Panel: Raise your Revenue: Best Monetisation Strategies for Established & Emerging Markets.

[Music] now I would like to uh welcome up to the stage uh my lovely uh colleague Dave Bradley who's going to be uh introducing his panelists uh to this stage and they're going to be talking about uh the best uh monetization strategies for emerging and established markets so uh Dave take it away I would like to welcome to the stage my experts uh we have uh shelling from from uh app loving

so from gamma G uh Kai from integral Ali from UMX studio and uh Kaz kazina from uh eleatics uh so please come up to the stage a round of applause for our experts thank you very much um so in a moment I'll uh I'll let my uh panelists introduce themselves I've got another mic here um but we're here to talk about the subject of raise your Revenue uh monetization strategies particularly uh in established and Emerging Markets um now of course the games industry is after all an industry so we're here for the purposes of making money uh and making our games profitable um but it's not the same from one region to the next some uh some games in in Emerging Markets uh in fast growing markets like the like the Middle East and North Africa region or in uh in Latin America as well can attract sign significant downloads but perhaps uh generate low Revenue while in some Emer uh established markets like the US um they are able to successfully generate High

spending so our panel will uh talk today some questions about how to scale and monetize your games around the world um so I'm going to hand a mic Ali to you I think you've all should find your mics on the tables and let's start uh start here and work our way down Ali please introduce yourself on your business oh uh oh can we we got I'm sorry sorry uh thank you Dave uh first of all this is my name is Ali har I'm from UMX Studio UMX it's based in real we uh in the market since 10 years uh our game reach uh this uh we expect to reach one mill 100 million downloads in our game this uh year most most of our audience from uh Mina region uh I would like to

thank you Dave and uh steel media bucket gamer uh for this event and also uh I would like to than thank you for uh I'm happy with you uh guys and this panelist uh with this panelist thank you all to joining with us uh today thank you uh hi everyone I'm CIA my brother and I'm co-founder in CEO of elatic we are doing artificial intelligent inine for the mobile games monetization for the smart in our purchases analyzing tons of data every day we generate in the lifetime custom uh personal offers for each particular player in the game uh and provide a personal bundle personal price the right place in the game and frequency for everyone and um you know we say that you don't need to choose anymore between the high LTV and the good retention rate right thank you hi everyone I I'm soam taker I'm the

founder of and CEO of gamerg we are an Esports technology company um ideally answering most of the questions where monetization around Esports is evolving and how technology plays a huge part in bringing SAS as well as technological Ai and advancements tools for uh using Esports for the right channels of monetization so I'm here to talk about that Enlighten you about what we do and along with that also share how Esports can Bridge with technology to uh monetize in in in a scalable fashion sure so uh hello everyone my name is Kai uh currently I'm working for Ming techro uh so this is a network uh at Network for monetization and user acquisition uh for your game or your app uh around the world so some fun fact about me that like even like I'm working for Mana region but I come from APAC uh and then uh I think that like is really a cross experience I I I can bring more good story from APAC regions to mana and then and bring it back to app as

well hi everyone so I'm sing from the app loving business development team so most of my day today at work spend working with Publishers to help them monetize and skill their titles using our end to end software and AI Solutions at app loving our mission is to ensure that our you know the partners we work with are able to reach their desired customers great thank you very much so thank you to my panel of experts with very different differing experience is in the games Market um so let's start with um with some Basics there are some wellestablished ways to monetize games and you know we we could talk about ads or inapp purchases or premium of subscription I'd like to just ask the panel what their experience of these different models are and what they know for a fact Works uh right so and and um and many people in the audience will be very experienced in this matter but some people won't we know that about 70% of our audience are game makers and so perhaps for the first time they're they're um they're trying try to

understand how to monetize their games so um I'll tell you what let's uh let's let's start at the the uh uh at this end with me uh with uh Ali and and work our way down do you want to give us some an introduction what do we know are the are the best ways to monetize games from your experience oh yeah actually uh we uh when we start we our game it's just adds Revenue game right so uh during the 10 years we uh uh do segment for our users so we have to spender mostly we show them uh premium content with n app purchase uh and uh another player they not spending anything we give them some incentive reward videos so that uh do big differ in our uh Journey so basically uh segment the user it's it's one of the things we uh uh uh uh tested since years

