Mobile game monetisation tips

[Music] [Music] hey guys so this is a moderation or this is a speed panel about monitor monetization and we're changing it up a little bit because we have you know our panelists up here that have a lot of interesting real-world examples and and advice that they could provide to you about monetization both about AD monetization and IP monetization what we did differently here is that we spent or we sent out questions to the panelists in advance and so we have have the answers from the panelists and we're going to be putting them up onto the screen and then we can just start the

discussion from there and the whole idea is really to you know get some get some actionable items of how you guys can monetize your games a little bit better both with IP and ad monetization so just to introduce myself Chris Lam I worked for a company called hyper Amex were based in New York and we are a video based ad network and we work to bring fortune 500 brands into mobile games so yeah this is me I'm Janusz I'm founder of fluffy furry games and we have this one title out it's called idle - I and it's like heavily based on at revenue so about like 60% of our revenue comes from ads great I'm working as co-op we were basic based in Finland

and in Amsterdam and I'm responsible for growth we have basically casual titles targeted women mostly so to jump right into it what I asked the panelists are a couple of you know the major avoidable mistakes that you can make from a monetization perspective so you know we had a couple great answers here you know find a good mediation platform but don't trust solely on auto optimization maybe you guys want to comment on like how do you pick a mediation platform yeah there's so many there's so many options available out there well it's definitely the best thing to do is just talk to your friends talk to other people and ask what's what's good what platform they had good experiences with and definitely also keep up good relationships with the platforms themselves and just talk to them and yeah see what changes there yeah so when

when we started with with the company we were like pretty news is a whole gaming thing and we didn't have any relations to any platform or to any ed provider and so we just went from the technical perspective and shows the mediation platform who works the quest way or the best technical way for us and do you mind sharing who you guys who use for me yes so for us it was a ayran sauce so we were pretty pretty happy with the mediation and it worked fine from from a technical perspective okay the second answer not segmenting users I find this really interesting because between the two of you one of you said that that's one of the biggest mistakes and then the other one on another question actually said that you don't segment users at all so maybe you guys want to comment on you know how like how useful segment segmenting is and you

know on the other hand why you feel like you don't need to segment and you know comment well I do believe segmenting is quite important because I mean if you do have users who make app in app purchases frequently or you predict that so some segments of users will actually do that there is no point really in disrupting their gameplay with with ads with with for example being aggressive too aggressive or ads so in this sense it's it's also good for example to give people the opportunity to to make an in-app purchase and and get rid of ads and also it's a good practice to segment offers based on on whether people are spenders or non spenders yeah so I kind of like see it the same way like in our

games we see like as like central thing so you there's no like Annoying interstitials but you can watch like reward videos for a bonus or something like that and we're keeping that option for for every player so there's no no at in a purchase or something like that right right [Applause] so I asked both of you what what the reward of video eCPM that you guys are seeing in in Tier one Geo's obviously the range that we got back was pretty wide between ten and twenty five dollars can you guys maybe talk about like is there a huge difference that you're seeing between iOS and Android I know a few years ago there was you know big discrepancies on you know eCPMs were much stronger on iOS versus Android and you know why why are you seeing around ten dollars versus you know some some

other networks are giving you $25 so like for us it's like there's not so much difference between like Android and iOS for the tier 1 countries there's like big differences in the countries itself in the tier 1 countries or depending on the like definition like us the the states are way way better than for example the UK for us in terms of like eCPMs I mean I see quite a similar thing so not much of a difference between Android and iOS and also quite a few differences in tier 1 like as you said u.s. is also best best for us and for example in comparison to Sweden which is performing quite why not not that great they're cool and so do you guys have have deals with ad networks you know with what we've been hearing more and more recently is that you know

publishers and developers are basically doing deals for first position or or even first impression to certain to certain ad networks you know we had again a wide range of answers say some saying no no deals so I'm saying you're you're auctioning off your first position maybe you want to you want to talk about you know what the benefits of of doing these deals for first position or first impression are I'm not sure which one of you are doing the deal said yes so we're doing a deal for first position and second position and for us it's like there are at networks out there who like try to be really aggressive and get inventory and like safe inventory for themselves and they're normally like pay more if you promise them like the first position and of course this is something we do and yeah I guess like we developed

some some strong relationships with with a few of them and it's like the thing they want is like stability and of course like the best inventory for them right so so your your advice is to you actively engage with with your ad ad networks that you're working with yeah of course so if you have like a decent size and a decent inventory they they are happy to talk to you and offer you like first position deal right so basically now we don't really have deals with networks but that doesn't mean that it's not good to do so basically as I mentioned you have to have a good relationship and it's always good to see what kind of deals you can have and what I would say it says rather good to make the deal but not make long-term deals if you're not sure about the quality of traffic for example so so we have to

