Panel: Into The Ad-Verse – How To Effectively Integrate Ads Into Your Game.

[Music] final final Final panel of the day is going to be an absolute doozy Ben Jager from malocco is coming up to moderate into the adverse how to effectively integrate ads into your game forget the metaverse it's all about the adverse guys get into the adverse give them a round of applause it's the last one of the day they need all the support they can get thank you so much for being here um as we just heard this is the last panel of the day we'll try and make it interesting so but but before we um start getting into the nitty-gritty why

don't you introduce yourself magic yeah sure hello uh everyone I'm magic and SVP here managing the advertisement business in supply side and uh demand side and naier is a IPO company in Japan and focus on the user acquisition retargeting type of business as well as user uh analytics this is app here thank you hi everyone good to be back on this stage um Antoine I'm head of Supply at get me uh we one of the leaders in the immersive in game at space um we basically have make more Revenue through uh 3D ad placements that are uh directly integrated into game so typically if you have a football game we would monetize the lead banners around the pitch um or the track side on racing game or again like a 3D billboard in a IP casual game that's what we do thank you um hi everyone I'm Jay I'm work as a Partnerships manager audio mob

um we do audio ads non intrusive ads for games and applications so I talk to developers and in terms of integrating our technology into their games and uh and applications as well so yeah hello everyone so firstly sorry for being late um I missed the time but I'm jir uh I am the co-founder of CRA Technologies um I have about two decades of experience uh across uh technology and banking uh spend about 13 and a half years at Google running publisher monetization and that point I realized that most of attech is built for advertisers and not for Publishers uh we felt me and my partners felt that it was a profound Insight that we had and then we started crackle which is at tech buil for Publishers thank you thank you so much and now we hear that ads monetization is crucial and you need to think about it when when you're designing your game

right from the get-go why is it so important to have a concept around ad monetization in your mind when you start con conceptualizing the games so great question and actually we're more like the technology provider so uh my sharing here is actually the learning from scop for their monopol go and also the white out survival from the Sentry games and I got a profound learning they told me that um add monetization is a process of value exchange between the game studios and the gamer itself so first is actually need to decide what the value the game is delivering to the gamers followed by U that value will decide the lifespan of those Gamers the long LTV or short LTV one and after deciding this they need to decide what's the weapon we have you got the native advertisement in the game that's like what U uh cim is

going to provide and also you got the incentivized rewarded advertisement and you got a video you got a net you got a Popa got interal all the weapon and those monetization tool also some kind somewhat affect the retention rate then you need to decide at insertion point and the frequency and what kind of format that we want to use so from the value proposition of the this game first all the way to how to utilize those weapon so that's why I need to consider in the very beginning even before or can launch and Twan what's your take on it yeah so from an in-game immersive ingame point of view it's it's very different um because you can integrate this game at any stage of the game life cycle uh but they are native per se 3D so very different from all the traditional 2D interal or reality videos um so you have to be mindful of like the game aesthetic the game call mechanics uh and the US experience so thinking about this placement as early as the game design or

game concept is probably a good idea um that's not mandatory but probably better I guess you can have a a more seamless integration and you won't have to put more resources uh further down the line to uh modify the texture or the environment of the game uh and then if you keep the player experience in mind then you know these are are here to enance en anory rather than disrupt um so typical example if you have an open world game uh in a cityscape environment the easy solution is to drag a banner on the building that's easy to do but then if you want to be more creative you can have um like a nice bus stop or um um um a nice digital billboard for example um so if you think about that from early stages that's probably better as well and finally um you can better align with your motion strategy if you do it early and I guess you can have your players used to this format as as well from

scratch from day one so yeah think about this as from the game design in concept is um good basically thank you um I guess from audio mob's point of view it's about I guess in terms of user experience so the way we see it is that rather than having a banner that comes up when you're playing a game we see it as an audio ad will serve as a fact that it's non intrusive to to the gamer who's when they're playing a game as well so we we benefit or the user benefits as well from that perspective yeah yeah I'm going to try to not repeat myself but I'm sure a lot of us agree that uh product managers hate to put ads in games right anyone disagree with that right and Ely the best games are ones without without ads right but uh if you look at the most successful games in the world those are games that have a very well thought out monetization or a business model

