How to Monetise Your Game Smarter in 2025

[Music] possibly winding down at the end of the day but actually it's high energy because I have got Andrew SE who is my favorite admon person Baran from triple duts first of all great to see you Andrew great to see you too Peggy and you know thank you very much you know for people who might not know Peggy on one of the link post uh actually offered the ticket if not I wouldn't be in the venue at the moment so you know it's a great pleasure to be back and all because of feggy oh my goodness that's lovely that is so wonderful and it was it was great getting you in right uh little bit of connection but I look about Connections you're connected as well Andrew and I've been thinking about you because since our last podcast on my mobile Groove now this is Pocket Gamer but uh the hacks are getting very imaginative the stuff I'm hearing at the show for admon and I thought you are the

man who who had some hacks that were were borderline in 2024 let's say what are you excited about in 2025 there are opportunities I mean there is reason to believe that it's a very optimistic feeling here yeah look I think there there are so many things that we haven't really yet uncovered right so if we think about the picture that we're talking about uh you know regarding cpms I think there is going to be an opportunity for us to try and make the auctions that um we run in mediation platforms whether that's Max whether that's level play to try and make them more competitive right so that um you know you can bring cpms up you can bring prices up and I think that's always good for us on the other side I think maybe not so much a hack some might call it a hack but I think players or you know Publishers are going to get a lot more creative with the ways that you are trying to shape the user experience so you know stuff like frequency caps um we

we talked about collaborating a lot more closely with networks to do things like ad quality controls and AD templates and I feel like we're going to get a lot more out of that in 2025 and hopefully Beyond because I think this is a new kind of Arc that everyone's on um you know we've gone through kind of the Google bidding changes you know ashes and all that and I think now um it's about kind of rebuilding right and and taking it a different direction I'm surprised also I heard a lot about subscriptions which you wouldn't expect because it was like oh it's difficult and you know if you're subscribing then maybe you're not going to look at the ads I mean it's one or the other it's cannibalizing you know it's it can just get messy because you can't split it that clearly subscriptions I mean you don't do them at triple dot you're you're totally iaia but there is this level of mixing up the the models is that what one of the things you're seeing hearing or would would you even

advise I think it depends on the type of games that you are building so I think maybe for kind of like very mature games right like those that you've had for a couple of years already that have a very well-founded user base maybe you can do it but I wouldn't expect it to kind of like move the needle so if we're thinking about what's going to really supercharge or drive your growth this year and you are kind of building a new game and you're thinking what are the principles of those game do you want to put in subscriptions then I think that works right so I I think the first and foremost idea is kind of like what type of games if you were building games um Do you want to build that would lend itself best to a subscription model where you could still have ads because like you said like a subscription model could mean that you offer no ads package but that means that for everyone else who doesn't subscribe which is the majority of your users you would still have ads and it's about how you blend the game to in identifies different

types of player Behavior so that leads us to something that might be a trend in 2025 I'm not an expert in admon like you but I would put some money on it which is thinking more in tears is what I'm hearing you know it's just like the the small medium large pricing right and um so we're going to be thinking about more mixes I was talking I had someone from triple dot on my panel as well and it was like you know rewards as well rewarded platforms they have to be looking at their users differently and all needs to be adapting segmenting where are you on segmentation and admon putting those two together so it's like yes it is the right approach for the right user to make the right amount of money yeah look I think segmentation is part of the bread and butter right like I think even if you are thinking when when I started in Atman and and those who came kind of like have been in the industry even before me um you always think about segmentation because you wouldn't put for instance the floor

price for All GEOS so you would put um a higher floor price for us or maybe uh what you would consider the tier one english- speaking countries where prices are higher right so there is segmentation wherever you think about it I I guess the maybe like more Nuance way of thinking about it is what types of segmentation right so of course like from the user acquisition side you think about different campaign types because they bring in different types of users you might think about um how old the user is meaning how long they've played the game for whether they are a fresh install or they're like an existing quite kind of like long established loyal user right so that's another way to kind of like segment and I guess you know we we spend a lot of our time um talking about data at H you know on the last time we we had a conversation and I think the question is as you get more of these data points are the segments that you're creating out of these data points actually meaningful or do they end up

just creating a lot more complexity cuz what you don't want is creating all of these segments not getting an artow uplift um but having to maintain them right and so ultimately whatever it is we choose to create segments on um what we're always doing it we're always trying to find new ways to do it um but it's about you know serving right like that North Star of just being able to grow Revenue in a sustainable way the value of an Engaged player is just out of this world it's all I'm hearing about you know we need to think of new metrics to talk about levels of Engagement because different values so we need we need new metrics maybe new Blended metrics it's going to be an interesting year for datadriven thinking a lot of models I think we're going to check in the bin as they say in England uh and and others were going to modify I mean you're thinking in that direction can you give some guidance or some thinking around how we're going to actually measure the success of admon in

