Panel: The Future Of Monetisation: Is Now The Time To Take Advantage Of Direct-To-Consumer?

Up next we have a final panel for the web store wizardry track before we move on to ad insights. Uh, and this panel will be headed by Connor from Agony and he'll be joined by Chloe from Neon, Matt from Digital Turbine, Liam again from TEX, and Archie from Stash. So, give our wonderful panelists a lovely round of applause, please. Everybody's got a mic. My name is Conor McGloin. I'm the chief revenue officer of Agenim. Agenim is I'll just give a quick introduction. Today's not really about me though. Um, so we'll we'll go on to the panelists

pretty quickly. Uh, Agonim is a game extension and publisher enablement platform uh, and a community hub that is kind of revolutionizing the uh, direct to consumer space uh, with the performance to prove it. Uh, and again not about Agonm today, it's about the rest of our panelists up here. So if you would like to speak to me after, I would be happy to do so. But let's get to the main event. Hi everybody. How's everybody doing? Great.
Good. Thank you. Great.
Good. Good. Good. Good. Okay. So, um I think it'd be great for everybody to introduce themselves. I'm very familiar with Argie here. I've been on several panels with him. Um however, I haven't met the rest of you and I think it'd be great if if everybody in the room knew everybody here. So, uh go ahead. You want to start at the end?
So, hi. I'm very pleased to be here. I'm Chloe, head of Red Neon. Um so you just saw Lou um um our head of customer success with one of our amazing um

developers um here. So what we do is we are a D2C commerce platform and my job is to work with amazing gaming developers um out there and I'm really pleased um pleased to share the stage with you all.
Uh yeah, my name is Liam. So I'm the VP and GM at TEX. Um there's going to be a bit of a a thread among some of the speak the panelists here. So we are uh we act as an extension of gaming studios enabling DTOC monetization uh across kind of mobile and PC crossplatform uh and in particular with an interest in games as platforms uh UGC uh enablement and those sorts of things. So yeah, great to be on the panel uh and over to you.
Yeah, Matt Tubergen with Digital Turbine. Um we've uh we've actually been around for a long time working on direct to consumer. But direct to consumer for us is not just payments. It's actually been working on distribution. So we partner with carriers and operators around the world to create alternative

opportunities for Android to be modified to help partners like yourself. So excited to be here today. Thank you.
Yeah. Actually, um I spoke a little earlier. I'm the chief growth officer at Stash. We're a GC platform business. We build end-to-end um solutions for uh direct distribution, engagement, etc. for uh games on mobile and PC.
Okay, thank you everybody. Um I'll go to my first question. So, we've all talked about direct to consumer for many years. I think it feels like a much more hot topic today than it felt back in 2024. Um can you guys speak a little to why that is and where you see the industry going over the course of the next 12 months?
Happy to go first. I mean from from our perspective um we've been working with a lot of app developers over the years that are providing alternative APK versions, alternative billing versions. Um we're one of the largest distributors of of Android applications around the globe. So we've seen this firsthand. But I think that honestly I think kind of momentum get momentum. Everybody's seeing the Epic, you know, service and what's going on with Epic and how it's

exciting. Um but I think even if we look at like Platoica and Immunactive and some of these other companies that are starting to announce public numbers, there's been a tremendous amount of momentum. I remember there was a panel two years ago. There was like one guy talking about DTOC and it was like, "Oh, this is cool. This is going to be great." Now we're starting to see multibillion, you know, dollar budgets move or revenue, you know, controls move from, you know, one pocket to the next. And I think that's that's providing a lot of momentum here. To me, it's it's you know, dollars uh dollars speak in this one.
Yeah, I think that's accurate. I think on the one hand, you've had some companies leading the charge, showing what's possible, especially some of the publicly traded companies, which has been nice. You can see what they're achieving. And then there's also been a lot of unlocks in what players can what developers can do. I spoke about this a little earlier, but there's been various regulatory movements that have made it possible for developers to do more and more things to distribute directly that's just facilitated a whole set of new products like linkouts. I also think that the reduction in the value of organic discovery on app stores uh I think a lot of the fallout from IDFA left the industry at a place where one

