How to Optimise Game Success & Monetisation With the Right Brand Partners

one thing we haven't yet talked about which we are going to talk about uh uh now um is is the the use of and a partnership with brands um now brand partnerships one way or another i've always been um i've been for a while an important part of of uh the games industry and something mobile game space and so i'm delighted for our final part session of the morning uh to invite nicholas uh logano who uh to from scuti store if i said that right is that correct that's right it's scooty uh we don't even need to excuse me sorry i i have dot store in my notes so scooty so scooty's good it sounds kind of cool um and you're going to be talking uh today with with patrick uh dolan who's also joining us um about how to optimize game success and monetization with with brand partners is that is that right that is correct we're actually going to

take it even a little bit further because i you know everybody wants to learn more about nfts and uh how they play into the equation and we talk about g commerce as well which is all related to brands and how we can monetize now every single game that's out there well this is fantastic we'll stick around this this is um this is definitely gonna be interesting and and you're gonna listen here so uh whereabouts you based uh nicholas where are you where are you well depending on the time of the year um if it's winter it's going to be florida and then if it's uh not winter it's going to be uh uh new york and that's where patrick is as well okay so patrick's great we've got we've had real we start off in shanghai we've been via much of europe and and now we're getting across to the uh east coast so i'm going to i'm going to leave you had a you had a twang that came from even further afield there are no assists in your voice so uh oh yeah that's australia

but i'm going to leave you guys to to chat if that's okay and and talk through give us your presentation you all good usually i'm gonna share my screeners with uh because we've got lots of slides to go through as well don't worry there's no one after you take as long as you need you can be here for two hours [Laughter] all right all right thank you um all right so i just want to confirm everybody uh can see my screen correct yep all good yep all right fantastic um and again i just wanted to thank everybody uh for being here this morning i obviously welcome the pocket gamer connects and uh this morning as chris had mentioned we're going to be covering optimizing game success and monetization using the right brand partners and also how every game maker can now take advantage of the hottest trends in games today which obviously are g commerce uh and nfts um as chris mentioned i'm nicholas longano i've been making games for well over 20 years most of you probably

don't know me and you don't need to know me uh i've had the privilege of working with the likes of blizzard valve universal interactive uh and almost 20 years ago i helped pioneer the in-game advertising market with massive uh which was eventually acquired by microsoft today i'm the ceo and founder of scooty and i'm joined by my esteemed colleague here patrick dolan who for 13 years was the president of the iab and is a respected thought leader in the advertising industry and when patrick speaks brands listen uh so i'm actually going to quickly turn the the virtual mic so to speak over to patrick and it can get us kick-started today patrick uh thank you nicholas and uh i'm glad to be here everyone uh who's watching um you know in doing some research for this presentation you know i i found a few demographic and um consumer

behavior trends that you know should be very interested to everybody on this on this presentation but also brands are really paying attention to as well and these major demographic changes are that there are more than 39 of the population by 2023 will be gaming and that's a global population of gamers of over 3 billion players that is a huge number and that the largest demographic that's coming up the generation z 90 of that generation consider themselves gamers which is amazing and if you combined both gen z and millennials uh this is alone and there's other obviously you know people outside that those generations

that um you know have buying power but this these two alone have three trillion dollars in purchasing power and one of the things that's happened other than the demographic shift is during covid the e-commerce has exploded and this generation and most everyone is now very comfortable and really utilizing e-commerce for their purchases and you know as i said before brands are paying attention and you should be paying attention because what they're beginning to see is that gaming outside of the traditional ways of monetizing gaming brands see them as an opportunity to reach their customers and they are integrating their products and services into games and creating ability for commerce in those games in fact you know this gucci example led

this guru douglas stevens doug stevens to tweet that the next billion dollar consumer goods channel is g-commerce and you're asking yourself i'm sure what is g-commerce well nicholas is going to explain what g-commerce is and i'm going to turn it back over to him thanks mate um so you said billion it's a hundred billion but it's gonna it could eventually be much greater than that as well so thanks patrick g commerce represents one of the biggest opportunities for game makers and it's available right now to every single one of you um g commerce is literally a reference to any product or nft related commerce which is conducted through games that's g-commerce games are the next major commerce platform and we're going to tell you how to do it and why you should be doing it because it doesn't matter what kind

