes us stand out in our AB Discovery site is our unique AI algorithm that was created completely in house and actually it was created by our coowner of the company Co co-founder of the company on his own so what does do this AI because you know we are living in their era of personalization and what it does we are able to find the game for for each user

so between all these crazy massive gaming markets like you can be jumping from one app to another so what we are doing we believe truly believe so each game needs to be shown to the unique user who will be interested in this game and our II solution is helping us to do that helping to do the most advanced targeting which was as well named as the II tool by com award as the best tool for that and as well we are leveraging this tool to give rewards based on the behavior and based on the profile of each gamer so right now what you are probably expecting you're expecting us to speak about draw retention rate LTV and other Buzz wordss we are not going to do that sorry to disappoint you we are going to tell you the story about the evaluation of e Discovery so just a little bit of personal note this topic is so dear to

me uh because I got the chance to be a part of two revolutionizing companies of ab Discovery I used to be working for the first app Discovery platform that was on the market with the name upgrades which was back in the days and right now I'm working for a game light that we just presented to you so what this app Discovery so it's all started back in the days in 2008 when the two app stores appeared how many games they how many apps and games they had inside it was 500 seems to be massive it used to be crazy it was booming it was a great thing to do and how the first company appeared in the market there was a guy can seem geeky not really geeky to be honest genius because he loved to explore new games new apps and to send it around to his friends so what he started to do every time he was discovering something new and apps were like basically they multiplying each day

so he started to send a newsletter to his friends guys have a look like that's a new cool app that's a new cool game to try and this new newsletter became viral it became so viral it's like it was crossing the borders of France and going to different countries not only European ones but crossing the ocean and being popular here in the United States and the iy was thinking one day we need to start getting money off of that so he started to monetize obviously so what he did he launched an app which became the first app Discovery app up graus I was the part of it what people they really like to be recommended we all like to be recommended maybe sometimes like we are pushing it away but we like recommendation because it limits our choices as well because it's actually it's the is the recommendation that you are getting for you that's why we really believe in the power of a recommendation you you are able to create the community

community of users for example if I'm talking like I will just continue with my story about up Gres that we created the community community was very powerful another thing is that um it counted around 16 million daily active users and by the way Guys Without zero it was Zero user position it was just crazy it was booming but it was the right product in the right time and there were like quite some funny stories there because once we received an ecography of the um of the baby because the guys actually found love using our app and that's they found an app that they really like they got engaged like in this game which was recommended by our platform and they met baby and they were not the only ones actually I have my personal story there as well who happened with my ex- colleague so that's the result of the recommendation apps let me go back and yeah so right now obviously it was the right product the

right time right now we are living in a completely different world right now it will not pass we are not interested users they Publishers are not anymore interested in installs and users they are not interested just in discovering you because they are overwhelmed by all their ass that they're seeing around it's too much plus nothing like you know the market became really cool right now we have ammps analytics so many ways to explore explore it and exploring new games and at the same time recommendation is still very personal thing we truly believe it's better than search it's better than anything because to be recommended it's a very personalized experience and the twist that we are doing in game light we are we believe in one thing is that gamer sometimes is feeling guilty for playing the game for a long time at least I personally do H when I'm spending hours with that and we decided

to make the experience more cool by rewarding continuously rewarding users giving a little bit of coins in that case the user is staying loyal he's not jumping from one to one and he's feeling less guilty at least like a personally don't and there is a very big misunderstanding because we all know about the incentivized traffic and we are providing vo traffic so usual question with we are usually asked by our clients is like your traffic is incentivized and we are saying no that's rewarded and I will give a word to my lovely colleague cats to continue this subject thanks Valentina and super well said um so yeah we often hear a Mis misconception between rewarded and incentivized traffic and I'm hoping right now I can help clarify what those differences are and what makes rewarded traffic um very strong so so let's start

