GOAT: Felix Braberg on Ad Monetization, and Fun | Full Interview

hello hello I think we are live now so today on Goat gamage in on air today we finally got Felix bber which means admon man number one welcome buddy thank you do you need intro do you think I can introduce myself yeah please yeah my name is Felix uh I'm Swedish I've been in the industry for eight years uh basically being on the other side of what earns you money whenever you earn money from ads in Mobile you're earning money from either a or network pretty much and yeah I worked on that side then I was the ad monetization manager for Tetris East Side games and a couple of other Studios and now I'm a full-time consultant you can also catch me on the 2 and a half Gamers podcast we're doing it twice a week now so yeah a lot of podcasting and actually Felix is one of the rare people on Earth that really likes ads in games we we still cannot understand but respect I I think it's cool no I just think it's cool I think it's one of these things that just like very clever

right so basically ads is turning eyeballs into money and that's very cool because it basically used to open up so much stuff for freet to play and basically solves a lot of problems right so yeah it solves that you basically can discover new apps and it just very eloquently does it right so just very cool yeah not like the you know random users that's hey we cannot uh you know watch the ads because of the game please like remove the game so that we can watch ad like there some comments well um like we are Prett curious about who is Felix that is the goal of our actually podcast which means like you know when you're not inside the ad monetization inside mobile gaming who are we actually talking about like who is Felix who is Felix I mean nearly 2 m tall from Sweden very blonde dad worked for Ikea for 30 years so I'm paper I'm

very Swedish didn't grow up in Sweden though uh I grew up in a bunch of countries mainly in Belgium so bit of an exper brat but yeah uh before gaming I was working in finance and food of all places and kind of just fell into Mobile quite accidentally but I'm very glad I did yeah in my free time yeah like to podcast cook long walks on sunny beaches like from Finance food to Mobile gaming like actually like I think if anyone asked me what is the like opposite industry of mobile gaming I would definitely direct them to finance like tell tell me about the transition Finance was just a pit stop after University uh I was there for eight months and I hated it I was working in a wealth manager and uh man it was just misery you know you can sit in the same seat for your whole career and you just move up to salary grades and it's just not very fun and you have to be a very special person and I wasn't so I quit after 8 months to to start a food

company I called eat about where you could eat in the home of a chef in London terrible idea but I sunk all my money into it so I had no money after 2 years big credit card debt and one of our investors was an investor in a DSP called REM merge and basically he gave me a job cuz I had no money and that's how this whole thing started and that was nearly 9 10 years ago or yeah quite a while thanks to much for gaining this guy bringing to the industry so like I I would like to also ask about your hobby stuff like basically what is something you do regularly or maybe people wouldn't guess about you it can be anything I'm trying to get into kite surfing but I've only done it for like a week and it was like two years ago so I would love to say that I'm a k Surfer I'm really not honestly in my free time a lot of time last year was just spent traveling and working which is really boring answer but this year I'm actually happy to say that I have free time and it's being spent doing a bunch of

different stuff everything from cooking to going to restaurants to traveling uh all these things that's that's really cool I think especially kite surfing like two weeks ago I learned like it really sounds ignorance but I learned what is kite surfing literally two weeks ago when I went to a like Forest like big Park here I saw a guy like he has giant like bigger than parachute stuff which is kite surfing I I went went to him like he was kind of like just free chilling I asked like hey like can I watch you how is it going Etc and we chatted for like 10 15 minutes and he teached me the basics I was like literally fascinated because he was kind of like it's I don't know it's Dancing With The Wind actually that's that's awesome so I think it's really cool that right now you have more time to you know explore new stuff finally yeah so we'd like to know if ad monetization had never been your career what path would

you have taken I don't know I mean like uh I thought there for a while I was going to do finance and to be an entrepreneur but I guess no I don't know I really like the mobile industry like I meet a lot of people sometimes who are jaded with the industry and kind of want to get out of it I'm just like no you don't realize how bad it is outside of mobile it's a great industry where it's like Dynamic and fun and you shouldn't probably leave it but yeah honestly like I I never thought I would work in gaming and I'm glad I did and I'm glad I don't have to you know be um what's it called yeah a finance bro I honestly like can't think of anything better like it's a bit of a weird one but I actually really love what I do and yeah it's fun what about like how did you first get into ad monetization basically I was on the other side right so I was always selling stuff to Publishers on the publisher side so like SDK Integrations and stuff stuff like that I had a friend who was