right and typically the best way to do that is to bring your product and your ad team to collaborate really early in the journey so you can balance the art of gaming with the business of gaming and that's I I feel that's the only way to build a really successful game over a long period of time okay and so when people don't do that they don't think about it mistakes happen what are these uh mistakes that you've seen and uh you can decide name and shame or you can uh vaguely describe uh what what you've seen as like the most obvious glaring issues who wants to go first I can go I guess for iming game ads again uh from my point of view forcing ads into irrelevant context is maybe a mistake to avoid typically if we sign um a campaign for Samsung

uh that would make more sense to display that campaign on I don't know Sav Punk like game or a GTA like game rather than on I don't know like a theal Oblivion game for example would probably avoid some backlash from the community so um the context is very important especially when the ad is inside the game directly right go second um I won say mistake but the learnings are it's pretty realistic under the meure of mon monetization we have a kpi to hit then the publisher side I really need to put more ads and that actually jeopardise the overall user experience that's one under the pressure of the short-term goal for ad monetization and the second would be leave the data on the table without fully utilizing that uh that means a lot of us we actually experiment okay if I put this placement here additional placement if I increase a frequency of my at uh add expression

um would that decrease my retention rate and how much would that increase my ADD Revenue those are all valuable data and including uh some subtle one uh if I change my IAP package how would that actually working together have some effect co- effect with the ad monetization together so all those valuable data points actually we can collect in a structural way and there's already way to analyze Okay so in the future what would be the ideal frequency to show the ads and what would be if I show more ads and what would be the incrementality increase of my Revenue what would be the decrease of my retention rate that can be predicted that can be forecasted um for example we all use media mix modeling to to measure the incrementality exactly the same modeling and with different set of data we can look at the incrementality of the add Revenue versus the retention rate relationship Ben can I just double click on the point on data I think today um

integrating ads you know it's fairly fairly straightforward I think most monetization uh folks know how to you know get the ads running right I think the key mistake people make is is the data piece I think people Miss on getting uh the right insights from the implementation and I feel like that's like like a like a really huge one where most people should really focus on I want to just share a couple of examples I think the straightforward example is it helps you balance um you know user engagement with monetization Etc right but I was working with um you know a publisher this was a really large gaming company doing over 100 million in revenue and they had a really unique Insight from the data what they realized is that they have 2% of users uh who are d120 plus so that means these are users who spend more than 120 days on the game right and they decided to experiment with this user base now this user base

was giving them about 20% of the total ad requests right so 2% of users 20% total ad request and what they decided to do is add one intertial incremental intertial on this user base now typically you would think that okay if I add one incremental intertial to a to a you know engaged user I might lose the user but in this case the opposite happened their revenue grew by I think it was 10 to 15% in that range with virtually no um um impact on engagement because these users love the game they they typically tend to like stick with the game for a couple of years and one indis didn't really make a difference because the session time was so long so you know these are like really deep insights can only get unlocked if you have well structured data and you have someone looking at this data to find the insights so uh you know one practical example and another thing I'll say is in my last organization we were like really you know anal about looking at all this data right what we realize there is if

you induce 1 second of delay in ad latency it impacts Revenue by 7% I mean and this was at a large scale I think these are metrics typically admon folks don't look at but the more data you capture and the more time you spend in these deep numbers I mean you can unlock a lot of insight so I think that's a mistake people make that you know they underestimate the value of data that's uh thanks for sharing I think what you're describing is um or you alluded to it like cannibalization of ads and how to tackle that and avoid it and I think you you're saying the weapon is data and data analytics to to get ahead of that and actually turn it around and not think of ads monetization as cannibalizing Revenue uh but the opposite as a booster anyone wants to add double click share