there was much more of an incentive and imp impetus to capture as much margin as possible because things got tighter and there was much less of a feeling that you're getting a lot of bang for your buck with app store distribution.
Yeah. So one of the most important um from the past 12 months is um previously before Epic and um Apple uh settlement um it was more like for um core titles and then you know feels like it was like privileged to them but since then it's like for all kinds of genres and then every genre can have the potential to actually um uh work on their D2C uh strategy and then you know to achieve the potential
and also I mean just to add to that as a final point that I think the other thing that maybe we don't always think about is that the regulatory kind of news and all the headlines. Yes, it's been interesting to us as professionals and studios but gamers are seeing this as well. So they're be you know they're becoming more natively aware of the

possibility of kind of out of purchases, web shops, those sorts of things which then you know it just starts that flywheel uh spinning.
Great. Um let's stay on regulatory developments because that's really exciting right now and a little bit interesting in terms of the risk that it provides right. Um, so can you guys talk a little bit about what you believe will happen with the external content links program, alternative billing program from Google, what iOS and Apple's kind of response will be, and how you plan at each of your organizations to navigate your publisher partners around these constant erratic regulatory changes to keep them compliant.
I can I can take that. I just gave a talk on it. So um what's really you said that there's a lot of excitement and like interest and I think what you were touching on there is that for the first time I think we now are in a position where regulatory changes could be bad for game developers comparatively. So until last year the status quo was like the app stores didn't let you do

anything and so any regulatory change was in a good direction. Now that's still the case in most of the world with the one exception being in the US where you've had this six ninemonth period of pretty much unrestricted linkouts first on iOS and then Android and now what we're seeing in the US is that those programs are under appeal both from Android and Apple in different ways. So what you mentioned there with the um external content links entitlement is it yeah that's the Android policy. So, Android have now tried to update their policies in a way where they're asking developers who are doing linkouts to now opt into a program that will be like an officially sanctioned linkout. And that will, if it stands, come into effect on January 28th. The thing is though that that policy is not compliant with the currently standing US court order that Android is under. So, this is one situation where the status quo is more beneficial to developers and Android is currently appealing um that court order and then as kind of a scare tactic a

little bit, they're trying to ask developers to sign up for this program um in anticipation of that being allowed. Uh that court hearing will happen on January 22nd. I think it knows whether or not the court will allow this to go into effect. They seem pretty skeptical of it. The judge in that case seemed very skeptical of it. So I think it's very very likely as likely as it or not that this is not allowed go go into effect but certainly Android is trying to take really aggressive action to stamp down on linkouts. Um I know that was a lot so I'll pause there.
We'll find out tomorrow right because here is tomorrow
get an indication.
Yeah I think it could be some time before we get this. This is why it's somewhat curious timing that Android have said basically developers if you're linking out you need to sign up for this by the 28th which is curious timing because I don't think we'll get clarity on whether or not this is a legal policy by then. Uh but the court hearing is yeah it's on the 22nd I thought so you know this week on but I don't know if we'll hear immediately.
Yeah. Very interesting. It also, in my

opinion, it also kind of leans towards if I'm a publisher, right, and I'm trying to monetize and I have my own front end or my own kind of solution for direct to consumer web shops. You mentioned Platea earlier. I think now is kind of the time where you want to kind of evaluate whether or not it makes more sense to go with an external vendor who's on the cusp at all times of constant erratic regulatory change, right? Because you know you build out this internal team, you build out direct to checkout on Android. It takes you months to do so. Suddenly there's this regulatory change that just comes through. You don't know that it's coming through and then you have to revamp your entire entire internal strategy for Q1 into Q2 when really what you could do is partner with somebody who's an expert who sees these changes coming. What do you guys think about that? And are you advising your partners to kind of take on more of that external consult? Yeah. So, um, of course there's there is the different approaches, right? So, if you're a bigger company, enterprise company, you want to have the full

