Panel: Choosing the Monetisation Mix for Your Game

[Music] nice to have everybody here we're gonna talk about monetization mix how you pick the right word for your game I would also like to dive with into how 2019 has been because we've definitely seen some changes we've seen hyper casual come suddenly enter the stage and then become difficult we've seen other places and spaces become difficult subscription it has suddenly become a thing again especially in the mobile space I think there's been a lot of changes in the spaces where we can measure things that's bidding is becoming a real thing that you can actually use and we have

really nice high-caliber panelist sitting here so we have villain from game refined he just maybe everybody says a few words about themselves I'm learning from game refinery and what I do is basically see your game a list and analyze mobile games every one time I see you on founder of star berry games we developed a title coffee core we're based in Berlin a small team making casual games so I'm speaking from small indeed aspect hi everyone I'm Robin working from Oguri we are specialized in brands in games driven by user choice I will tell you more about this hi my name is of president of fiber from Israel based in San Francisco for the last nine years a fiber is a mobile mediation platform and we do an offer

all marketplace and an LTV management platform okay miss Jo I work at Rovio head of studio we make in our studio we make make core games but overall Rob you're probably better known as Angry Birds company yeah and that's not the only thing you do there's a couple of people that also have done very interesting things in the past but the passion the hobby that I have yeah I also found a constructor of fun so if you read that blog often behind it it's oh and what I did want to mention is well auntie may be an Indian now but you've run a studio for Wooga I think Red Rover had a studio Booga yeah yeah running a learning studio for without making puzzle games jelly splash fun fact about on he's the one who hired me to games you were working together

and I found this actually what was the company that you were working at together before yeah Digital Chocolate so it that's based in Helsinki naturally I'm also finished do you regret it we haven't spoken so I've sent everybody a couple of corner points of what I wanted to talk about one of those things was to have a bit of a thing about 2019 how you would summarize that briefly maybe we start with mission okay so it was summarized in five words and but I would say three so it would be ads and subscriptions okay but now I have to to shrink it I would say banners banners had seen a renaissance in 2019 they came back out of nowhere I would say privacy

between gdpr CCPA google play audience policies and and you know Apple doing Apple stuff and definitely privacy policy that's where big and the big platforms betting on games I think word like thirty words now can I suppose what you're saying even more brands in games yeah I did it guys yes I agree with miss cup to be more specific I think subscriptions battle pass that's I think 2019 the interesting interesting thing yeah ads I would specifically mention China and the CPM is in China potential in that market I will have to say if we keep really short well battle pass plans in all genres and then I would say meta game monetization in casual games no as

well and I have to agree with you on the brands no as well for sure how have any purchases at revenues whichever you're working with hopefully both how have they been developing over the past year what has changed what has been remarkable in your opinion maybe we start with Allah me right so basically we seem like a lot of changes in the in the way advertiser we're looking at games and which is very positive for all of you guys here so I was just like watching join girl and also achieve like conferences before here and what we see that advertisers are trusting more and more the gaming inventory they are still things that needs to be done in order to reassure them so we mentioned brand visibility we mention like a whitelist this is something that they go mental with that no brand safety is one of the key key

key assets actually like 87 of the company briefly receive 87 percent of the company brief you receive a degree comes with the whitelist as a requirement so the advertiser before running the campaign so Nike for example they want to know where their ads is going to be displayed and gaming it's something that they're they say gaming what is that you know they like to invest in BBC New York Times for example they have no problem with that when it comes to games it becomes more challenge for them so we find a way like by unbiased data I would say we show that the user that goes to BBC every day is also the same user that user overall your game for example and we connect the dots and thanks to that we are able to bring those brands in games and I could say much more but we see more and more confidence in the markets which is great for the gaming industry yep so from kind of a game gamedev

perspective I would say 2019 with with that Taniya P we started with only monetizing with that so an idle coffee corp and that night see kind of as a as a nice model that was enabled to add LTVs being such high that you can kind of get kick-started as a like with limited resources in a small team you want to make something fast it's you can actually make an LTV with that that gets you supported maybe you can even global launch and then we've been pushing towards I ap we even implemented subscription so kind of wanting to make it during the live phase of the game shifting from ads and getting more for monetization on Riya piece from game feature and a little perspective don't really have info on the sort of how the numbers have been developed but actually what we have noticed that game refinery during the past year especially in top crossing games that the usage of easy and device ads have been heavily going up so for example your URIs and device

