How Different Are UA & Monetisation Strategies In Eastern And Western Markets?

Next up, we have a panel discussion that explores one of the most crucial questions for global game success. How different are UA and monetization strategies in Eastern and Western markets? Joining us on stage are five outstanding experts from across the industry. Dan Laughton from Game sites, Javier Navarrete from Crackle Tech, Claire Young from Kingsoft, Yianni Tsiouris from GEECLAB, Chip Thurston from Fast Spring. Please welcome.
My name's Dan Laughton. I've been in the industry about 20 years. I currently see our Game site based in Seattle in the US. This is my second time coming to Shanghai for ChinaJoy and such. Last

time was in 2013. So it's great to be back here. The city keeps growing and growing. Um Game site, if you're not familiar with us, we have kind of two parts of our business. We run attribution tech platform for PC and console games to help media buying, you know, UA teams track their performance on campaigns. And then for both mobile and PC console games, we have an influencer business where we are tracking data on every possible influencer you can imagine on Twitch and YouTube and TikTok and then running lots of, you know, software to help figure out which influencers are the right fit for our publisher partners. So we work with companies like NetEase and Krafton and Tencent and Nexon and Netmarble over here in Asia as well as lots of publishers on the west. So, if influencers are in your plans,

let me know. Uh that's enough for me. Yianni, want to
Yeah, I can do also my intro. So, for me it's not 20 years on the industry, so little bit less than 10 years, but hopefully I will get that 20 years also on my record at some point. But yeah, I'm one of the founders and COO at Geeklab. We founded Geeklab 6 years ago and mainly our biggest focus are SaaS business on UA side and then ASO side, so app store optimization and user acquisition. We have a tools for both of those and that's what basically we are doing. Then obviously when you have a tools and you are working with the companies, you need to tell how to use the tools, what are the best practices on UA side and ASO side, so then agencies another side that we are having, but and

also my first time in the Shanghai, so been traveling a lot, but this is new and I already like it. And now we have a little bit more people, so we can keep doing the intro.
Chip, you were the next to show up, so your turn.
Yeah, welcome me. It is likewise my first time in Shanghai and it's an incredible city having a very good time. I arrived on Monday. Uh still battling some jet lag, but I'm I'm doing okay. Um so I'm the head of gaming at FastSpring. Uh FastSpring, we're a direct-to-consumer payment platform enabling game publishers to sell on a global scale. I come from the world of game development. I left Scopeley back in October where I was leading a lot of our product strategy around marketing direct-to-consumer. And so, my focus at FastSpring is really helping our customers and the industry overall to sell direct-to-consumer on a global scale. Happy to be here.
All right. Claire, you want to go?
Hi. Hello. Sorry if I'm rolling late for 5 minutes. So, I'm Claire.

I'm representing Kingsoft here. We are a publishers in China. We've been in the market for over three decades. So, we've come across a lot of different portfolios. Um me myself, I'm primarily scouting games from Western markets. Uh so, bringing those titles into China, we uh explaining how we're going to grow the business. So, which comes to the topics of this panel is uh So, we'll be giving some advice on how we market the title in terms of content as well as the platform formats. And how do we do calculate the conversions? Yeah. So, hopefully we have some insight to share with everyone here. Thank you.
All right. Last but not least.
Um hi, everyone. Uh great to be here. Uh firstly, I just want to thank uh start by thanking um the PGC team for organizing this with My Games. Uh super excited to be here.

I know this panel is a post-lunch, so you know, hopefully people we don't make people go to sleep uh with our discussions. And I hope you find it interesting and engaging. Uh just a brief about me. Uh I um have about 15 years of work experience in ad monetization. About 13 years was at Google, where I was part of the uh publisher ad monetization team on AdMob and Google Ad Manager. Um there, you know, I had this good fortune of having a bird's-eye view of how the ad tech supply chain works. And I felt there was a massive opportunity to help publishers grow their monetization. And that's why me and two of my colleagues at Google uh left and started Crackle. We're a a company. And largely, we're you know, applying a lot of machine learning in optimization of ad monetization. Uh yeah, super excited to be here, here to learn from uh the Chinese ecosystem, and also share some of our perspectives. Thank you.