control. Of course, you can have different teams. You can be your merchant of records. But if you are a smaller company, then the best option is to work with your providers because they have all the resources. They negotiate with the PSPs for you. They take they take take care of the compliance fraud for you and you don't have to worry about anything and also they have the volume right so they get to negotiate a better rates for you as well. So they have all the knowledge and you just need to work with them and then be open with it. And also like uh my colleague Lou mentioned in the previous session as well there will be a lot of changes and we just need to be you know be adaptable um just look at the long-term DTC strategy have a web shop um have direct checkout and if there is any changes in any region then be adaptable um but if

you have a web shop then you always have an option Yeah, it's very much like Archie said, isn't it in your in your talk the other uh a few minutes ago, having that fallback that, you know, we know is covered globally. Um, yes, by all means, take advantage of the other the other possibilities. you know, have direct linkouts, um, you know, have all these things, have an in-game web shop, um, you know, whatever, but don't neglect the fallback and don't neglect that kind of default position that again, once you educate those players into this kind of new mindset of, hey, actually, this web shop is a place to go to get good value, not just a place to go cuz I have to,
um, that kind of really changes the game, you know, in the event, which, you know, we know is going to happen that these regulatory sands keep shifting.
Yeah. And I know that I think Connor totally agree with everything that's been said and I think one of the things you were getting at in your question was that um in the US where we've been is where you've you've been able to do these linkouts. That's a pretty simple developer implementation and a pretty

simple user experience because it's just clicking a link and then you open a web page and there's certainly optimizations to be done there to improve conversion, lower friction, etc. But um you know that value proposition funnily enough is kind of you know it's debatable to the extent to which we're adding you know the most value as providers there. I think stash adds a ton of value there but I think certainly I've heard from developers well if it's that simple you know I don't think I don't see why I need to work with an external provider etc. Whereas with web shops and I know Agonm you know really invests in this and so does stash in particular. You know we both believe our our role is to really you know grow DTOC adoption and stash's feature set really doesn't focus that much on just the payment flow right the feature set really focuses on the loyalty systems the engagement systems etc that really are meant to attract users to DTOC channels to keep them coming back. And so that value proposition is much more acute when you're in a world where you don't just have that simple link out. Um so we are working with developers to prepare that like I gave a talk about this a little while earlier and basically setting up

you know at least two models one being the linkout model and you deploy that wherever you can and then the fallback being uh you know not using links or in-game messages to steer users to external payment channels uh but to instead uh you know just go back to a world like we were in before 2025 where you know you have to find other channels uh other ways to get players into DTOC channels. I think it's TBD whether or not it will be worthwhile for developers to actually sign up to these programs. We're currently advising our developers to adopt more of a wait and see posture. Don't be the first to sign up. In general, when you look at the precedence in Europe, it's not been worthwhile to to sign up for these because the fees basically are too high to justify the um you know, kind of uh adoption uplift you get. Uh but yeah, I think we'll see once a few other developers hopefully test that out
in the event that and this is kind of what we're thinking about now at Agonm. In the event that uh iOS direct to

checkout, Android direct to checkout, direct to store is all by the time of Q3, the fees that are introduced make it kind of not worthwhile for publishers to proceed with. What channels and what strategies are you starting to think about at your separate organizations to help players and publishers still take advantage of the web shop idea without being able to link out directly from in game to those to those destinations?
Sure. Go ahead. No, I think there's a maybe maybe a little bit of a point here where um it's very clear that there's going to be a bifurcation of publishers who publish on Google Play and Google and using Google Play services and publishers who are going to publish outside of Google Play on Android. Uh and right now publishers who are publishing on Google Play are obviously paying a bunch of money for that. And Google said, "Hey, listen, great. We're going to allow you to publish on Google Play and use an alternative payment. You guys have a lot of those alternative payment services." Awesome. Very cool. Uh but guess what? publishers still are going to have to pay a bunch of money to Google to do that. And then Google's saying, "Hey, listen, great. We're going