for action to watch what's an ad and then you get the rebar for that and players Lea seem to like that all right so a lot of things said so personally the way that I'm looking at things is naturally unwell naturally in our studio side it's only not purchased side and what you're really seeing is some of the games that have been for a long time the market the revenue per install is just increasing constantly it's really hard to get a new game into the market and if you look at the numbers of games entering the market it has really dramatically decreased since 2016-2017 and that's partly because the existing games are retaining so well and they're monetizing better and better and the payback times that are increasing because they're able to predict their LTVs much better so I don't say yeah just increase of return per revenue per download very very little to add and you asked about in-app purchase and advertising I would say that if in the past in a

purchase accounted for and now 70 sometimes 80% of revenue we've seen it starting to balance with in-app ads sometimes you know 60 40 even 50 50 in a purchase and in-app ads and that's an interesting trend what would you attribute that to I guess coming back to all the points that you know they the people here said before I mean there is so much we do within a purchase and in this bigger audience for casual and hyper casual wear in a purchase behaves differently then ads takes a bit of place and then you see it going up I mean you mentioned HEPA capsule before yeah the crazy so the the ratio you were mentioning that's across the board and not with an individual product because it's quite heavily relying on different genres so as the ad revenue is increasing you see different subgenres creating more games like star strawberry like I got this company I mean they're creating more and more games that are catered to both take advantage of ads and a nut purse it's not across all the categories but if we're talking 5050

that's about like idle games and 90 or 95 5 would be hyper cash as well and then with the casuals it's it's a little bit more but then when you go to you know fully core games I call it duties and whatnot the percentage is naturally smaller I agree with you if I may well I completely agree we do see slowly a lot of a be testing around exposing also in-app advertising into you know the mid quo and and worse and of course ID and trying to segment some of the paying users maybe carve them out but you know we can we can take it off that's something I wanted to jump into two things actually so you mentioned anti you mentioned that you were we started out doing purely advertising and then switched why not switch but integrated in app as well and subscription was that out of necessity have you seen anything changed to the degree where you will head

to do this well that's like that was the we want it to be fast so it was more like we've got very nice resources and the first thing we put in to monetize with was ads like right from the get-go in like pre soft launch type of stuff so IIT was just we need to get them towards the global launch and right after it then subscriptions to go a bit longer for us but we can talk about that maybe another question and I was wondering you mentioned that you've seen less games come on the market you've seen revenue for existing games just increase increase increase at the same time we have an insane squeeze in terms of you echoes that I think a lot of people are feeling what would you recommend to anybody who's not a Rovio launching a mobile game that is not purely advertising driven

okay so what would be the the approach for a company no no significant marketing resources yeah I think there the approach would be to enter the market as fast as possible because you're probably assuming that you're not you don't have that much resources for development so you need to see the early traction for your game I think the motivation models they don't it was talking about very hybrid intent in terms of using both ads and in-app purchases ads specifically because you can money I mean the return investment could be even hot I mean faster and so you're not competing against games that have been on the market with high enough purchases so yeah just some summarize just go to the market as fast as possible don't look at one monetization model try to use both and and you have to go basically for the stickiness because that high high initial engagement will contribute to the ad revenues pretty quickly and then you can you're able to scale off yeah

and supports is this idea if I may and there is something really really important especially for the nucleoid you know when your name is review you have a huge attraction from the from the heads because your name is review so people knows your name and give are often to play more games rather than the determinant usually launching the new game tomorrow so there is one finger we say here is that gaming industry is one of the only industry actually in the market except to display ads for the competitors it's real important what I'm saying here I was saying that yesterday as well I'm going to preach this message again but then you see BBC displaying ads for New York Times Lucy Liu who displaying ads for tinder not happening Gaming is where we accept this because this is the gaming industry this is how it works so pay attention no you matrix they pay attention a lot on the whole user of charm actually you can refer to some game company in the market like Sunnah for