working at a really big gaming company and I basically was curious so I offered her money to teach me how it works on the other side and essentially she taught me and then basically I was managing Tetris and then I eventually got offered the job to be the admon manager basically like admon is it's basically part being grumpy part knowing what's going on on the other side there's not a lot of admon managers I've actually worked in a network or a DSP which is kind of to my benefit and it's a very dirty industry right so basically you don't know what the margins are you don't know what's going on on the other side so actually knowing really helps uh which is great but yeah I mean it kind of just flowed naturally I was just very curious because you know if you've been selling something for 4 years sometimes it would make sense to buy it and you can kind of add a lot of value to it and then uh yeah I guess uh I met MAA and yakob on my first conference on my first like first month in the industry

so it was just uh yeah meant to be I think everything has a reason yeah exactly the dots only make sense looking in like reverse never when it happens right actually like on the grumpy adjective like that's so so true because like you know that I also worked on the ad Network side not just selling but also I did operations for like adops and user acquisition for some game companies everyone is just trying to you know get the best out of it it's kind of like there's a big pred B competition over there actually last week I saw a post on LinkedIn a guy from like one of the big Publishers he was telling that when he sees all the like Q4 results of the ad networks he says all the gaming industry are suffering on the ad monetization while like ad networks are doubling the profit over and over that's like crazy I mean it's less now because it's all done with algorithms right so basically when I started it was like literally you could draw a correlation like the amount

of abuse you took like or like you gave to an ad Network usually meant you had lower margins right so I think it was in 2021 that Unity changed it so basically the account manager at Unity for the admon side used to have a drop- down menu where they set margin so basically like you could add a lot of pressure and get a lot better deals right so there's still some networks you can do it but like Google Facebook the other ones like it doesn't happen anymore unfortunately so it's Chang ing a little bit but there's still other stuff to do there's always like it's just a weird industry right so yeah yeah especially the there are so many tricks especially I think the game uh trick story was the like by far the funniest one uh I don't even know how to explain that to anyone like it's just it's just ridiculous but yeah I'm happy that it's finally over yeah so actually um I would like to ask about like it's been already years like what would you say about the we weirds or the

most surprising thing that you learned or you saw in mobile ad it's the weirdest I've seen I mean there's a lot of weird stuff that happens all the time what like really what admon has turned into is that basically Adon managers that know how it works inside of several networks are at an advantage and basically it's really good if you know things and basically it's only that right so the more you know the more sophisticated you are and then the more you know the more shocked you are at some things right there's uh let me think of something I mean like it's just the whole gam thing is shocking when that was happening it was interesting to say the least but it's probably not the most shocking the most shocking probably is just like the whole margin thing how it's just changed like even at dsps and stuff like that like I mean even when I worked at a network you can look at my LinkedIn and find out which one but like you know like we used to decrease the clickable pixels during High ecpm moments and stuff like that right like it's it's wild west I don't think they still do it but yeah it's pretty wild

probably if I have to say anything right now it's probably the rise of the aggressive end cards and how's that just become a thing like you know rewarded videos worth 30 seconds now they're a minute 14 yeah crazy you also talk about industry Trends what's one prediction that you made that turned out to be completely wrong or maybe completely right E I mean predictions are hard to make I tend not to do them I made one big prediction in December last year that loving will go to 700 and I still think they will uh that's like the only time I put my neck on the line predictions like I've been not very vocal about it uh I really did think that one company was going to allow meta mediation or post bid or pre-bid uh basically how mediation is done on desktop is very different from how it's done on mobile and when I say difference is done better on desktop and when I mean better I mean more fairly so

basically on desktop you usually have a pre-bid and private auction and a post bid so basically every bid goes into very very like quite a lot of scrutiny on top of the main mediation in Mobile that's not allowed cuz basically get shut out of the main platforms right so that's kind of one of the main things and it's just not allowed I thought that would be a thing but it's not a thing and no one's really asking about it so guess not that's that's true and like from this answer can we understand that majority of your investments in appen stocks I have a little bit in appen but uh most of my stuff is in uh gold gold ETFs makes sense on the monetization side of course we also wanted to ask about like in current gaming market like what do you think about the common mistake that most of the studios consistently make and still don't learn or slow to learn yeah I mean the main

thing with ads is right it's a dirty word right so like usually you have like two types of developers you have the idealist and then you have the the pragmatists right so those are the two different ones a lot of the developers typically the ones that made it big 2011 to 2016 they tend to be very against ads right and not think about how you can integrate them in a way that doesn't interrupt too much where you don't get us your complaints right so if you look at some games with Voodoo like they have or like even a better example we are warriors they have 15 to 16 rewarded Impressions on 82% of their user base yeah per day which is crazy on that game right so basically they've actually discovered that adding ads basically earns them money and at one point they were earning crazy amount of Revenue I think I estimated on our podcast that they were earning something like two or three 00k a day from rewarded ads right

