How to Advertise Hybrid-Casual Games in 2024

the CPI benchmarks I think especially for developers that are moving in to this realm of things as well right you know like one thing I think one Insight was regarding that uh iOS in Japan has one of the highest CPI benchmarks but still it is the top 10 countries by ad spend in 23 right so this was a very very unique uh insight for us I mean we have seen this trend because usually advertisers like to pump money in tier one with us UK and all these countries uh but kind of you know I did see one more report that said that I think in 2024 almost 64% of the ad spent Revenue will revolve around the Asia Pacific [Music] Market hi everyone this is Roman from tangent and today we're discussing how to advertise hyper and hybrid casual games and I'm joined by kimim please introduce yourself hey everyone nice to meet you thank you for having me Roman uh this is fim on behalf of ab Samurai uh I I work at app Samurai as the

Director of Business and app Samurai is an attech startup based out of New York sweet uh fim I saw you published an ebook on hybrid casual games so this is basically why why you're here so I bet you have a ton of expertise so maybe you can tell us for the starters what is a hybrid casual sure thing Roman so one thing that you you mentioned right so uh hybrid casual is something that has been making a lot of noise for the past year year and a half before which the whole world was revolving around hyper casual midcore games at Max as well but of course as you see over time the industry is constantly evolving and one thing that came with the evolution was that you know while hyper casuals were enjoying extreme popularity they were easy to make easy to use and Market one thing that was kind of an issue was that you know the retention rate was something that was a big problem so over

time the ltvs and retentions were very very low so the idea was hey you know let's acquire users at a cheaper cost with you know limited LTV but then with all these challenges right how can we increase you know uh the monetization of it as a game developer how do I earn more Revenue without losing the player so you have hyper casual player that just plays for fun you have a a core game midcore game plays there that is a hardcore fan right something in between right when you merge both of them you have hybrid casual so you would see approximately 40 to 50% of this hybrid casual Revenue being generated via inapp purchase so still ads holds almost 50% of the revenue via ads the idea was make a game that is not as complex as a mid cord so the users that were fan of hyper casual games can still play it but at the same time add layers like you know social charts leaderboards inapp purchases so this would make the user come back to the game again and again and hence the core game or the midcore game user would also start playing this game so you would still acquire a user

that would basically merge between these two genres and at the end of the day you would have higher retention rates and higher ltvs yeah yeah makes sense um what about the proportions uh of in purchases and add Revenue you mentioned like 5050 but um from your experience yeah so even on the I even on the ebook where we evaluated over 100 different hybrid casual games uh what we saw was on average 40 to 50% was an ideal scenario for iaps a lot of them kind of you know wanted to keep it less than 50% uh just to kind of you know go into that hybrid casual setup game of things as well so 40 to 50% is what we would say as an ideal Roman uh but then you would also have apps that would do exact 5050 split but the ideal version is you know 40% I AP 60% inapp ads so that the user that won't do the inapp purchase can still contribute to the ad Revenue by watching a rewarded video banner Etc yeah that's a cool inside because

like I see a lot of hyper casual developers starting to do like hybrid and the in purchases is a the most challenging part right like of course it's challenging for any game um but we we've seen the herper Casual Developers for whom it was like so easy to get all of those ad Vue and all of a sudden like the UE has shrinked right and with all these privacy regulations coming in with the Google sandbox in you know all these advertising is kind of you know becoming a challenge these days and when you pump into these iaps it's more risk-free and you can place a bet on hey if the user is purchasing something they will be a repetitive user and you know as they keep coming back to the app it contributes directly to your retention rate ltvs and overall Revenue right um maybe can you share another Insight from your ebook just as a teaser for everyone here sure thing one more thing that we

did see was in terms of uh the CPI so overtime as you can see for the hyper casual games with all these privacy regulations the cpms and the cpis were increasing right so this was a challenge on why hyper casual developers started to seek other monetization uh channels for example with hybrid casual although they are willing to pay a premium CPS of course as you can imagine uh since these are kind of you know midcore games combined as well so you the developers don't expect a cheaper uh CPI like a hyper casual game but they're will to pay a premium price for acquiring a user with the intention that these users based on the monetization will be doing in app purchases so although as a game developer your CPI might go higher to acquire a user compared to hyper casual but your Ras that would be a new metric not getting a cheaper user but getting a user that would contribute to overall Ras is a main kpi so that would be something that would change in your day-to-day Life as a developer moving from hyper casual to hybrid casual and uh you said a but AAS for what day for when we're talking about

hybrids so for hybrid casual games since it's not as serious as as say a casual or a midcore game for example you would still see kind of you know day 30 Ras is something that is a very very common metric of course you know over longer term day 60 day 90 day 120 are more and more in demanda as well but you would see a stable rise in your Ras so day 14 is a good starting point day 30 is an ideal time where you would expect to hit those R goals uh of course over 100% makes sense um yeah let's then talk about like specifics uh from the 2023 or maybe even early 2024 um can you highlight some of the hybrid casual titles that are on the market now sure thing so one of the the leaders of this was Ru of course that came out with Angry Birds too so of course you know growing up everybody played Angry Birds which was a very concept and Rio was one of the leaders in the public e system that came came up with the Angry Birds 2o as a concept for

