Panel: Choosing the Best Ad Format for Your Game

so with that i'll bring on my panel um so i've been your compare your embassy for the day now i'm gonna switch hats i'm going to moderate because it's choosing the best ad format for your game really excited with this panel because we have them from all aspects of the ecosystem we have platforms we have publishers i'll start with the platforms we've got meg nylon or milan she is director of publisher at north north america at fiber global technology company of course as you know developing monetization platforms for mobile app publishers we have joby tan he is global head of business development gaming at inmobi and moby of course we know specialized in new paths for brands to understand identify engage acquire users offering them intelligence and technology platforms

keeping it with the platforms we have effed f i never learned your last name i'm sorry i'm going to maybe possibly mangle it effa it's uh useful but it's yeah it's i mean we can't skip it we can skip it don't worry about it well don't worry about it no we're laid back it's late in the afternoon it's been quite a day business development director at pangol pango of course we've seen throughout the day video advertising platform from bite dance offering interactive high performance in-app advertising solutions now going to publishers i told you it's a full panel here we have it all actually actually virginia lead marketing artist at trap light midcore fantastic game and also on the heels of a very successful launch of battle legion in 2020 and azo kawamato well-known speaker providing lots of insights on how social games can be turned into successful businesses speaking of business i think you have a

new gig but i'll leave it to you to share is a welcome uh you want thanks to share now if you want to why not i mean this is a great thing i joined i joined this company right here right in case it's uh backwards it's tether games uh where skill based games uh publisher uh one of the biggest publishers on uh skills uh but today i'll be speaking about uh idol games because uh pretty much five years my yeah past uh employers and friends and uh you know friends who are developers and publishers have been in idle games so i'll be focusing so um kicking it off you know it is about choosing the best ad format the right creative we know is critical right making that format can clinch the deal what are some strong differences between these depending on formats maybe we'll start off with you aso because you have

so much uh in this in this space so much experience what's working well what formats just are not cutting it um you know it's it's a lot of uh you know creative testing really but you know i would say pretty much all the all the um formats work except for you know the typical banner ads um you know things like uh text-based advertising may not work as well but what i've seen is uh you know just looking at you know services like you know mobile action or even facebook uh transparency pages um or sensor tower um you know the top creatives from our competitors or you know idle games have been uh playable ads so it's playable then video um and then on facebook facebook and social that includes like google ads um and basically like the uh

the static ads may work pretty well okay so that's for your genre actually what's the difference there because of course um yours is mid-core it's so much more about showing the experience um also not annoying the audience the player what's working for you well we are all about video ads at the moment like banners definitely is not for us but perhaps for some retargeting thing when player is already aware of the game and the image could be enough but we focus on uh easy to understand uh video ads that are true to the product just simply very briefly explain what the game is about and uh it might be your cup of tea and uh needs to download and what about the placement here because what i'm hearing in the industry i'd look into a lot of the research and the ideas well video video is pricey so let's use it to drive really valuable engagement you

know get that roi in there is that limiting the potential video is it for deeper funnel or is it top of funnel how are you using video well uh we use video all over so we focus on both facebook and google uac campaigns uh definitely i don't see the price to be a limiting factor like there's endless possibilities within video uh it's just a matter of testing like iso i pointed out that uh you can just optimize your videos endlessly and of course there are new trends uh new things to tap into so yeah the price is uh just a matter of tuning it down so throughout the day throughout the sessions i've been here all day long you know i hear it it's video it's playable i'm going to ask you both you know you have one chance for an ad

placement either video or playable which do you choose and tell me and tell me why tell us why that's the important point i'll start with you actually what would it be oh azo no you do it okay you go for it so yeah i if you were to pick one well i think it really depends on your capabilities and costs uh because you know video is a lot cheaper to do than uh playable you know you may work with like we've worked with um you know iron source app loving um without unity ads but at least those two networks will build the playable for you but it may take like i don't know four to six weeks you know so it'll take forever you can also go out and you know work with some vendors um that can probably do it for you know relatively inexpensive i think you know there are new tools out there like luna labs for instance but it really depends on your budget so you know video is like easy um you know in the past i think uh we've