to now allow you to publish on Android or outside of Google Play, but however, we have they have yet to fully announce it. We're going to start restricting Google Play Services." So then what does that mean for developers to be able to publish outside of Google Play and Google Play Services where they're not paying a whole bunch of money either with payment rails or Google Plays payment rails? And so I I think there's a world right now where there's going to be a lot of kind of angst and concern around publishing outside of Google Play and using Google Play services. Um at least at Digital Turbine, we've got a pretty specific road map in helping developers basically leverage other services on Android to be able to meet the needs. And by the way, it's not just meeting and being, you know, comparable to Google Play or as soon as Apple opens up Apple, but actually there's a lot of innovation that's going to take place. Maybe not right now, but during 2026 and 2027. So, what does that mean? If you're a developer, you know, right now, I'm raise your hand right now if you're if you have a Mac laptop and you download an application on the Mac uh the Mac App Store, right? Isn't it weird how you can go on

your Mac laptop and download an application directly from the web and use whatever payment really you want, but on your mobile phone, you can't. You have to go through an app store. It's kind of weird. And so we believe that there's going to be a world soon where there's going to be all sorts of services that innovate in a world like Mac operates today versus how mobile operates. And that's where we're focused.
Can I just ask like so this is a very interesting topic and I I completely agree. I think this is where a ton of the innovation is yet to take place. Why do you think given that this hasn't been possible on Android for you know forever why do you think it hasn't taken off in a huge way in the west at least?
Yeah. So I I think it's a couple things. It's based um at least from a digital turbine perspective. Um we build Android services. So a part of part of Android services for operators and OEMs and that means basically system level uh software that helps carriers and OEMs and app developers distribute their applications. Um the way the software works there's not a lot of companies out there creating things that are basically Android level services. And so I think as as those services start to come available, DT has a bunch like we can

install an application on a user's phone without going through an app store and without all the scarecreens. It's completely compliant. It's certified. It's great, but it's just it's taking time for
What kind of services are these?
Yeah. So, it's actually install services. We got a product that's called single updating.
Yeah. App downloads, app updates, it can all happen. Just like the example we talked about with Apple, you know, with a with an Apple laptop and an Apple application, we can do that on on Android today and we've been doing it for years. It's just the the interesting part of it, at least from our side, because we actually come from the opposite side. There haven't been all these great payment rails inside these applications. So therefore there hasn't been this really big strong need for developers to say let's go and and focus on direct distribution and direct to consumer. uh now that that's starting to take place I think everybody's put the focus and energy on how do we optimize for payment rails when the when we believe that it's yes that's a huge piece of it of course check the box that's better economics but the innovation is going to come building these alternative services for distribution um of which again if you feel free to talk afterwards if you'd like to to go through it but it ties back to Android and the operating system

uh as it starts to evolve away from Google Play services and Google
yeah so I mean I think you know exactly that it's going to you know a lot of these these opportunities are definitely there and I completely agree. I think kind of going back to the the original question as well that you know these changes are going to happen and you know there are chance there are situations where the move is going to be quite sudden where suddenly on such and such a date a rule is going to change. Um and for us we kind of split it into two core pillars. So there's the the awareness pillar and then there's the there's the education pillar. And so the awareness pillar is is exactly that. It's like how do you make players aware that the web shop exists? Um, you know, and that can be, you know, again, we're a big uh proponent of building your community and owning your community as much as possible. And certainly, while you have these opportunities to do direct link accounts, don't just use that as an opportunity to make the payments and and make the extra margins and whatever else. Use that as a chance to build your

fan base. Use that as a chance to build your wider community. be that kind of email forums because you know if you're a certain age like me um Discord whatever that might look like for you um likewise you know if you have fan fans um you know you have influencers YouTubers you know Twitch streamers you know get them obviously directing players to the web shop as opposed to kind of in game purchases use things like creator codes uh and then that comes on to the education piece right where you know once people are aware you need to almost make it muscle memory that you know the default is no longer the AP. The default is use the web shop. Um, and again, creator codes, you know, people who feel they want to support, you know, a particular streamer, a particular YouTuber they really like, that's an incentive for them, providing kind of those free like daily rewards, but making it on the web shop. So, it's building that muscle memory of every day going to the web shop, claiming your item, going through the steps to get it so that you know by the seventh, 8th, however many times you start to notice other things. Oh, actually that looks interesting. But at that point, you're