by just taking a look at what incentivized traffic really is incentivized traffic is when a user is extrinsically motivated in order to earn a reward typically this means they are you know earning a gift card for installing a game or perhaps reaching some sort of level within the game itself and incentivized traffic can be very strong at increasing volume you get a lot of different users a wide variety of users that are interested and motivated by that particular reward however we can see that potentially there is lower quality there in the traffic and this is because the users often drop off they stop playing once they earn that reward there's no continuous aspect as you were saying when it comes to rewarded marketing platforms so we see that there's not necessarily this long-term investment there's more short-term interest when it comes to incentivized traffic uh and it's this very thing this diversity in the audience um that is its

downfall uh we're not really seeing this you know meaningful relation to the app however if we compare it to rewarded marketing platforms we see that rewarded recommendation apps actually help to enhance user engagement and this is because the initial interaction involves some sort of gameplay um the users are you know interested in the game itself the content the mechanics and the users are choosing which game to play uh there's a catalog of games and It's usually the one that strikes the fancy that they're going to play the most uh from there we also see rewarded marketing platforms increasing monetization this is because users are more likely to make an inop purchase they see value in spending in a game that they've already invested both time and effort in learning how to play this game so they see spending money in the game as uh a worthwhile investment similarly we see ad engagement increasing often with rewarded marketing platforms and this is helping to

increase that user quality the ad engagement increases because typically a user is going to find a rewarded marketing app through an ad itself so we already know that they have a propensity for being the kind of user that's going to watch an ad and thereby being a great user in terms of AD monetization these things also help to improve retention so because the rewarded marketing apps are continuously giving points or Rewards to a user the user is not only expressing interest in the app but they're getting rewarded continuously for playing the particular game now there's a lot of reward marketing apps out there we know this uh but what makes game light so special what is game light's Innovative approach this all is coming down to personalization so for us the personalization aspect starts from the very beginning of the user Journey from the AI targeting algorithm them all the

way through to how the user actually earns rewards there's a tailored reward section there so first let's look a little bit at the AI targeting and what makes that so special when a user comes to install one of our apps they're giving us their demographic details things like their age and their gender but then beyond that they're also willingly and actively giving us access to their app usage data this means that we can see all the types of games or apps this user has installed on their device and for how long they play this way we're able to differentiate between users that maybe show a little bit of interest in an RPG game versus a match 3 game so for example maybe there's a user that has a couple RPG games installed on their device but you know they haven't really touched them in 6 months but they're playing Match 3 games and they're playing them often maybe it's the case that those RPG games were actually installed by a partner um or Someone's Child

uh but we're able to tell through this AI algorithm which is going to be the most relevant to that user so from there after we've scanned that device we show up to four titles at a time this way as Valentina was mentioning earlier we're actually limiting the selection of games that a user has to choose from the whole idea here is that we're actually pairing a game to a user that is going to be the most relevant to them one that they're going to want to spend a lot of time in and a lot lot of money in too uh and as I mentioned as well the personalized aspect goes even further than just this AI targeting in the beginning it's all the way through the user Journey so a user earned points and then they redeem these points for gift cards again it is continuous meaning that once they've redeemed these points for a gift card they can actually come back to the app and continue to do it again and again um but beyond that uh there's a variety of factors a variety and ways in which a user can earn points for playing um on one of our apps so for

example uh there's for the amount of time a user spends in the app perhaps it's you play for one minute you get some points another five minutes you get some points and so on and so forth but that is also in combination with in-game levels and achievements um it kind of really depends on the user itself the game itself and what are actual Partners goals are what their objectives are out of the campaign so we look at things like what our Partners roas goals are or retention goals and that's going to actually inform the algorithm in terms of the rewards that this user is going to earn essentially each user is going to be earning in a different way in a way that is most motivate most motivating to that particular user and in this sense we're creating a sense of loyalty in our users you know the users aren't necessarily abusing the system hopping around from game to game just to get rewards our idea here is that we want to pair a user to a game that's