kind of know where you're standing also kind of have transparency and then and then yeah just negotiate cool so we asked the panelists you know what the optimal number of video networks to work with you know obviously the majority of publishers and developers are working with mediation platforms so it's really easy to you know add in new networks but you could end up with 15 or 20 if you kind of go crazy so you know we got answers anywhere from four to five and then the less number the better and you get comments there well I think it's it's it's not about the number so we can have three five and that will work great or you can have just two and one and that might also work well I think it more depends on first of all how many daily active users you actually have because if you don't have enough then

there is no point in having five different networks and then waterfall the other super important thing is integration and good tech so if you don't have if you use real if you want to use reward those videos and you don't have a good integration it's it's just not gonna work yeah so so it's it's kind of like this the same opinion about it so you really have to focus on like good networks so like on on the right side does like I guess one that one of the major ones they all have good technical integration but at some point you have to I guess you have to focus on on just a few of them so how do you guys determine whether the you know their tech is solid without actually going through the integration first like is it

purely by you know talking with fellow developers and publishers seeing what their experiences are like how do you vet a network you know well it it definitely does come down to a lot of conversations within the industry with with people who've had a positive or negative experiences with certain networks but yeah it's also it's also a matter of even if you decide to go with a network with being able to to to then turn it off if it's happens that it's not working so you have to have the possibility to to be elastic there yeah exactly so that this is the last question on the panel which we're you know I wanted these guys to list some of some of the games that they thought used IEP or ads really well the one thing I thought was really interesting is that both of you listed farm away and and mentioned that the

future play titles you know use ads you know in a really kind of unique way so maybe you guys can elaborate on that considering like future play is you know a Nordic company well I've seen a few titles especially with Idol clicker is also adventure capitalists there which do integrates as well because they create a feeling that ads are a positive thing so they give you a benefit some kind of a benefit so you double your earnings you you go into the games you see the video straight away and you can straightaway double your your money there so it's it's a kind of a seamless integration that yeah that creates a positive feeling that the player wants to watch the videos by himself he's not fulfilling forced right and you know I know that like Idol miner is obviously a you know Idol kind of clicker game did

you guys take some of those best practices from from future playing yes oh of course like future plays one of the big innovator like in the they I guess it termed the word few to play where like people or like a game monetize is a heavily on like ads and rewarded videos and that stuff and yeah of course like with all game I'll - I couldn't we we do the same thing exactly so for example if like we have technical issues when we're falling off the networks and there's like no video available people complain about it so right that's I could think yeah yeah notice that and in a few situations as well that's I mean if that's the way the integration is so important if players do not get paid after watching a video of course it creates a negative experience and then you end up with with negative reviews right great well thank

you guys for your comments any questions from from the audience for our panelists here you guys have a couple guys that have a lot of experience and the monetization space any questions for them now we're good all right I was question come on home thanks my name is Kimo curry from wearable games this obvious question for an indie without publisher without an extensive world war chest of several tens of millions per year that are obvious that it is needed for for serious user acquisition I heard also strategies that you win one country you go go country by country you for example conquer Italy first and make it profitable there then you have some

profits that you can take another country and blah blah blah do you believe in do you believe that this way could be good big good approach if there is not not big war war chest or do you have something else else to propose yeah it's an interesting question so so for us it was like in the first place when we started we started with Idol - I couldn't you relied heavily just on organic downloads and you released it globally and we had locked there just that we had so many organic downloads and then could build up the company and could build up like user acquisition team a marketing team and all that stuff like what I would do is just try to release it globally so you get some traction and can can build up from there then like move from country to country no then a second question I heard

argument against launching the game globally that that that if Apple is going to feature you and you know the same time have the war chest can you misstep burst effect possibility so so if you just launched it you know in few countries then Apple it doesn't feature you because you don't yet want to be featured you want to save the featuring when you really launch it properly and you have some money in the chest so that's no but that's that's case by case of course yes so Apple really loves like the global feature things or if you like if you are like a big company with like soft launch and one or two or three smaller countries test it and polish it and then go to Apple and say hey we're doing like a release will you help us in some way and then probably will but like it's a small developer or as an indie team like chance is to get featured are like really really low I would say and you

like especially for an indie team or for a small team you shouldn't build a game just for a feature it should survive like with other feature yeah yeah Ned never do that actually cool have any other questions fair enough I'm gonna ask one final question so I'm skipping from the camera if you have to want these advice because the obviously gangsta sit walk be the one won't be a one top piece of advice I was asked this easy question well I would I think I would probably stick with creating opt-in scenarios so really just integrated the game in the way that that is positive and that actually brings value to the to the players exactly yeah so so the first thing is you you have to feel like a crate product so when we started we had like

one one point where we tested ads technically but we build a crate product so you could build in anything else at a later stage so we have no inner purchases they're nothing but but like a trade core game and a create the product okay all right well I think there's anything else Chris no we're good okay can we have a round of applause please for the the panel for Chris [Applause] [Music] [Music]