we've done some like high quality videos where you know it tells the narrative and stories but like you know it might work for like a month or two whereas the playable may work forever so you know it's really kind of dialing into that um but you know it does take some time um but you know if you were to ask me like you know which one i'd use you know yeah i'd probably start with video first just to get a feel but you know if it's it's if it's a game that's you know been established then a playable for sure okay actually well that was a great answer for myself uh i'm in the same lines video for me always um because myself i am very involved with the uh day-to-day uh production of advertisements and i can do video but i cannot uh work with playables so the upfront cost of acquiring those payables

it's uh just might not be worth the risk for for you so uh video is it's much cheaper much quicker to turn around and much quicker to iterate on so it's a it's a no-brainer for me okay so are they right joby i'll start with you because you've got a lot of data a lot of insights i read a lot of in moby reports are they right on that placement or are you seeing that in your platform in your data is it the higher performers where is he oh he's not i think i don't think i see jovi here i know i thought it was just me well meg you're you're you're you're good we have a lot of we have a lot of fun talking i i could have sort of saw him out of the corner of my eye get into the into the studio but it must have been must have been a mistake pick up with you meg you've also got i'm also reading your reports so i'm not playing favorites here

are they right yeah well i mean i think that that's definitely what we see um across our platform especially when we're talking to our dsp partners i think video especially rewarded video has actually picked up a lot i think dsp's typically we're considering full screen just as a blanket and not really honing in on the rewarded video and they're starting to they're starting to look at that when it comes to bid prices bid profiles it's getting a lot more um uh specific um and then in terms of playables yes like there's a lot of positives about playables the engagement can be very very high but it's also really difficult it's expensive um it can be complex and also i think maybe and maybe xle you could say this too with a midcore game it can be a little harder to kind of get the user to quickly understand what they're supposed to do in a playable like a hyper casual game it may work a little bit better because sometimes those games can be really easy to mechanically like understand but that it can be a little bit more complicated

for playable to be simple for a user to get instantly and then you're sort of wasting the time to have them engage if they're not figuring it out um so i just think we haven't seen playable scale yet um and rv just tends to be a lot stronger and and potentially like a lot safer as both of you guys mentioned to start with those are probably some innovation probably some testing there as you said it depends on the game you have to explain it f over pangol what are you uh seeing i mean obviously video is big but there are some choices to make some best practices to consider what would you say how to make this a very high performing uh format so like as a summary playable ads works quite well for simple mechanics as it is set so if you're a hyper casual developer i mean it's no brainer so it's much more engaging so and like it also can function as a feedback channel as well if to see if your title will scale or not because like

it's easy to create the experience in the playable ads but again it's a matter of cost as it is said if you're a small independent hyper casual developer as the beginning like as a start they don't want in general they don't want to start with play bullets but start with a simple video creative and test it in various channels and then as they get bigger like as they have more resources like we see that like they invest more in playable ads but like for i would say for hyper casual uh titles i think if you average resources it's the best choice in my opinion but like i also agree with our like friends as well if you're a mid-core developer i don't think it's easy to create that experience so like it totally depends on the type of the game actually in my opinion a lot of things are going to be changing how might this change just staying with um midcore how do you see

this might change how might this change perhaps also in a post idfa world for you actually um well to be honest i i don't think i'm the the right person to answer any uh possible changes and um yeah we just simply don't know enough of the future well i'm thinking maybe more about the the um the way you're approaching this for example the events you're going to be optimizing to what you're going to be uh events you're going to be sending so it's about you know we in many ways restructuring um the game play to get that that immediate engagement as well yeah that's uh that's very true uh and we have been doing uh uh our data team has been doing great work with the research uh regarding the very very early hours and what shows promise and uh there's actually interesting findings uh regarding the later point of our discussion