All right. Actually, I'm going to sit really far away. There we go. Okay. Um yeah, excited to uh to get this going here. So, we have a a very global panel tonight. We've got uh two Americans. We've got India represented. We've got Finland represented. And locally, China. You Beijing, right?
So, we are our headquarters is based in Beijing. Yes.
Nice. All right. As the lone game publisher on the panel, you're going to be very popular here with the questions. He's Yeah. I think they'll have some questions for you as well. All right. So, let's start off. So, this is uh going to be wide-ranging. We've got UA and monetization as the topics here. So, we can take this a lot of directions, and everyone's kind of got their own specialty. And And feel free to jump in with questions. We don't have to wait till the end. If you've got questions, please just just shoot them out. Um I'll start with a a kind of a a broad question about user acquisition for y'all. Uh so, my perspective, you know, having worked in mobile for 10 years prior to, you know, just the

last year or two, I've I've I've spent more time on PC console, but I think it's been true across all platforms that in the West at least, you know, Meta and Google are really dominating, you know, most people's budgets and uh attention. I'm curious, when you look over here on the East, you know, what are the trends on the major platforms here? What's similar? What's different, you know, perhaps from a publisher perspective? You You might have the first start there, but other guys, I'm I'm sure you're seeing this too, you know, like how how are things different here? How are they changing um beyond just what's what's the usual suspects, if you will? Go for it.
All right. So, I think from the eastern side, I would say there's like first thing in terms of like UA in the most uh uh typical way would be hearing would be doing, which is the Chinese TikTok and uh WeChat. That's the I would say the

biggest uh channel here. And for those ecosystem, they were closed loop. So, basically the uh platform owns data. Uh was staying in our engine and for uh the audience, for the players, when they see the ads, they don't need to leave the app. So, basically they finish download within the apps. So, that's I think that might set the Chinese channels apart from the western uh uh platforms. And the other in terms of trends, in terms of growing, I would say um there are a lot of contents ads growing. So, with no direct download from the traditional way they were like hard push, download link, one page feeds that you would see to nowadays we have like many many different kinds of formats in terms of like it could be short videos, it could be a video streaming footages, or it can be like Instagram Reels, which in China is uh the Xiaohongshu, the

little red book that we call that app. So, the formats is um there are more different kinds of contents going in. Um I think there would be some um the Chinese way of dealing with that the western people might find interesting as well.
Yeah, on the western market, as we know, uh Meta and Google, nowadays TikTok is also increasing a lot. So, those are the kind of main self-attributing networks that people are using. But, Apple 11 is now the nowadays taking a huge piece of everything and most of mobile gaming studios are right now spending usually around 80% they are using in AppLovin and then the smaller parts they are focused on meta and TikTok, Google and those kind of classic self-attributing networks.

Obviously then ironSource and everything else. But AppLovin being one of the biggest ones because there is a lot of big benefits but also the big problem and issue right now in the western field is that all of your eggs are in the same basket when you are using a big part of your budget in the same place. And the big problem with meta and Google and TikTok is basically the scaling part. So finding what is really working and also seeing the data points that you are looking for because nowadays as we know we need to shoot in the dark a lot because of the IDFA and those kind of things. So we don't know where the users are coming from, what they are really doing inside the game and that is biggest headache. So nowadays I think that's kind of the how it's divided in the western uh industry right now.