which is nuts and basically the retention was amazing so they figured out actually how to design it really well and monetize really well right so most mistakes that idealists or people like from early days do is they they don't design the game with ads in mind to start with right they add it on a bit later and that never works so like bolting on ads is very hard you need to think about how it actually works in the core gameplay and um also one other thing is like you can change end cards and make them less aggressive if you ask networks to do it the unfortunate truth is that there's it's harder to get big in gaming because there's a lot of things that fight against you so like you don't get to speak to anyone at you know these big networks until you're you know earning at least 10K a day or spending x amount every day right which is hard right because then you can't changeing of these things which help you quite a lot so yeah it's a very unfair industry but I don't know any industry that's not unfair and I guess just the

way of life welcome to the world yeah exactly well could you tell us some ad monetization strategies that are underrated or overlooked I mean I can't give away too much secret SS but basically like the most simple things right so if you do these things you're better than probably I'd say 70% of people that have ad Revenue it doesn't matter if you make a 100 bucks a day or if you make 100,000 bucks a day these things are always universally true right so the first thing is adding a mediation platform will double your ad revenue and basically the golden rule is that you keep adding networks as long as they make about 5% of monthly revenue or daily revenue however you want to look at it it's called share revenue and basically what you're optimizing for is the overall Val the overall share of Revenue and competitiveness so basically ecpn which is what everyone talks about in ad monetization right that's how much you get paid eight per every impression

and it's like the golden metric that people always think about but basically ecpm is decided by like a bunch of factors and basically at its core it's the performance that networks are seeing from their ads in your game in the last s days on a rolling average and that's what decide how much your user base is worth also kind of one of these factors is like organic versus inorganic because then there's more information on those users and that's what bring up ecpm so the only thing that you impact in the calculations for algorithms is competitiveness so the more networks you have that compete that is better for you and basically that's the only thing you can do so a network is only really competitive in your stack if it's making at least 5% a month right then there's a bunch of other stuff when you get into the nitty-gritty stuff so ad monetization when you're making 10K a day k a day or 100K a day is very

different and the more you earn a day the more exciting it is because the more insid or knowledge you get like to you like there's a bunch of networks that have like brand demand that you don't get access to unless you have certain amount of like thresholds and it's very hidden and if you don't don't ask you don't get because you don't know and then like it's like they'll never tell you right so even negotiations for integration bonuses or mediation like discussions it all varies on size and how much not angry but like how grumpy you get right so the the kind of Publishers that I've worked with that I admire the most they're always the grumpiest like not with me well sometimes with me but like yeah they get more yeah that's some valuable thing that you just talked about yeah well um are there any AD formats or trends that you think will dominate in the next years app open ads so basically not the Google format where basically it's like a splash screen for 5 seconds when you

open the app they have two low ecpm but what's really taken foot now started with hexa sword I guess when they do a rewarded app open in justicial which is just a really clever ad where you give a reward every time on subsequent app opens and then what you think about it it's just genius because every time you reopen a game to play it if it's sticky you start with a revenue event and it's also trickle down now that I played some of the games that are coming out of Vietnam and they basically just started doing intials on like second app opens so if you have a really sticky game like why not and that's going to start to dominate but you got to remember with ads as well like they might be annoying but it's also enabling the whole ecosystem to exist because basically ads got invented because of the fact that desability on the App Stores is terrible and if the discoverability is terrible like you're not going to have a thriving ecosystem if you can't buy new users so like half of the traffic or

half of downloads on the App Store is completely inorganic right so ads are making this ecosystem work and it wouldn't work without it and basically yeah it's a good thing noted that's Prett solid answer actually and like while you were chatting I'm just curious about the integration bonus stuff how is it now is it like still aggressive just like I don't want to say numbers cuz and I always get in trouble it's been a lot of times I got in trouble for saying too much stuff but let's just say it's like4 of what it was 2 3 years ago during like the main Mania yeah so yeah like it's really decreased still there's competitive deals out there that I've heard of in the last like two three months I I've personally done I think six or seven mediation negotiations in the last two years and they're decreasing in value they're they're they're not as valuable as it used to be there's still value to be had but basically like it's not as juicy as it used to be yeah like I I I remember

those days like with crazy amount of money especially for the like you know even aav and after mopb that that was like Make It Rain like the admon manager was the favorite person of the CEO like you could just walk in and you could get a million dollar deal for basically anything yeah exactly I I remember the numbers from like big guys like really crazy yeah like wanted to ask about like what is the current situation for like aggressive add Revenue versus play retention because especially in hyper casual scenario like nobody was caring about the user it was literally like squishing the rock out of nothing and how is it now is it still same yes I mean like I don't think hyper casual is dead yet like I still see like stuff in the charts I'm looking at it every week when I um write my newsletter and there still so many titles that just coming up that are complete Hy hyper casual not even hybrid right so I don't think it's a dead genre at all it's a bit more difficult but it's not dead in

