Monetisation masterminds

[Music] all right I'm just gonna start alright here we go so we talked about monetization a little bit of you know I ap but a lot about ads as well these these folks are all have done a lot of this kind of stuff and so quickly introducing them so Sam is with pocket gems and works on episode which would probably hurt a huge huge title he is one of those guys who tinkers with thinkers with AD mediation and ad networks and is actually probably a lot smarter more talented at ads than the ad networks themselves so he's he's someone to talk to shannon is with line kong's he has the business development there it's a big Chinese publisher that is making some inroads over here but 15 people in the US Shannon basically runs everything she starts listing all the things she does and it's basically everything so

that has a lot of focus on ad monetization as well and then Brian some glue Brian is been working on ad glue for quite a while now and can talk with the best of them about monetization and the ins and outs so he's worked on you know all the big games you know from Glu like Kardashian race and rivals etc so we're going to do it looks like a different format today I've asked them the questions I'm going to ask ahead of time and I've taken their answers and put them into slides which we may or may not see I have them on a thumb drive if you'd like them again all right thank you very much so I always carry that case so so the idea is that we can just dive right in the answers really quickly and talk about the interesting points instead of just passing the my crap so I believe the first question is a little bit of a tough one it's I'm going to tear you guys down first and then later I'm going to build you up so we're gonna start with something that's not

quantifiable it's what's an ad monetization or monetization in general mistake that you've made or maybe witnessed other people make your friends have made that is avoidable and you can help the audience here by avoiding that mistake something that you've done that you wish you hadn't who wants to go first I'll take the first one so everyone knows that segmentation is really important but big mistake that we made early on was not showing ads to payers on the surface it seems like you shouldn't show like any ads to them but at the same time rewarded video was a great way for us to get additional revenue from existing payers and so originally we weren't even offering rewarded video ads to payers but we've seen that since they're already paying they're really engaged in the game and so we made that mistake learn from it and now everyone gets rewarded video as pretty much it would really I would also

say that how many of you are actual developer services vendors are you guys in the room no anyways when glue first win lives with a lot of a rewarded video as we type it down to just one currency or one durable good but once we realize that users want different things depending on where they're at in the lifecycle of the game we found out that we were leaving a lot of revenue on the table if we were only giving away say hard currency versus speeding up like a certain timer or offering them an item in the game so if you're only you know servicing one type of reward you're probably leaving around 65 to 70% of the revenue on the table for worth advertising ah okay and sorry just can you raise your hand if you represent a developer okay so back there to the room alright

so I think my my biggest advice to you is know your customer experience requirements for you know every ad provider SDK out there is is different and I'm sure every publisher is your code is a little bit unique and sometimes they can play well and sometimes they don't play well so one example for us was we attempted to integrate an SDK and the in between ad time was just a little bit too long for our users and had we known that up front we would have saved a lot of effort and specifying those requirements well alright we'll jump to the next one so here's that here's the slide alright I asked these guys do you allow directly competitive game ads do you allow your competitors to run their ad in your game and you know interesting two out of three do who said no and why so mine with you didn't allow me to yes with an

asterisk so I think the answer is is like for the right price yes everyone has a price with $1000 eCPM I'll walk you through it we I've shifted my tune I remember back in GGC I remember talked about the yes camp we've shifted our tune - hey there are some competitive upstarts out there we should not let them get any traction and even if it gives us some short-term profit [Music] we do allow committed about now that we heard that Sam does not kind of visual male block pocket gems in Kim Pradesh is not going to be able to bid anymore Kelly can you block that right now for for therapist no we we actually ran some actual live campaigns for a direct

average direct competition and we spent say like $500 or $1,000 of no arbitrary money through our server we targeted it just to a certain country and we you know essentially delivered their campaign on behalf of them on our inventory and we looked at the cohorts and we saw that it didn't affect retention or conversion or IEP LTV and I was super you know interesting to know and I'm not saying that it's like that for every title so don't go ahead and do that across worldwide but you know start small and test it and kind of go from there yes we actually do show ads for competitive games in certain geo so not really in Tier one where we're able to monetize very well but for tier two and Tier three countries if we can make money from ads from our competitors why