contradict there's something about um immersive ads that's quite useful actually for um you know drive more in app chases um you I'm big fan of the arbd M model so I think you should mix a few different ads audio ingame reward videos um and then having app chases or subscriptions but then something really cool about that imersive format is that um there is no field for a particular user at a particular time Studios can use that 3D placement to drive more in app chases and promote like I don't know um bundles or um new weapons your VES whatever you want and have deep links to redirect to the shop directly so Publishers can make more money with these ads but they can also yeah drive more in ad purchases so they live in armony together in that that sense so yeah it's not distracting one other it's living together I'd like to add one

point on this I think a lot of times you think about you know uh is my game in in an ads category or is it in an IAP category and I think we need to like completely change the mental framework of thinking about this right it's not about which Cate so okay by the way just let's put hardcore AAA on the side not talking about those kind of games right but typically you know hyper casual casual even in some cases midcore when you're thinking about the game monetization business model don't think whether the game is in the right category for ads think is the user the right user to monetize with ads so just think about that again right in your game there will be users who have a very high propensity to pay ideally don't want to show them ads but then there's a large base of users who's never going to pay those are the users you got to show ads to irrespective of which category your game is in right so I think it's about not thinking about which category

I belong to but thinking about you know what does the user want is this can I monetize this user with IP and if the answer is no you got to monetize with ad so so it's you know just changing the mental model it's what how do I monetize the user not how do I monetize the game right so slight different in third different concept uh different point complimentary one not totally conflicting one instead of segment app and IAP Focus or IA Focus I would say High retention rate user based Gan or lower retention rate for example I see a lot of G do a lot of in inab monetization the 7day retention are about 5% I see the commonality across all and I also see 100% more 90% uh Revenue coming from inab advertisement but their 7-Day retention rate is about 15% 16% almost equivalent like Monopoly gold those IAP driven game it's almost the same so I would also share High retention rate game again back to basic

what's the value if this value is good enough for example I got the game with user generated content user can generate content like Roblox in their game then okay this actually bring a super high value to the user I create something by myself in the game so I'm more acceptive for the advertisement or other package in the game for monetization so I would say uh high value um usually the value comes from game with user generated content um pure user generated content for example Roblox is one extreme uh one extreme in the Spectrum or for example Monopoly go centry games while all survival you can build up your own City this kind of game then kind of semi user generated type of uh game or you'll just provide some uh block blast as an example uh provide some game you cannot design a game itself it just provide a game but it's just for you to kill time so different type of game that do have different user value different user

value you can choose higher user value you have more weapon you can choose that you decide to use more um a lot of weapon for as for inapp or inapp purchase package combined together so this is how I characterize okay and can can I just add one more point I think like um I mean again agreeing with everything uh Magic said um but typically the best performing IP games uh at best would have 2% of users pay right so 98% users don't get monetized so I mean that's something to really really think about and see we're living in a world where Netflix is starting ads pure subscription business and YouTube is starting subscription so that's like a that's a lot of data to sh show that you know hybrid monetization is definitely the right way it's like user focused versus category focused yeah so we I'm surprised you agree with

each other because you don't quite um and and I think there's a a some kind of myth that you're dispelling and you're saying okay actually it's not the the category that is important but it's a a user level um that determines and and you're coming from the other side and saying actually um there is some kind of way to think about uh the the app category right um so any other myths that we want to dispel or argue about do you want to share what do people get wrong when they're thinking about games and what something around the add intrusiveness we you know always say that ads are bad and they ruin the experience it's true sometimes obviously we ate like full screen in we can't close them um but speaking about these Innovative formats like audio or in game I think on the

contrary they um they can actually enance sometime The Experience they can bring more immersion in that game um or add more more more value um so yeah I think the bad ads are are um um a myth and it can on the contrary bring more value to the to the players yeah one more myth to that comes to my mind is uh a lot of times uh Publishers would increase the flow price of the ad uh typically what would happen is your fill rate would go down right and the fundamental assumption is I am showing L less ads to my user my ad load is down so it's a better user experience but in reality what happens is your high value users get monetized as they were in the past your low value users have a great experience off your game without any ads so think about that for a second you know it's a myth the myth is that I increase flow price and I give a great

