Opportunities in Games as Marketing Channels PG Connects Digital #2

hey Dan how are you thank you for joining us how are you at the moment pretty good well getting kind of hot and sunny here I had to close the window shades of my screen here wouldn't get all messed up but things are going well and you'll be joining me for the big indie pitch later in the week as well so yeah we'll get some time to see that but in the meantime you're here to share your expertise with the audience aren't you yes yeah thank you for joining us I mean I'm interested to see this as well especially because obviously you know we've spent a lot of time in the pictures and hanging out at the after parties and everything yeah I'll let you

get away with it the time is perfect so I'll leave you to it I'll be here though and I'll be back at the end to do some questions and answer okay fantastic all right so I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen here I'll get started here so as long as everyone can see my screen there so I I just kind of wanted to share some insights to some of the other in these out there and you know how to how do you kind of use advertising in your game or how do you how do you grow your games through the use of you know commercial means or advertising so you know the the purpose of this is really the you know a lot of indie games you know you'll have games and things like that and you want to monetize and you know it's not always so easy to raise you know money to continue building games or things like that so these are kind of ways that you can you know look at partnering with other companies that are looking to advertise through games so just a little

kind of background on you know opportunities and game ads and branding so you know years ago you know we saw some of the early some of the early advertising options where you saw you know console games that had billboards you know racing games that had all kinds of ads on the billboards and the stadiums and things like that so those DUHS were kind of you know some of the some of the big commercial pushes of you know putting advertising into games and they mesh pretty well you know they weren't sort of distracting in any way they were a part of the game you're used to seeing a billboard at a racetrack or a ball field or things like that and so you know they were pretty well accepted too as part of the game and part of the game experience I think earlier I think I saw a presentation by bid stack where they were actually able to put these into you know into some of the mobile games or other types of games now using

their SDK which is sort of you know kind of in that tradition right and in it in a tradition that follows well without kind of ruining the content to your game and still putting advertising and making some extra revenue in it so you know that the trick really is you know how do you bring advertising revenue into your game without ruining your game right you don't you don't want to ruin your game by having too many ads you don't necessarily want intrusive ads in your game so you want a partner with a potential brand that can really use use your game without kind of changing the content too much or without ruining the content so you know early to early on you used to see things like promotional web games one of the games I did worked with another company that was doing sort of race games on the web this is back in the early 2000s where we did like a super race game so it was an ideal rally

you know it was like a rally sport game that was on the web and had several different tracks so you know you saw a lot of things - with flash back then right a lot of people would bran through flash or put promotional games on the web not nearly as as powerful as what we have today you know we've just seen such a huge leap forward in in games you know in the interest in games and the quality of games now that you know now we're seeing a bigger space as far as advertising you know they said I saw a talk from Google about a month or two ago and they were saying there was something like trillions of hours of game time played which means this is the mo viewed media out there and so with the most viewed media obviously you know the eyeballs are all there and there should be a lot of potential for advertising to want to get involved in that and and a lot of potential for any licence holders or game creators that that can potentially grow their revenue with with

ads so some of the other types of things you know we've seen most of you are familiar with in-game advertising right so there's a bunch of SDKs that you can do that and so some you know some can be implemented better than others you know when there's when there's too many of the ads every time and you want to get a reward or get past something or when the ads are forced on us we're not too happy with it but when we're we're okay sometimes with a lot of players are okay with rewards if they're not too frequent you know rewarded advertising um but you know to reward it advertising the best one because they can just skip by right and go go right to their game if they want to buy in at versus buy it versus watch rewarded ads so you know where's the potential in in making money with brands so theme game reskin so I'll show you some examples of that where some some brands some game developers have

kind of read the reskin games are done a whole game that entirely uses it utilizes a brand so that's another thing that you can use if you're an indie studio and you have a really competent team and you want to add some revenue you can totally you can totally make use of that okay so you know the ad network SDKs are the ones you know that probably most of you familiar with I mean obviously as game creators we don't necessarily want to have to sell individual ads so those are those are a good way to add into your games but not a great way to target a lot of the ad networks will sort of show random ads that are unfamiliar with your game so do a little bit of research and make sure that you know the ad networks and in even do some follow up and testing your game make sure that the ads in the games are relevant there are some that will target users you know what Facebook Ads obviously does that they do a lot of tracking and things