Yeah, interesting. Yeah, yeah, AppLovin just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Um
So switching gears a little bit.
Yeah, I just had one more piece here. I think like I feel like China has a bit of east and a bit of west. So you have developers in China that are focused on the the China users which is a lot like what Claire mentioned. But beyond that there's also a really large ecosystem of Chinese developers who are focused on western users. And that's a lot a lot like you just mentioned you focus on AppLovin Google and and meta. So I think it's like this conference of two ecosystems both are thriving and and really large in comparison to ecosystems outside of China.
And so since you you do a lot of work on the pro programmatic space and and helping publishers monetize effectively, you know, a lot of times people think about the user acquisition side of the network first and then monetization

second. Is there any kind of up and coming networks or specific, you know, integrations or or even potentially formats that that your customers are really benefiting from that might not be so obvious?
You know, I'd say that I mean if you really look at the the last like three to five year trend, a lot of the controls have moved from from the publisher to the mediation platform. Right? So there's there's lesser optimization opportunities available on ad monetization for the publisher themselves because of how the ecosystem has evolved. And then on the mediation side we're seeing there's a lot of concentration with a few large players. So within gaming Max is very Max AppLovin is very large. AdMob is is is is a good size outside gaming and then ironSource is as well somewhere somewhere in the middle, right? So

so so this is one trend that I think it's important to understand this this trend. I think the second trend is we're seeing, you know, because of this shift of control a lot of value is getting captured by these mediation platforms. So if you look at the financial returns of the mediation platforms top mediation platforms and top gaming companies, right? There's an inverse proportion of profitability. The mediation platform profits are like rising and gaming company profitability is kind of getting more and more squeezed. And that's what I mean, you know, there's a shift of value from one type of player to the other type of player. So So the reason for the background is to kind of showcase, you know, a new trend that we've seen is we're seeing this emergence of optimization layer in money in monetization that sits between the publisher and the mediation stacks and tries to make decisions on behalf of

the publisher. So there are two things happening. One is try to bring bring the control back to the publisher. And number two is because there's a lot of emerging technology like, you know, machine learning, predictive AI, not generative AI. I think applying these new technologies to enable this monetization. So you know, I I understand monetization more or not UA so much, so I can't comment on UA trends, but clearly on the monetization side we're seeing this this niche play of optimization sitting between the publisher and the mediation platform.
Wow. That's a good insight, sir. Thank you. Yeah, it's you know, I I first started working in ad monetization about 12 years ago and it was the waterfall, you know, about a few a few ideas, few networks, and there was very little you could do. And now it is, you know, a very sophisticated science, for sure. Chip, I want to get you in the mix here. So you spend a lot of your time thinking about things like web stores and

direct-to-consumer work. Now obviously the the landscape has changed a lot over the last couple years, you know, probably from when the time you were at Scopely, you know, this wasn't even an option, right? But where where do things stand today? Do you feel like the dust is settled enough with, you know, court proceedings and policies with the major platforms that companies like yours and and publishers can really invest in web stores and get enough benefit from it that it's worth you know, the juice is worth the squeeze or are we still kind of in a world where we're trying to figure out what's happening? Yeah, I think there's absolutely uncertainty and things yet to resolve with regulations and direct to consumer space. You see things like the DMCA still taking form in Europe. Um you see this recent ruling in the United States that's really transformed the state of play there. You see the smartphone act in Japan that will go into effect by the end of this year and we'll see what impact that has. So there are these

different moving pieces and yet I would say now is the time to act and it's that uncertainty that should drive publishers to act with urgency because the window is very open in the United States now to drive consumers direct to or drive players in the direct to consumer monetization. And so uh publishers can market web stores or off-platform payments and they can direct players there in a way that reduces friction and increases the profitability of the game significantly. And I've heard a little bit of pushback from some publishers who say, well, we know Apple is still appealing this ruling and so we want to wait to see how that appeal plays out before we really take the plunge and invest in the mechanisms to do that. Um and I think the the folly there is that this appeal one will take a long time. I'm not a lawyer but these things tend to move slowly. One thing people may not realize is that the ruling in April in the United States of April 2025 was in response to an initial lawsuit from Epic in August of

