Mobile Gamers Have More Choice Than Ever—Here’s How to Keep Them Loyal, Playing, and Paying

[Music] hello world welcome back to the Pocket Gamer podcast with me your host Brian Bago and The High Priestess of Pocket Gamer podcasting Miss Peggy an Sals hello Peggy it's a pleasure as always to see you it is good to see you too as well Brian and also a celebration not just because we are moving into all the hot trends of 2025 we're going to be talking about the insights from missplays latest mobile growth report and that explores how developers can build stronger marketing monetization that works loyalty strategies that attract and are magnetic I mean this is the show to watch if you want to really get ready for 2025 and that's what we want to do here we want everyone to have a great start to it speaking of great starts Brian we are closing out 2024 with some phenomenal numbers so what

we're doing is working and it's all about educating marketers and making certain everyone can go and be a better version of themselves so what we're doing works Brian isn't that great it's fantastic piggy you know it's we don't like to be the sort of the the Doom and Gloom podcast you know there's far too many games related podcasts out there that's just like everything's awful survive till 25 which is all very well but but how you know I I think it is it's hitting people the right way because it's all about finding that spark finding that inspiration and and how you can be creative and talented and and find that edge to push you forward into the new year so it's fantastic news and I'm looking forward to doing this with you across the whole of the New Year absolutely so I'll just set the stage with the report defining some high level Trends namely yes we knew it but now we know it for sure it's in the misplay report players yes they are overwhelmed by choice too many games too

little time but they are playing right so relevancy and relatability is King here they are willing to spend in games yay um that match their interests and have attractive IP and um what I also liked is because we're always talking about you know we have to know our audience we have to get deeper into behavioral data and strategies and Frameworks well we also have some personas which I thought were pretty cool that marketers can also borrow from and use in their own approaches because not everybody wants to reinvent the wheel and I thought about you as well Brian because one of them let me think of you midcore Mike maybe you're a bit of a midcore Mike maybe I'm a bit of a lucky Lucy about social and casino because that's a female thing but uh we find ourselves again in this report and I think that's also a plus as well it's well listen it's we we love it we love alliteration on this podcast and I think big game Brian and podcast Peggy are

very clearly missing but maybe that's for the 2025 version so who do we have for the show Peggy so we have Kyle West the senior director of marketing at misplay Kyle has over a decade of experience in Mobile gaming he's been instrumental in driving user acquisition and engagement strategies and when he's not crafting campaigns well he's carving up the slopes because he's an avid snowboarder so we have a guest who loves the thrill of snowboard and the challenges of mobile gaming and marketing all inone welcome Kyle thank you Peggy nice to be here looking forward to diving in absolutely well we'll Glide actually we're gonna Glide smoothly from the slopes to the Strategic Summits because we have the expert for that as well we have Axana famina she is founder of gradient Universe at games analytics consultancy we will be hearing a lot about Brian I met her I'm impressed she's coming back back so since 2017 oxan has been helping

game developers enhance profitability through optimized live up strategies and hey like Kyle she's making it look easy welcome Oxana lovely to have you thank you for having me today and it's such a pleasure to be with you and to share all my knowledge with you guys so I know we have a lot to cover so we're going to Dive Right In um but before we get to the game stuff Kyle I have to ask what's the bigger challenge uh navigating the gaming gaming industry or tackling the toughest runs on the steepest slopes it's a good question uh I think I'm I'm going to have to go with with the industry the slopes right if you have your home mountain or if you're visiting somewhere else once you run it once or twice right you sort of get the groove of of uh where you're going where you're headed what what obstacles are in your way whereas the mobile industry constantly evolves right so there's a lot more adaptability and resist ions

needed to sort of plow through it this is very true it's that we say this almost every episode the one constant in the games industry is change so if you can't be flexible agile and accommodate that then you may run into problems a few bumps on the slope as it where and that's why we have the report so we talked about it actionable insights so first of all K I want to start off with that because you know a report comes out but this is a report it comes out with certain timing certain purpose in mind um why do you feel it was the time for this type of a report and what do you think or hope developers will take from it yeah I mean great question I think first and foremost right and Brian kind of touched on it earlier it's just it was born out of the the current state of the industry right like every year it's getting harder and harder for Publishers to sustain growth right there's numerous headwinds that continue to persist whether it's the fierce competition right long-standing games continuing to