that the the ads within the game can can be a very useful tip for you regarding the value of your users but we haven't seen that the players that don't watch uh many ads yeah are in the end the most valuable for us and it's interesting i've been seeing also something from that from reforge actually it was uh you don't go for what you think is the most um active or valuable you sort of go for that great middle uh in the middle and try and get more out of that azo we're talking about change um okay we won't maybe talk about um placement in a post idfa world it's too early but how do you see it changing overall in placement and also optimizing those events to ensure that you're optimizing your monetization yeah i mean idea face uh post idfa world is just really gonna affect um you know all idols it's actually it's

not a billion dollar question for idols but it's a more like a million dollar question um but um i think you know uh as far as you know placements go um i don't think any of that's really going to change uh we're you know i think most publishers are just going to have to figure out like you know what's working and what's not it's you know is an mmp really going to help or not i mean i'm hearing like you know somewhere just bypassing the mmp completely um and you know just kind of figuring out some you know ltv targets um like for idols for instance you got you know let's say 50 50 like iap revenue and then ad revenue so that kind of roasts um you know calculation it was easy to do before you know uh this apocalypse kind of hits but um yeah

basically i think you know once the kind of hammer falls down i think a lot of you know folks are really going to be trying to figure that those things out i think the for idols in general like maybe in hyper casual as well like our ad revenue our you know ad revenue in general is a huge part of it so you know without targeting those uh ecpms are just going to go down um and you know that would just be my main concern if i was still an idol games publisher it's like you know are we still gonna be making you know as much ad revenue um yeah i'm going to stay with that thought for a moment because you were saying it all depends on what works out in the end so i'm going to ask both of you you know what ad formats are really just a no-go you know that they just don't work in your game you talked about banner before but there are so many innovations out there in ad formats i'd like you to just you know cast a little wider net here and give me an idea of some of the ones on the fringes um

and maybe there are some that uh that do work for you for that matter but let's stay on what doesn't what's a no-go i'll start with you asa because you have very no very distinct very very extreme opinions on that so i was i was on a panel a couple months ago with uh dan great guy uh he does audio ads but audio ads i i don't you know i think it kind of depends on you know the form like you know like what the user is doing but you know typically i've heard that you know maybe 70 of users just you know don't don't listen to music or you know have the sound off um you know things like banner ads or you know even i don't know maybe interstitial placements you know may not work um but yeah those are just some of the things i wouldn't go for but you know as far as like testing you know uh what what i'd be testing is just yeah you know this is what's working for us

now and then you know let's see what kind of data comes back and see if we can optimize you know those things otherwise yeah we may look at you know new things to to to do i don't really know that much about it until it actually happens okay so so very much video very much playable audio yeah maybe not um actually is there something that's a that's a no-go here because yours again is much much more about the experience than per se the format but as i said there are a lot of really interesting formats out there and people want to understand are they effective are they a go or a no-go what are your theory experience well um it also comes down to your uh resources but how much bandwidth you have to to test all these uh new placements or networks uh in your acquisition we have been uh testing uh a bit of

different things uh some of the like new but for example tick tock is of course a massive one for us for some uh hyper casual especially but we did not uh manage to to scale in tiktok almost at all like the audience fit is just not there for us i suppose okay but granted i mean it's it's it's something where we're all trying to get our head around that there is a way to do it because i have seen um some fascinating uh you know success stories in that i mean on that note maybe maybe you want to weigh in here a bit because you know that is it it's about a formula in video do you have any examples from some of your some of the companies working with you maybe some best practices across uh asia and how to get that right i mean are we is the question about asian markets specifically or like midcore games like midcore games i would say maybe some learnings because i

i've had some other uh panels where we're we're sort of having a a cultural exchange and a fit there's a lot to be learned but maybe apply it to before to start yes i mean first first of all like as we said like geography is quite important and like as axel said like she they were not able to scale in tiktok but for which region like for for example for apec which we are quite strong i mean local local know-how is a must like i mean without it it's it's really hard to scale it because like culturally speaking it's quite different than western markets and most of the time like different things works there like even for simple things like color and like you know simple graphics so like i think the the the major point is to find the right local partner and because sometimes it is challenging as well because like it's a huge market there are many uh local partners so like i think uh like the developers can start with the

