Levelling Up Your Mobile Gaming Strategy on Snapchat

we're going to segue into social media now um in the company of um of callum carmichael from snap um he's got a power that's a 80s reference no that's going to happen apart from me but but snap i know snap have been achieving some uh incredible uh results with kind of their their kind of micro games or games recently i've it's uh maybe not spoken about enough actually but um but there's certainly a snapple or snapchat as you know it is certainly much more than uh funny overlays and throwaway videos these days as an important part of the ecosystem so really interested to hear from uh here from uh from callum about what what he's got to share about his leveling up mobile gaming strategy hey calum how you doing good morning how are you not bad not bad how where where abouts are you in the world are you in this great ufk or uh i am very much so down in uh

down in the west end i've uh come into the office to guarantee some wi-fi and london london okay so it's still there last night i hope it did look it did look like it'd been on the receiving end of a fairly heavy night last night um but uh no all good it's great to be here everyone how bad that would have been there we go so i know i know i know well we we won't we won't come without anyone i'm gonna let you um i'm gonna let you go straight along you'll have your full time don't worry and then no worries come back with some questions at the end for you uh and if you've got any issues i'll wait in as well but over to you with your uh yeah your project all good can you see see my screen okay yep working perfect perfect well thank you very much for letting me uh to speak today it's uh it's it's really exciting to be here and uh i just want to start off by saying um many many congratulations to the italian team for uh for their victory last night it was hard fought and uh yeah a bit of commiserations to the england team losing on penalties my name is callum carmichael i am the

head of international uh gaming at snap i focus on the growth the growth side of the business i'm really excited to be here today to present um our advertiser and developer solutions for really growing your game both on and off of the platform so just to dive into our agenda today so who are the snapchat generation i'll walk you through a little bit around who the snapchat experience and how really to bring your game to life through augmented reality on snap and then also how to grow your game further on the platform as well so let's dive in so over the last decade smartphones have become more convenient more powerful and the gaming experiences have also kind of followed suit as a result and as a result of this kind of growing growing capability games are becoming more complex and as a result we're expected to see over 120 billion dollars spent in mobile gaming in 2021 and generations from around the world are turning to their phones to play to connect and to also

communicate with their friends at our recent q1 earnings call we were very proud to announce that snapchat is now seeing over 500 million monthly active users around the world and on a daily basis snapchat is engaging with over 280 million daily active users what does that equate to that's almost one in two smartphone users in the usa today is on snapchat is also the most used camera company in the world we generate over 5 billion snaps every single day and there are more snaps taken on our camera than any other smartphone and digital camera put together five billion snaps a day let me introduce you to the snapchat generation the snapchat generation are millennials and gen z's and as a generation these people are 150 more likely to communicate

with pictures over words come into snapchat to express their true selves and to connect with their real friends and they're unique to the platform if you want to reach millennials and gen z's where they are every single day you have to include snap in your media mix you're going to be missing out on a huge incremental reach due to our huge unduplicated audience and contrary to popular belief snap just isn't used by teenagers our median age is now 26 and the fastest age group for our for our audience is the 35 plus bracket and this is because mums and dads are now turning to snap to communicate with their kids and snapchatters love games advertisers can easily target more than 110 million daily active users on snap who play games before i take you any further i'm going

to take you in through a little bit of the snapchat experience today simply put snap is the fastest way to express yourself and also to communicate why send a text when a snap is worth a thousand words people are snapchatting throughout their day whether it be at their work at the gym at home they're sharing moments with their real friends this is not about a broadcast medium this is about sharing a message in the moment but it's so much more than that it's so much more than just a tool to take a picture it's a starting point for things like the creativity tools face and surface tracking audio and products and objective scanning playing games buying goods and services and so much more 60 of our community creates snaps with our camera every single day our community spends more than 30 minutes on snapchat every single day and opens the app