mature and remain at the tops of the charts new games can be hit or miss it's consumer I AP spend right that can remain a little concerning right putting pressure on revenue and profit for mobile Publishers and then lastly it's on the UA side right and continued increased cost of of uh acquisition right it's getting more expensive marketers have less and less control every year so I think between all those headwinds right the truth is the Publishers are going to have to get comfortable operating sort of Within These constraints right and find ways to succeed and so this report is sort of reinforcing that mobile growth is essentially a team sport right and and we wanted to give insights on how Publishers can sort of align every part of their growth fly wheel to sort of win right from marketing to product and monetization um and that's especially true at the early stage of the funnel right that early part of the user Journey the handshake between marketing and product really paves the way for

stickiness and sort of long-term uh growth long-term LTV um as users come into the product and and play we have it split up in three sections you know marketing that's you Kyle so we'll focus a bit on you then there's monetization we'll talk more to Oxana and then there's both of you when we talk about loyalty so I'll kick it off in marketing the report interestingly shows how branding efforts and UA are converging right and we''ve got players who trust signals like Community feedback reviews before committing to downloading a game it's all about understanding that first so how can developers leverage this convergence to enhance their UA strategies now that that is so important I mean social proof matters I think it was pretty fascinating Insight we got right I think it was something like 75% of of uh Gamers right they sort of take this extra step between seeing the ad

and downloading the game right and yes they're on the store page but they're also going off the store Page right they're Googling things they're checking out the state of the community and the sentiment of the community they're doing their research before they click install um and so I do believe right there is that sort of convergence where brand reputation Community engagement they need some level of investment right from game Publishers and within the marketing department uh to supplement paid efforts uh they just can't be forgotten or deprioritized because at the end of the day it all sort of just comes in Full Circle to sort of like this this mini engine of value creation right if you have a really strong Community really strong Community sentiment and positive brand reputation that can fuel Word of Mouth that can fuel referrals right and drive organic growth on the on the flip side right an active and meaningful Community uh that can really sort of nurture extra engagement right increase retention increased IP spend um and just

really excite you know existing active users and then lastly right when you're leveraging them those earned social sort of pieces that social proof you talked about you can actually incorporate that into paid marketing right to increase the trust and credibility of things um and so then that can increase creative performance right and so now you end up in this sort of place where Curious consumers are seeing ads are going to the store Page they're looking at the the user base and the Community they're seeing that social proof and and getting validation from it store conversion rates increase and then ultimately this can help reduce overall customer acquisition cost so I think it's it's a piece to not forget right and and not put to the Wayside and really put some effort into it at c c some certain level of investment the great news is Brian every developer can do that every developer can create Community that's not rocket science that's doable even for midsize and small Studios so good news and again

this touches on something that that we come across with so many of our guests just making a really good game is no longer enough you know you need the marketing you need that reputation um and you want them to to be able to find that social proof that credibility so I absolutely hear you Kyle first party data that's another big reoccurring theme especially in a privacy first world and it's more critical than ever so to come back you how should developers start utilizing that first party data most effectively I think first and foremost right sort of back to the basics right leveling up a user acquisition in a marketing team to be data sufficient right and and Beyond just the basics encouraging them to be data curious the more they can do themselves right the more agile and efficient they can operate um because there's only so many resources to go around uh at a at a studio right uh second right supplemental to that is become best friends with the data team right so they know in-game user Behavior inside and out right and they can help

with more sophisticated analysis when we talk about first-party data utilizing it in the most effective way I always go back to sort of kind of like three core questions to ask yourself right as you dive into the data and begin to pull apart any any uh insights and actions you can one is like how can you use the data to build basic user segmentation right to inform key messaging and AD strategy I think two is how can you use the data to determine optimal postback events right to use the signals in your UA campaigns and then rigorously test a lot of them across different channels and different campaign types and then third is sort of how can you use the data to identify gaps in the user Journey right which can yield increased campaign efficiency for marketing and then it just creates a stronger deeper funnel what I've seen a lot right is there's actually a lot of lwh hanging fruit to Seas once marketing data and product teams really come together to analyze the bigger picture right and then all of a sudden all these different dots start to connect and it just