like that and that could also be a bad thing you know if the player feels like they're being watched too much or their web activity is being watched too much where the ads are totally targeted to the last thing they search so you know you kind of have to balance that and really figure out you know what what you want to do what's what's the you know what's the really the the impression you want to get you can give with your game product placement is another one you know we don't see a whole lot of product placement in games and I haven't seen a whole lot of really push for that you know in product placement so that's something that really is up to the developer I think that's an open market where the developer can really open up some channels and do some product placement if it makes sense in the game right and then also their survey surveys is another way that there's some survey companies out there that have SDK plugins and you know those those have much higher potential for earning but of course they do take away take the player

out of the game experience for a little while to answer questions but again it you know it depends on how much game time you're willing to give up versus how much revenue so I wanted to show you some examples here of you know really the the branding of what companies are doing and you know how agencies are taking advantage of the game market now bringing it into you know the commercial realm because obviously the eyes are there and you know some stuff is like really off-the-wall and but it really does you know what KFC did with the I Love You Colonel Sanders games this is not even like you know it's not even like they directed at mobile users they directed it at Steam users in particular so I think they really wanted a younger audience to continue going to KFC it's not a game where it's you know it's like okay you're you know we're promoting KFC you're not selling fried chicken or anything like that you're really part of

a game at a cooking school in you're part of a story right so it's it's it's kind of an interesting twist on it because it has a lot of anime characters in it as a very fun style to it it really does lend itself well to to the community of gamers and still is fun you know it's one of those things like it's not like an intrusive add thing like hey we're promoting KFC it's actually using the brand to really to really make the game experience embrace the brand rather than forcing ads on people and then you know you have the Hard Rock Cafe is interesting brand to which is one of the ones we're potentially working with the masquerade so you you know the Hard Rock casinos are a very large property worldwide and we've been looking at them particularly not so much for the casino aspect but for the fact that they are really looking at free-to-play games now so I think they just did this Hard Rock

Cafe you know it's like a diner type game so those are really popular right now right the the management game so the company they had worked with how to had a similar game and did some reskin for the Hard Rock and so you know there's potential in enlight re skins versus heavy Reese kins and it really depends on you know how much you know really how much your development team can devote time into doing Reese kins or you know how much of a budget you really have for potentially getting more player reach but if you think about the Hard Rock Cafe you know you think about them as a casino owner right so they have hotels they have the cafes and then at the casinos and so they have a whole bunch of online casino games but the interesting thing that they did was a departure from the casino games is that they also did free to play fun games you know both you know both of the casual and and sort of management style games so it's really I like the companies that

are taking that leap forward and I'm really taking next step and not just sort of sitting in their comfort zone and saying well this is work from the past so we'll keep doing that so you want to keep your eye out for those companies that are really that wanna do you know they want to take those risks that and that understand the potential of how many really you know how many users are there are of games and how many more how much more time players play on a computer versus watching video right and so you know a lot of people they'll just skip the ads right if they're watching YouTube or something and there's an ad a lot of them's it'll just look away or skip it but or they'll have ad blockers which you can't really do in apps right um so you know that that's one of the potential things that that makes a game more popular and then you know then there's you know one of the things they look at you know is it a potential good brand match so like with our games in particular you know we've looked at you know the demographics to the Hard Rock Cafe now they've been

working with a number of other companies I lion is one of them so that had a bubble shooter game and they had reskin on that bubble shooter game I'm a very light reskin really that just had some music and and a few other elements in it that was a little bit different from their other game so you know the other potentials are besides reskin because every scanning can be a pretty heavy workload on on your your team so unless the potential is there to really reach more players which you can with a brand you can reach a lot more players if you're promoted through a brand or a portal or things like that so it's a potential way to reach a lot more players but it is of course a commitment in in really putting that team together and trying to get more people on board with you know investing time into re skinning a game or customizing the game for that potential market so some of the the easier things to do I mean we talk about