not cool since I didn't plug my company at the beginning like I'm supposed to I'll just say that hyper MX where I work where I work we run all brand ads that are not competitive with these guys title so if you're looking to diversify your ads a little bit talk to me run some brand ads there and done I had to do that or my yeah so you go to kill them all right thanks guys this one that's a fun one how many ad networks should you have in your game and which ones do you like the most who are your favorites who give you the best swag apparently ad colony does a great job with the hoodie nice fiber shirt in the front irelia I think you should give him a shirt but I'd like to thank whoever mentioned my company in this question and save me the embarrassment of not be able to put my logo up on this one so thank you mentioned hibernate I think pocket gypsy understand hey we

do a great job for them come on thank you I actually was the one who said five plus I think if you have enough volume and you would like to see and drive the competition of your supply up then even though that the top three may be getting all the traction in action you can never have enough demand we unique demand sources in the mix to drive up the competition and to kind of always keep the other ad networks and exchanges on their heels in toes so I think I think that's super important I don't know about you guys who who said I'm sure you can tell I did the acronym leave it on all my users have asterisks yeah I mean so our actual numbers is between seven and nine in episode iOS for us obviously the the more you can add that your tech stack can support you will see a greater fill problem if it's working you will see diversification which is good on the

other hand you're going to trade off against inconsistent ad experience you know every SDK and ad watching experience is locally optimized you know it look works great within the constraints of the control that we give to the SDK but the loading screens are different the ad experience itself is different the end cards are all different and then pick a random corner where the X is and when you show those ads next to each other it can be a jarring experience for the user which it's not great yeah so we actually use three to five we don't want to make the binary size too large by adding too many add partner SDKs but at the same time since we do have we do have a wide range of different Gio's where players are in we want to make sure that there is enough fill from the different ad networks and so usually you know we have a big ad

partners like like AdMob that really helps to get us traffic in and some of the tier 3 to 2 or 3 countries its own on that list on the right we've got some exchanges some traditional ad networks and a new VR network how's that going for whoever emerges Christine and the rumors being no I'm putting that immersive just because they're a unique demand partner that we've been working with on Android and what kind of unique and worthy kind of first started on Android versus iOS and so I kind of known them from the old tattoo ities and kind of trying to mounting on Android and they do have their spot in our waterfall on the titles that they're integrated with so we're happy with them alright next one let's see what we got rewarded video eCPMs in the US on iOS 20 25 bucks can't say so ash yeah come on and also maybe put some ranges here if you don't mind like so your best game maybe does 20 bucks what is your worst

game do is a do 2 or 4 how big is that spread and what you don't wanna get fired I get it it's like so I I answer $25 and I think that we don't have to kind of be shy about the CPM just because there are different there's different frequencies for each title so even though that I have a $25 CPM that may mean that you know episode does and monetizes at a higher CPM if they're showing fewer ads versus me bombarding users with that or but at the end of the day it's all about like if you're looking at rewarded video and the CPM kind of like look at the rewarded video interest like our actual Arkell on a per ad format or per ad unit basis I think that's the better conversation this is just I mean yes we look at eCPM but it's also almost like a vanity metric in a sense so yeah next year I'll use art out for this question it's a good point we

will need to that that's why we typically do around 20 dollars in US iOS we don't have the big IP games like this one over here but we are getting really good quality from our from our ad partners all right deals with ad networks this one I think this is maybe an evolution and how things are working with networks you know with mediation tools able to lock a network in first place traditionally you do a deal for first edition with whoever that network might be more more we're seeing first impression deals what's that math look like what's the evolution there you know anything interesting from the you know the two that said they are doing first impression deals with networks I can take it in um so we actually do first impression and first position depending on the format for rotate video I like to do force position just because a lot of the demand sources that you see for