increases performance one of the other things that happens is you start to see where and how you can achieve better results and unsurprisingly you also show that UA campaigns tied to live Ops do drive better results now that's your Areo son so like just ask you where do live Ops give you a that extra Edge and you know you work with so many studios so maybe you can share also how Studios can align these two strategies for those better results first of all uh we saw already for some period of time that uh puzzle game use mini games uh to attract users through their advertising and it's one thing that we can do especially with playable ads uh when they can play uh mini games or some small events that you have in your game and you can present it uh through the advertising and attract more users different type of users in

inside your game uh secondly uh you may notice that um many companies start to um Implement uh Cooperative events and uh ask users to um um play with a friend so it's required to users to um send a request to your friend to play with you in this game and this is the way how they can uh attract um organic traffic inside the game because if you don't have the users inside your game already uh the comp uh the game company they provide you different ways to um um make them join this is uh uh another way how you can use life Ops uh inside your game uh also to improve your traffic to have more organic traffic and we all know that when we play with the friends in this game we're more um

committed to this we're more engaged we want to cooperate we want to compete with each other and it's uh more fun to play with the friends and with the people who you know from real life so uh this is uh two ways how some companies use the life Ops uh to improve the uh user acquisition because we know right now it's very hard job and challenging but very smart to get people to join I mean you make literally your players your Advocates and you're very very committed uh if you play with a friend you will not you will try to finish this event you will try to do your best inside the game you will try to spend more uh time and resources to achieve the goal that you want to achieve together it's so smart it's like make it as easy as possible for your players your fans to say nice things about you and play with their friends their family their loved one so I want to bring it back to to you

Kyle if you were sitting down with a small studio right now and giving them one action that they should prioritize to improve the U campaign or start thinking about what would it be I I would suggest right especially if it's a a scrappy small marketing team and they're looking for the biggest bang for their buck and they're thinking full funnel it's it's really that concept that sort of creative is a strong hook right it's at the top of the funnel but it has to be aligned with the rest of the user Journey right and starting to peel that back with xon and and some of these other discussions right but I think in our report right we found that like 66% of Gamers sort of State misalignment between the ad and the actual game play uh is like a top reason for churn um and so this isn't necessarily a jab at fake gameplay ads right and sometimes those can perform well um and then there's obviously a lot of just copycat sort of Nature and AD strategies as well which only takes you so far but I think the true advice here right is really that whether it's a

small or large studio you really have to step into the shoes of the consumer right and understand how they will travel from ad impression to the store Page to install to the day Zero experience to the day seven plus experience right and so with ad creative as your first impression you have to get that right right you have to understand your core user right the demographics the socio demographics and their gaming motivations you have to marry that with the inapp behavioral data right like like we talked about earlier and then you use all that together to guide the key messaging and the gameplay and the visuals right maybe you're promoting a specific inapp event maybe you're promoting that miname maybe you're promoting and showcasing that progression of what the early gaml looks like into late game uh experiences right the the biggest uh sort of mistake that one can make right is having huge gaps in the expectations as

users progress uh and transition into the next stage of the user Journey right and to pull that off requires a lot of tight collaboration between game uh game teams right and production teams and marketing teams the goal should be regardless of whatever team you're on right the goal of the the team itself in the studio right have that user progress through the user Journey with continued moments of joy that build momentum right rather than moments of confusion or regret right when that user journey is sort of disjointed they're not going to stick around which is a big problem and if you're a small studio right you don't want that sort of leaky bucket taking place yeah absolutely I was thinking moments of Joy who can disagree with that it's not necessarily the game it is the journey and you point it out as well and it comes out in your report Kyle I mean but of course once they're there then we switch to monetization as well so Oxanna that is your area that is your roomm is there a standout approach that you can share about yeah turning players

into payers first of all they have to be very engag with your game so um the core game play should be a perfect match for them person doesn't play uh the game only need to play to spend the time they play because uh they want to satisfy their needs and if you understand what kind of needs they fite it's easy to retain them and monetize them because uh we all pay for something that we want right uh so and um what I can see right now on the market um if your game playay is great um the life Ops helps to uh improve monetization engagement and oration uh heavily and uh many companies start to present uh their um events early on the early stage of the game for example right now white out survival they present the um uh first event on a second session already and it's a great