in-game rewards and rewarded video but some of the other things you know you could do is you could tap into some some types of companies will have rewards playing a rewards plan or loyalty coupon redemption so if you can tap into those things into your game - you can also have some added revenue if it's possible if the developer or if the the license holder is willing to kind of unlock those potential things for you because you know really loyalty programs are really important for certain types venues and certain types of brands and the other thing is do you know turning games into training software so if you have a potential game that has a specific mechanic and it can be really easily turned into a training software or things like that that's a whole other it's a whole other thing and you know a lot of game developers you know we're really kind of dedicated to our craft or really dedicated to our art and and you

know in our audience and things like that so you know you know it's only if it makes sense right if it's an easy thing to do to take this game mechanic that you have and turn it into something to you be using for training you know there's so many markets for that and even government agencies that can utilize that whether it's you know flight training or you know safety or a bunch of different things that I've gotten involved in as well there's there's a whole lot of potential there so you know this is kind of just an example of you know proposing games as rescanning so this is one of the things we looked at like you know for the our game romant a shoe you know we had sort of a medieval romance game and then we looked at it to do more of a battle of the band style game so it was it really a similar kind of it's really the similar game in a lot of ways pretty much identical game well we're really just changing look from you know some sort of this medieval romance to this this rock-and-roll battle the band style

game and really the items you know the items change but the values are pretty similar so we're not really doing a whole lot of change in game design as far as playability but we're investing a lot of time in game assets right so that's another potential thing that you have to kind of consider so what types of products are good for rescanning or branding so you know there's a lot of different potential in there for you know your game products of gamification you know if agencies or things like that are looking for gamification for brands there's there's potential for that and when I think of gamification I'm you know I'm not thinking of incredibly complicated things but but you know if you if you have really small games and five those are the ideal things for gamification because you can really easily change you know you can change the the visuals rather simply and you

can also add in a lot of little things like you know a lot of companies will use like a spinning wheel or you know the typical we love for trainer things like that to generate promotions so those there's a lot of potential I think the most potential in html5 as far as you know game rewards whereas you know on the video side there's there's a lot less potential because people will adblock ad blockers and things like that and they don't really want to be bombarded with ads but they are willing to play games so if you can turn redeemable coupons or promos and things like that into simple games you'd do that really easily on the web so the platforms you know the platforms like I said the html5 is a really great one as far as you know gamification are simple small games if you don't want to really invest a lot of time and building big games for companies or you can add you can add a lot of value with that however

you know the potential and the platforms as far as you know distribution goes there's less there's less problems with ad blockers and things like that so if you do choose to use say like an ad platform or an ad network and you're putting it in an app or in a platform you you don't have you know you know have that problem with you know the advertising the advertiser losing money because of ad blockers and things like that so you know the mobile platforms a really good one for that web not so much if you're doing video ads because you can block ads steam is another one you know we saw not so much with rewarded video but with theming you know there's a whole potential market there for theming and you know we're not really sure too much about Google stadia or things like that apples never been big on in-game advertising especially first description but but you can obviously

can do it in your own games and then you know there's a big potential market to in VR product marketing so we've seen like you know here's an example the McDonald's app so you know fast food this is one of those things that's really gonna be heavily into you know the gaming market and VR market and a our market as far as new mixed reality using these things you know using something similar to pokemons go instead of finding pokemons go you find things at location-based establishments and you know it's really it's a really powerful tool for them and potential reach for you for customers too because you have the global brand in place already so that is the the end of my little presentation here so if anybody has any questions thank you yeah

we've got one question and as I say to everyone we've gotta you know throw your questions in and have a chat I know we're just about to coming up to time in a bit but yes so the first question we've got is because of covert Kobe ten but I think he's been speaker in nineteen do you think in-app spend by brands will increase as it is cheaper and measurable than billboards etc well you know that's hard to say they're saying that right now I think there was an earlier talk where there was an in in analytics on the fact that people were spending less on the advertising on an in-game our in-app advertising and I'm not really sure why I'm not really sure why and that could be just maybe they were talking about game you know game companies doing less spent on in advertising but um but you know really the player space has gone up but the player space per player is lower but you know overall if there's more players even though they're spending less