more than 30 times a day as well and this is to connect with their closest friends throughout their day when you open the when you open the app you open straight to the camera and this is about creativity first you open the camera to capture a moment in real time to share it with your friends if you want swipe to the left you can start and you can start to text and chat in the traditional way or you can start to interact with our gaming platform or our new snap minis swipe left again and this is where you arrive at the snap map this is where you can see where your friends are on the map or zoom in to engage with over 35 million businesses around the world and this is where snap has now become truly hyper local swipe to the right and you'll land on what we call our discover feed and this is where our curated news and media feed sits from the biggest outlets and entertainment plans this is also where you can immerse

yourself in your friend's stories and introducing spotlight this is our latest addition to the platform and it features the most creative content from our community and you might have seen in the press recently about the rewards that were being offered for people creating amazing content now let me show you how to bring your game to life on the platform augmented reality is no longer a dream of the future but very much the reality it's now become the norm and when it comes to the snapchat generation over 200 million people every single day are engaging with our augmented reality this is where snap users can really really transport themselves into their favorite gaming realms by utilizing lenses and filters and becoming part of the world around them our augmented reality lenses are among

the most innovative ad formats in the market there's no better way to bring your game's hero closer to your customer than on their face or in the world around them with the augmented reality lens snapchatters can play with share it install your game directly from a call to action straight in the lens an ar no longer comes with that kind of high barrier to entry that one might expect it should be a realistic addition to your media mix lenses and filters aren't just reserved for brands they can drive competitive direct response results without needing a strong gaming ip or a character and to truly immerse your players our latest augmented reality feature is full body tracking and this example from riot games is to title valence it's super early days for this but this does really demonstrate the far-reaching capabilities of the platform now i want to take you oh i want to show

you excuse me how to bring the best of snapchat into your game not only do we have mobile gamers on our platform but we've got mobile games on our ecosystem also in 2019 we introduced the world to the next generation of mobile gaming and this is made for friends snap games has been played by over 200 million people friendships are built on shared experiences and that's why once in snap games we offer multiplayer games with built-in features like chat and voice to help friends compete in real time and further immerse themselves in their session and what would a high score mean if you can't share it easily with your friends and also show off a little bit to those you've defeated friendship leaderboards and snippet sharing let's show their game highlights and share their achievements to inspire more social play

we've seen the world adapt to working and studying from home over the last 18 months and therefore people have turned to mobile gaming more than ever to stay entertained connected and in touch with their real friends snap games are seeing really highly elevated engagements as well time spent player counts voice and chat features are all experiencing record usage as well snapkit is our developer toolkit which allows you to bring the best of snapchats into your game and it's aimed to help your and it's aimed to help boost your organic growth user engagement and also retention we've got a growing number of snap kit partners with over 800 apps have already integrated elements of snap kits and over 150 million snapchatters are engaging with these integrations every single month our partners have also seen great success as well with over 40 with over 10 apps created by our partners currently in the top 100 free in the us app store so what is snapkit

from left to right why not let your user share their experiences from their game their level up achievements and then sharing it on their stories or how about bringing the best of snap stories and integrating this with your app how about a frictionless and seamless login experience from snapchat to your app with login kit and we've also now got monetization capabilities bring snap ads into your into your game and allow you to generate revenue with ad kit one of the most exciting updates we've announced recently is bitmoji kit and this is where now we can bring in this bed the bitmoji sdk which brings the world avatar into your game and with our new unity plugin snap is giving you the opportunity to bring bitmoji into your games make your game the most social personal and fun game around by building a unique experience for snapchatters with bitmoji kit

in the us 75 percent of the gen z population having a bitmoji avatar and on average snapchat is with a bitmoji integrated have spends twice as much time on snapchat why not create a more personalized and immersive experience for your players as this example from typically demonstrates we are super excited that more and more developers are taking notice from heritage brands like mattel and nickelodeon to top developers like scopey and rollick you'll start to see more and more bitmojis integrated into your favorite games why does players in the morphic character when you as the player can be front and center and the real star of the game i want to talk to you a little bit about growing how to grow your game on snap and since the launch of our self-serve platform in may 2017 snap has really grown rapidly to become a top channel for our app marketeers and because of our unique reach our