2020. It took over four years to get from that to the impactful ruling that we had this year. And so that appeal will take a long time to play out and guess what will happen after that appeal plays out? I'm pretty confident there will be another appeal. We'll see regardless of who wins it. if uh appeal goes in Epic's favor, then Apple will appeal to a higher court. If the appeal goes in Apple's favor, then Epic will appeal that ruling. And so, I feel like some publishers may be getting paralyzed by that uncertainty. And in that paralysis, they're missing out on the opportunity to be driving direct to consumer profit.
You probably didn't think you'd know so much about legal proceedings going into this job.
No, no, there's been a lot of furious Googling around the United States federal court system over the last few months.
Thank God for ChatGPT. Okay. Um Claire, a question for you. So, uh Follow me here. All right, so in the world of mobile games, you know, obviously user acquisition got much

harder several years ago when Apple changed everything with their privacy policies. What I saw, especially having moved into the PC console space with part of my work, is that a lot of mobile game companies 2 or so years ago said, "We're going to make our first PC game, right? We're going to We're going to make the PC version of this game because it's getting really hard to acquire on mobile. And we've already, you know, we're using Unity or Unreal, so it's pretty easy to make the PC version." So, lots of excitement around cross-platform. Fast forward a couple years, we've seen very few success stories from that attempted transition. I can think of a couple like we work with Scopely on Star Trek game, which has a decent following on both platforms. But for the most part, it's it's been here and there. What I've noticed with with Kingsoft is, you know, y'all created a whole new subsidiary of Seasun, a whole new approach to make AAA games for PC and console. And And at Gamesight, we've been lucky enough to partner with the Seasun team to help with the influencer launch on Mecha

Break. And this is a massive, massive launch, you know, multi-multi-million-dollar investment, you know, in the game and in and in marketing. All of that is to ask you the question, do you think that the dream of the cross platform game that reduces user acquisition costs and further leverages investment in the the development, is that dream dying? And is the answer that actually if you really want to go after PC console, you have to have the money like you guys do to invest in a full on new approach, you know, and and just can't assume that your little your mobile game's going to work. You know, do you see that as am I reading too much into it or is that where we're at?
Um, so first of my understanding to the question is where do like cross platform game in mobile plus now we plus PC and console on top of and the entire marketing budget does it goes down like so it to to answer that questions, I think

first thing we need to understand at least well, I'm not a master on the western side, but at least in the Chinese market, I think mobile game players and PC game players are very and console players is in another universe as well. So, if you're trying to appeal to both audience like okay, there's a cross play game you can play with the mobile players and you can also play with the PC players. Actually, it it doesn't really make sense because they have very different playing habits. I myself I'm a I'm gamer as well. So if I I I love playing mega break, I I likely I don't play lots of mobile games. That's as true as he and um um, so if you really want to have the loyal audience to your own game, it doesn't to me, I don't think it doesn't necessarily like cut the budget. If you're trying to appeal it it actually it dilute your players. Um

but I think there's another trend that worth mentioning is a lot of PC games here or like well, because in China console is a really relatively small market. A lot of players, PC game players, they play Steam games. They use the same platforms and tools and advertisements strategy as mobile games. So, they just target at the different players. So, at Kingsoft we are a a developers and publishers for over 30 years. So, we have like indie games, PC indie PC game studios. We also have like mobile game studios. So, for example, the Chinese Instagram which is the Xiaohongshu, is also a major hub for mobile game developers to advertise game and also very useful for PC indie game indie gamers as well. Um to developers to advertise their contents as well. So, they kind of share the same kind of tactics there.

Interesting. Yeah. I didn't realize that Kingsoft has been around for 30 years. That's crazy.
It's wow.
Amazing. All right. Yanni, so am I saying your name correctly? Yanni Yanni. First of all, your glasses are amazing with the tiger. Is it a jaguar or whatever that is?
I appreciate it.
I don't know where to get those, but I don't think I can pull it off. But so So, Keklab, you guys do a lot of different you know, you help publishers kind of AB test and work on their ASO and SEO and that kind of thing. So, you must think a lot about kind of creatives and you know, the different types of things that work well, concepts, creatives for different you know, platforms, different types of games, but I would think also different geographies, right? So, curious for your take on this East versus West thing for creatives. You know, if you're a team out there that's trying to do UA across all these different regions, do you need to be developing all sorts of different creatives to account for that or or do you see a lot of similarities between East and West?