and doing really good uh Plus in this region even the uh the market itself it's very small compared to uh other Market but the to spender player if they uh uh uh see some uh let's say high customer support from the team they can spend multi million h00 in beer game right so that that is really important to focus into spinder and about uh nons spender they they like to watch 100 uh ads to get just to get free content that's interesting that's interesting thank you oh youve got it Mike so we should we hand it down the the row and hand it to to Jor yeah yeah uh basically agree with Ali but uh you know also want to add from my point of view uh taking in account that we're working with enough purchases but uh you know I think that it's really

important doesn't matter which location are I mean Mana or United States uh we need to uh find the good balance between monetization by different ways we don't have to choose you know we have to choose the best way for each particular game and to understand the pattern of behavior of each player inside of the game for some players it's a good way to monetize its ads for some one it's enough purchases and any other way subscription season pass and so on and so on so it's really important to know the data about your game to choose the right model and right balance between these models yeah that's great I think we'll come back to that actually as we go down the theme because the finding the balances and and the hybridization of it is important so so yeah what's your experience uh well from my experience it's also the kind of the game that you make defines what ways you should monetize obviously geography plays a big part yeah but for example if it's a it's a role playing or a strategy game which is a longer lasting career mode you're more likely to spend on in that purchases right versus if you have

a quick toplay game or a casual game or or a first person shooter game uh you know ads make more sense uh especially because you're not looking at a career mode you're looking at more of it in a in a in a quick toplay kind of a setting where obviously ads make more sense because you don't have to uh you know look at them or kind of rely on them for a longer period of time so it also along with geographies obviously there is enough data points that prove that uh this the the category of the game also defines what your monetization strategy around it should be so along with geography I think uh you know game developers should also be focusing on the data points that are available and obviously uh you know the placements of uh and the kind of inapp purchases that will Define that yeah absolutely absolutely depend um K I think you might not did you want to chip in on this question because if if if not we can go straight down to S sy so uh sing I tell you what we'll come we'll come to you and ask the same question your experience of the best

um the the well established ways to monetize a game but I'd like to pick up with you that point that was made down here about finding the right balance between uh Ina purchases and and ads what's your take on that so for the right balance I think first of all you need to have a lot of data to understand what your users are doing in your ad how they consuming you know the game throughout different levels so when we work with Publishers we recommend that they look at things like add frequency to make sure that you're balancing the retention of your users together with you know them not being annoyed by ads and then leaving your game another thing that you can also look at is rewarded videos so for example if your users are watching too many rewarded videos then there's a certain Gap that you need to fill with the game economy in terms of inet purchases so that you can you know better monetize your users wanting to utilize more tools to help them progress further in the game interesting um I'll tell you what I'll just stay with you for for a second to come back but I will say as well that um we've we've got about 15 minutes left for this panel and I will leave some time at the end for questions so if there's anything you

want to ask our experts please do uh hang on to those and I'll ask at the end and we'll get a mic to you so so L just staying with you there um uh I want to talk just a little bit about um about scaling your game as well um about user acquisition and the role it plays in what we what we've just said um can you tell us a little bit about how developers can successfully scale their their games in in in audiences in order to to monetize their game do you want to talk about that a little bit yeah okay yeah so uh to scale your games I I think first of all again it goes back to the data right you need to understand um what kind of break even points you have how much you can acquire users for and in what countries make the most sense to you so uh what we do at app loving is whenever we work with Publishers we recommend them to use the multi campaign approach strategy so for example um if you're more of a casual game we recommend running Roes campaigns that Target maybe add users and also event campaigns that Target level progressions so this balances out you know the revenue that you get from ads and also uh helps users to progress to a certain

event in your game and then that works for your retention on the other hand if you're more I AP focused we also have I AP Ro campaigns that targets a certain I AP goal so with a multi campaign approach then you can reach out to engag users users who watch ads and also users who make purchases so it's kind of like a all-rounded approach to make sure you're just reaching whatever audience you need to get cool Kai did you want to take the same question as well so let's talk a little bit about scaling your game so you can take advantage of this yeah sure so like uh the same with like apping saying so actually uh the game industry right now is really different with uh compared to four years ago like the mobile game can grow organically but right now you need to invest heavily on the UA to really get more user and then test your game uh with the market so from mro side we also have a solution uh to support the UA to grow uh with uh Global Market uh we have a cbii model roas campaign uh and also we aim to have