of game you have it doesn't matter if you're a mobile pc console or you're in esports right doesn't matter if it's a shooter puzzle sim strategy does not matter because g commerce is designed specifically for the entire games industry and it will eclipse all the existing annual revenues that are generated from games today right we've still got the same revenues that we were generating decades ago when i was making games 20 years ago right but g commerce is designed specifically for this industry and it's an opportunity in the trillions of dollars and the best part of it is particularly for mobile game makers is that it can monetize every single one of your players and mobile whether it's free to play or if it's the more hardcore gamers you can monetize them now without ever concerning yourself about alienation um because that's a big one you know when i talk to people about monetization

oh am i going to alienate your place it's impossible you can't through g commerce right so the opportunity definitely can't be ignored by any of us in the games business right and now is the perfect time for all game makers to be integrating g commerce into their games and to help everyone understand the opportunity that we have in front of us right particularly on the content monetization component of it we're gonna borrow a page from the movie industry because i think that that is the easiest way to illustrate it and i'm going to show you how we're doing it with games okay why movies because movies are experiences uh there are non-interactive entertainment just like um well then non-interactive entertainment but they're non-interactive uh versions so to speak of your games we all get that we all understand that and before covert right when you went to a movie theater to watch a movie audiences first entered a lobby hope that makes sense for everybody they then transition to the actual movie and that's where they were immersed

into another world just like your games and just like movies right you have to separate the lobby from the actual game itself because it's that kind of thinking that's going to bear the new opportunities that we're talking about today and like some of your games movies even have brands in them but the brands are always a natural fit to the experience they're never forced you don't see banners displayed below the screen when you watch a movie the movie maker doesn't try to get you to click on some ad that ejects you from your seat to some waiting browser in the ether there are no interstitials that break the immersion of that movie exception is television but we all expect that we know that we were born with that uh we're our generation wise anyhow and while all of this may sound funny to you or some of you that's exactly what many games do today

you know before i go into this you know one of the statements that i wanted to make here is that no game should ever permit the ejection of players in the last panel i heard them talk about user acquisition costs we know how high that is we know how harder that is you should never try to lose your player or because you were pursuing some click-through okay that is by far the worst strategy that any game maker can implement into their games okay what's more about movies is that they're unapologetic about monetizing everyone and they do so many times over all of you are moviegoers or movie viewers right but they do it in such a way that it never alienates you and that is key and it's a lesson that we as game makers need to understand patrick right and they're monetizing you not only in the movie theater but they're monetizing with through pay-per-view digital retail

sales and also through syndication um but when you're in the movie theater lobby you know you're sold premium movie tickets you know there's 3d glasses there's popcorn drinks candy uh merchandise swag you know um and on top of that there's billboards in the lobby and there's previews before the show i mean so they are monetizing you like crazy and along that way i mean most people are pretty happy about the experience i love to watch the previews and you know get my candy and popcorn and drinks and i always have a good time with the movie theaters i can't wait for them to open again i'm sorry electric so having a good time so we have to ask ourselves how does that translate to games and how do we identify um how the games business across all platforms and game genres can tap into billions of new found

dollars and that's what we're here today okay um the majority of games today ignore the most important monetization real estate in their games and that's the lobby we just heard from patrick you know what you're doing in a movie lobby some do actually sell virtual goods there while others do absolutely nothing with their lobby to monetize and it's an enormous opportunity that the games industry is actually leaving billions of dollars on the table needless to say just like a movie theater every game should be used in the lobby to incorporate g-commerce now we start to get into this right here they can monetize every single player whether it's premium or free to play game on any device at all right um and one minute right so this is an example okay one minute you're playing your game the next minute you're back into your lobby they launched the g-commerce experience and here you have it

based on the gain they're coming from technology's reading and basically delivering to each player curated products and these are all hand selected curation and selection is critical you anything that touches your player goes through your game should have the blessing of the game maker uh otherwise you really are going to upset your players in one way shape or form because you're delivering me brands or products that i have absolutely no interest for why are you wasting my eyeball time right if they make a purchase decision they're rewarded these are rewards that can be used to purchase other products crypto game art game trading cards branded collectibles they can spend it in the nft marketplace they can buy other goods they can exchange it for credits within your game right so there are many many possibilities and this is all done through that one thing that i mentioned before which is called g commerce and the majority of game makers