they're going to be for more earning potential right so it's one of those things where you know we kind of have to wait and see what what the results are you know it's hard to predict to say really what what the effects of koban 19 are obviously more people are online people are playing games so if they're spending less that and then and the games have you know advertising there should be more earnings from the in-app advertising but you know a lot of a lot of people will be willing to skip ads of course and and I think you know the the bottom line is you know the metrics used to be something like 30% of your game revenue could come from in-app advertising but you know that's a variable number of course and you know we could see that number go up with Cove in 19 yeah and the next question is do you expect ad revenue eCPMs to increase well you know the price what I've noticed is that the price of ads are

going up you know especially for you know for promoting apps right so the price of apps have been going up I don't know that the price of advertising within game or the revenues they're coming up for the for the for the game creators so but I mean potentially more players should mean more revenue but that doesn't mean that the ad networks are being more generous what what I've noticed is you know the the higher paying networks are gonna be the ones that are gonna be featuring stuff that is like you know the companies that can forward big ads right like you'll see it on TV too right you'll see sorry about that you'll see a lot of companies that are doing you know the insurance companies they have the most money right now right we all have to pay for insurance the police here in the United States and so that that is a company that can afford advertising so you know you will see a lot of those ABS ads in games now and

you know so those are gonna be the higher paying ones and you know and unfortunately for the advertisers you know how many 14 year old kids are gonna be wanting to buy insurance so it's a relevance thing you know it's persistence it's you know how many ads you thing and and this is one of the things when you partner with an ad network you want to consider those things do you want to make a lot of money do you want to have relative relevant ads you know you know do you want to continue the game experience all those things you kind of have to once out in your game and make sure you're not ruining the experience here came at the same time to the next one is just a big THANK YOU from Avinash she's saying the best way to market out the games for indie studio so thank you for the talk it's always really nice and then another question we've got user do you know about non-intrusive out formats like palma die oh that one that one I haven't used no heaven I suppose they one thing that came to my mind based on

that sort of thing which really talked about not intrusive is I remember talking to a developer about using things such as audio ads much like like a radio broadcast so you can continue playing the game without being disrupted do you see a future for an alternate form of in our advertisement that isn't just what we know now such as you know cutting away from the game to see an advert or anything else like that yeah I think we're just scratching the surface now of of what the potential of advertising is and I think the advertising community hasn't really fully realized it yet either and I think they will and you know hopefully it won't ruin our games forever hopefully the developers will figure out a way to be smart enough to not ruin their games with too many ads but um but yeah and I think there's a lot of you know potential for entrepreneurs there that have a understanding of marketing or or the advertising world to really bring tech into games and really bring

potentially you know meaningful ads into games and relevant ads into games that are at the same time enhancing of the games you know like the different things that can help a game rather than hurt it yeah and we've got one more question so we'll ask this one last one and then I'll let you get on your way this is Jordan who asks who's first of all says great talk and then asks what your thoughts on direct purchase ad formats where you can buy stuff directly from the ad is that even viable I think it is I think the problem is is when they make you go to a site to buy things I think that's that can be rather intrusive and obnoxious right so if you're forced to go by something and you're in the player and you're taking you know anything that takes you out of the player experience can be quite aggravating so I think you you know it's again it's it's really like how how well is it done how well thought-out as it done that you know those experiences can be integrated into

the game without being you know obnoxious or feeling like a you know a cash grab yeah well thank you that's brilliant so thank you for being a part of the show as a speaker obviously your your parts are far from done as obviously you'll be joining us for the big indie pitch I'm sure you've got a lot of meetings and everything else like that and of course if you have time you know drop into the discord because I'm sure people might have some extra questions they'd love to ask you in our growth track channel great ya know thank you so much for joining us and yeah alum I'll see you later in the week but you know for now thank you so much you