a more uh event Focus uh campaign that you can like uh Prospect any kinds of the event you want to purchase uh check out or maybe any other kind of uh Dipper event that you want to try for your game uh so from that you can achieve the goal you want to uh meet with like mro and then from that you can scale your your game well and then achieve the revenue or maybe some event go that you are looking for great thank you um hold that thought so um so I'm going to skip you because I'm going to come back to talk to you about Esports in a moment so we'll come straight here what's eleatics advice in in this here about scaling your game and the role of user acquisition in in monetization uh basically I want to say that now it's very important to align acquisition strategy with the in purchase strategy uh yeah because um you know uh the real uh the real value is to get the really effective money Potential from each player if it's zero from an purchases it means that we need to push at monetization and so on so if we align

the strategies about user acquisition to understand the right location to understand the right price per each player and so on and balance it with the right strategy on N purchases we can get uh like really good balance between the CPI and the LTV yeah absolutely makes sense Ali do you agree with that yeah okay cool in that case let's go back to at so I skipped over you there because I wanted to in the time we've got talk a little bit about the Esports Market um that's your that's Gamer's uh places in the market corre um tell us a little bit about that how do you work with Brands to monetize to monetize that experience how who's making money out of of orts and how do you do it well uh obviously Esports started um you know especially making revenues through sponsorships and Brands associating with it but now those times have evolved you know I mean just putting your logo out there is is not going to be enough there has to be more mediums in which monetization in Esports especially for brands or or even organizations even federations uh there has to be engagement and that's where

gamerg plays a very important role where we build tournament engines which allow Brands to engage with their audiences to not only uh sell their products but to kind of understand and build a community within their customer base so that's where Esports plays a very important role now uh kind of innovating from the con from the conventional medium which was just putting your logo out there is just putting uh you know your your brand mentions in in in uh in live stream is is is not going to be um you know sustainable over a long period of time where Brands start to realize that Roi are just not there where engagement or longer lasting Solutions which obviously through technology or ideally white label products which are customized to design for a brand uh you know whether it be a consumer brand or whether it be uh you know even something as simple as an FNB service where they can engage with the customers through games and through mediums of tournaments through mediums of creating content through them

and obviously uh you know um building a smaller Community within that is how orts has started to monetize itself interesting um I don't know whether um uh anyone else has experience in the same sector does anyone else want to comment on the uh on on the monetization of Esports that way just you you're on your own uh but if there are any questions about uh uh Esports and brand monetization as so's the guy to speak to uh speak to later um the adver ising uh both the user acquisition games and advertising generally has faced some challenges in the last couple of years I mean the um privacy uh the drive for privacy things like ID the um the changes to idfa uh has resulted in user acquisition becoming expensive and and advertising perhaps being a little bit harder um how do mobile game studios um manage to still manage to create uh to get the data they need to create useful either ads or inapp purchases how do we how how do we work in that landscape um are ads

still viable in this post idfa world and you know what are the challenges that we face as as game makers uh in the current landscape uh does anyone want to take that question does anyone have a an opinion on that yeah Ali have you got sorry there's not enough mics you're right uh yeah actually building the uh game Community itself it's really uh give the studio is real uh uh promising result compared uh to privacy so uh based on our experience uh since years we build our community uh gaming our umix studio game community so that is helped to our user engaging with us and see what is the latest uh uh update for our games so that is one second things we go with uh tier two influencers so this also boast our uh Community engagement uh with uh our gaming

ecosystem so uh that also reduce the cost and also we get the uh exact target adents so that help us in our uh growing uh that is also uh really important because we see the uh bade campign using some ad network not affect similar to back 2018 19 so uh that is one of many things to do uh in in a BRI your challenge that's interesting thank you uh does anyone else have any experience with this uh Zen do you do you have any thoughts on on nothing about that no anyone else want to want to comment on on that uh sure I think that like from my point of view at Network I see that like uh idfa will um maybe the data consense will uh protect the user but at the same time it cannot stop the grow up out G so uh what I observes outside there's many uh solution outside I see some boost over there too they have a solution to help

you to uh boost the user consent and maybe in term of like many MMP right now they also have that solution so I think that uh yes there will be a challenge but that will not stop our growth and then with like uh like other at network uh mro also like doing really well in term of like uh a our sell like gdpr CCPA something like that uh to bring the user experience uh good and then and uh still protecting the user data uh but uh but still can support you to grow your user base really really well great thank you yeah i' would like to to add not about the ads but about the not purchase monetization because you know when you don't get the uh users personal data it becomes the you know difficulties in the building segmentation for example based on the regular way that we prefer to have but if I would say for example that 60% of the players in Mana is under certifi or I say I would say like 40% is the