going to be something that they want to continue to play we want our users to install one maybe two apps maximum um and then continue playing for years to come so and because of this we uh typically see uh increase in our day7 and roas by about 40% uh on average with our partners so doing pretty well uh in terms of this very cute photo of Valentina and I it's not just there cuz we're looking cute it's actually there as a metaphor it's the power of recommendation so when we arrived in San Francisco uh not too long ago I had you know told my best friend Morel hey I'm going to San Francisco any recommendations on where to get the best clam chowder she told me Nick's Lighthouse and boy was she right it was delicious however if it was up to Valentina and I we would have been just walking the warf for really long time

until we could find something that fit our palette but because um I had someone that I trusted that I had someone that knew me in the same way that you know gam light knows its users we were able to through the word of mouth actually get a recommendation that was brilliant so essentially what I'm trying to say is that the word of mouth you know we ask our families and we ask our friends for recommendations different restaurants to go to cafes or nightclub clubs um and this is because they know us well and they can give us a good recommendation so the recommendation is you know limiting the choice of options that are most relevant to you and similar to how Morell recommended us Nick's Lighthouse and that was a Smash It game light recommends games to our users with a powerful AI algorithm thank you guys thank you very much for that gu um does anybody have any

questions thank you thanks great presentation um I was just wondering how um over the last couple of years changes in things like uh idfa and ATT has affected your ability to know your Gamers the way and have that personalized information um can you speak to that a little bit yeah yeah I will I I will speak about this uh Kathleen has like mentioned uh for us it's like very simple in a way because the thing is that we have our own apps when the user installs an app he needs to go through the settings actually it's not just a box he really needs to go in the settings of the phone and make like tle the box and after that start sharing the data that's why it's like it doesn't um like we are the owners we are the First Data owners of our own data that case we are able like to Sor our compaigns for each user yeah

actually I would just add to that as well that our users they can't even find games on our app until they open this up to us as well so we're not going to recommend them apps until they as I mentioned earlier willingly and actively do this for us yeah in the settings yeah yeah oh um one question I had is are there any particular genres of um game that seem to work best within the system like are there particular kinds of Gamers basically the tend go through more easily than others the thing is that actually why why we are doing it we are showing only four games with us all the verticals well work well with us obviously we are doing the use position on our side as well because we doing use position uh from different channels for our own apps the thing is that we need to have a very wide audience in order like different ages different um different genders different Behavior pattern basically we are using a lot of

different sources because like this we are able to tailor our campaigns for each game so it doesn't matter the vertical that's why it's maybe like for the singular snapshot it's acrossing all the verticals of gaming because actually like sometimes what you see is that the most famous the most famous Publishers you can see they ATS everywhere we try to give a chance for all the game Publishers to shine and to find Their audience via US okay um does anybody else have any questions cuz I do have one more oh here we go yeah hi as someone who admittedly is on like level 6,000 of Candy Crush um what does my experience look like because I'm not entirely sure if I'm downloading a game of yours or I'm getting the the incentives in Candy Crush maybe walk walk us through that okay so you you will be installing our app after after that four games will be presented to you

maybe less maybe only two one of them for example is Candy Crash so first of all we need to be sure that Candy Crush will be shown to you because maybe you are not interested in those titles or will be another materal which will be matching your expectation more maybe with flowers if you like flowers and that really depends it's not meant that we're working with Candy Crush it will be shown exactly to you another thing so you are installing an app usually what we are taking we are taking progression events and we are taking purchases if it's a game like keny Crush which is monetized we purchases we really need to have it for the first like seven days for the very beginning and as long as possible down the funnel that publisher is sharing it with us so like this we are it's not only install for which you will get the little incentive it's as well like how long do you play it's play time it's as well all the progression events which will be tailor it to your gaming

Behavior yeah so we really like we cannot say that you will get like 50 coins for something maybe for you it will be only 10 coins for somebody else it will be 70 coins because he hasn't been using the Candy Crash for example for two days it's really like there is a mechanics because it's all done by ey and it's completely like self- adapting and self-optimizing as well depending like on the campaign yeah great um I think we'll wrap it up there CU we have a a large panel to kind of get set up for but thank you very much guys thanks everyone thank you very much [Applause] enjoy sorry [Music] that's [Applause]

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