25 yeah look like there is one only one real nor Star right which is Art Dow of course like you can think of it as um cumulative Revenue if you're looking at it from the UA side but that is at the end of the day that's it right I guess if you're thinking about what components would make up that traditionally you've always thought just about CPM or price and like Impressions right which is your quantity I guess now in 2025 what is perhaps going to become more and more important are things like retention things like engagement and I suppose traditionally your admon managers have only ever focused on the CPM part of the equation or how it influences Impressions right that kind of like uh Dynamic relationship that they have but right now I think Atma managers you know some people at this conference have also spoken about the fact that you need to look at things in a more holistic way you almost need to be a bit like a

product manager of some of the games because you need to look at how your ads um either the ad quality the frequency um you know all of these uh factors the impact that would have on retention profiles on engagement profiles and I think that's not an easy leap to make or you know you're going to have to start from scratch again but it is going to inform how you evaluate kind of like art Dow uplifts and the success that comes from um in 2 and I think as we said like this new Journey this new arc that we are on from now on I like that sort of like the heroes Arc we're going to have a happy end we're gonna have a happy end at the end I've also been listening a lot to really changing just the perspective not even changing the formula just changing for example what you think of as a as a payback period you know having a little bit more patience I was talking to one guy he's like you know we just we just changed it a bit and we saw that we gave it a bit

more time and we saw these massive returns I mean it was a it was a 10x increase in Revenue that's not small so it's almost as if the strategy is right just give it a little more time to work not necessarily burning the cash but just letting it hit some sort of dynamic what do you make of that I think that's probably fair right um I think we all came out of like a lot of the kind of success stories we heard of like supercharged Grove in the sense of you know hitting in very small payback Windows either come from games that um you know dominated the market right like they Blitz the market or they came from kind of like a period of time so I'm thinking like covid where it was very easy because like engagement numbers were very high and you know I guess like advertisers e-commerce kind of advertisers were kind of going through the roof right I think that's changed a little and you know the way that people are behaving Viv games has changed right because they're not I guess stuck at

home all the time as they were um during their era and so what that means is that if we keep the kind of goals I suppose the same or you keep kind of yeah your payback Windows exactly the same then you you're not responding I guess to the environment that we are now finding ourselves in right and I think that has kind of secondary implications because you know UA and monetization at the end of the day are two sides of the same coin so if from the monetization point of view we saying saying that you know it's it's stable it's strong it's still growing it's just not at the kind of hypersonic growth that it was then we need to find that symbiotic relationship where UA is also kind of like changing the way that they are looking at the goals and how they uh should serve those goals and I think you know at least for each publisher um that sweet spot is different but for each publisher who does this right it means that you're more likely to get kind of sustainable results and growing results because again like I think more than anything

kind of sustainable growth is what everyone is looking for rather than just kind of like volatile High periods of high growth and imp periods of love because that I mean that's not good for the heart I love it I love your analogies Andrew and I love the fact that you have such a balanced calming way of discussing this I knew it was a great idea when we said yeah let's let's do this let's meet again um and do it again and you have shared some great insights and above all um some great Vibe as well I mean you have to be the one You' call me positive but I think you're you're a match you're a match by far and and and and you and you ironed your shirt I'm just kidding did Iron your shirt I did I did oh so Mom if you're watching this as well I haveo eye in this sh absolutely well it's great to have you here great to have gotten you in Andrew it was well worth it and hey let's continue the conversation you you rock Andrew honestlyy thank you

this show is all about how to do your job better how to make an amazing game how to Market it and you have a say so if you have a story or know someone we need to shine a light on then we would love to hear from you we want to hear from you we want to reflect the reality of the mobile games Market in all its wonderful complexity and strangeness so if you have any suggestions for us if you have any feedback for us you can always get in touch you can email us at podcast at pocketgamer.biz you can find us on Twitter at PG Biz and you can reach out to us through the pocketgamer.biz website if you're interested in listening to all of our podcasts you can find them at pocketgamer.biz SLP podcast and we would love to hear your thoughts on future shows and we've got you covered on all the major platforms so subscribe to the audio podcast as Brian said look for us on YouTube if you want to read it hey you can do that too because we have a companion post for you

as well on the pocketgamer.biz website tune in again for the next edition of the pocketgamer.biz podcast and we look forward to speaking to you in the near future until then I'm Brian Bago I'm Peggy an saltz and that's a wrap until next week