today don't really know that this even exists um because what you're talking about here is an opportunity that whether a player spends any money or not it doesn't matter look at this screen here you've got two ads you just generated revenues from the ads uh from this experience and this is g commerce it's not in the game the player opened up and launched the store on their own accord they opted in so it takes care of many of the issues um that the gaming industry has been played with and all the concerns of idfa and tcf etc this takes all of that away from the equation and provides every single game maker a brand new revenue stream whether the player spends or not and whether that player spends or not they're getting rewarded and that is the

stickiness factor right we talk about retention now we can do something to retain we always need a good game you always have to make a good game experience if you want to retain folks i apologize it looks like the sun is coming up behind me as well um so furthermore g-commerce can also be connected to the actual game experience itself that's if you want it to right so imagine in this scenario here player is zooming around their racing game they pass a billboard for nike again you want to make sure that the content that you have within your game is pertinent to the game experience and also relevant for the player but anyway they're driving around in their racing game they pass a nike billboard nothing happens we're not interfering with the game play we're not ejecting that player they're not clicking it they don't need to do anything with it they just passed it also it seems nothing happened right but

they continue to play onwards they have a great game experience and they finish the game play right now they're back in the lobby this is where we start to alert them okay this is where the g-commerce store where scooty comes in and says hey hey hey look at me there's something happening here we've got some promotion some offers curiosity compels any player to launch the store you guys all know it works that's why you try it with your virtual stores all the time right your g commerce marketplace launches and voila you see nike up there your players are seeing those nike products they came across in your game which now they can buy your player never leaves your game there's no browsers there's no pop-ups there's no interstitials and their ability to shop and your ability to earn is never disruptive or a distraction to the actual gameplay better yet the brains will actually pay you up to three times as much for that native billboard that you saw within that game because it's now a performance-driven ad

with attribution what does that mean it means that you're making much more money and when i purchase those 220 air jordans that you see up there you just received a wealthy share of that sale and you'll probably monetize me more than the entire lifetime right that i was playing your game under the way in which you manage game monetization today it is far more lucrative i still have a great game experience but you've now given me the choice to actually buy the products that i've seen in your game and i can buy other products as well that didn't show up in your game as well it's completely up to you as a game maker because and having said that this is a good transition g-commerce can actually be tailored to every single game and sell literally anything at all that you want it to to your players if you don't want to sell products because i've heard some people say i don't want to commercialize i'm not going to give you my opinion on

that particular uh statement because everybody shops but that's okay if you don't want to sell products right then sell your own game merch you can also tailor these experiences as you wish right you have complete control there's no such thing and there should never be one such thing as one size fits all because it doesn't your games are different your players are different a casual game or someone that's looking for a casual game experience is pretty much different to an art and hardcore uh you know gamer that's shooting them up or going to esports events etc some games can simply offer their own nft marketplace that's for the most ardent players okay personally i wouldn't be putting an nft marketplace in a casual game a puzzle game that doesn't really make sense you're going to put your nft marketplace in those games where you have the most ardent fans that are going to spend money on those uh that game art the collectibles etc you

can sell them limited edition game art trading cards branded collectibles literally anything that's digital that's tied to the blockchain that's all available through g-commerce platforms like scooty you can even use and most people don't know this you we heard in the last panel how difficult user acquisition is how expensive it is there are 955 000 games in the app store right um it is very difficult for any game marketer if you're starting out particularly to start building that audience but you can use a marketplace like studies for example as a place for discovery why because every game that's connected to that network is available for players to see why because they've got these rewards and they can use those rewards to purchase games they can use those rewards to purchase in-game credits so it stands to reason

that the marketplace will actually allow you to sell your own games or market all the other games that you have in your portfolio it's a great marketing tool as well so g commerce as we you know started out today has been specifically designed to solve many of the issues which play games today it's going to improve your player engagement it has to you're rewarding me you're giving me something for a purchase that i would have made anyway i would have bought those nike shoes either from nike or from the amazon store but guess what none of them are giving me a percentage of my sale back that i can now use to either buy other products or to improve my game experience so that reward is critical that reward is your stickiness as well it's also going to improve the game experience as a result it'll increase your retention rates we've got research