female of players what can we do with this data I mean it's just the average hypothesis you know and uh if we will look deeper uh we can understand that personal data will not give us you know the real key of the uh money potential of the game but if we will look on the behavior of each player you'll see that we even don't need this personal data if we will look at the behavioral pattern of each player what what do you do player when you level lost for example or level win or something like that it will give us more even you know much more answers than just collected the personal data and trying to make segmentation based based on that so uh I understand it's it's a big challenge for us to make the segmentation based on the new approach don't use the personal data and so on but from Another Side it's a good opportunity you know to get more effective monetization of your game very good very good answer thank you um we've got about five minutes left I've got

more questions I could I've got plenty more questions but I don't want to miss anyone here does anyone have a question about monetization for our experts while we're here anything specific to what your try what your mission is here at game Expo Summit uh if there's a question from the audience we could definitely send a mic out to you well no and then I'll I'll carry on so on behalf of the um the the developers and Publishers in the audience uh what advice do you have for a developer here I know there's many Indies here um perhaps launching their first game what are advice do you have for an India developer who wants to launch a game globally perhaps particularly in the in the Mena region um I don't know perhaps just start at the end there do do either of you have some advice for the developers in the audience that want to launch a game so I think if you want to launch a game globally um what you need to do is test um in different regions to get the data to see how users react to your game if there are any metrics that you need to improve on for example like users in the US versus users in like Brazil say or Mexico or even in Mana itself they can react very differently so let's say for us you might have more inet purchasers

if you look to other countries they might be more ads heavy then from there you can kind of tailor the strategy that you want monetization wise that's great that's very important as you say the different regions I don't know kai do you have a a view on this yeah sure so like uh for many in this game uh developer uh we have a same suggestions like aing are doing it's lot like uh you should launch your game with the at least some minimum budgets for the UA uh from that you can have a live holistic view of your game performance the country how the roas how the tier is working for you and how the IAA IAP is working for you so from that uh you can pick uh what is the the your focus from that you can put heavy investment in maybe the Bigg girl launch later on so uh from that you can have a better revenue and also have a better qualities of the user for your game also that's great thank you thanks Kai um so what do you have any advice for the um Publishers and developers in the audience being in the Esports space my only

advice is make it Esports compatible but no I mean jokes apart uh obviously it is it is also very important to localize a particular localization is important localization plays a very very very important role obviously globally when you think about it we are very diverse audience from geographies and so localization or kind of relatability for local audience to that particular game is very very important for the game to organically grow obviously inorganic mediums of growing are good to to kind of get into the initial phase but then sustainability of the game depends completely on organic growth and localization obviously according to me uh plays a big part but do make it orts compatible it'll help uh the we could we could definitely spend a whole panel talking about Esports but we could also spend a whole pan on talking about localization and culturalization which is a huge Topic at the moment as well and of course we've been talking about the price of Ina purchases and and so on and it isn't just enough is it these days to to translate that money into local currency you also have to consider what the spending power is in the the territory and that kind of thing um yes

uh what advice can see what do you have for for developers in the audience uh yeah my advice is you know to put much more resources to the new feature to the new cool games and so on uh and uh don't be scared you know to uh use high-tech in the gaming I mean to use ml artificial intelligent because you know it will free a lot of resources to make cool stuff in the games and uh to boost Revenue Generation by very fast and very good way absolutely and in fact we just had a round table about AI over there and we could definitely spend the whole afternoon talking about the role of AI in in many of these processes um or do we get get a mic to there we go and yeah any advice do you have particularly for people you know perhaps launching a game for the first time how they should they should look at monetization in this region yeah uh for this region you mean well anywhere anywhere at all yeah but our game it's targeting uh Mina region so uh I think uh they can start with uh for example Tik Tok here it's very popular so you can uh get uh really uh