innovative innovative ad formats and strong roi across the different gaming verticals over the last year we've worked very closely with our game developers and marketers to really drill down and learn the priorities for 2021 and beyond with over 2 million apps now in the app store and also in the play store organic discovery is becoming more and more difficult and more competitive than ever apps as you know are turning to paid acquisition to officially drive business results to reach and convert users at scale and also very cost effectively as well snap supports the full funnel whether it be brand awareness at the top all the way through to driving conversions of new purchases at the bottom of the funnel how do we do this we'll walk you through a couple of the ad units snap ads between our user stories

they're really really easy to access incredibly flexible and also they offer huge scale they are full screen with sound on by default ensuring that your ad maximizes the real estate on any mobile device these innovative and immersive canvases allow you to showcase your game's message and engage with your customers in a way that captures their full attention or how about collection ads collection ads are our most recent additions to the portfolio how about showcasing different characters different levels or different features of the game similar to snap ads these ads also fall between user stories as well next we have story ads this is our feedback unit appearing in our discover feed beneath user stories how about telling more about your game through a curated selection of snaps up to 20 snaps allowing you to fully immerse the user

in the ad experience around the game snap ads also story ads excuse me also benefit from a different auction environment to snap ads and so it would be wholeheartedly recommended to try both we've also released two new call to action across our different ad formats we've used prerequisite pre-register for users to register their interest and intent to ins and install before the before the game is launched and also play the game to clearly highlight your app's content to snapchatters our first party targeting audiences are built on snap on platform engagements and we know different games deserve different targeting options we recently rolled out three new first party targeting audiences including trivia gamers puzzle gamers battle combat and first person shooter gamers to add to our more generalized options of gamers casual and mobile gamers and console and

pc gamers and these audiences are available globally and introducing the snap audience network allows you to target snapchatters both on and now off the platform the audience network allows us to drive unique snapchat audience through its privacy first network of trusted partners with both full screen and further creative flexibility over the past several months we've expanded our inventory significantly through partnerships with applovin unity mopub and ironsource launched in the usa snap audience network has now been released in canada the middle east australia i also want to address the main topic of conversation now in the industry and this is about privacy this is something that's been core to our ethos from the very beginning starting with the notion that ephemeral messaging is really the cornerstone of

what drives in the moment's self-expression we don't stockpile user chats or keep a timeline of anything that people have ever posted these it's these same privacy first principles that we apply to all of our ad technology that we build as well going above and beyond what is required by law we take a really conservative approach to the collection the use the storage and sharing of personal data and we're really eager to champion this further with the new privacy preserving alternatives that we'll be making available but we think increased privacy shouldn't come at a cost and it shouldn't come at the expense of valuable outcomes for both developers and nor should it compromise what should be a useful and relevant ad experience to our users but with any change comes disruption and especially with the magnitude of apple's recent att mandated and to that end i want to touch briefly on a little bit about how this relates to ios 14.

snap is fully compliant with apple's privacy changes and we're serving the apple prompt now that att has been mandated privacy and the right to choose what information consumers share is at the heart of everything that snap does snap is fully integrated with the s care network and it's now fully supported in ads manager as well and if you haven't done so yet please reach out to your snap point of contact to set up a test to ensure that you're fully supported when navigating all of the recent industry changes and also how snap is really best placed to support your campaigns we have launched a dedicated ios 14 hub built into our help center we have comprehensive videos and guidelines in order to support you whether it be conversion value mapping setting up your snap app id scad campaign structure optimization recommendations and also campaign best practices

we're also testing an advertising sdk called app ads kit we will it will live under our snap kit banner and provide a free lightweight and direct measurement solution to all of our app advertisers in the near future we'll be also providing further advanced features within the sdk as well please look out for this become generally available in the next couple of months and reach out to your snaprep if you're interested in learning more to draw this to a close i wanted to leave you with three things and these three to three key takeaways of this snap is so much more than just a camera company we're about fostering and creating communication between our closest friends we have a huge unduplicated audience which isn't available anywhere else and should become part of your media mix and we've got incredible tools that can help you grow both on and off of our platform thanks very much cool cool cool cool that was great there was