right and i'll share some of that research with you in such a in a minute but people are going to launch your games whether they want to play or not just to go into the store because they get a reward every single day that they log in they get a reward every time they watch say a game trailer a movie trailer they're rewarded why would you want to go to youtube to watch an ad from batman movie when i can watch it through your game and i as a player am now rewarded and i can use those rewards to improve my game experience so the net of it is is is going to boost your game ltv and when i say booster i mean boost significantly beyond anything that the games industry has ever seen before commerce is a multi-trillion dollar industry and we're now bringing that to games because it's just another service and it's another point of contact

between you and your players and you can customize it any way you want patrick yeah but of course you know in order to create that really great experience for your user and your your gamer you're going to want to make sure that you've got the right brands associated with your game and your audience so it's very important to make sure that you are partnering with brands that want to help and reward your players with tokens and other ways that they can buy the product so it's nice to match these two things up exactly you don't want to be you don't want to have a player be seeing brands that have really no interest in them as far as the game is concerned they just want an eyeball and somehow that eyeball is going to translate into a sale at some store later on no that's not the way it should be done brands want an engagement and a relationship with your players they want to reward your players as well

and the fact of the matter is that you know game development in the game world is going to be a richer one right post covert because of platforms uh such as scooty through g commerce and of course the nft marketplace as well because they guarantee your players a better experience to the point where we did surveys and research with independent groups right over 500 players all platforms nft premium etc 90 9 out of 10 so that they would want to purchase why because of the rewards and the experience that it gives them it it's not think of g commerce and the the nft marketplace as the super bowl of advertising because that's what it is and your players look forward to it because every day they're going to experience something new they're going to discover a new brand and of course they're going to be rewarded uh for that as well patrick yeah and i was going to say that you know because of this really

explosion and e-commerce you know the the idea of buying through e-commerce is something that everybody is super comfortable with but you know there's probably a couple of questions out there and before we turn it open to everybody i'm going to ask a few to nicholas uh does g-commerce work with premium games it sounded earlier that it might just work with pocket games can you give us uh some insight into that yeah no at g-commerce nfts et cetera they appeal to all players the nft appeal more to the hardcore games and the hardcore gamers i'd say that's just my opinion so take that uh as you wish um but you know g-com is spending a money on products that you want to buy that's for everybody and it doesn't matter if you're the most casual player to the most fanatic gamers right everybody buys products and g commerce allows them to purchase what they would have purchased somewhere else anyway and what's better they receive a reward which will improve their overall game experience and you as a game maker now

make more money from that player than you would ever have had in any other way you're trying when you when you are fresh out of the stalling you are trying to convert a player and this is where the mobile industry really suffers a little bit where they try and convert to in-app purchases you're trying to change consumer behavior i've been a brand marketer for almost 35 years gosh i'm getting old but you're trying to change consumer behavior that is so difficult to do what we're doing through g commerce is we're allowing them to do the things that they do every day and that's buy things and now they can buy things through your games right without ever impacting the game experience so it's no surprise nine out of ten players no matter what games they play said that they want this by the way the other 10 the other 10 didn't say no this is crap get this out of my game they said well i really want to experience it first before i can tell you that yeah this is a place where i would shop for

so not a negative don't think that that one out of 10 is a negative it's not the one out of 10 is i want to wait and see and experience it and see exactly what it can do for me and again it doesn't matter if you are casual free to play or premium everybody wants to discover savings and who doesn't like rewards right we all do i fly one airline only because of those rewards imagine what it can do for your game as well and what we've done here g commerce is literally gamified shopping um so we shouldn't take that lightly at all all right so i think we've kind of talked about this uh about whether people will shop in games um is there anything else you want to say about that i yeah you know i've come across some game makers who say you know oh nobody wants to shop through my game um you know look we all have to keep an open mind um shopping has changed you know very different from the time that i first uh went to a mall to how i shop today which is completely