already familiar with the whole process. you know how it works. You're not learning it for the first time because you've done it in a zero risk situation multiple times. I think it's that kind of draw build awareness and then build that muscle memory.
Yeah, I think Connor your question was about like what strategies are we using to scale channels in the absence of direct linkouts. It's funny we made a web we made an ebook back we released it in May 2025 called how to scale your web shop. It was a really amazing ebook. we released it in the wrong month because that was the month that the epic vapp you know thing came out and everyone was like okay well but it has these tremendously creative workarounds so we were kind of returning to that thinking and fortunately all of our web shop tech is built around that and I think you know I roughly split it down into kind of okay there's you know two services there's what are you doing in the app and there's what you're doing outside of the app so in the app you're doing two things the first thing you're doing is you're acquiring out of app communication channels you're getting emails you're asking players to sign up for you know uh discord groups or Facebook groups, etc. And the second thing you're doing in app is linking to non-commercial engagement functionality,

loyalty programs, other reward systems, uh, blogs, other depending on your game, community systems. So, you're linking them to, you know, DTOC channels that aren't necessarily commerce-based. Um, and then there's out of app. And out of app, you know, I think your framework is great about awareness, education, etc. Um and then we also think about okay you have what are you doing inapp what are what are you doing out of app and then what are you doing on channel and on channel is like in your DTOC channel how are you building a habit to bring players back again and again and again are you offering daily rewards are you offering you know content drops every month that they come back and visit and so I think you have to think creatively about the problem but there's certainly a lot of solutions and a lot of them are tried and tested so there's tremendous precedent of us scaling web shop channels north of 50% just web shops without steering ing um so you know you really can reach high numbers through these these strategies.
Yeah, just to add that because when when you are new and looking at your DTC strategy, you probably would look at as

a payment project but it's actually more than that. It should be a your player journey uh project. So you need to think about how you would uh like to bring your players from your game to your web shop and then from the shop and then back in game. So think about that and of course like uh panelist said um here so it's about your social channel platforms around it. Um at the same time um there there is actually an opposite example. Remember like 20 years ago when a lot of commerce um brands they were used to websites right and then they were trying so hard to bring their um users from websites to apps and then they were like different promotions discounts and then try to build trust. And now mobile developers are doing the opposite because their players probably a lot younger than us. Um, and they grew up

with uh mobile games. Um, they probably don't even have a laptop yet. So now we are trying to um basically bring them back to the web shop and that's just very interesting to see that you know that's happening in reverse. Yeah, I think the the really interesting that we're finding thing that we're finding at Agony is that second purchase conversion is upwards of 97%. So going back to what you said about just like making sure that the journey feels familiar, getting players to second purchase means third purchase, fourth purchase, fifth purchase, those happen. It's just about getting over the hump on first. So, and it was very funny what you said about bringing back everything that we used to be thinking about in May 2025. I heard you email marketing, user acquisition, retargeting, creator-based marketing. So, it's very interesting that we're there. Again,
can I make one note which is that um one thing that's notable is even where we've entered this world in which you have these like taxed inapp linkouts. So,

like you know like in the Europe with the DMA um or what's coming what Android's proposing in America where they're asking you to opt into a linkout. So even where that's the case and we don't think the linkouts are worth it, the removal of anti- steering policies there still applies to the messaging. So to your point, you know, previously you weren't even allowed to talk about web stores within your game, but almost always in um countries where you have these linkout entitlements. You're still allowed to talk about the web shop within the game without paying fees or opting in so long as you're not directly linking out. And that's huge because prior to 2025, you weren't even allowed to mention web stores or inform users about them. So, well, that's a small win, but it's a nice one.
It's a nice one. It's a nice one. Okay. I want to talk a little bit about um how publisher perception of web shops and direct to consumer has changed. So, do you believe that most publishers that you guys are speaking to now that you guys are having calls with and meetings with, they no longer consider direct to consumer to be an experiment. They consider it to be a must have. Would you