terms of like aggressive formats like they're as aggressive as you wanted to make if you were these big guys right like you don't have to have the most aggressive ones but there seems to be a really big space for for example puzzle genre that's driven by ads and IAP the hybrid casual space is very interesting to watch and it's very fun to see how good Vietnam and the Vietnamese Studios have gotten very quickly at this they still haven't cracked the the nut of I P Revenue really but yeah they're they're really giving you Turks a good run for your money yeah actually we have a uh game Parts in the end and it will it's like quick fire and yes like you you can still go for one quick sentenced explanation so yeah let's good then working from home or a cool office home working Solo or working with a cool team cool team i' would say late night

grin or early morning hustling depends no both I like I for some reason I I don't work well in afternoons like I work good in mornings and the evenings I don't work well in the afternoons hyper casual ad monetization versus hybrid casual ad monetization hybrid because it's a bit more interesting also you can get users to watch more ads and they're happy about it so hybrid for sure yeah and actually I just remembered if you didn't read mobile Ed newsletter he wrote about Vietnamese Mobile gaming scene currently so please read it sorry for an advertising break yeah here we go don't worry I appreciate it of course of course so monetization Joy iOS or Android I mean the crazy thing is Ah that's a really good one as Adon person I had to say Android because ecpm are actually quite higher usually right now so Android another Adon Joy tier one or tier 2 ization tier one of course

including us only us yeah for me tier one is only us that's the only tier one everything else is like Europe tier two tier two yeah maximizing revenue or maximizing user experience maximizing Revenue over time a bit grumpy just just a bit slightly okay let's keep with easy question app Max or Unity level play they're very good at different things I can't tell you nothing okay yeah I knew admob mediation versus inhouse cool mediation never build your own mediation platform ever it's like you can't do it anymore like anyone who says this like you don't realize you'll never have access to Google bidding you're like yeah the the industry is cornered already like there's no new entrance like you can't build it yourself yeah yeah there is no room for new ad networks like come on full bidding versus old and gold waterfall days old

and gold waterfall days it was boring as to update it but it looked like it performed a lot better playground with gam Ed units versus admob Ed units back in back in the Glory Days it was both right yeah uh I don't know none of them really work anymore so it's like yeah yeah one SDK for everything or multiple specialized SD ideally one SDK but yeah but doesn't doesn't work mostly add Impressions versus arpu arpu ecpm versus high field rates whatever equals the highest ad Revenue good question though definitely solid High daily active user with low arpu or low daily active user with high arpu for me I mean I'm an ad person is a volume game right so it has to be high impress a high amount of users yeah yeah AB testing small chains or big shots so

AB testing for placements I'd say small small changes more ads more revenue or fewer ads better retention U I'm going to quote CEO of berny games here yeah depends on the user yeah depends on the user greetings to anat from here direct deal or programmatic programmatic pure ads hybrid monetization what does that even mean like 100% uh only admon or iip included monetization would be your the ideal one is I AP plus admon because you usually get higher ecpm for it but you know there's a lot of students that are making everything work banners versus interstitials from just personal Joy banners my mind would be interational for example yeah privacy update sites do you think challenge or big opportunities over

there boring no it's just my mind I hate it but I have to deal with it but there's opportunities I mean a client of mine just increased ad Revenue by 40% by adding a CMP which is quite impressive so yeah there's definitely gains to be had by being compliant last one which is worse boring app open ads or famous unclosable x button ooh which one is worse closable unclosable x button button probably the worst one would be the x button that you actually like 100% click correctly and you still go to App Store yeah that was fun I like that I've never had a rapid fire before that was really good so before we wrap things up we got one last question for you what are the top three games that you got your eye on right now whether it's for the monetization strategies game design we want to know what's on your radar colorwood sorts really interesting what they're doing on the ad side Vita Mong

is scaling crazily and I'm trying to find out what's the difference between that and all the other mayong games and then I always keep an eye on Hex of sorts cuz yeah I think it's going to go down in the last year is probably one of the most Innovative games but there's like so many games from Ric there's like so much stuff coming out like yeah there's a lot of good stuff everything coming out of grand games as well there's just so much going on yeah like yeah Studios yeah wow so we came to the end an era here Felix since you are so experienced with podcasting would you do us a favor and uh finalize this podcast oh this has been another lovely podcast by Gaming and uh what the number is it is the second one third one third one third one this has been third installments or actually it's not three it's uh two and half because like yeah Jakob mty and you now oh nice cool well this has been another lovely episode of the newly started gaming gun podcast thank you so much for tuning in this podcast occurs

once a week don't forget to share with your friends pets animals dogs and cats cats love podcast we'll see you next time have a great weekend bye-bye thank you so much