like with working with like big partners like us and like they can get like suggestions from us so that like they can start the game with an advantage especially for china and japan and and for china i i i like i think it's a completely different universe in terms of culture and that's why getting that know-how is quite critical if you want to you know scale in china and at the end of the day it's right now the biggest gaming my mobile gaming market and i would say it's it's crucial for all mobile game developers at some point to gather that knowledge if not now so i think that's all i forgot to mention so you know i think at least one network that you know i would say a lot of you know idle game publishers or publishers in general will probably use more is uh asa apple search ads

yes yes indeed in fact that's a good a good segue i didn't want to enter you know bring in questions but now that you bring it up we do have a couple of questions here actually about some differences between dsps and ad networks some examples some concrete examples please our anonymous attendee why don't you kick off that discussion because you just started it with apple search ads some some networks to be looking at some differences some examples opportunities azo levita first um so typically i i don't have a lot of experiences with dsps but you know i would say certain networks that we were looking at um where i was looking at or even you know my colleagues folks like cross install i think was maloco and liftoff but you know i don't i just don't know like how much data that we're actually gonna get like you know it's just a big unknown so

um you know without the idfa like you know without any kind of tracking how can we tell like you know what's paid and what's not so um yeah as far as like you know the difference between dsps and uh you know the kind of sdk ad networks i mean best key ad networks like iron storage app loving you know uni ads uh you know fungal i mean they're all you know great games so um you know i think um yeah like i said i don't have a lot of experience on the dsps okay actually do you want to take a stab at that before i move on with that question from the audience well same same goes for me and like we touched the dsp i can add quickly though peggy that we actually work with a lot of those dsps the same ones that you mentioned so um and yes like idfa is obviously looming but a lot of the contextual

segments that they're they're starting to use will hopefully make them as best prepared as possible and i know that they've been working obviously apple has delayed it now for several months yeah so there's been a lot of extra time i guess you could say to prepare but um i think it's pretty um uh reassuring the amount of preparation those dsps have really put in and they're actually starting to already buy just on that do not traffic do not track and uh led traffic already to sort of experiment in terms of what what that pricing will look like so while of course i think we can all expect some sort of hit across the board or that it'll change a lot how it's all done i do think there's a lot of preparation that's gone in that should make us feel more assured i i think like the question is like how much contextual targeting will work i think it's it's the main question at the end of the day because like when when there will be no idfa the only remaining like approach is contextual targeting

and like most of the technology companies are investing in it and like it is to be seen to be honest and like yeah we might we might see a like significant drop and then it might it might like slowly improve from then on but there are different scenarios to be talked about like and like we will we will wait until it happens like everyone is speculating right now but like but as a summary contextual targeting is the answer like will it work or not yeah those are some open questions so now we've been focusing so far on the genre and the format fit you know choosing the best ad format for your game what is it like the fit with your genre and i thought i would switch gears a bit and really make this into a reality check so a little bit of understanding based on the examples that axley and azo have offered us to do a little bit of a health check you

know weighing on the approaches of what they're doing specifically and you know regarding format regarding frequency so actually of course our audience doesn't see what you shared before but maybe you can summarize that a bit and then meg and f and they can weigh in on um you know where you're hitting it and where you might have money on the table yeah okay so our game is all about rewarded advertising so we we don't interrupt your gameplay at all you never must watch an ad and we do that through three different kinds of placements we have the like a classic camp wagon where you get uh daily some uh free gems and whatnot then we have a timer skips for for events and a specific uh gameplay mechanic related thing that

when you roll into the battle or sometimes you are offered a uh offer or an ad placement but you can always opt out our total total theoretical uh frequency is about 16 ads per day when events are running but more realistically is about to nine okay nine all right and that does uh require also several sessions when we have the cooldown timers on the camera okay so that's your combination that's your frequency meg what do you make of it is he on the money yeah well i mean i think obviously with the game like battle legion for instance there's a lot of um segmentation you guys are probably already doing those events probably align with where people are in the game or how long they've had the game so um that would always be one of my first pieces of advice is to make sure you're looking at your users differently than just um as sort of one blanket