agree with that statement? Why? Why not?
Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean definitely from our side kind of you know the a lot of the studios we're talking to it is very much a you know we know we we know we need it we know we want it. Um it's not an experiment. Um and I think you know a lot of that again is it's that common bell curve isn't it? you know, we we've kind of had the early adopters and we've seen kind of the you know, as you said, the big headlines on the big numbers and that's drawn this awareness and this attention. And I think, you know, the fact is getting regulatory kind of insights as well removes as much as in some ways it muddies the waters because there are so many different rules and so many different um kind of you can do this in this country and can't do this in this country. the fact that that it's being recognized as you know it it almost has that legitimacy whereas you know we had conversations a year ago and even though you know like like you quite rightly said you could have a web shop and as long as you weren't steering wasn't really a problem but we still had a lot of people going yeah but I'm I'm still scared of pissing off Apple and Google understandably because you know that's that's that's your dinner at the

end of the day. Um but I think because of these regulatory changes and because actually you know a lot of the you know governments and courts and you know and regulators in different countries are recognized this and so you know adding that legitimacy effectively you know the studios are now going well okay we still might need to be careful about the specifics of how but the general concept we know you know we should be doing and actually you know is a legitimate thing to be doing. There's some variation by genre, but I think 100% for more, you know, midcore casino um genres, uh really high monetizing ones there, it's like everyone's doing it and almost all the conversations we have with developers are like, look, we have a channel, it's performing okay, we want to take it to the next level. Still for kind of casual games, hyper casual, hybrid casual, like there's still earlier sentiments there. You haven't seen the match games in particular jump fully into this. So that we we're having conversations with them. I'm sure you guys are as well. Uh there I think it's still viewed a little more experimentally in like casual with

especially puzzle. Um uh but among the other genres like yes, you know, you've been late. If you've been doing this for a year, you've been, you know, already quite late.
Yeah. I think two years ago it was like um should we do it? But now it's like how do we do it, right? And the other element is the shift in um the like the popular of the genre. So the past two years a lot of the the casual um genre studios they have shifted to um like IPdriven um titles right so when Euro games rely on IP then it makes more sense to have a web shop or have a proper DTC strategy.
Great. And in terms of I want to go back quickly to direct to checkout but from a performance perspective. Have there been any situations that you guys have encountered uh at your respective companies where direct to checkout has not backed out from a conversion perspective uh to the point where you expected it to

be a net serious net revenue gain. So no. Um I think what you're referencing there is like okay if you look at the side by side of linkout checkout versus AP you can you can say all right AP will always be the most convenient lowest friction channel you know and to some extent you know that is just true. I think we've gotten at stash as good as you can possibly get but like a lot of developers have to be comfortable with the idea of some drop off in overall conversion through web channels. um or they should at least be comfortable with that so long as it offsets so that so long as the net revenue gain more than it offsets that drop off. So I've never seen a scenario in which that drop off is so significant that it's just not worth it. Um I have seen scenarios whereby product teams are incentivized on the wrong metrics here. And so developers I know have been experimenting with this have seen a scenario where let's say you're getting like a 3% drop off in conversion on your um web-based checkout funnel versus your

in-app checkout funnel and the product team's incentives are purely on gross revenue. So because what they're looking for is like you know the individual player transacts this many currenc purchases at this amount and so the product team's incentives are totally misaligned with the overall business's incentives. So they've been very nervous about jumping full bought into you know um uh kind of web- based checkout which is a is a problem with game organizations. they need to reorient their teams from thinking about gross uh player LTVs to net player LTVs like urgently because you know those teams could be like basically you know they they could be forgoing the opportunity to have a 15 to 20% revenue boost in favor of a kind of gross revenue uh 1% increase because that's where they're incentive incentivized but the bottom line is you know seeing you know 20% less profitability super super important issue right now I think in the industry
yeah definitely And um just to extend on that and it's it's kind of slightly adjacent to the question but I think