all online i i don't go out uh you know the shop anymore i don't need to everything is there um same with your games you you are engaging these audiences um i like to say renting their time uh you know for could be five minutes ten minutes etc right um your game can provide them access right to the products they want to buy in turn it provides you the rewards which enhance you know your gameplay experience right so it becomes a huge win-win for everybody and frankly even if they don't make a single purchase it's fine players receive rewards every time they launch the g commerce experience like scooty right and game makers still get revenues from the advertising that was going on when you saw those screens flash in front of you and again this is all outside of the game experience and then the last thing i

always say to everybody is it's the player's choice i hear that's said to me many many years ago from many game makers you know when we were trying to do in-game advertising right um in this you know that you know it's a player's choice to do this or i always give my players choices okay so we should live by the words we speak it's the players choice give them the choice in the lobby has nothing to do with the game play experience and i guarantee you they're going to make the decision to purchase from it because they're going to find the products that they want and they're going to enjoy the riches of the rewards that they get from it as well sorry i delighted that one that's alright i've got one more question for you and this is something i think that all the game developers are thinking about like what kind of resources am i going to need to do something like this if i was interested in doing it because it seems like it could be complicated pretty much nothing and that's a completely understandable question

um i always say game makers need to focus on making great games um which is exactly why scooty for example created an sdk which takes one hour one to integrate its g commerce and the nft marketplace into any game at all okay or even the customization to your game is handled by scooty right so i like to say it's a plug and play but in this case it's a plug and shop experience for everybody um and look this brings us to the end today and i do want to thank you all for joining us and obviously we'll open it up for q a to end up there on there i'm sorry chris so maybe you have some questions from the audience yeah yeah i was just i was fine no i was going to usually come back and do some questions that was um very very high energy uh by henry i had you picture you just you was telling uh said it at some point you've been in essentially too long my god i wish i had your energy i think that was incredible um so also at one point you did have the light of the light of uh heaven behind you

it's a it's a heavenly thing right i'll try and kind of combine these quite a few questions i'll try and get points i i guess one i i think germany people get the idea i think it's it's you know it's putting shopping within a game and i completely don't see why there's any reason like you say people are shopping mainly of amazon off the mobile phone what difference does it make it it doesn't i i i i think the idea of bringing brands into into mobile uh bringing is something that you know a lot of the advertising in mobile games is other mobile games right um i think trying to find ways to get brands absolutely seems logical it's a retail experience they understand i totally get it i think because often brands can be a bit hesitant to you know to go something completely different so i think that's fine i i guess there's some practice questions about how how kind of scooty kind of work specifically so do you do you kind of provide obviously provide the store do you also provide all the

the offers like or do people select how does that work what do i have to do yeah so as a game maker as i said earlier takes about one hour to basically integrate the sdk and look you know i also hear and know that you know everybody wants to integrate into your game you know you have you have decisions to make but when a solution comes along that can provide you monetization retention it has an nft marketplace in it can also now have this uh g-commerce um it's you know it's substantial in terms of what one sdk can do so that's one hour right on top of that everything else is taking care of you we go out we hand source we source the brands i have a list from gamers right in terms of the brands that they want and the categories they want right so everything is customized to your players on top of that every every game maker has a dashboard and on that dashboard they're going to see all the brands that want to be sold through your games

you check the ones that you want you don't check any of them you don't get any brands because we're not going to serve your audience as anything that you don't want and frankly you might also have you might also have a product placement an exclusive arrangement with especially for sporting games right that we have to be very cognizant of that um so the decisions and the controls are all left to the game makers but we do everything else for them so i've got some a lot of questions from from dan creek who i should i really should have because he's put out five something i should get him so he's he's asked what one related to that is he said you know you've talked a little bit about how you recommend you know he said do you provide recommended brands you said you do so that's that's kind of it how many brands i mean at the moment i guess it's it's early days i don't i don't know where you're at but how many brands have you kind of got on board at the moment or what sort of brands are you kind of working with right now we only deal with uh there are two categories of brands the big national brands that your uh you