Yeah, that's one of the like biggest thing that different companies are battling right now. So, if you are big company in the from Europe or States and you have a hit game there and you are making millions or billions there and then you have the plan to go to Asian market, that's basically that you need to launch the game fully again with the different way because the things that work in Western countries, like in the Europe, from ad level to store pages, like what kind of screenshot, how you sell the idea of the game, how you advertise, what kind of hook you have in your ad, they are fully different. They are like fully different worlds and most of the game cases, like 90% of the cases, the things that you are using in the Western countries, they don't work here in Asia and then vice versa. So, things that you

are having here, they don't work there. So, the biggest things that people are battling right now, our clients, we work with the biggest companies in the world to the small startups and everything between that. We have a UA tool, quick promote here because it's related to the story that we have tool that gives you capability to see creative level data. So, which ad is giving you what kind of audience. So, usually you have a huge campaign on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or Google and it includes multiple ads inside of it. And the biggest problem that people are having is scale. So, if they are seeing good numbers, like the ROAS is higher or the retention is higher, in-app purchases are getting there, revenue is getting there, they don't know which exactly was the creative that are doing it. They just

it's just a whole campaign. And then that means that if you want to pour more money to all the ads, that's the only way. So, that's kind of the way that you can start to analyze what creatives are working and where. But, the biggest difference that I know that when you try to get your Asian market, you need to have much much more happening in the ads. Some of our clients when we are doing app store optimization testing with the screenshots or we are doing the ads. I'm so lost when they happen. There's so many things going on. But, those are the ads that work here. And then compared to western countries, it need to be more slow-paced. We use lots of memes in the ads as a hook. And there's usually the hook of the ad. And then there is the gameplay of the ad, which is on thin ice of the fake ad and being the real

game. And then that's how it works. And then your goal is to find which kind of combination works the best. Because if you have a fully fake ad, maybe you can get the downloads, but people are not playing it or they're not spending the money. And then in Asian market, the biggest thing is to find like super hectic. Everything is going on and text coming up and all the colors are there. But, the biggest thing that I can mention is you need to have some kind of data to see what works and what and not. So, you can shut down those things that are not working and then boosting those. And I know one great company if you want to have a chat how to do it, but that's mainly biggest differences.
Yeah, that's fascinating. That makes sense. The you know, like the crazy screen with everything on it. Like, what's going on? Like, that stuff for me, I'm just like, I could never play that game. That turns me off, but I have a simple brain. Um you brought up something that I was

going to mention also. So, curious, where where do do where do we stand with the whole fake game ad thing? I know there's there's a lot of kind of pushback, but it doesn't see you know, it's not like you know, the FBI or the you know, European Union's going to come in and do some you know, thing to really change that, you know. So, are they still proving effective? And if so, why? And you see any trends there? And uh you know, actually on from the Crackle tech perspective, too. When when you think about, you know, companies monetizing their games with ads, are you seeing publishers push back like, I don't want any ads running in my game that that are BS, you know, is is that an issue as well? So, anyway, where do we stand on fake ads? That's a fun topic.
I can give like a weak thing because that's something that we are playing a lot because we need to find what ad is really bringing the client the biggest draws or revenue at in-app purchases, and then fake ads being like a big big

part of the community and the whole gaming industry. But nowadays, there is a thin line. Everybody can see immediately when it's fully fake nowadays. They can realize pretty quickly that, okay, it can't be this game. But the thing that really works still is when the gameplay is selling you the same story that you will be doing at the game. It doesn't need to be fully on point like the gameplay that, okay, it's going to be this fast-paced. Like, White Out Survivors is a great example. Uh the ads that they are having, there is a meme hook usually on the start. And then there's a gameplay. And the gameplay is super super fast-paced, which is not the case because it's a 4X game, which is super slow. But if you