it's probably important message and I'm sure you know I'm sure everyone here would would agree um kind of as a a bit of a PSA I suppose. The other thing that we have seen is you know I know you know all of us on this panel and and everyone else out there works really hard with these these studios and these app developers to go look to make the most of it you need to do these things. You need to draw that awareness. You need to build that education. You need to do all the things that we've been talking about. Um, and yet, and and I'm sure we're probably not the only the only company that's had this, you'll have someone that goes, "Well, you know, we've we've built, you know, we've got this web shop now. Why is no one using it?" Uh, and it's like because you've not put the miles in. You've not put the work in. You can't just build it and people will automatically start using. I wish they did. It would make our lives a heck of a lot easier. I think that's fair to say, right? Um, but it's very important. you you know if you're going down this route you have to put in kind of the miles to to build that awareness to to build that community to to you know drive players to the web shop give them reasons to do it and build that muscle
I don't know what you're talking about every staff
yeah players use
I mean maybe maybe the contrarians you

know position is because we you know our partners integrate with all all you guys and a lot of other partners I think it depends on who you ask the question inside the organization to your point if it's a chief product officer you may be crushing your metrics yep check the boxes if you're asking the CMO Oh, see, wait a minute, you know, is my return on ad spend the same? And by the way, that's driving a lot of, you know, decision-m across the organization. So, I still think, you know, if 2026, if there was, you know, like the the goal for, you know, developers in this room and in the event here, focusing on how to drive profitable rorowaz is going to be the biggest lightning rod aspect of this whole thing as we get uh we get into this year and pass this year. But it's not just Yeah, I agree with you. Net net value, hands down, no issue. That's the you know that's to check that box but trying to get attribution working trying to make sure that you know you can properly uh you know process payments and properly run a marketing campaign against uh your UA when 50% plus users are being you know are paid users for any given developer at any point at least at the top grossing level. Um that's going to be the the metric we got to crush this year.

Yeah. So D2C right direct to consumers. So we need to think about is we need to put the players first you know we need to serve them as a purpose. That's why we have a D2C strategy in place. And um you just need to put them first and think about what value they can get um when you're actually trying to um get them to pay through direct checkout. Then you need to build trust. Explain to them why they need to well if they get more if they pay through direct check out they get more value and then they will understand why. Once you have the trust then you should see the positive impact from doing this
right and in terms of positive impact right let's talk about what performance metrics you're looking for at your respective companies to drive success like what does success mean with direct to consumer you hear the metric revenue moved off app there's a lot of other

metrics there's increases in ARPO there's impact on net revenue there's impact on gross revenue um all are possible. What are you guys looking at in terms of we've reached a successful milestone and when can you celebrate with your publisher partners as as as a for finding a strategy that's worked? So I can just start at Stash. So at Stash like our most important metric as a company and I'm always transparent with developers and we start talking to them and we say if we're successful we're looking at like DTOC adoption as a share of revenue. So that's what percentage of your revenue is going through a TTOC channel and that's always our number one metric and I almost always then identify you know a couple other uh metrics we want to support. So for example our loyalty program is built specifically to drive drive traffic and spend into the direct channel. That's what it's optimized towards. That's what its rewards are calibrated for. That's how it's designed from a UX perspective. But of course you can also tweak it to have secondary benefits whether that's to

retention to organic growth you know to spend depth like yes certainly those are things you can use the web to achieve but you should always be I think crystal clear that like the DTOC functionality benefit and this is something I have to kind of sell to customers we work with and just show them the math that like if nothing else this loyalty program all it does keep spend the same but shifts $1 from here to there that's made you 25% % and like there's basically no product metric I could improve that will increase your net revenue by 25%. So I think you've got to be clear that's your number one and then you also do have any other secondary metrics you can support. But I will also highlight there's other kind of strategic benefits that you're getting from your direct channels. So a good example for web- based direct channels that we love to work on with our partners is this idea that these can be testing grounds. web-based functionality is far easier to build and ship at a fast cadence. We work with our developers to build very custom interfaces and so a lot of them want to

use the web to test out concepts that might be quite expensive and costly and difficult to implement fully natively in engine. Whether that's, you know, a new miniame, we've done that with one customer. We launched a new monetizable miniame that made them tens of thousands of dollars in the week it was up. Or a new interface design. We worked with a developer that wanted to test out new menu designs for its shop. but it had added a lot of offers and it was like oh we're thinking about moving to a tab based navigation model in our shop. So we just tested that out in web before we rolled out in game. So there's a ton of other kind of benefits data collection etc that you gain but number one we're always looking at percent of percent of uh percent of revenue. Yeah.
Yeah. Same here as well. I think revenue is definitely you know the top metric. Um but also there's like other things um to look at. Well, back to the value that we can provide the players. So, it's like the um how the you can just tell how much uh love that you get from your

