Panel: Indie to Empire: Growing Your Game Through New Monetisation Models

we now welcome our next panel our final session of the afternoon so we are getting there folks please bear with us because we have decided to round off the day with an absolutely fascinating exploration of a lot of the evolution and a lot of the change that that lev and jane were talking about our next panel is looking at indy to empire growing your game through new monetization models so i suspect nft and blockchain may come up at this point um and our host for this session is k from walking squid good afternoon k how are you hi brian i'm uh terrific thank you excellent i'm very very pleased to hear it um so the panel will all be be

jumping in um very very briefly so thank you all very much indeed for joining us it has been a an absolutely amazing afternoon a really interesting track but i will be honest i am looking forward to this one so much um i come from a game development background as you can tell from the white i've been doing it for a while and to say that in my own particular corner of the world there is some skepticism about the new monetization models revenue streams is putting it mildly so i will be making notes and beating my colleagues and peers around the head and face with them as we as we continue so the last panel of the day kay are you ready to rock and roll are we all good well you set the expectations pretty high brian thank you we do have a absolutely stellar panel of experts um and i'm looking forward to learn a lot as well so yes in that case i will slide gracefully out into the ether and

let you guys uh get on with the introductions thanks folks i will speak to you at the end thanks brian hello everyone um hello to my uh panelists i'm very happy to be here with you hello to everyone in the audience um i also was very excited reading the reading the headline when um when this got brought to me um i have an absolutely stellar panel of a very diverse crowd i'm looking at our topic from all kinds of different angles um and let's dive right in i always like to start with a very quick round of introductions um i let everybody take care of that themselves and allow me to briefly start with me my name is kai until recently i actually managed the game studio on paladin here in the netherlands absolutely amazing team doing great stuff um and i'm in games for quite a while and this

is one of the reasons why i still enjoy doing it so much uh talking to some very smart intelligent people um that know what they do um with that i'm gonna go uh clockwise around my screen in the order that you um that you appear here um and uh david um please uh let us uh tell us who you are and what you do thanks and i i hope we live up to the expectations that you and your colleague have set for us right now it's a high bar we'll do our best uh my name is david david phillipson i am the ceo and co-founder of a business called data seat uh dataset we specialize in working with gaming companies to help them in-house their programmatic ua campaigns retargeting campaigns and uh and cross promo um so we're very much involved in the demand side working with gaming companies uh previously uh to today's seat i founded the first uh mmp called addicts tracking those of you

that are old enough as me that was 10 years ago when the first mmp was out there we sold that to a business called critio and at crucio we built their in-app retargeting business so my expertise is very much on the ad tech demand side programmatic attribution uh working gaming confidence and it's a pleasure to be here thanks for inviting me thanks so much david um andre you are next on my screen please tell us who you are and what you do hi everybody very nice to meet you all my name is andre i work at mambu games which is a belarusian hyper-casual publisher and developer my job there is uh to overview the administration of our business and um i have been working in administration for three years now so point of view uh here is that i've been working from the publishers side and

i think i know pretty much uh everything about how to build a good waterfall and set it up for the mobile game cool thank you so much andre um riley um another developer and self-publishing view i think uh tell us who you're on what you do yes hello and thank you for having me uh so i'm riley i'm the ceo for mommy games and i'm also a co-founder uh and we make hyper casual moba games um so um we have worked with publishers for a long time and in early early this year we made abc runner which has a bit more than 10 million downloads and since we've been through that journey we've been wanting to self-publish so that's the plan in the start beginning of the next year um so i guess that's my point of view as a developer but going towards self-publishing so having

to deal with mediation and uh and waterfalls and everything on our own cool thank you so much riley uh christian you're next uh and i think there was some stuff that brought you in the news lately so uh curious to see uh hero who you're on what do you do yeah hello no great great to be here so i'm christian ceo of audiomob and what we do is we provide non-intrusive audio ads and games so a player can listen to an audio ad while being monetized rather than being blocked by a video and developers tend to use our formats interchangeably and what we see is a thousand percent increase in click through engagement um we recently um raised the 14 million dollar round 110 million valuation so everyone is very happy right now on the team it's going to be a great christmas thank you and um before um audio mob i was a strategist at google and a science partner at facebook and in my spare time i made my own hyper-casual games and my own hip-hop and jazz music chilled out music