rewarded video don't allow a complete floor pricing and where you can set up different floors at different rates in your waterfall versus like you you can do that on interstitials and where you have multiple exchanges in networks with different price floors so for interstitials we do first look and and then for reward a video we do force positioning where they actually see the first users and then again even after that because they're top of the waterfall and our networks coming to you every day saying hey I want your first impression or they still be mostly talking about position lean want position just because they want to just see all they want to be exposed to all of our supply on a daily basis but if we can't still at a first position rate we will sign them for a first impression or first look and then kind of like frequency cat that line item on our Lea basis go uh yeah I I guess I'm the odd

duck here sin for first position we we only have rewarded video interstitial video we have we only have interstitial video which is non rewarded and involuntary imagine a TV show before you watch an episode so for us we use eCPM floors some capping on some zones and then jockeying for for first and second and third position yeah we do it based on first impression and so it's a combination of eCPM floors and also guarantees if we don't actually get the performance from the specific and the work provider all right effective rewarded the effective rewarded video on retention positive neutral negative everyone said positive is that an intuition or is that backed by science no we've tested this I think that's why

it's all positive evening Sam usually he wants to be the outlier here yeah what surprised bored with this one so we know it see I he knows I even emailed him I said I had an opinion yes so okay rewarded video is good we know this everybody's tested this but rewarded video is only so good because non rewarded is bad and this is where I like you know get on my pedestal and say like you know this is I think where the industry needs to improve I've got friends who aren't into football and like still watch the Super Bowl for the ads we're not there yet for a number of reasons but I would love to see the day when someone plays episode to see an ad let us start advertising in your title or the week awesome alright okay so when you guys are making a game how does how

do you guys situate the people the strategy the tactics around you know building loops for in-app purchase versus surfacing ads and potentially promoting ads or ad sales you know when maybe reward video might be worth an extra amount for a weekend or something like that it sounds like it's a pretty separate operations you guys all happen to be you know ad focused people whereas maybe perhaps your game teams are separate and building the other core that's how does that work together even though it's separate how do you make that work [Music] we at glue we treat the teams definitely separate will work with the PM some videos on each title and and work together on and out of strategy but as far as like placements go we'll define those by like it m2 and then based on the type of reward they know they're getting the best and so we allow them to kind of like dictate what reward to give

a user at at certain times but as far as like frequency and recency go as to how use your see ads that's basically dictated by the ad model station team but we're all obviously in agreement before rolling it out into beta and worldwide launch I would say that for a lot of Chinese companies such as wine film the primary focus is still around in-app purchase monetization and so the game designers really focus on you know making sure that the game is balanced and that we have in-game promotions and offers to promote those in-app purchase packs and so for the ad strategy it really is a kind of an afterthought so we aren't really designing the game to make money primarily from ads like some other developers do but also related to like an upcoming game that we're launching this summer we are kind of taking a more native ad approach and so

having sponsorships for in-game tournaments where we can have arenas that are actually branded by you know certain physical brands or additional sponsors so in that respect we are kind of integrating the the team between in-app purchases and and mana station was it always the case at line gong and glue that there were separate teams yeah okay for at Pocket gems it was more of a function of like team size in the old days it was just the game PM who was in charge of monetization and kind of made sense because it was directly involved in the player experience and it hit the bottom line it wasn't basically until this year that we specialized and now have a dedicated video ad p.m. on episode all

right so segmentation is something you touched on at the beginning Shannon so do you segment users for IEP and or ad offers is that pretty sophisticated or is it as simple as after 60 days that's a non payer and we have you know group a and group beam yeah so actually for in-app purchases we do kind of throttle the bundle packs that are offered based on whether or not they've purchased and when their last purchase was and so I know this is kind of controversial but if you look at like the airline industry or hotel industry there's a lot of like forecasting and price segmentation so for example like hotels comm if you are a power of hotels calm you watch to get different prices and so we are applying that kind of mentality to how we market our in-app purchase bundles to players and then for the ad offers like as I mentioned earlier we are showing the rewarded video ad offers to all of our players now and for the sorry for the for the