approach because it uh um helped to show different features inside the game through the event through the participation in this event it help uh to um provide uh small goals to the user and make sure that um with those small goals he will return to the game and create the Habit to return to the game because we know no we can attract them but we also need to make sure that they will stay and stay for longer and when they already uh actively playing the game uh this is the moment when you definitely need to monetize them again if we will look at the data uh the first payment usually uh that users do they do this for the first week inside the game most of them first day so if your game inspiring and a very

engaging uh you definitely can monetize and start to monetize users from the first day give them something that they uh will need uh exactly in that moment in the first experience that will help them uh to achieve their goals very fast this is very important and many games can do this heavily uh since the moment you have this aha moment inside uh the game and yes I I like it I want this I want to proceed uh doing this um this is when you need to um catch the moment and give some uh offers especially for the companies that have the old games that already on the market for several years and they cannot um they tried uh different methods to improve the tutorial and they cannot change their anything try to figure out what kind what small event you can Implement there

to engage them in the main uh core game Loop to satisfy them and to show uh what your um game can bring to them can give them so this is my suggestion that's fantastic Oxana and and thank you and and the two words that were standing out for me there were were engagement and value you know you want your game to be engaging and you want to prove that value to your play player as early as you can and if you can do that and monetize them then so much the better I want to come on to sort one of the other standout topics in the report um so the report tells us that 26% of players are opening to visit uh visiting a Publishers web shop a direct consumer web shop to explore exclusive Ina purchas deals and special events that you were just mentioning and 8% 8% a bigger Pard of Spenders have already made a purchase

so web shops are opening up new opportunities for personalized experiences that we've been discussing why do you think web shops have become such a a huge deal and such a game changer so uh first of all um it helps uh developers to um earn more money personalize the user experience because you know that um through the web shop uh developers also gain direct access to the player data uh which improves understanding of the performance and uh enables customer Communications through loyalty programs or email campaigns also uh but also it's give the chance to provide um better rewards and uh better um offers to the users directly I think that uh it's a great opportunity and a and great uh possibility to imp improve um

monetization uh of players because now we know how they uh buy when they buy and we know much more information um about the player directly but uh it also help us to engage them inside the game because uh they receive it uh directly to the game the all rewards and all um purchases that they made it's immediately inside the game so we can correlate it with their behavior what uh what they did after how they respond on this or how they spend on this and uh also we need to understand that uh webshop give us um as a users uh different opportunity different methods to pay and for some it uh users uh they can pay by credit cards some will uh prefer to pay uh for the App Store and we can see it um but um there is um

different me paying methods in different countries and this has help us to earn more by leveraging those benefits developers achieving higher margin and more sustainable monetization while enchancing the overall player experience so it's win-win for both and players and game companies know it we saw that from pla actually just recently I mean it's gonna did they're doing it it's going to be massive it brings us right back to customization personalization making your player feel valuable making your player feel cared for looked after and and giving them something of value and more personal I want to come back to the limited time events and dynamic pricing that we mentioned earlier so as big monetization drivers how do you balance creating that urgency with the time limited offers and making sure players feel like they're getting the value that you're trying to you're trying to build in yes uh I I I think the life Ops also

helps here a lot because um first of all you create the urgency and you create a need uh through the uh event um to participate in this event they need to use resources they need to use some boosters and so on and they start heavily use this and then you give them the offer that will expir it in 20 minutes sometimes uh right now offers uh are available only for 15 minutes and you give this offer when the player on their high potential to win and you give them this Choice uh to buy and to uh be the first to buy and proceed to play to buy and have a better score uh inside the game and the great example the battle pass first of all we had a battle pass it was free and then uh you should pay and uh the user choose will I pay or not now we have a battle pass with two

or three prices and the uh user he decide what he wants to do and this is how you do this uh inside your game make sure that your player know that if he will be involved and if he will pay you will uh give them a lot of value in uh for that and that you appreciate uh that they spend time in your game they spend spend money uh and um you give them even more you definitely need to understand your uh audience what you can do uh give them what they want and how you can uh support it through the life Ops through the small events that will engage them and stay on a very high motivation to play This Is The Benchmark this is the way it's done and one other thing that's interesting in the report and Kyle you mentioned it as well you know is