experience to all my users but in reality that doesn't happen your high value users see more ads or the same number of ads your low value users get a great experience so um yeah one myth to work on yes so so what you're suggesting is sometimes counterintuitive thinking is is the best way to go absolutely I guess that depends on also the type of the game for example some game that do need a lot of user play for free in so that uh for those pay user they feel there's an environment for multiplayers so yeah but some games they may have this limitations it's only single players casual game puzzle game they're single players so they don't have this environment for them to choose that um I can't have a lot of people just play for free nice so what you are saying is there's additional value that users bring Beyond immediate Revenue impact there's virality there's actually um to

to some extent a degree of um yeah for example the yeah Community the value again back to the basic the value the game want to deliver to the user it actually let a user create some content or build a community for those user to mingle with each other so if the purpose is to I want to create a value to build a community then I need some people play for free it's okay perfectly fine because it added value for my game so but for single player game they have a limited option they need to find a better way since Ben is egging us I'm going to say I totally agree with magic please disagree you should say we can build community but why do we have to do that for free right there's that aspect I I agree with magic on that point I think sometimes you you just need to have those users right yeah yeah sorry I going to add one thing to that um so an example that we had was a developer I can't name him but um they

actually spoke to the community about the ads and the frequency of ads themselves and they found out actually a being engaged with their Community they were able to I guess integrate ads in a positive way what the user base was happy with and now they've seen great results with that as well so that's another way of looking at it if you have the chance to speak to your community and constantly be in touch with them as well so that's one way to add as well yeah but then you don't want to overload the play with too many ads there's more and more different placement now and we had a case saw game where they had a massive billboard and inside it they put like 10 different Billboards hoping to multiply the revenue by by 10 basically um but the other way happens and actually track all the numbers so the less is sometimes and often the better um and just yeah we said it earlier but we want to keep the user experience in mind and um just yeah take it easy not too many else very nice um let's uh there's all this Buzz around

the future of AI and how that's going to help and um ad monetization is surely impacted by AI as well can you share your perspective on how AI is shaping the future of ads okay yeah two FES in a short term for short term is 2025 and in the long run in the short term it will be we got content Generation by AI so more and more again actually we actually did a survey the most effective type of advertisement for game is actually showing how you play the game in your advertisement that's the most effective one instead of just show some Banner of your game no it's that how you play this game so that's why the emersion of playable ads but we all know playable ads you you require some software engineer near to hard go something 3 weeks and cost you about

$3,000 to $7,000 US per playable creative that limits the experiment of all the marketer so 2025 they're going to be a solution maybe you can just generate a playable like this yeah like this and it's totally possible that's in the short term for AI what AI can contribute and in the longer term I guess it's still like media mix modeling um collect the existing monetization combine IAP and IAA scheme collect all those structural data change and if you move your IAA uh insertion point uh from a point to B point and also change the frequency or you change your IAP package collect all those in the database with the corresponding consequence of the user retention rate sooner that I guess in one two years that we will have a uh data science based tool for you for us we don't need to do those kind of experiment let me change the flow price let me change the frequency how can I

let me change SSP let me change the DSP portfolio and to see what would be the most effective one if we already collect enough data it can be predicted instead of need to do a lot of experiment that's what AI can help from content generation to data I think uh what what we've observed in the last uh maybe four to 5 years is that gaming companies have significantly uh ramped up on user acquisition right so most gaming companies have built these internal tools that do attribution measurement um and built a lot of In-House capability in really scaling up U user acquisition however all of that or most of that has come at some uh underinvestment or lower allocation of resources than ad monetization all right and because of that what's happened is that the adoption of AI on on the buy side which is user acquisition is very

high right you're always thinking about what is the right bid for a particular user right so all of the investment is identifying the value of the user and bidding correctly to acquire that user on the Adon side everything happens at a cohort level right you price your inventory you have the same price for All users in US you have the same price for All users in tier two markets it's it's all happening at a cohort level so I feel that you know I think the next in the next maybe you know 12 to 18 months we're going to see a lot of Investments towards ad monetization and application of AI in ad monetization and the way that will manifest itself is cohorts are going to move to more personalization so everything you do at a cohort level will be done at a user level so you get better outcomes on ad monetization and maybe even like balancing you know ad monetization with with with I AP uh and and the reason is because with AI