High uh traffic from this uh platform uh and also the the the the campaign itself it's really uh low cost so they can test the game press and see day one retention day seven retention also day one conversion day seven conversion how many user will stay with uh with the game so that will give uh a real uh a real result to understand what is your game doing in the market so uh that is the basic actually things uh then after uh do Improvement in on that game you can go with uh dick with imp visitors so you can present your uh numbers in front this uh uh imp visitors so you can go to Next Level by uh influencers by more uh uh Kim ads Kim Bean that's great thank

you do we have any questions from the audience we've got uh we've got sort of three or four minutes left so um uh are there any questions from the audience for our our panelists about monetization uh I know it can be very difficult to uh to to ask a question in front of everyone so if you do have a question for our experts um uh you folks all uh here at the conference I suppose you can be found on me to match and good um uh uh we've got a couple of minutes left so um so let's uh talk a little bit about I guess um let's go back into into some of those questions about you mentioned about um uh about AI there um see that was great that was a great topic is anyone else experimenting with AI or advise advises our um our developers and Publishers here to use uh Technologies new technologies like that to monetize or what about web 3 and things like that as well are they also worth exploring for the monetization of of games right now I'll take the mic on this but uh uh

web 3 definitely uh it is it is something which which uh you know can help you monetize however it completely like I said earlier it completely depends on the kind of game you have because web three games and especially the web 3 audience can be very very choosy uh and on what they ideally like to spend on so uh web 3 can definitely play a big role but AI uh according to me plays even a bigger role especially when you are defining games and if you are defining multiplayer games AI plays even a bigger aspect especially when you talk about what we do um as as an Esports platform we use AI for for enhancing your stats providing you with analytics which will help you improve yourself as a gamer um matching you with like-minded Gamers or like uh or helping you build your squad if it's for example an FPS game depending on your playing Styles things like these uh obviously AI pays a big aspect on on uh kind of building uh on top of an already existing game or even marketing the game even further down perfect well in the last few minutes let's start at the end

here and come back so let's start with selling um how do you see monetization strategies uh evolving in the years ahead if we're back here in a year's time three years time what is the conversation going to be about what are the trends here uh I think right now the trend is heading more towards uh automation so in the sense that a lot of networks are moving more towards the bidding approach so that also frees up um you know the people who are monetizing monetizing from you know going through the waterfalls and all the manual work so a lot of the focus then would maybe be on coming up using AI to come up with new ad formats to see how else you can generate revenue from what's already there other than the existing a formats great thank you uh Kai what's what's your thoughts on that how do you see monetization strategies evolving right so like uh from my side uh we see that like uh right now um the the game developer and also the game Studio they are willing to test uh so before that we see that like many Studio they just forgot on AAP some just for AA but right now we see the trend that like

many steo they are willing to do like hybrid uh motor or maybe they they try to combine many kinds of the monetization way uh to maximize the revenue but at the same time uh it bring many benefit for the user uh when the when the user they can like purchase or like free to play or something like that so that uh they can have a more way to uh optimize the revenue for the game Studio but at the same time the user have a more Choice uh when com into the when playing game on mobile as well great great thank you um uh let's let's St down this work backwards so Ally what what's your take on this what um do you have uh any thoughts on how we see monetization strategies evolving uh in the years ahead uh yeah actually I uh uh I I think the next three years the BL to earn uh game will be more involved in that and also we will see uh a free-to-play game they will add

some auction inside the game and will be there as a Marketplace so there is there will there will be exclusive items so the player can uh sell to each other inside the game system ecosystem itself so uh I yeah so I think the player will not just spending a money inside the game they will uh try to uh for example can uh buy exclusive item for example this day and maybe after 3 months he they will be with 3x will uh will s it by 3x uh inside the game currency so instead of I re uh rein a purchase over and over so I can make I become Trader inside the game so I can sell and buy with the same game currency great thank you and uh zenya do you have a a theory of that yes how monetization strategies will evolve as we keep coming back here for this conference what are the topics going to be uh yeah in addition what my colleagues

already said I would like to add just you know the technical point that it's very important uh if you're going to use ml for example for the uh Revenue boosting for your game for analyzing behavior of your of your players uh you have to use models uh that learn based on their uh Mobile gaming experience so not to use their ml models that used for monetization for example different mobile applications and so on uh because the behavior of mobile players are really the main sensitive and you have to be sure that the data that was used to learn uh some particular ml model was exactly from the domain of your mobile gaming so then you'll get the great result you'll get great Automation and uh you'll free your resources uh to make uh you know a lot of new cool games perfect that's a great note to end on we're we're out of time I think it's a half an hour panel so I'd like to give a round of applause to my panel of experts please uh 30 minutes is not enough uh to get into the uh the thorny topic of uh

of of monetization so if you do want to find out more and while we have uh experts like these here please do use the meet to match platform to reach out to the companies that you see here and and engage with them [Music]