hybrid casual because initially in the days while they were not a hybrid casual they were more of a midcore game they still had things like leaderboards and scorecards which they moved over to this new Angry Birds 2 as a genre similar to clash Royal for example right they also enjoy these features so these are not too heavy on the user I could be a user that loves hyper casual games I could walk into Angry Birds 2 or Clash Royal really fun games really well done because they're backed by these big studios and you start playing a game and anytime you see stuck at a level you will not be obliged to do any app purchase you could just hop on watch a rewarded video watch a rewarded ad has hyper casual or a casual player you can just walk into these apps and really have fun and these apps were actually on the leading board where you would follow all these others so holic moved into the hybrid casual setup as well Kali they moved into hybrid casual publishing as well tap Nation moved into hybrid casual as well so you see all these leading developers moving on to these steps uh but I believe Angry Birds 2 is is a great game that I think anybody that wants to see the basics of hybrid casual

it's fun to play with and you'd learn a lot yeah this is a very interesting perspective because we've started hearing about the hybrid only like for the past two years I I think and usually it's like the games like arero is say this like role model right but you are saying like Okay hybrid was always there right almost from The Angry Birds too it it was right so while the the word hybrid casual might be new to the ecosystem uh you always had gaming uh developers looking for alternative channels to kind of you know earn the revenue after having all these cuts that you know every time there is an inapp purchase you have to pay to Apple or Google etc for those inapp purchases so something that kind of you know trigger external monetization ways ads came into play accordingly and when you found a good balance of uh game games with had ads and the inap purchase you know while you had the hybrid casual setup so once the big Studio started doing it and now hybrid casual can be done by any Studio hence I think it's a very very common

talking point that you don't need to be r view or Angry Birds do this you can be an indie developer and still focus on you know hybrid MH yeah and uh that means that actually it's not hyper casual developers that starting doing the hybrid it was a other way around the Casual developers was starting exactly exactly exactly because for hyper casual kind of you know it's usually easy to make a game but when you start acquiring those users that is where the main problem starts and once you are somebody who has into midcore and you want users that would play your game on a broader audience that's where I think you know you would move to a hybrid casual setup got it um we also released the report on hyper and Hyper and hybrid casual games uh I'll just quickly share the screen now let me know if you had a chance to look at it I I did see this report right and one thing that was very very interesting was especially the place where you

highlighted all these unique channels that the advertisers could possibly tap into and also insights like you know uh the CPI benchmarks I think especially for developers that are moving in to this realm of things as well right you know like one thing I think one Insight was regarding that uh iOS in Japan has one of the highest CPI benchmarks but still it is the top 10 countries by ad spend in 23 right so this was a very very unique uh inside for us I mean we have seen this trend because usually advertisers like to pump money in tier one with us UK and all these countries but Canin know I did see one more report that said that I think in 2024 almost 64% of the ad spent Revenue will revolve around the Asia Pacific markets right so that is an ins very very similar to what you had shared in the report and I found it very very interesting got it uh any comments around the ad Network rankings or the ad types or maybe something that you haven't seen here but you observed on your own so one thing that we did find especially with our

version of the the hybrid casual analysis was regarding uh the channels of acquisition as you mentioned so of course you know app loving and all the leading channels that you have highlighted are the main go-to channels for any uh developer to test a hypothesis or for a soft launch but as you grow that game right something that has been popping up very frequently is the New Concept of a reward of play time which basically while an offer ball would reward the user for a task the rewarded play time or the play to on that app Samurai does for example rewards the user for the amount of time they invest in playing that game so that is a channel that we have seen operate as a new channel for acquisition on top of all these successful channels that you have shared so with the rewarded play time you can assure that the user would walk onto the app and for every minute they spend inside the app uh the chances of them uh purchasing an inapp package arises right so we have seen with this so although these are cpis are significantly higher as you mentioned uh but the RO ltvs are quite quite higher

compared to an offer wall because again an offer wall you would bet on the user to complete certain tasks so if you are a hyper casual of course offer wall works wonders but once you are in the hybrid casual or where your inapp purchases have significantly higher contribution to your Revenue you would want to make sure that you're actually tracking the play time of the user as well and basically motivating them with you know uh different kind of levels different rewards and of course leading to eventual purchases got it let me quickly Lo this one and I have a question about it like is there like a lot of supply for this ad format because the the most problematic thing is that I've been hearing is actually scaling so it works okay for small scale but once we get we want to scale more then this is where like networks often underperform definitely Roman so as you mentioned it is something that has been very very niche in the ecosystems so while this concept hasn't been around as

long as app loving or an offerall concept uh the reward play has been around for the past two two and a half years right so that's what we have seen so with every day uh the scale is constantly increasing right all the leading advertisers that were once doing just offer walls and if they have higher inapp purchases are moving to the rewarded playtime ecosystem right players like app Samurai and other players are also contributing to the growth as well so we see constant scale of course now you would again any game developer that designs a game the inapp purchase ratio differs now of course the the spending power of somebody in a tier one country let's say the US UK or Japan is much more compared to a player in you know a tier three country to do the inapp purchase right so by default The Advertiser would focus on these regions to buy the inapp purchase and for the tier two and tier three regions with ads so they don't need to purchase they can just watch the ads and contribute to the revenue while the tier one countries uh are where you could actually bet on the users to make that purchase hence with the inventory as well as as you mentioned not many ad networks are