players, right? And then if they come visit your web shop very frequently and then you know they love your game and then after what they after they purchase the items what what they do they go back to the game and play more games. So indirectly they you would probably get more um advertising revenue as well. So all in all that should be like considered. So there are like different metrics and then um deep down it's all tied to the value that you give your players.
Yeah, exactly. I mean I think it's I think it's safe to say you can't take any single metric in isolation, right? Um, I mean, one of the big ones that that that we look at and obviously we talked about slightly earlier is repeat is repeat purchases because, you know, you can drive players once and if they don't find the experience worthwhile, they won't do it again. You know, I think it's safe to say we wouldn't consider that a successful kind of DTOC um, you know, experience. But you could also, if you looked at that as your only metric, you could gamify that and be

like, well, okay, we'll make everything $1. Then people are going to come back, but then you've lost a crap ton of revenue. So I think yeah I think you have to look at kind of multiple I think revenue obviously at the end of the day is is key uh for us combining that with like returning customers because again like we said you know once you get to that second or third purchase the the the conversion rate becomes almost automatic. So um yeah definitely kind of that is our kind of second big one. If I could just clarify that when you say revenue so when I was describing like revenue I'm specifically talking about share of DTOC adoption and the reason we focus on that so much at stash is that's what we can control that's what our product delivers and so across seasonality across you know declines increases in your game's performance any other adjustments you're making to your game the thing that stash promises you to you to deliver and that we are entirely in control of within reason is what percentage of adoption are we getting
right and in terms of what you're offering players ers to essentially transact off app. What have you found to be the best strategies for bonus discounts? Uh at Agnum, we have cashback

reward points. We have various different other engagement levers where we can link to various different destinations. What have you found works the best in terms of strategies for getting players off app to checkout or to web shop to then check out?
Um there's no like one answer. I would say do AB testing, you know. Um it's always good to have free claims when you try to uh redirect players um to your web shop for the very first time right and then after that you can introduce daily streaks so they will come back to your web shop like they would be like oh what's today what's the free items that I can claim and then um and we also find like um if you offer better value is better than discounts as well but then every game is different and then you know your players do AB testing and trusted data.
I love this question. So, this is something we've invested a lot in. Our loyalty program is is oriented around this. So, um we separate rewards into

two categories. There's kind of rewarded engagement, which are the traffic drivers. You're you're trying to create that habit of repeat daily engagement. So, that's weekly rewards, daily rewards. Streaks are super effective there. And then there's spend-based incentives. And for spendbased incentives, we have a loyalty program structure that's got its unique implementations across games, but is generally extensible. And the first thing we do is we make sure all of our incentives are structured at the per dollar spend level. So we separate them from the catalog design. We basically say, okay, assume you have the same catalog. Of course, you do add web exclusive offers, but really think of those incentives as every dollar a player spends, they get some amount back. We offer three of those incentives to players based on each dollar. The first is your core currency. Every game is a core hard currency. So we give like let's say five five you know gold per dollar. The second is loyalty program XP and progression which progresses you through a series of milestones. And then the third that you claim rewards at gives you access to various tiers you get benefits at. And then the third is a

web exclusive currency that you can spend on the web. And what that does is it creates a sense of intrinsic motivation to progress through these web loyalty programs. And it also allows you to perfectly calibrate your rewards to the amount of adoption you're shifting. So you know that for every thing dollar you're giving away, you're getting X amount back in adoption. And so you know all of that is perfectly triangulated to ensure you're kind of maximizing your generosity.
It also keeps your players loyal and sticky, right? Coming back, etc., etc. Okay, guys. 9 seconds. I mean, I was going to I was going to do some questions, but I I think we're out of time. Charlie's glaring at me over there. Can we take one question?
If there is, if there is one question,
I think we covered a lot. That was pretty
good job so much. That was great.
Exactly what you were awesome.