and i streamed that into the games i was making combined with the advertising expertise that's what led to uh the creation of audio mob with my uh co-founder wilfred fantastic thank you so much christian and uh last but certainly not use least uh yeah and my name is yoni markovitskiy i am g marketplace at fiber and fiber has multiple solution monetization solutions for publishers and marketplace is one of them we have the mediation platform and offer wall and my main job is basically connecting supply and demand helping our developers to monetize and improve their performance and work with our dsps and um advertisers to maximize their spending on our platform if i i started seven years ago at a company called interactive we got acquired by fiber back in 2016 uh six months ago we got acquired by digital turbine and yeah this is kind of the [Music]

um you know a briefly um explanation about myself happy happy to be here thank you so much um yeah thank you everybody we had most of you i had the opportunity to introduce myself because literally this panel i didn't meet any of you before which is very strange um so let's kick this off um i usually start with a little bit of a very small paragraph of introduction and the topic that we have today is certainly a huge one um monetization from rags to which is um you know there's a lot in there um but i was thinking for for the longest time uh and that certainly speaks to me being ancient in this in you know at least an age um premier was the one and only way to sell games right we had boxes we put them on a shelf and there was a price and that went down over time but you sold it then came free to play and literally changed everything not just how games are monetizing but

also it really drastically increased the potential for the audience that we can address as a games industry accessibility of games um and in turn uh luckily enough also the revenue potential so that was really a game changer um over the last decade some free to play innovated around you know in-app purchases um ad-based revenues subscriptions and so on um most recently subscription platforms saw renaissance across uh pretty much all platforms from pc to console to mobile services like apple arcade google play pass playstation plus and xbox game pass just to name a view um so as a developer on choosing that right monetization strategy and on you know how you want to actually make money with your game if you didn't choose to do so um is is critical for the commercial success at least of your game um

and the question is how do you plan for it how do you navigate that jungle and what i want to ask you is um was that fundamental choice really between premium and free to play and all the different shades of shades of monetization and grey that are there what would your most important question be in return when somebody asks you which model should i choose should i do premium or should i do free to play what would you ask them uh to give a better answer and um i'm gonna start with the with the two people closest to the development so riley if you can kick us off on that one that'd be awesome okay yeah pressure right but i think my answer question would be how is the market share like if you take the entire mobile market as a whole at least now we make mobile games right so from my

perspective it would be on mobile but how many percent is uh translated with the like premium game versus free to play but my understanding is that it's highly towards the free to play uh so for us it's not even really a question for us and we're definitely free to play yeah i think uh and that's probably the answer that uh that that comes a lot but andre as a publisher on in that space as well is that pretty much how you look at it too or is there something else to be said about you know doing premium on mobile yeah i would definitely agree with riley in terms that as most of the games and especially hyper casual games are being free to play so it's not really a question that is rising before me as a hyper-casual publisher but what would i like to add here is that publishing your game as

a premium game where you have your potential user to actually buy it it's sort of commitment that a person should make before seeing the product so you should be very very certain that the quality of the product is up to this price to to uh for for the euro to make this decision and with the free to play this threshold of starting uh to play is much lower and you give a chance for the users to actually try a game before deciding whether they want to pay for it yeah yeah i think that's uh that was one of the big uh game changers that came along with that uh kind of monetization for sure um one um in the past uh free-to-play games um monetized primarily through you know um single methods like aip or ads um i think uh in hyper casual i

i assume that it's mostly still at driven um and some slowly going towards other monetization options but i think the the detainer is that the trend is going towards more hybrid models or utilizing all tools really in that whole monetization tool chests that um you know form the right mix for for your game right um what are the what are the most important aspects that i have to understand as a developer about what model of monetization uh to choose and apply to my game um is there something like a a universal truce or at least you know some basic tips that um you would you would have on for anyone out there that uh is still very early on um david you you have a pretty much 360. you can see on the tip of my tongue one of the things i love about our