know your consumers are going to want to buy they expect to see they appeal to gamers but we also think about the demographics so you remember how i said there's no one-size-fits-all we look at the game the demographics of that game by the way we tell you who exactly is playing your game right we are compliant in every way idfa that's why we got patrick here tcf gdp you know we don't we don't have to concern ourselves we don't use third ma party markets or anything like that we have the relationship one-to-one with the brands top brands but we also offer your players because we know players want to discover things there are cool items like for instance we have a cool shoe manufacturer right that's called koyo i hope i pronounced that right koio and it's 250 pair of shoes right they are so cool because we want to provide your players with cool items that they would have discovered on their own okay um they're high-end and you're thinking yourself my player's not going to spend 250

on a pair of shoes through my game sure they are they're spending that money anyhow they're going to get a reward they might get anywhere from two to five percent from that brand in rewards so they're getting back five to ten dollars that they can now use in your in your game as a result and of course they can pay over time that doesn't have to come off there you know we can use we work with firms like a firm etc so they pay in installments as well okay there's a couple of questions about the mechanics of it here that there's there's uh related to the the the one relates to the lob where where is what is considered the lobby of the game is that the main menu was as a screen shown after each level um correct it's whatever my first load screen is when i launch my game right where where are you taking me is it the main menu is it and look it's your game you can put us wherever you want right um we just want to be able to allow the player access put us anywhere you want that you feel you're going to be able to optimize you know that launch opportunity an

interesting question here which is always uh topical is do uh does the um uh does apple or i guess google take a share of the revenue um but someone's we've faced a bill through before we've tried self-discussions in games someone's raised here yeah no because um we're not selling you any digital items or any other producers um at the moment in which they use their rewards so you're making money from the purchase of those say those uh nike jordans right that's a 220 item i'm not going to say on this in a public forum what you're going to make but it's double digits right that's from one purchase you make double digits okay you also make money from the rewards program as well each one of those brands gives a percentage back in the rewards that reward if they exchange it for a digital good we have to pay uh the the fee you know to apple etc of course and that's already built into the model so we we will reward everybody that's

associated yeah so so we're not trying to side line up if money's being made by developer then it's the same thing um i've got a couple of specific questions here does the scooty use iab categories for pairing games and ads that sounds like it might be a patrick thing i don't know he's he's uh expert but yeah actually if if i may so yep so patrick uh you know obviously as uh the the ex-president there of the aab um so we've worked uh with him to make sure that you see you saw those displays those are not just product displays they are all iab compliant billboards as well um patrick do you want to add to that yeah i mean you know it's right now i'm in the process of reviewing the scooty technology and the data practices and you know it's so far everything seems compliant but you know i've got to do more research [Laughter]

so um i got from louis savvy was asking how does your nft marketplace work would we upload content to you or via another source i guess they're talking about if they have their own nfts they want to they want to sell is that is that something that's also supported here yeah we're yes so you know we're pretty much agnostic we support through our system we support um you know any cryptos uh every the nft that we have in place uh we're the third party actually so you don't feel anything the player doesn't see anything it's all happening in the background is a third-party firm um that uh uses aetherium um we're going to announce who they are very very shortly um as well um but again i didn't want to do the heavy lifting i'm sure most game makers don't want to do the heavy lifting as far as that's concerned uh so they they do everything the right way and it's all built into our platform okay finals probably very quick answer uh from anonymous attendees here do you support the middle east we've got we've

got some uh we've got a global audience here we've got people from the mena region is there any reason why you wouldn't support any particular region no we support um the beauty of this is that um all those products that you're seeing we don't carry any of that product it's all direct from the manufacturers so what we do is if there's an opportunity in the middle east we will work with local vendors and local suppliers um in order to deliver to those players the the products that they're looking for absolutely stuff in boxes and necklace lots of shapes no no thank you so much for that it was really interesting and and yeah something very fresh and g commerce i'm sure is something we shall hear an awful lot more about uh hopefully associated with scooty in in the in in the coming weeks months and years so thanks so much for your time today guys uh have a great uh great time on the show obviously please do reach out uh to nicholas if you want to learn more about scooty you'll be in the meeting system and uh yeah and

perhaps the discord i don't know what he's doing but feel free to reach out to him direct um that is cool i think my my colleague's going to send you into digital ether back into into into uh new york to enjoy your your day thanks for getting up early