would show that kind of gameplay, which is super slow, there is text everywhere. That's not that interesting. So people are not downloading. But if you're showing the gameplay, you're not going to get the feeling that you got scammed because the game is look exactly like the gameplay. There is the snow, there is the guy, you need to survive, but the gameplay was just faster to make your attention. So that's kind of the thin line, but that's also something that you need to test it out. But if it's fully something else, like for example, if you are saving beautiful girl from the bad guy, and then when you go to the game and you are the garden boy building your mansion, for example, then that can be bummer.
Yeah, the the the sped-up thing, that makes sense to me. And if I think about it, like a parallel would be like a movie trailer is often personal, you know, and it's it's a 2-hour movie with

lots of slow parts, but they're just showing the highlights. So yeah, I can see where that makes sense as long as the themes are correct and that yeah, the gameplay is there. Uh so yeah, about on the consumer side or on the publisher side, what do you what do you think about?
So I think like on the publisher side is a uh it's a it's a mindset of the publisher, right? And even on that there's a spectrum. So uh depending on where you are on the spectrum, you decide what kind of ads you want on your platform. So there are some publishers who will optimize for, let's say, CPM. Right? They have a very different behavior and a very different outlook. There are some publishers who optimize for ARPDAU. Right? I would say they have slightly mid-term outlook on the monetization of the game. And then the publishers which have a long-term view on game profitability, they they focus on LTV, right? So, depending on what metric you are trying to optimize, you you make the decision on what kind of ads you want to

show within your game. So, like a like a CPM optimization is super short-term, right? And there the view is like I don't care what ad comes in my game. I just want to make that higher monetization right now. And sometimes it could be at the expense of losing the user or that session getting closed, right? But, you know, some some publishers don't do not have the capability or the ability to make an investment to track the attribution of just chasing a CPM. Right? And the other end of spectrum, there's a publisher who would say that, "Hey, listen, I'm okay. What I want to prioritize is in retention and engagement. And if I'm able to prioritize these two metrics in the long run, I'm going to make a lot of money from that user, whether it's through ads or whether it's through IAP." And those publishers make very different kind of decisions, right? They

would be very thoughtful of the ad load per session or the ad load per per DAU. And they would keep nurturing the user. And their goal is always to, you know, just keep time spent growth within the platform and balancing that well with the monetization of the game. So, uh you know, you know, it I'm not saying one is better than the other, but different strategies work for different publishers. But like it's interesting how, you know, what drives publishers to, you know, take those decisions on allowing uh you know, ads which where the UX is you know whether it's fake or it's aggressive or what have you.
So I think yeah we can all continue on that and I think that's very true especially in the Chinese case if there are certain different indicators we're aiming at the we there are certain ads and advertisements or events that we do for purpose to improve engagement not

sometimes not like download so there are other that we see so eventually it comes to like how exactly do we calculate or small conversions. So in the typical like UA buying traffic it is like very strict for us CTR or click through rate that you can track but there are like sometimes okay we want to see more engagement from the community we want to have the biggest the hottest dress on Weibo which is the on pretty much on Twitter how many people search the schemes and what kind of topics they're discussing. So this are the metrics that you can't calculate in the gate. So to we're aiming for that purpose so we want to be the trend of today on Twitter on the Chinese Weibo and um there are many other ways many other different kinds of ads formats that we can

we can make and for example at if we're aiming for that purpose sometimes the ads contents you see will be very controversial. It is sometimes it might not be good and bad it might create some like countries among the players and it becomes okay everyone is discussing and there's another trend or interesting formats that I think we can share is we are used to WeChat or the Chinese WhatsApp here and there's like the WeChat moment you can see and there's a trend that below the ad it becomes a a a rabbit uh discussion thread. All your friends is commenting below that ad. It's I don't think I've seen that in the Western markets. So, it it's almost becomes like a discussion board, a Discord panel for a game that no one heard of. And I I even see, "Hey, I'm going to China Joy. Are you coming?" And they booked the meeting below the ad. Just kind of interesting. Yeah.