but um you know another piece there especially when you're thinking about users and having it not the ads not um interrupt their game play is an offer wall format um because it's another opt-in um you know when you look at ads in iep there's always the users that will just never ever buy iap but they maybe really want to stay engaged in the game so how do you connect with those users in a new way and offer all really does help increase overall engagement and retention because it gives them an option another option to continue to play and to continue move along the game um and i know battle legion has a lot of different format uh different currencies so there's multiple ways you can pick any currency to to attach the offer wall to or you could do it to multiple and really sort of tailor it to the game so it doesn't feel like again like a reward of video it doesn't feel intrusive or um invading the users play it allows them to choose and actually we tend to see positive feeling towards the game if they

have an additional options to continue um without having to spend their own money so that would be my my first thought i'm thinking about that allegiant so actually is considering that yeah that's a that's really realistic yeah you know you don't have it in your game yet i know okay so for from my perspective like yeah i don't know our you know commute in the past uh cs just hated awful walls you know but the pro the thing is though what works for offer walls is like hey you know we can make like me and my friends who are idle game developers we kind of compare ecpms on offer walls they're super super high and then all of a sudden it's like hey yeah you can you know spend i mean you could have like 10 20 maybe 20 of your revenue come from awful balls so you know i i think i did have to do some like hey we can make more money we can

generate some cash you know this can pay for i don't know free lunches or something well i think and i you're so right and the thing about off-road too is it's not for everyone not not every user is going to click on the off wall and that's like fact um it is a specific set of users that are passionate and engaged but still not willing to spend money they're willing to spend time but not money um and yes the cpms are extremely high because from a ua perspective the advertiser is getting um a very uh you know they're getting what they want the user is getting very committed and engaged to the to whatever it is they're advertising yeah and then the top idols like uh like adventure capitalist has like a huge button like on the ui that says they're free free gems or free gold um and then eastside games is uh trailer park boys and their bud farm games they're all like you know front and center like free free this um and yeah those those work really really well mm-hmm really interesting tips when you have the genre it makes a lot of sense

business sense effort will you you want to weigh in here a little bit and talk about actually before we get to what azo is doing but uh you know what about it is actually bypassing anything that you can point out i think meg covers it quite well but like as an addition like uh like user as she said user segmentation is quite critical and like like as as you know some some part of the users they never purchase anything and like uh i mean for like for those groups maybe like i mean but it depends on the defining the metric but maybe interrupting them with interstitial or in your case specifically i played the app so after watching three rewards ads it's there's a time gap of five minutes you are not able to watch anymore maybe you can you can make it unlimited for for some segment or so they can they can watch more videos because like

like if if a user like does not buy anything for a certain period of time it's quite unlikely for them to buy start buying like if for after month so like like applying a bit more aggressive strategies for those segments i think might bring additional revenue for you guys and also as an addition for example for if you one day decide to scale in china right now there's a new regulation and it it it requires a licensing for apps with in-app purchases which is which is quite uh like which is not easy to get it but like what we suggest to our developers is to create a different package just specifically for china ios market and use aggressive ad monetization instead of in-app purchasing because at the end of the day this is a market that you're not able to monetize so it's just like additional revenue whatever

you do and like for chinese users like they are much more like you know friendly to watching ads comparing to western uh users because like it's and and we can't say that we can't say this for apec in general the disposable income for users is lower than western markets so people are like like they are more okay to watch more ads so like aggressive monetization strategies works quite well in that region so moving on with um the health check is a we also don't know or rather the audience doesn't know what you offered me earlier this morning is some details meg and f ado um tell us a little bit about the format and frequency that you're using in the games that you've been working with and we can get a better idea here of what's yeah what are the possibilities what have you done really really well and where might there be more opportunity so

why don't we hear a little bit more about that from you sure so for idle games um yeah it's all rewarded videos and so if you look at all the comps out there i mean that's basically um yeah those formats um so we have uh well there's always like uh reward video for you know 2x when you come back so your idle income you know doubles um let's see frequency capping like you know you can come back for like a minute two minutes three minutes it doesn't matter um i guess you know there was back in the day like you would want to do frequency capping so you can control the ecpms but i mean these days like um you know one game i worked on had like uh one user or actually you know with many users watching hundreds of ads you know for rewards so um let's see there's other placements