industry particularly in gaming is there aren't huge barriers to entry you know so there are so many new entrants and there's so much and which causes so much innovation and there's no shame in analyzing and spending a long time if you're at the early stage of your business analyzing what your competitors are doing you know so if you know that you you want this cool you know kind of an rpg game or you're in hyper casual i would spend a long long time in you know finding who are your competitors that you admire the most and then look at what are they doing you know you you can get all of these other software tools at the moment that you know apptopia all these other software tools that would free that will tell you what sdks are in your competitors apps if you're successful they're going to be doing it to you so although i i think any gaming company that's starting off has got to focus on good ip you know focus all of your efforts on creating cool games that consumers are going to love that's got to be you know priority number one and i think most people will agree and actually think what riley did you know is the right thing create

cool games and work with the publishing you know publishing company initially so they can actually spend their dollars and their expertise so because to try and create an awesome game on day one and be brilliant at marketing and automation is tricky so start with start with creating cool content work with the publishing house and then spend that time trying to master looking at what other successful companies have done and it's not rocket science but you'll get there but trying to do both at the same time is tricky so work on the ipa and the content first cool um actually uh david we got we got a question uh if you have any uh sources to um to point people to to get that info about the competition um that that would be appropriate i i mentioned some towards the end i'll try and get a brainstorm for my colleagues fantastic and it's not just gaming companies by the way you know tech companies can license the same tools because you want to know you know your customers what sdks they're using your competitors

there are several of these apps that you can what sdk is a cool app it's got in there you know i'll try and get some names before the end of this end of this call yeah um so since um since monetization really um you know at least in my humble opinion ties in very very closely to on to the actual game design nowadays and you know especially in in general is like hyper casual i think it's it's absolutely critical um where do you start like um maybe riley and uh and andre a question for you as well is um do you start thinking about the game first or do you start thinking about monetization first do you you know look at your competitors i think that's a really good tip um see hey this seems to be really working really well maybe we built something around it um or where does it start or is it all at once

i feel like for us it's changed a bit from like post idfa to now whereas before we thought more and only core concepts as almost the only thing because we could also produce them so fast so do you wanna yeah so back then we didn't think so much about the depth to begin with because if you churn out a new prototype in a week then it's almost faster just testing it right where i feel like today we do think a bit more about the monetization as well and also in general i think that the design and the monetizing becomes better if you think at it from the beginning uh because then like they it interrelates better than we all i think as developers or designers knows how it is to add something on it never really becomes as good as if it like intertwined uh from the beginning and i just agree with the whole looking at competitors we actually also do the same for um like the creatives also have spy tools i guess you can call them where you can see

oh so we're making a game about something specific here idle game about cooking which ads have other idle games about cooking done right or other similar games disagree with david yeah cool um from uh from your perspective yoni is this something where um you know developers and and teams can actually start talking to on platforms early on to you know maybe gain a little bit of more intelligence um you know from a practical point of view or is that something that they kind of have to figure out themselves absolutely i think that smart developers and they don't have to be big right i mean we'll try to get as much information as they can obviously from colleagues but especially from networks remediation platforms to understand better about the setup understand better about pricing how to price users in specific geos or specific formats and and i would like to relate to what david mentioned yeah i tried to take

um something as a base and then on top of that constantly try to a b test try new things and try to compare it to the existing revenues and try to push for um incrementality so i think that yeah try to get as much information from the market but your game your product will probably going to be a little bit different so you will have to optimize it constantly and that has to be done by a b testing um of your mediation platform of your of your demand partner so that that's going to be my two cents on that yeah cool um so i want to dig a little bit deeper into uh ad based monetization on there's been a lot of talk around the recent changes and you know the ecosystem from uh from apple's side as well and i i don't want to get too deep into that that's a completely separate topic but uh in-app advertising um you know

certainly still is a vital monetization method in the mix for sure um for some games more for some games less um and i know this is a big question but um i would love to hear what what your opinion is on where is that where is that going in the next 12 months um you know we've seen a little bit of a dip in that at least on ios for sure um but um yeah where do you see it developing on you know over the next uh next uh four quarters and um i want to start um with christian on that one because uh you're obviously one of the experts that are deep into that yeah so i guess a little a bit of my background to contextualize the answer so uh before audio mob science partner at facebook all we were doing is coding tests to measure incrementality what is incrementality you know what is that