a lot of data and information shared there um i i always get slightly surprised maybe i shouldn't do by the scale of of of snap um uh how huge it is i i know it's a big platform it's very serious social media but i always whenever i see numbers it's always like my god my god why why am i not on there um i i don't have a bitmoji yet and i need to i need to spend more so i've got a snap account but i need to spend more time in there so i'm going to try and try and drop in uh this afternoon and bump up your average age a little bit if that's all right i think you should i'll i'll ski your metrics in a marginally over 25 age group um but yeah they've got loads of questions and he didn't really manage that you sound like a man that might have been cheering uh yesterday or although i i would be lying if i said i wasn't i was shouting at the tv and holding my head in my hands [Laughter] so yeah i will ask if i've got a question i'll try and pull a few you've answered some of them and some so feel free to give it simple answers

if you have um so um he talks about you talked about um being um compatible with just now with the sort of the new changes from from apple you know has that how is that impacted but you've obviously again it's your you know your network and you've got different access how how is that that impacted on your your tracking and kind of data provision is a question here the uh change yeah i think it's a it's a very valid question i think um if anybody said that they weren't impacted by it they i think it'd probably be a full statement um snappers of course impacted by uh by by the att mandating and uh and the new privacy policy um unless the user kind of opts in our double option for both snap and also um the app to to track them then we would be using s card network and as a result of that again i have very limited limited visibility but from our perspective what we've done and where we feel we've positioned ourselves in the market both from a kind of a

setup and also kind of a best practices perspective snapper we feel is incredibly well placed to navigate what is really a a fairly turbulent time in the industry um and and really to kind of see us come out of it in a better place in the next few months um so yeah it it of course it's going to be impacted but when you look at the data that we do have available there are going to be users who have opted in and so we are able to utilize traditional tracking methods and and therefore um looking yeah or able to have access to that data the other side of it is there's also android as well and so we are still able to build models and so from that perspective when we're when we're looking at the the the cohorts of ios users as more and more people are now forced to update to ios 14.6 and above we are going to see diminishing returns when it comes to those users on older operating systems but again there are still going to be a percentage of users who do our double opt-in not going to be a huge amount um what that number is is tbc at this present

moment but we we are able to provision certainly for a smaller number of users on ios and also then we've still got android as well that's true and google haven't despite sort of suggestions and rumors haven't seemed to have really weight weighted into quite the same degree as as yet so fingers crossed um uh there's presumably i i played a few uh games on the on the channel and i was really really kind of impressed there was a couple of kind of um has a shooter game i can't remember everything now which was really cool but um presumably it's kind of is is it more the hyper casual or instant games but most effective on the platform is it something that people kind of can just get straight into because you've kind of got games within obviously people can advertise games externally but you've kind of got games kind of within the the platform as well right so absolutely and from from our perspective the there's some incredible use cases and most recently the the celebrated success of um the foodies um aqua park on on snap there is a really there is a real affinity with vertical screen single thumb um kind of

snap and gamepl it felt that the natural extension of snap's kind of user engagement was to be able to start playing games on the platform and we've kind of taken um a very conservative approach we we've set a very very high bar to entry when it comes to to the games of course we don't want it to diminish the experience that a user gets on snapchat but at the same time we want it to be really really appealing to to the masses and now what we're seeing especially with with snapkit where we can take for the example bitmoji and for a hyper-casual game that uses those amorphic stick main figures to actually then start to play with your character automatically the user experience becomes so much more and more more entertaining and can and can drive retention um and so from that perspective what we're trying to do is we're trying to kind of say okay there's an amazing opportunity to drive kind of a paid acquisition um through through the traditional methods on snap but how about utilizing snap as your an opportunity to help your organic growth as well