are what's uh you can double your revenue if you watch a video like for 24 hours like maybe for every four hours so you can watch the video for about six times uh you also have ad offers so eastside games trailer park boys does this where they would they would cap it like maybe every like five to ten minutes you'd see like this used crew in their game and you can kind of you tap on it and then basically yeah it's a rewarded video offer um older games there's a game called cash inc that i used to love and um you know then they started putting interstitials in there i mean yeah the basically when i first came back all of a sudden interstitial but it's an older game so older games that don't really have a lot of liveops you can just probably you know monetize uh with interstitials but you know you may want to a b test that you know a lot of the networks have tools where you can be like okay well you know let's say i take 50

of the audience now i'm going to show them you know nurse digital ad with a reward video versus like just the reward video and you can kind of look at you know the impact on revenue there and yeah and off the walls um you know i've seen games idle games that kind of hide the offer walls uh but you know i think like the biggest games out there always had them on the ui i mean like you know the main ui so you have free okay i'll pick that and then you could also have another placement uh where your you know iaps are absolutely i mean ambeg is big on offer walls so you know what about it he must be he's he's partially on the money very interesting point incidentally about older games of interstitials because that makes sense as well because maybe then the offer wall isn't so relevant it's an it's a it's an established audience they might not expect or or respond to offer walls as much meg again health check yeah i mean thumbs

down thumbs up um but i would say that um i think you know you touched on one of the main pieces which is again that user segmentation just being able to test different audience segments it's just the most important thing like to make sure you're looking more sophisticated and a sophisticated look rather than just blanketing like oh we only show rewarded videos four times a day it's just not maximizing what you have in front of you because your users that have been in the game for 20 days could feel a lot differently they maybe are willing to watch much more videos they're really highly engaged in the in the app but they're still never going to spend in in-app um purchases um again offer wall obviously um something that i think that's uh you know can be missed and and i think of this from a user perspective is um something that would create churn for me is seeing the same ad over and over and over and over again um so i think diversity of demand is actually really important i know on rv it's hard to get the brands on rv it is we at fiber this is you know always something that we're trying to really push is to get the brands to be more

participatory in in the format but i think it's really important to have the diversity because as a user it can really give you a sour taste to watch the exact same ad over and over especially if you're engaged in the rv format it can become very off-putting and so i think making sure you have a healthy mix and healthy mix of networks uh can contribute to like helping that that's an interesting point i'll just bring up a q a here because someone is you know we've got quite a few now we've got people thinking differently i think about offer walls and also overall um about some formats for their games so someone here wants to understand and this is to your point maybe about a little bit of you know ad fatigue and boredom is it advisable to have offer walls for multiple networks say tap joy iron source fiber and how many and do we need to combine it all like mediation so i guess mixing it up but also making that that money that monetization at the end i'll give it over to you meg um so i wouldn't say it's advisable to

have the two i think it's it's doable um to have multiple um but you would do that across different currencies the good thing about offer wall i mean especially at fiverr but i know this is true of the others is that you can use the fiber offer wall across different currencies so there's no reason to really have a different provider you can have you know the shards be one and then the coins be another and you can actually completely customize what the look and feel of those are and then you can actually customize the types of offers that you'll see so based on where they are in levels you can again segmentation um of those users so it's um you know i think there's a lot of diversity it can be offered by a single user but it's not like mediation where you or um you know other formats where you want to have a multiple multiple of them you can um but often if you're doing that i would have them compete versus each other and go with one yeah how do you avoid that competition between them aso are you four more than one multiple networks

you mean for a mediation or for off walls or the offer wall oh for the awful vault yeah i mean you know i think with offer walls yeah like um i haven't tested like all the different networks and i think in the past i've i've spoken to fiber as well and i think you know other publishers tried to test you know a b tests like offer walls um you know see like you know which network will make them the most money also comes down to like you know things like customer service um you know i think all the all the networks you know have their own uh cs team so it doesn't really go to the uh you know the cs team of the game developer uh but yeah you know it really depends on what you're comfortable with like you know i know a lot of developers that are on iron source and you know they default to the iron star source off the wall and i'm sure like you know fiber you know developers using fibers