extra additional revenue that i can generate in my product without cannibalizing pre-existing revenue so that's the core of what what uh what this answer is going to entail and um ev all the most sophisticated um uh developers i was on a panel with mini clip yesterday uh that have you know um in um in-app uh monetization solutions now in display monetization solutions it's all about figuring out where are these new incremental sources going to come from without damaging uh my video ad revenue my iap revenue now again you know if i was to ask everyone here if they knew anyone that liked video ads you might struggle however video ads are an amazing source of revenue and it's not a case of um trying to replace video ad revenue it's trying to figure out where are these new products these monetization products that i can add that won't damage the video ad revenue but can work with video ad revenue and iap revenue in order to

uh in order to generate incremental revenue and what we're seeing across whether it's audio mob or any of the other in-display um monetization formats is that it is providing incremental revenue i.e advertising revenue that has been spent in the game from these brand advertisers or performance advertisers that isn't blocking the primary motive of uh of the user which is to play the game or use the app and we're seeing this in terms of developers now releasing their case studies uh displaying this incremental revenue and we're also seeing it in the investment market as well uh many investors now shifting their uh their capital towards these kinds of companies like audio mob so where i see this going in the next 12 months is that there actually is going to be an explosion in the amount of developers that adopt this solution and the growth of most of the in uh in display um monetization companies as well as you know the non-intrusive companies such as uh such as with audiomob and we're also seeing brands increase their uh their ad

dollars into these kinds of formats as well yeah interesting um what way uh what's a good way to stay on top of all of this because there's obviously a lot going on right um you know for um for somebody out there that's um that's that's building a new game there's a lot to digest and there's a lot to keep up on on an everyday basis right um and does any of you have um you know a good tip on how to actually do that unless you have somebody you have to luxury or somebody that actually dedicated uh to that in a team which in you know most of the the younger teams and startups might not be the case right um any any specific source anything that you suggest to really have an eye on unique innovations that might uh might bubble up on something like that um just going around going around in my

my order here david anything that you can i'll i will step back philosophically a little bit um i started my first mobile ad tech business 10 years ago and i knew nothing about mobile ad tech you know i i didn't i knew nothing i just said i i want to be in that industry and it was early enough that actually there weren't any experts around so it was quite easily become an expert quickly but my my point is do not fear you know learning a ton of information it's not rocket science you know have some trusted partners you know there are people here that want to help you drive you away drive new users monetize help you earn money now you need to caveat all of it that everyone's trying to sell you something and make some money themselves but you could speak to data seat to fiber to audio mob and and you'll learn a lot a lot of information so don't find it intimidating you know attends uh you know pocket gamer you know make notes about who all of the you know kind of major partners and who the up and comings are and it

rains calls with them and and and don't you know take everything with a pinch of salt the people trying to sell you stuff but they wouldn't be successful in raising money or working with all the clients they are unless they had something very valuable you know to share with you and for you to learn so um i would just yeah just if you've been gaming first and you've got great content and then you're going to the publishing world look at what other people are doing attend conferences like this join mobile dev memo slack group yeah you know listen to all the mobile user acquisition show and the the you know and the pocket gamer podcasts and within six months you're going to be an expert that's all i'd say that's a great advice for sure yeah uh yoni i saw you i saw you nodding approving no i have nothing to add to that i mean mobile dev memo slack channel be direct i think that david nailed it nothing to adhere go uh riley andre from a developer perspective

yeah i would just had to also not be afraid to talk to other developers and uh not be scared to talk to your partners from the um network side because it's uh they they have a lot to share actually and uh as soon as you start talking to them you will see that the community is growing around you and this will be a very good way for everybody in this community to learn and as an example i i have to mention the telegram chat that's been forming for last three years on the monetization and it has i think about 2 000 people in there right now and i think it's been very very useful for the beginner developers in the cis area at least so yeah start your chats talk to colleagues and talk to your partners i think that's a good advice in general no matter what

what area of development of publishing you're looking at right your peers are your most valuable source of information and events like this certainly for sure um i have um i have a question and it uh it might sound silly to you guys but there's a lot of different types of ads right we got banner ads we got labels we got interstitials we got native we got iconics we got offer walls rewarded videos now we got audio uh as well there's so much to choose from um when i develop my game and i think about the design and i try to put this all together um is there one of them again there might be a silly question that is uh absolutely critical must have or is it really depending on what is the game and how you want to put it all together um but i'm i'm i'm curious um is there one that you would always throw in the mix or maybe it's all of them or maybe not um anybody