creativity we're going from quantity to quality yes we can churn out a ton of stuff but that doesn't work for the game experience that also doesn't work for the ad experience so um maybe starting with you again Oxana you know studios are trying to optimize their ad strategies and maintain player trust it's a tough one to balance what are your thoughts what are your advice as we move from quantity to Quality also in the ad experience as well as in the player experience yeah so uh first of all we need to understand to whom we will show this um ad and how much uh how often we will do this and um uh what kind of um ad placement we will choose I did a post in on my link in in puzzle game called um Candy Crush Saga what they did they give a choice you can uh pay for the uh boosters before the hard level that you

need to play or you can um you uh see advertising and um go with lower amount of the boosters but through the advertising and they did it when they have the strike event so they connected event the uh requirements to this event and monetization offer what one in three and this is what I can see right now on the market uh that um by understanding the user Behavior through the data uh through the user experience inside the game and connecting this different events and moments inside the game to suggest the specific offer that they need exactly right now this is a game Cher you know it brings us right back to something that Kyle said earlier which is you know this

has to be seamless between all of the different teams it's not development working over here marketing over here UA monetization all sort of going off in different directions this all has to be aligned and that's the that's the biggest opportunity so for a studio that's just starting on this journey with web shops limited time events what's the first thing they should focus on if we will speak about um web shop your game should uh earn a lot of money to start to do this shop with exclusive offers different uh events inside the web shop and so on but if you're a small company you can do also the web shop but through the web shop Constructor uh they there is several companies uh on the market right now that uh help you to create a web shop very fast and it takes like 3 hours uh on the back end this can be a first step for your web shop but uh again when you do web shop uh just don't

do the same that you have in in the store try to give more advantages to you users because they understand uh that you will earn more money make sure that they will have more rewards from you for that it should be win-win for both of you for the player and for the studio if we speak about life Ops so there's also some um software companies that provide um the system that can help you to implement life Ops uh and events and offers inside the uh game much more faster um and for the beginners I think it's a great opportunity for the new game uh because they um scale uh their uh opport the ability uh do different uh events inside the game and Vary them with uh different uh art and with different uh rewards it's

working great so for small Studios and for students who just started I think uh they may use um software that there is on the market uh some programs some systems that will help them uh to do it much more faster fantastic advice xanna thank you so much it's can you give us any suggestions for for the tools that you're talking about any um suggestions where people start looking yeah for sure one of this is balancy it's a life opsonization workspace um company can create life Ops uh and uh different type of offers and um control them uh in real time there is no need to uh upgrade the build uh of the game uh all the time and this is a uh great approach especially for the companies who just start with life Ops and uh who want to do it fast and um in

the right way and optimize it uh very fast inside the game because we need uh we all know that if we um implement the event or uh offer it may not work out uh as we want from the first uh iteration and we will do different iterations and there you can just um change some stuff very easily uh in real time and it's great I love this idea and also um there is um uh web shop Constructor from um Kola they created uh from the beginning and they um uh provide you opportunity to uh have a web shop in several hours after you start to work on it and uh they they work on it and they optimize it I know

uh I I checked several times different web shops that have this opportunity and use this webshop Constructor and I know that there is different companies on the market so uh Please be aware of this um uh check uh as many as you could uh and uh choose the that will work best for you we've had exol on the show before as well Brian so we have indeed one of those things where you know you can do it you can set up a shop and if you're a small company and you still want to have a big impact well just maybe go with seasonal Rewards or personalized offers but the point is that uh it is democratized people can developers can get in on this and ride this wave I think that's the message here that's exactly it Peggy you know it's the there are tools out there the company's working at the sort of the games Tech side of things are working just as hard as the game developers and there's a growing Suite of tools out there for

anybody who wants to sort of start their own web shop run Live Events run live Ops so do your research folks and if you're looking for the biggest the best the most advanced then obviously you need to listen to the Pocket Gamer podcast where we be bringing you the founders developers and creators who are making this whole Global Mobile Market work 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 and 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 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 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 and salts and that's a wrap until next week