solution or even tap joy you know um you know typically use whatever is available but you know i guess once you get smart about it you can you know start a b testing them okay um taking one more here before i get on with the other questions i had about some other formats but i want to do it in order and we still have quite a few video questions actually i think people want to understand placements they want to understand the best practices in placement you talked about a few but are there others that you can offer um well how to optimize your videos to placements is uh it's pretty simple uh we make always say four versions of each concept all the way from your like youtube landscape to instagram stories uh vertigo and we have uh kind of come up with a system how to do that effectively with our

gameplay footage so even though the game is landscape it can be a bit difficult to fit it to to vertical but it's uh of course doable and then we just uh usually when we test creatives we use facebook we have automated placements on so the system will just go crazy with all the four versions and we see what works well yeah it's uh can be very efficient okay if i know you're not a publisher but you have a lot of insights into what is working in video can you give some advice on not just uh you know the placement but maybe a little bit more of the approach because it is so vast and everyone is experimenting so some guidance there is always helpful so like in terms of creative usage i'm not really an expert as you said like i'm working on supply side so like yeah i don't i don't think i will be able to

add anything on top of what actually just shared but like this summary like in terms of the optimum number of ad placement to be used i think this exactly is quite similar to optimizing waterfall like it looks easy but there is too much work to be done there are many different factors so there's too much data to be followed on and analyzed so at the end of today it's a question of resource again because like there needs to be a team and like that there are there must be too many a b tests to be done in order to optimize the real optimum i mean in order to have the best outcome because like it has to be optimized according to user segments it has to be optimized according to geography but like if you're like apps lifetime is around few weeks or months then is it worth it so it again it's also a question of the type of the title

you have if it's a long long value i mean if it's if the lifetime is like a few years or like at least like more than a few months then i think like it's worth it but like for hyper occasional games i don't think like uh optimizing it's to do full extent is it brings the best like outcome in terms of revenue no because it's a much shorter cycle and you want to get literally more bang for the buck um so it looks to me actually and asos if you've got a full thumbs up here on your health check you're doing everything absolutely right which is great um i'd like to move to some of the formats that are a little on the fringe but people are excited about and just get a feel for you know are these ones that you can consider or would consider are these ones where you see some potential to monetize your games brand advertising is a big one um actually azo do you want

to jump in there and give uh your take on brand advertising opportunities well um you know it's when you're talking about brand advertising you're talking about like i guess you know like the big big uh consumer brands um you know typically yeah with rewarded videos like even all the networks that we use including like facebook or even google ads and we we only really see brand advertising like around christmas you know q4 that time um everything else is just you know competitors and games and you know mostly like mid-chord games um like what i like to do is you know when i'm playing idol games i actually watch the ads and going oh you know this is a you know brand new idol game and you know i can kind of look at the networks going oh you know these guys are advertising here i mean there's you know easier ways uh to look at who's advertising your games um as far as like you know

uh you know it's like ips you know that's a whole different story where you know you have wiz khalifa you have trailer park boys and you have uh archer so you know i don't think they're really doing it to like you know advertise their brand as much as you know you know just kind of uh take taking their brand to like you know a different level into game okay so not maybe so much brand advertising but people do have a personal brand right so influencer ads and you've had a lot of experience with that i understand micro influencers are macro i'm not sure celebrity i believe well so i think the biggest one is yeah like wiz khalifa um you know you look at i wouldn't call like you know trailer park boys or archer you know there's always sunny in philadelphia like you know influencers but you know that it does really help the kind of organic to paid ratio like you know you'll get more you know

it's you'll increase that organic lift that you get from you know adding an ip to your game so i think for you know just you know those type of you know ips in general that you know works with you know whatever game that you're you know developing then you know i think it's just like kind of a win-win situation uh as far as like specific idol like you know influencer ads where you may have like a youtuber talk about your game i mean i've done that with midcore and it just you know doesn't seem authentic and so it can be kind of miss yeah it was going to be hit or miss so yeah go ahead what's your experience actually i mean is it is it that is it or is there a way to make it um seem real um well we have done the kind of two different types of influencer stuff uh actually having your like a beta placements uh