example they've done analysis of how user churn and the analyze like when user were exposed only to gaming ads and they down the comparation also by adding brands into the mix results is that the churn of the user can be decreased by up to eight when start displaying a branding ads within your game so it's really really important like it's great to make money and especially in the hyper cacher game you need to act fast and make the most of it quickly because there are very like instant games one tab button stuff like that so the user needs to stay as long as possible while making the most of it brand doesn't mean that you will sacrifice the CPM and other money you will make it sometimes ask as much better other gaming company just think it it there is a more and more company pushing the direction including fiber blog u.s. position that that permanent --iv brand is really important in choice is not going to stand for 100% of the ad

revenue but still the 50% you will get with brand we increase a lot the user activity I have a question for with him be and I forgot it what would you say are the best practices to make sure that are the monetization more to using do not cannibalize each other at least not massively I'm sure some degree of cannibalization can't be here but what would you recommend well I'd say that you really have to think about sort of so right for example if you think about using a hybrid model between subscriptions and IPS you for example when you look at the bail pass plan which is just another way of doing subscription plan that can work that can really support that I'd say the ia ia P purchases as well because for example if

you like at the class of clans recently introduced a pal bus and it was hugely successful yet pretty low price point of I think it was like five dollars and you get a huge value from that and the players they really love that and that also boost the retention which then supports the other IEP revenue as well from the game so that kind of like you just have to deep and I'm not there example for example is that if you look at casual games like coloring games then you have subscription plans where the content is sort of tied behind the subscription but it seems to work for for that kind of audience because you have to if you think about coloring coloring books in in real life you you have to buy it sort of to get it more natural for that yes exactly yeah like you might have some thoughts on that as well do you do your thoughts sometimes no I mean I'm gonna

talk about subscriptions or not I'm not asking about subscriptions I don't know that it's actually an interesting topic because I don't have anything to I do that particularly a photo well yeah there are the games where was where those battle paths have been added and it's actually being negative so it exactly has I've been cases where you've seen are you expecting that to be damaged now if if we can't say what what you should be doing what should you not be doing maybe that's a different way to approach it with subscription with subscription or any mode of monetization that you using when it's more than one well the challenge is like you mentioned classroom class is an example and and there are other games that everything from from play Rick's games to supercell games to other top grossing games that have added this battle past model the problem kind of in there is that those games didn't have inherently that model so it's being put on top of it and you mentioned that clash of clans has has had a significant revenue increase which is true but then again clash Royale

hasn't and it's actually decline it's not necessarily based on that I haven't play clash class that much to play clash Royale and there I was getting too much from the battle paths which decreased my spending in other elements so I know from personal experience as well as looking at the data that it hasn't decreased and the other part you mentioned coloring games and there's some other for casual games they used to be very dishonest with subscription system just fooling people and Apple has actually you know crank that down so you see the games revenue is now declining in terms of end up purchases so it's I think the industry is kind of you know learning how to do subscription but we really don't have other than you know the fortnight's and cards and other games was launched with battle pass that really because that was there from the beginning so this is essentially the same thing as yeah put some thoughts on the topic like preventing kenny

validation of them like when cuz we're gonna go with our next title we're gonna go all in subscriptions IPS and ads of course and you're designing the subscriptions from the beginning not like yeah so we can do free to play out of a game that wasn't free-to-play which was what we saw in as well so yeah on idle coffee we've implemented or both on iOS and Android subscriptions but how kind of I approach it from from the game design perspective is so ads are the ones that are gonna give you a sample taste sampler of something that's gonna be super nice in the game it's gonna be three minutes of to its revenue in an idle game and something's flashing and and you kind of see the the the reward there with I ap when I convert that to something that's that's been permanent potentially so that's kind of adds are tied to the IAB in a way that they give you a sample of it that could be one one way to think about it and then for subscription I'm I'm pretty sure that's just I'm just

starting and you can use it for something and that's sexually increasing retention and engagement some subscription you should be thinking I wanna incentivize the player to come every day if they subscribe for seven days I want to make something that if they log in every day they get kind of the benefits so that's kind of pushing forward with that kind of a monetize in yeah it motivation did what for the user to also like play more and engage more so then give the benefit that when they purchase they can make the most out of it but returning to the game more often but if I can build on what he was saying is kind of like Europe like book more theory around it so when thinking about subscriptions and then kinda from theoretic perspective instead of what we have right now I think that the main point in subscription service whether you're thinking about Spotify whether you're thinking about well Spotify what