No, that's interesting, for sure. Uh all right, switching gears a bit. So, Chip, I want to go back into your past a little bit uh and and bring some of that forward. So, you used to work in the casino game space, right? A while back. And then uh at Scopely where, you know, uh where ads are big there. Um and we talked about ads a lot in this world here. But, you know, good old in-app purchase, you know, getting people to pay $10 or whatever it might be for items or for capabilities, consumables, is obviously still huge part of the market. Maybe we don't talk about it enough. Just curious like from your perspective um you know, at a place like Scopely where, you know, I know uh you know, the user acquisition team is really good uh at finding people who will spend. You know, Eric Moz's team and then but like Sense's team on the monetization front is as good as anyone with with running ads. Where's that balance these days for a typical game? Not that there is a

typical game. But, let's forget hyper-casual, hybrid-casual for a minute. Let's let's talk about, you know, 4X or like uh you know, action games or RPGs. Um do you see that world is shifting at all over time? Uh has one become more important than the other in a way that's surprising? And also, if you happen to know, you know, is there a big difference in how companies like Scopely and whatnot are looking at IP versus ads in East versus West, right? Do some things just not fly? Do price points have to be lower in one place versus another to get IAP to matter or to you know, what's going on in that world assuming you still follow it enough to to comment?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. In my time at Scopely I had the privilege of working both in the casual division and the mid-core division and so understanding a pretty diverse perspective there. Um and so on the casual space it was a mix of IAP monetization and ad monetization, but then in the mid-core space it was almost entirely focused on IAP. Um and I think

that's not to say that's how I would recommend a publisher do it. I think it's really the result of your players. Like you just have to follow your players where they are and follow the behavior that you want with them. And you do have to design your game around the monetization that you desire, but at the end of the day your players will tell you what's what's more effective and what's not. Um even in the time I worked in casual we saw that uh profile shift as we saw maybe players gravitate a bit more toward in-app purchase and a bit way away from ad monetization and that was just very specific to the game I was working on and I think it's the same on a regional basis, too. Um as you see your game get more traction in certain regions, you might see the behavior differ among those regions, right? If it's a uh maybe a higher spend profile region, then you might see IAP be more significant there or if it's a uh lower spend region, then you might see ad monetization be preferred from the players there just cuz they're they're less likely to make that in-app purchase. And so um that's been compounded with

the desire for the game to look at the the profitability and that's where direct-to-consumer comes into it, too, because as we see maybe uh an in-app purchase can become more profitable because it's made directly through uh a web store instead of through one of the ad platform one of the uh gameplay platforms, then okay, well, we're getting a bit more profit there. Maybe how can we shift more of the players over to that um without compromising anything we're doing on the ad monetization side. And so, I do think these two different worlds are very connected and uh as we see growth in one, it will certainly impact the strategy that publishers have with the other.
Yeah, can I just comment on on the IAPs? I'm not a I'm not like a professional in this space, but uh back in my Google days, we used to work with the Google Play team and had some learnings there. I think uh there's um there's there are also like two very interesting um perspectives. One was this uh you know, cultural habit to pay. So, a lot of times, it's not about the

ability of the user to pay, it's just in that in that region, you know, culturally do you want to pay for a game or do you want to squeeze the life out of the game by just playing it free and you know, waiting the 20 minutes, right? I think the second thing which was a huge enabler was a payment infrastructure. Like what you know, how easy is it to make a payment? Because in a lot of the Eastern markets, you don't see credit card penetration being as high or even debit card usage being as high. So, there are these different forms of payment arguably could be like easier to pay. And the higher prolificity proliferation of these payment systems really enable higher IAP purchases. Like for example, if you go to China, uh you're sitting in a taxi, most taxis don't take credit cards, but they do take WeChat. Right? So, I mean the having like local payment enablers within different geo