within their videos in youtube and also getting videos made where they talk about the game and then we run those videos as a video advertisement and uh the latter videos work in some cases pretty well it's a it's a very tricky uh thing when you have a human talking about the game you really need to find the proper talent to pull it off and to be like a resonating with your audience so uh uh we will be experimenting with that more so there is some promise but we haven't tracked the code yet okay just want to stop you know wrap it up with a sort of a rapid fire it's always about you know where's the innovation where the innovative ad formats where's the growth where's the opportunity even the risk for that matter okay not everyone here is a publisher but you do have an overview and you do have some insights to share i'll kick it off with you meg what are you excited about looking into 2021 for

opportunities yeah the best ad formats or maybe the innovations on existing ones yeah i mean i think playables has a lot of growth opportunities there's a lot of mastering that needs to happen there um also i would say offer wall does continue to innovate there's new features that happen there um that i think can make it more engaging and and more um authentic to the games um as we move forward but i think the thing i'm most excited about is just how much mobile gaming has blown up and i think there's gonna be therefore we're gonna see a lot more brand advertising come come through because they're going to move towards where the people are there's a lot of people playing mobile games more than ever because of the pandemic absolutely you're seeing articles on ad exchanger right about how brands can get involved in games you can feel it coming you can see it coming i'll continue um actually we'll go across the screen here i'm looking at you what is what is it that you're excited about looking ahead um well we are beginning of testing some

automatically generated uh ai generated ads and that's really where i see the like a massive uh like uh fortunately to be uh in the future i'm not sure if the technology is there yet especially for gaming like of course for example retail uh it's been working for for a while but the gaming is a different thing and uh i'm really looking forward to tackling that and in the opportunity the advantage of ai just to spell it out is it simply because uh you know you can get many many different creatives and it's a lot of it's a lot less heavy lifting or is there something else it's just smarter perhaps as well literally yeah the sheer volume of course that you can output can be unbelievable and if you have uh smart uh integrations uh to your campaigns all the way uh you can uh leverage uh data also in a very clever way yeah customizing it

to your segments to your valuable users yes i've seen that win backs on a personal level even for that matter fl i'll continue with you what are you excited about where do you see the opportunity or maybe the risk in 2021 i i would like to talk about the branding opportunity that you just like talked a few minutes ago i i i think it's the most exciting thing for me because like in my opinion it is quite under leveraged by like brand advertisers like at the end of the day rewarded a reward rewarded video is the best replacement for tv yet and tv is losing its popularity and like that it's 100 viewability and it's popular that all of the youngsters are playing games so i think sooner or later we will see that budgets are coming to reward the ads and it will make it even more valuable for mobile game developers i i'm not sure if it's going to happen this year

but like for the coming years i think it's the most exciting thing for me like seeing serious brands budgets in the rewarded video and i mean and it's becoming popular among like account managers on the agency side yeah yeah azo also for you i mean you're obviously in your offer wall is is part of your dna but where do you see the opportunity beyond that are you also as as uh you know as bullish about uh reward for that matter um well yeah just to piggyback on brands um yeah uh the new studio that i joined uh we're gonna be doing a nfl uh game so you know i think that's gonna help you know with brands and you know bringing up to like you know installs uh but just going back to you know i love it the ai stuff sounds crazy and yeah i want to try something like that stuff and uh as far as like you know tracking

goes i'm hearing a lot of you know income incrementality solutions you know as far as like advertising and just seeing like you know lists of you know i mean just you know installs so you know as far as like you know ad units go like you know i think yeah just try them all really um and you know see which one works for your genre for your game and we see some interesting crossovers there as well um great we have come up on time there's still some questions so always go over to discord right and continue the conversation there i've sent a couple people over there they're still over there a lot going on there thank you meg actually azo effo thank you so much for your insights a great panel and i great i think some great options for our audience as well to choose from thank you thank you thank you bye