came to my mind or whether you feel Amazon or Salesforce or what not and you kind of start with the with the access so when you're signing up to subscription it's giving you access to something unique so in a case of theoretical hypothetical you know slots games the subscription would give you an access to totally unique slot machines and totally unique progression and that gives you some some meaning to actually convert and there are five more things that you have to think about they don't be kind of mentioned but I'll just put theory around it so the this second thing is honesty and that's what we haven't seen in hyper casual developers where they cannot you know fool you to getting a subscription and they're they're not honest in the sense that they don't deliver the value that they're selling so Netflix is honest with subscription because you subscribe to Netflix you're not expecting them to not do any more movies or anything like you know that they're gonna come in with banging content the next month and not the month of that and the next and this series gonna continue that's honestly with subscription that's the same thing

with World of Warcraft like you expect new content coming in and then simplicity comes in the third part there are some subscription services which list all kind of crap and it's really hard to understand what's going on but if you're really clear again in World of Warcraft they you know this is one month this is three months or six months a year very simple you know it would be what you're gonna get we're honest you believed in us and this is what we're going to deliver that's really important events parenting yeah then what was talking about engagement is important in the sense that a good subscription service is the one that rewards you for engagement so again a battle pass is about not only you're getting the subscription but the more time you invest the better reward the more rewards you're going to get and also the kind of like the fifth point there is that the the rewards get better all the time so it's not only rewarding your engagement but it rewards you for the more engagement you put in and then actually these two micro transactions where you can pay for engagement and the final part is you know the VIP so that's

not what a lot of subscription services do but think about it when when you know in the beginning of the year there's like all these music services or whatnot they're running these campaigns first three months free and you're like well I'm subscribing to this do I get first three months free like this is not fair so in a good subscription service the VIPs also are rewarded for staying VIP like it would be nice the spot if I would say you know you've been subscribing to our service for six years here's a free month because we're giving it to others as well like that's an example I do and it just made currency that way you get those are kind of six points that theorized what I'm saying can I can I be honest with you for a second absolutely maybe I don't know much about subscription but I'm kind of old it depends about like choosing your right monetization mix and and one thing I want to recommend all of you here you know developing publishing is make sure you have a solid way to test all the

assumptions all the theories all the thoughts all the recommendations all the recipes that we are getting out there because whatever works for me will not sell you work for you and vice versa and it's very hard to test you know sometimes you implement something for a few months and then you change but the reason ality and your game you know the Dow goes up or down and you know in your competitors showed up so having a solid a be testing that can we what's happening so you can test you know game elements metadata that you mentioned a different monetization style you know ad units whatever you can and really compare everything to each other is crucial otherwise you know we just you know making assumptions and maybe maybe it works maybe didn't have any numbers in pieces and we are every app is a business and you need numbers to support any assumption that you take and we had something which is the most sexiest I would say to kick up the yep especially in 2020 and you know this world it's called GG PR there is

something here guys entire industry everybody has been lying to the user on the way the data their personal data has been used so for a long time we maybe the main user believer that actually access single game access you like a website was just for free but actually yeah we are using the a data person our data in order for different purposes advertising is one of them but under it is the others so I like the way to describe something about transparency it's really important to explain to the end-user how the data is going to be used at the end of the day which makes me think about this thing have a consent manager bgp of compliance explain to the user what you're going to give them in terms of choices because at the end you develop amazing games to let the user play then why the ones how many times I wondering the day and you have different game jars that ends up that and basically think about the use of choice Zab they need to have the ability to

accept to share data with you they have the ability to refuse sharing data with you and then you can decide to spend them and until the more they say yes all you can make if you have IP for at free experience you can yes this thing I appear within the consent manager like this you make two rocks one I don't know if this is a valid expression in English but you will just one stone exactly thank you but actually we just like your average opt-in rate of a concern manager is 50 to 60 percent of the markets if you include IEP within this concept manager you can bring it to 70 to 80% 70 to 80% of user saying yes to share data it's huge if you got ninety nine two days probably because you're forcing the user to say yes which is by the way nobody by the legal okay sorry was a bit long but I insist on that point that nobody wants to talk about because it's not sexy at all but it's really important guys it's just