payers we aren't showing them the you know static interstitial or video interstitials that non payers are seeing the price discrimination is oh they call it beautiful term yeah I would say sin for us I mean we will segment based on IP versus a non sender but we would based on like the user's device in geo and their spend propensity or like or what the expected value is will either dial up or dial down at based on you know the attributes that we see and then after that we would also as far as like push versus pull dose like if anything is pushed to a user like an apple turning your social an on spender would always see those versus a spender spender is not going to see that versus them also being able to engage with reward video if that's obviously a poll and often experience so

we would absolutely allow spenders to engage with that sort of format because feeding something back to the ages yeah I agree with giving back to the users we don't always have to use data and for insidious price discrimination rules we can also use data to improve the user experience episode has a central energy mechanic in the form of passes the soft currency and we recently figured out that hey like if you relax that energy requirement for elder users they'll stick around just as much as if you didn't and obviously they were very much in favor of that so yeah you can use it for good as well okay all right for messaging out the users about you know maybe an offer whether that's a ad sale or an IEP bundle are you guys using your own tech and tools for that you go outside for it do you do you like your third-party tools anybody you'd recommend here I forget my answer

so I'm gonna guess it's the one that's not like the other so depending on the studio that we have we have like eight to nine different Studios that are either developing titles or has a live supported title some run their own enroll their own in-house media segmentation and whatnot and for push notifications and ingame messaging and then a few other studios use website yes we actually is a combination similar to to what glue does and so for our in-app purchase offers we do that in how and for the push notifications we use Delta DNA we've historically have always had in-house tools and I think recently we started testing with lean plum Stephanie now cool all right games that nail I a P and ad monetization it's not a typo two of the

three of you said episode and it wasn't did not include the one who works there so congrats Sam yeah she gave that too much and now Sam did not say anything about your titles did not recommend you guys yes I said - so why is episode so great at IP and add well I said episodes great of both its consistently top grossing and it does provide a really nice flow in in terms of how the video interstitials are shown in Game one of your competitors choices also does a similar approach and they've also taken a essentially very similar integration for how they get in the game I'm liking the same thing nice about you anyway let's talk about it venture capitalist yeah adventure capitalist if you guys are plated

it's like going billionaire which came a little bit earlier ads are inherent to the game design and as a player I remember you know looking like anticipating not just tolerating but anticipating the ability to watch an ad to kind of speed up my in-game progress I thought they did it really well not quite the Super Bowl thing but close yeah not quite getting there cool alright so I'd say I'd yeah I told you down to the game build you up now what's something you did that was awesome a best practice and aha moment in modernization that you can share with the crowd today who wants to go first so I recommend to developers that you get your own data but I think that would might have been an extension of just pocket James's mentality of building out and controlling our own data I will say another thing yeah analyze user satisfaction so this is this is something that can be hard to

monitor and what I mean specifically here is like analyzed like with the qualitative responses there's a lot of ways you can you can get qualitative feedback on your game a huge and important method is by looking at the app store reviews you should be paying attention to these and even though they're noisy there are ways to break down that data and you can and you can monitor user sentiment with respect to the things that are the biggest pain points like sometimes at I chose that you should hire someone who is experienced with pricing and yield optimization just because they're going to be able to understand if you in terms of like crank trying to like optimize money that you already have is much different than creating opportunities that you don't have one example would be if you can if you see that your international inventory is picking up try to find the a demand partner that does it better or if you have like a lot of bids coming in at $18 in $12 try to

find the demand sources picking things up in the middle having someone that's very experienced in in-app you know pricing is much much different than web as well so having someone in that position that's not just a part of the studio team that person will pay for it him or herself within just a couple weeks I actually don't remember my son you didn't answer this question really yes slacker alright we got zero seconds who's got a question one question anyone that works out well because we're out of time all right thank you guys [Applause] [Music]