geos is can be a big enabler to unlock IAP.
Yeah, that's that's a great point. I want to underscore uh one one point you just made, which is um so much of direct to consumer is perceived as shifting revenue, right? You shift revenue from a mobile store to a web store potentially. Um but what we're actually seeing is growth. uh Uh, to your point, one thing we just launched with VAST Spring is UPI as a payment method in India. Um, and it's an extremely prominent payment method there that you can't really get through traditional distribution platforms. And so, by offering it now directly, as some publishers are doing to their players, they're able to monetize in a way that they weren't before. And so, doing that, you're actually able to grow, uh, the the spend uh, uh, portfolio of your players uh, by offering these new payment methods in a way that you couldn't before.
Yeah, yeah. Um, so I think we still have a little bit of time because we started early, which is fun. Uh, but before I have two more questions, but before I get to those, I was just curious if anyone in

the audience has any questions for anyone up here, any anything on your mind? Could be about typhoons, monetization. My first typhoon warning, uh, is pretty fun. My mom actually texted me to see if I was okay. So, I thought that was pretty cool. Um, all right, no questions from the audience. All right, uh, so I'm going to I'm going to do the old generic question that I love, which is what are you excited about in, you know, 2025, 2026? And feel free to, you know, talk about your own products or, you know, the things that that you know, you're thinking about every day because that's the business you're in, whether it's the next game you're launching or the next product you're releasing. What are we going to be talking about a year from now, year and a half from now, that isn't just the normal, you know, same old stuff? A- Any, uh, but you know, I'll put you on the spot here. Any Any of you can go first.
I wait you go back to the COVID times in the gaming industry. Everybody had all the money in the world

and they were able to spend and launch the games all the time and everybody was happy, even the world wasn't that happy.
You're working on the next virus to spread the the
Yeah, I was in a evil vendor side of it, so I was benefiting a lot when No, the thing that I'm waiting a lot because last couple years as everybody knows been pretty tough for the mobile gaming industry. We have a lot of like uh layoffs and uh all those kind of struggles and then even if we look like uh top 10 games in App Store or Google Play Store usually there is only one game that have launched during that year. Which is kind of example that there is the old games that are still ruling it because people don't have that kind of resources courage and the situation is fully different to even build new games. And I think that's

kind of the funniest like the best fun part in this whole industry. No matter are you evil vendor like I am or are you from the publishing side or the studio side or whoever that we are having a new games all the time and uh not even competing against each other, just increasing the amount of competition which means that the whole industry is growing. So, what I have seen on our point of view because our ASO side is also heavily focused on concept validation, so doing testing before your game is out, testing the marketability. That was something that nobody did that basically 1 and 1/2 years, but now the amount of concept testing being increasing which is usually the sign that people are willing to release new games, so basically what I'm waiting is just new

games. New games little bit more competition and then more money and everything going back how it was.
Yeah, great new games always spur the market. All right, I was told we've got less than 3 minutes now. Maybe it's 1 minute. Rapid fire, what do you got? Real quick.
So, um, as a publishers I would say that the good news is that at least in the Chinese market the regulation is getting relatively looser. So, we're hoping that lots lot of games overseas games they have more chance to get published in China. But of course the ugly truth is it's very still highly competitive. So, that's why you can see a lot of Chinese developers and publishers go outside China to publish their games. But there are chances here. And on the publisher size, as a publishers we have more pressure. So, more more and more Western developers come to us, but we need to tell them that hey it's still a very competitive market. So, on the

publishing size how are we going to help them succeed, right? So, going back to the topics of today, one of the trend I think in in terms of marketing or publishing is that we do a lot of uh organic uh advertising towards the organic search for the game, which means games if you you're still in development if you have the the content for like UGC content that you think it can go viral on social media they have a higher chance to succeed in China. And so often the content you see it looks like organic is not. It's we kind of blended and it looks like native, but it's not. But that's one of the strategies that might be useful.
All right. Okay, I guess we're out of time. But one more thing is I need a quick panel selfie. Here we go, so I can prove to my boss that this happened. Okay, thank you. All right, thanks everyone for listening. We'll see you guys around.
All right, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, everybody.
You're welcome.