and so the opportunity there as well is is something that we're so excited about and there's going to be really really great opportunities in in in the coming weeks and months to see new new examples of that yeah no that's interesting do you have i mean i i think you do have because i think i've seen it the reports and stuff are you sharing uh any reports on on particular engagement numbers from from or results from existing games on the platform is that is that i i i might have i might have if you did share i just now apologize because i know you're going through quite a lot i was kind of trying to making notes throughout but did you do you have like case studies you're kind of showing out um so i purposely didn't go into that detail simply because we've actually got another um session on wednesday where my greg clinton's going to be talking about uh the the the amazing snap games and there will be some stats and there'll be some case studies and there'll be some great uh great examples as well so i will i'll let him kind of take the uh take the glory on that one fair enough i've got a question from i've got to try and get through a couple more i'll give this one a three-foot because you started a bit late can kanye

i've got a question from the from the chat here which is not the way to do it use the q a people what's wrong with you um it's it's again like his name got right once but i'm not gonna keep doing it um can your platform connect to a game community i don't know exactly what he means there but i guess can you connect to a community i guess why not um i don't know i don't even want to expect i'd love i'd love if he could expand on on the question um i think yeah i don't want to i don't want to miss the uh the the the um the crux of what he's asking for i've got i got it right first time i think it never happened i've got some more specific things here good question which again you might might not want to might be too good to go into do you have uh good dows mouse in tier three four geos like india brazil argentina mexico um where are the where you know is there and they can see that data there's a couple of questions about that as well is that a question for sure yeah super uh super question and and delighted to actually talk about it um so we re-released our android app um in

april 2019 and we've seen hyper growth as a result of that especially in emerging markets um india is now actually our second biggest market behind the us um with and uh in terms of later stats around about 85 million daily active users in india as a result of kind of the android growth the likes of central and and south america have seen incredible growth um and also some of some of the asian markets as well and this is also kind of supported with our our tier one markets too so the growth of android in in the likes of the us and also western europe too but really where we're seeing the hyper growth on android is yeah very much in latin america and also in the indian subcontinent as well cool fantastic it's nice sounds great um i've got a bit of a left field question here can you see bitmoji partnering ar software with larger fashion brands and creating potential runway events that's very specific we did this event called beyond games where recently where we had sort of leading fashion brands and

the the uh alexander mcqueen's cousin actually came queen i think it was came in talking about how he was using game technology to fashion stuff it's really fascinating so i think there's a few people probably from those uh that part of the world in here so i would i would love i would love to connect um them to uh to to some of my colleagues in the company we are this is an area that we are so excited about and um when you're looking at kind of the try on technology that we that we're now promoting where you're looking at the the tie-ins with the likes of dior and and and similar similar high-level fashion brands um it's something that we've we've showcased at our recent snap partner summit um where evan was talking about it um the likes of farfetch where where we utilize the augmented reality as a means to be able to try and try and try on clothing items it's uh it's an incredible opportunity and really the the the scope of possibility is is endless we are we feel that the industry is just really starting out to investigate this and i think the opportunity to to do something with

with your bitmoji as well would be really really exciting we're certainly very much market leading when it comes to the opportunity to uh to kind of tie and partner with fashion brands and so from our perspective if we're able to kind of gamify that as well that would be fantastic to be able to do that too but if they'd like to reach out to me please i'll put them in touch with the right people here do you reach out through the uh through discord or this or the the meet to match with callum i'm sure he's interested that sounds fast and i look forward to uh to seeing that if anybody needs me for any fashion work i am available anyway um on that note um i probably have to move on but thank you so much as kevin said there is another uh another talk on wednesday with some more uh more data and case studies so so check that out and do get in contact with uh callum um and chat through the uh through the the various means and uh yeah and i'm sure he'll share more infosight with you and maybe add you on snap i don't know i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna go no way okay

linkedin or snap would be perfect but so yeah please stop yeah so i'm gonna go update my account all right i'm gonna send you to the digital ether and thank you so much for that it's really really insightful