likes to pick up on that one i want to know your secrets yeah if if i may yeah i would recommend always considering rewarded videos for your uh game whatever it is because this is a great way to give extra value for your users uh by not sacrificing the retention so number one definitely rewarded videos all of the other formats i would say that you have to consider regarding the genre that you're entering the session lens and all this stuff either it's portrait mode or so there is a lot of variables in there but yeah always consider rewarded videos first and it may even help your game even become better in terms of product matrix

anybody else do you agree yeah i agree the rewarded videos are super important but i think for awesome hyper casual also interstitials have a lot of value and also i think the way i see it with the mobile market and the hyper casual that's turning a little hybrid as you said as well it's also super interesting uh with the in-app purchases like light inner purchases in in hyper hybrid casual and how far can you stretch it i think it will depend a bit on or from what we've seen so far with the genre right but i think it's a very interesting development of monetization models in general kai that i've seen over the years a lot of developers that started with rewarded video and then consider adding interstitials or they had interstitials and you know thought about adding banners

and again it brings me back to running tests to determine what drives better roi and look at churn rate take a look at and also the reaction of users to these new formats so it's really about trying to optimize trying to push the arp dial the revenue per user as up as possible and uh yeah don't be afraid to make changes take a small number of user small percentage and try to optimize and try to find the right formula to generate more revenues yeah yeah and this is uh this is still fascinating to me the the the breadth and and widths and depths of the tools that we have nowadays to actually gauge these things right there's instant feedback uh on all of this and um i can highly agree like this is uh what should be done um brian your appearance means something it does it does it means we're very nearly done for the day it's let joy be

unconfined and the bells ring out um thank you all so much i this is this is a topic that i've seen done really poorly in other events not steel media events but other events um but you you've absolutely kept me riveted all the way through um i think for me this is this is less of a question but i think what you've just kind of come up to at the very end is the fact that this is now these are valuable tools for developers you know it's no longer one size fits all in the ancient history where i started you had to sell a game for people to play the game and now developers can ha can utilize all these different types of ads all these different monetization models in different ways depending on the game the genre the audience and the overall experience they want to create and that's for me the big takeaway is you know developers and designers are going to have to get to grips with the fact that i need to know how this game is going to monetize in order to create you know that art day that ltv all of

the the fun things with that we know they love um but i just think it opens up so many new opportunities yeah i mean i i i didn't get my uh secret uh source recipe um that i could just write down and make my next billion dollar game out of this but uh i think that's the message right you gotta you gotta create the right mix you gotta try it out and you gotta test and test and test and that never stops um to really maximize the potential of what you're building there and um i think that's um that's a good takeaway for everybody out there this is it and so next time you'll be you'll be dialing in from your solid gold yacht and next to your own private island and uh with your own satellite and listen folks we have one question and and the person who's asked it has asked it in the last three sessions um and so i'm going to do it it's hyper specific but what's the minimum daily installs or dau and duration of ad campaign to test they add lifetime value

and return on ad spend for a casual game which is 100 ad monetized i go riley or andre sorry no i think yeah i think i can help with that so i would say that you will see the um like the meaningful results if you have higher than 5k idea used and higher than 10k add requests for for your ad entry either it's an ad unit or one of the countries that you are buying users from because uh if the numbers are lower than that uh we are talking about like dollars singular yes so so it wouldn't make much sense to analyze it there we go there we go so aside don't say that still media is not good and responsive to our audience thank you

very much indeed i really do appreciate that um folks it has been a genuine pleasure i have learned a huge amount and i'm sure everybody out there and watching and listening has done likewise so thank you so much kai sorry um bang up job great hosting uh panelists thank you all so much for joining in um i know that you know you you have many other demands in your time but i really can't say thank you enough um for for joining us this afternoon so with that i will be i will wish you a goodbye and hope to see you again at some point soon real world january london we'll make it happen thanks brian thanks panelists uh thanks everybody out there and thank you pocketgamer for giving us uh this opportunity always a pleasure always a pleasure