you can do it you can do it in real time just before an ad auction you do some prediction with machine learning and and boom make the changes without applying you know cohort level design and what's most likely to happen is because all of this takes a lot of investment so probably the top 200 gaming companies will adopt it first so I feel like you know next the top 200 companies making more investments in admob uh sorry ad on um looking at more AI application in in ad monetization um I feel that's that's what it's going to be yeah I agree with you and the the use all the usei to navigate all the data Publishers have will have them to make more inform decision um you can mix like user baver in the in the app with demographic data soci graphic data and have like some pness and bring more context more value into the ads just dive it from being textual all the time um and just yeah

maximizing a on these campaigns um yeah I we don't really use it on our side but I think that'll be beneficial for um for the market yeah what what you um I think these guys gentlemen have alluded to all those points um I guess it's just again using AI to look into your data and then to be able to spot Trends and again I guess that lends to being able to then talk to your developer and say hey these are the things that were happening or this is the data what we're finding in your data in order to I guess provide better results for your product or your game or application as well so okay thank you um I want to check with the audience do you have any questions for this fabulous panel got any questions anything burn in you got like one two three four five of the most important guys in adtech come on

okay so then I will continue um I have uh a final rapid fire round are you ready so I want a quick answer don't think about it too long whatever comes to mind shoot all right um what is the highest CPI you've ever seen CPI CPM you mean CPM CP you know what whatever you want well CPI if it's a gam $30 $40 yeah we see that I say 60 um I guess from audio perspective um I guess $10 so yeah okay okay so I'm not responding to CPI because that's a buy side metric I'm mod on admon yes but I think uh in some markets I've seen like $200 plus cpms on on re water DS which Market Australia New Zealand

Australia New Zealand sounds like a test small number of users buying buyers like a lot of auction pressure on that base yeah um which game has the best ads integration this very subjective but for me I would say Roblox because it's h the you know Mars loss human need hierarchy the top one generate the content by yourself that's actually his self fulfillment so that would be the best integration because they they also do the immersive ads inside the environment that user created by themselves so for me it's a Roblox I would say I don't know tennis Clash for example they have a nice mix of different formats and they have 3D as well beautifully integrated into the courts when you play it's not distracting um yeah I just thought about this game um I guess I'll speak from audio M's

point of view um aacan life actually has got a great integration as well so yeah so yeah all yeah I think like for me it's more about like how you use data to monetize and I think there's a company called play Simple they do puzzle games and I think given their arow or LTV you know it's like phenomenally high and that's that's that's where I find the best integration of Arts okay let's go the other way around starting with you again um biggest threat to biggest threat to add Revenue I AP I would agree yeah um all the compliance barriers now like at for shortterm pressure of monetization okay can I can I add one more I think like if you saw Mark Zuckerberg's interview recently as for him we're going to stop using mobile phones and use these spectacles I think

that's a big threat to add okay um most important metric for Adon LTV U and I'll give context it's not CPM it's not arto it's LTV okay um I guess LTR I guess LTR rate so yeah for audio for audio oh okay I'm always sorry I'm always from audio perspective so yeah so I would say aerate Revenue per Daily actives we use it a lot when we do ab test but there other formats for example yeah nice user retention rate okay I like it best advice for new devs what start best device for new

devs from the basic think about look at the Historical example a lot of case in the market for um how user perceive this kind of app with this kind of design so you can see a lot of sensor Tower data AI all the platform look at a similar category of the apps look at their retention rate even the same category you're going to see very different user retention rate categorize them into two group observe how they design their app how they monetize their app I would say try new things try in game try native try I well new format you you can think and just do ab tests and see that that works for you yeah well AB testing along with the user experience as well I think user experience is the biggest thing for me yeah I I think making data a priority in your organization so I think if you're a owner then think of this as the

beginning of a really long journey and if you're a professional then I think you know this is a capability you have to build to succeed in the long term I think those are great final words Round of Applause thank you thank you so much