this thing has been flashing at me angrily for some time okay a lot more questions I would be asking but I feel like maybe we should invite paper to ask questions and if they don't have anything it would just be me thank you very much first of all congratulations and thank you for being here I just want to ask you if you have seen or experienced and ingame ads that haven't been too intrusive or annoying which is kind of what usually happens and then on the on the second part of the question how do you see the future of vats integrated like tailor-made for games for a better experience for users and still be able to make money for companies can I take the second one guys that will talk a lot

about like just integrate ads stats um little testing and you'll figure it out it's kidding anyway so I'd say the the positive impact of ads and how it can be tied to game development how the I'll do an example is called duty so they ran a campaign of playable video ads for four kind of choosing what game mode to invest to next they have different stuff but one of them was zombies and basically what the player did and in the end the playable app they just chose what to do next and in that I think like 80% or even more of the players chose the dump zombies mode so it's clear signal to the game team that they should probably invest into zombies since it was the most engaged one and in that case it wasn't well probably there the company the developers that showed the ad made the money but it was good also for the the development team in the sense that they got a whiff of what to do next and and reengage the players so your first question was about like I'm

sorry very upset yeah absolutely are there examples of so the innovation of ads that not being intrusive or the call that content so yeah because I'm looking at it from a point of paying my my employees and so we started fairly like gently with rewarded video ads when we first integrated them and over the last eight months we've gone from you know I don't know three to five at for da you to somewhere beyond six six and seven as per BAU that's quite a lot of that the engaged users are are watching a lot of them and what we've noticed of course is like being so we only have rewarded video ads that's of course same way I don't intrusive when you're not like when you actually want to watch it but of course what we've learned is the more you kind of offer the chance to watchin that it actually is quite effective as well so it's I would say yeah there's would be still seeing 20/20

quite a lot of pushing ads in front of you just to make sure that you have a chance to actually then convert people to watching ads so I I'm not sure if it's gonna work if we hide them somewhere and expect people to go and kind of get that logic so actually more intrusion unfortunately works it probably is this on some extent but if if I can adjust something makes idle games and modification with idle games and then they do good integration with ads because you watch the ad to speed up something and then you come back to that so you kind of watch the ad at the end of your session so not only is the ad beneficial you want to watch the ad but also ad is more efficient because you're already exiting in that session and if you another ad from the company then you're you know likely downloading the game and play that on the side with your coffee core you made a good point about look you may get supplies but for the vast audience out there ads out of your game economy I mean it's about to fade of the experience i watch an ad to you know to

shorten the time again I can unlock in you a new feature in the game I like it I'm gonna engage with it there are several numbers showing that they would be to specifically actually increases retention in the game of course you don't abuse it so as long as you plan accordingly act works I think a lot of people really like for water deaths I personally like ads that are where targeted sometimes I'm like hey I'm glad I know this thing now do we have additional questions really nobody what can one know I can add something real of you I I get a feeling of where you want to go with your question like maybe having like your amazing integrated heart within your game your program with that is that share on the paper it's amazing because indeed we like to have like an integrated like Nike for example on your player or Nike shoes on on your character for example she's great it's just going to take like the huge amount of energy and time and you need to come you have the same program when your name is Rob Lowe you can do that and go to

talk to Nike despite the fact that they would get maybe two months to get a meeting with them and that you need to build a partnership implement that and today we haven't seen yet like a scalable way to do that because that implies like there is enough has there is no standard in that kind of stuff every piece box solution become like a very tough jobs for you but also for the brand because this is something you so you can build something there but it will take time so maybe if your choice is to say I need to make a choice between like energy and what I was going to bring in terms of money display maybe an answer and then you can play with the different aspects industry sure intrusive we wanted to do open a less intrusive but let's play or you have like some proprietary formats which were like floating ads or thumbnail you can see that a lot on mobile web it's like you're like Facebook you know sorry you see like when you start watching a video it goes down on the little screen and you have a little square you still access your content by still seeing the

video you can think about something like that as an alternative as well new formats but this is not a standout again kristenjohn so much for coming up and sharing your ideas and thoughts with us that's great I want to make sure that we give them an extra thanks to game refinery which sponsored today's trap [Applause] you [Music]