capable of this you know you need to have your own SDK like app Samurai to basically promote this uh Channel and promote this inventory so we are of course you know reaching that scale we are not there yet you know because the it's kind of a niche product at the moment uh but we definitely see potential and we have heard from the advertisers as well that due to the high roas they would constantly want more and more scale which we are trying to achieve as well yeah yeah um yeah that's an interesting point and and uh what about some other trends that you see for the hybrid casual games so one very common Trend as we spoke at the start Roman was that you know usually the advertisers are kind of you know a bit used to the the the lower cpis that they come from from the hyper casual lower cpis lower ltvs but in this world one common Trend we have seen is no longer keeping acquiring a low k a low CPI user as a kpi but right now all kpis are oriented for your post install actions for your LT DVS for your was as well so

as you can see with this scan 4.0 updates and the Google privacy sandbox the ecosystem is also bound to see some fundamental changes so I believe the whole hypothesis on hey if you are a gaming studio get the cheapest CPI from Google and Facebook and you know uh clanking those ltvs on day seven and you are done I think the focus will be left from there to H try to reach your ltvs in day 30 day 45 day 60 so play the long game so it's more like a marathon not a Sprint anymore for all the game developers especially entering the hybrid casual SP right and it's so hard also like talking from the experience of uh building all those reports it's getting so much harder to do the benchmarks because again like how do you define hybrid like you are saying 6040 50/50 uh add Revenue in a purchase split but is it if it's like 7030 should we still consider it 80/20 right and everyone would have a different opinion course of

course of course of course that's what the that that's that's the the good part of the industry right it's a very very Dynamic industry you know uh notto baskets are exactly the same as well the ideal opinion is that you know uh the Ina purchases between 40 to 50% and 50% is uh you know Ina purchase to inapp ads is a perfect fit if you have higher uh inapp purchases you would be basically considered as a midcore or a casual game of sorts as well your cpis by default are higher and as your ad Revenue starts to increase You' be more on the hypercar because of course if your ad Revenue increases by default uh they are not earning you as much as an app purchase hence that users's LTV decreases hence your CPI tends to decrease so you'd go back to the hyper with the increase in ads and with the increase in Ina purchases you would skew slowly towards the bitco genre uh what about the pr predictions for 2024 like it can be anything on the UA side channels ad

type scan I don't know whatever you have so a couple of pointers right so one thing of course you know uh in terms of uh the the biggest regulations would be around the scan 4.0 updates and the Google privacy sandbox which basically goes into effect in May so that will basically change a lot of things as well we all have to wait and see there's a lot of speculation a a lot of prediction but only time will tell regarding the channels of acquisition as I mentioned I know uh the app Lo the dsps the offer walls they are there and they have been there for legacy right but something new as in terms of You Know audio ads is something that has been very very new same time rewarded play time is something that is very very new and these deliver Ras at a scale that the offer walls have not been able to deliver just because of the nature of the game when the inapp purchases exceed a certain percentage so you would pay for a higher CPI and you know You' basically get that LTV covered in day 30 for example it's a kind of A New Concept and we are seeing more and more adoption more and more hybrid casual games willing to spend that higher CPI and the

mid code games willing to spend that higher CPI for a user that basically gives them higher LTV over the longer skew as well and regarding one more thing would be regarding the genre of the game as well as of course you know in the initial it has been the q1 of q24 has been almost come to an end so RPG party match Casino these kind of games are making quite the noise as well actually there was a whole report by uh data AI regarding RPG and match will actually fuel uh $1 of every $5 of aggregate growth in spending right so the amount of spend that is going to be increased for RPG and match is significantly increasing as well looking at app summarized current customer base we do see that Trend screwing that ways so this could be probably an interesting uh genre of games to keep an eye on for 2024 got it um as a last one uh do you have any tips maybe one tip the the tip that you want to give to a hybrid casual Developers so uh one thing if you are very new and

moving from let's hyper casual to hybrid casual uh one very important tip is the way you use these user acquisition channels as well although the campaign types might look somewhat very very similar but the way you report P the data is extremely different as well because right now you are trying to balance out inapp ads to inapp purchase as well and of course you would have to optimize your game to be more uh incremental for these inapp purchase as well so the same user that was once very comfortable with watching an AD should basically now kind of you know feel motivated to go ahead and make that purchase as well so from building out those game Dynamics to all the way from user acquisition and monetization mechanism uh for developers moving into hybrid casual I believe this is a very very important factor that you change your views of how you would position hyper casual and hybrid casual within the company itself especially in terms of reporting thanks a lot for him that was very helpful um please uh leave us a comment under this video if you have questions

we'll definitely answer them give us a like if you like this video and uh see you in the next one thank you very much byebye cheers