Panel: The Mobile Marketing Survival Guide: How to Navigate new Industry Trends.

[Music] [Music] [Music] we now have um to finish off our morning session we have uh a lovely panel um which is being moderated by mate lanich um and all about the surviv the mobile marketing Survival Guide so how to navigate new industry Trend so if our

panelists could right thank you very much for coming is this the last uh discussion for okay so yeah thank you bear with us 40 more minutes and then we're good so thank you very much for coming again uh welcome to the panel to kick this off let's start with introductions of you guys the companies you work with let's start with ladies here is how about you let's start with you so hi everyone I'm Iris com Sanchez I'm a manager at upin business development team and I work across the emia region and basically at applovin we help developers of all sizes to scale their apps through our user acquisition platform app Discovery as well as help them monetize their games better through our both our networks and monetization platform Max and uh my role uh primarily involves for string strategic relationships with those Partners um and help them and consult them basically in a holistic way across both UA and AD

monetization hi hi everybody I'm Yolanda uh I came from a engineering academic background and decided to shift to the gaming industry 14 years ago um I worked with as the marketing person I worked with uh PC MMO RPG titles and then eventually moved to the mobile world work with mobile apps and games and now I'm working for natifa natifa we are a global marketing agency uh we help uh game developers and advertisers uh run user acquisition as well as branding campaigns on uh various kind of media platforms for example we are uh we've been for a long time at the global official partner of Tik Tok we help our clients run campaigns uh optimize towards uh the set goals uh especially you know providing uh culturalized localized uh creative Productions to be included in the manage service so besides this kind of global

platforms we also represent Regional less known ones like for example if a platform only exists in Japan but 90% of Japanese users are on it then those are the platforms that we try to brinet to our advertisers so we have uh this kind of uh Solutions in Japan in Korea southeast Asia uh basically the entire China everything in China uh latan me are basically the regions outside of the tier one markets yeah so uh that briefly summarizes what we do in terms of media Buy in terms of uh influencer placements in terms of Community Management basically everything uh with the same aim to um help with the marketing of our clients a very impressive intro thank you thank very impressive Daniel how about yourself hey everyone I'm Dan M I'm a director of girls at triple Studios I'm one of the the leaders of

the user acquisition team um so tripot is a um Mobile gaming company based in um here in London and uh other place around the world we were named Europe's fastest growing Company by financial times last year uh and we operate um a few g games such as voku triple tile and soliter they they're fairly successful games with in up ads um when and and we also work on multiple other projects behind the scenes cool hi my name is Roberto casabi I worked for king um and I've been at King four years um and now I oversee product marketing for Candy Crush hopefully most of you have heard of it um before that I worked at um a variety of of gaming and Sport uh companies and TV uh and excited to to learn a lot from the panel as well nice my name is mate uh been in the industry for 10 years do

UA consultancy work in different companies have my own creative team and uh most importantly I'm a host of Two and a Half Gamers podcast anybody listening to the podcast head up oh nice okay very cool thank you so we're going to talk about a few words about 2023 how to prepare for 2024 all the fun stuff around the challenges UA Channel strategies and then ATT creatives and stuff like that so let's just start with like few words about 2023 so what worked for you guys let's you know let's start with youa what worked in terms of UA channels creatives I know yeah I think 2023 I mean when I look back on it I think it was um massive year for us at King but also from my perspective at Candy um I guess I look back and look at one of our biggest things um is something called Candy Crush Allstars which was a a product of marketing

focused um uh feature which is a competitive way of of playing candy it kind of speaks to the culture that we've got a king I think this one was the biggest one we've done but actually it took four years to get to this point and I think that's um something I look at um it's something I'm really proud of we gave away a massive prize pool which took us a long time to get to that understanding um so that's something I'm I I look back on in 2023 King was 20 years old and to be able to steal be innovating candi's now nearly 12 years old um to to keep doing that I think I look back and that's a highlight for me um both from an acquisition a retention and an engagement perspective uh and keeping candy fresh and new and still innovating so that's kind of when I go back to 2023 what I I think of first okay what what didn't work where did you fail I don't like the word fail I think I think learn where do I learn I learned a lot about myself as an individual um I

think I think in um in our industry I think you have to be able to manage change and I think and that's why I kind of factiously say I'm not sure about failing but but I think there's loads of things that that don't work how you plan um be that a season be that an event but I actually think the cumulation of all that for me is why we can get to things that work um and our approach is always to test and learn I think the reason with King you know been around for 20 years but candi's been around for 12 is because we test learn scale what worked what didn't um I mean in terms of of of all stars in that context I think we look at where we've gone from a really localized UK test uh what worked there did we have the right slbs did we have the right should is that even a strategy that worked um to what we where we are now and I think all of those learnings led us to a really great proposition so um yeah that's kind of how I look at it um

yeah nice okay Alanda what worked for for the companies you work with in terms of the UA strategies or creatives I'll probably give two simple and straightforward examples of what works and what actually didn't work uh the first example is for for title actually launching in a Southeast Asian country so it's uh we always actually with all this kind of conferences or the regular talks with our clients we always face the same question um do you think you know in some of the countries where English is more adopted can we use English at least to run the test right A lot of people do so still so they were doing well with Creator Challenge and everything with English ugc copies and everything so they were thinking okay in this specific country actually it looks okay with English why don't we go for a test right it seems like most of the people audiences are actually speak there and uh what happens is um it was just not there right so this is they decided to work with us they were

checking and said okay what we could be doing uh the result was uh like impressive because we always knew that there's a difference but no a few people could tell you how much is the difference right so what we saw is that by shifting basically the uh ugc models towards local faces using local languages basically the CTR is increased like almost doubled more impressively it's the landing page it's the store listing together with it the CVR increased by another six folds so they were basically paying 12 times of the cost even that's before optimization right so after changing these two it's like right away we see a significant increase so I I would say you know it's um you might see that or the friend you might be hearing from friends that okay yeah maybe this country you just run for a couple of hundred dollars then it's fine you keep it just the the English build and or the English creatives right our answer would be be no yet we don't

recommend you to do that so that's the first example and another one this is for you know the new launching phase in in a new country right another example is uh a rather stable client they've been running with us in Brazil for more than a year um stable you know budgets every month's almost the same a stable performance how much money can you say no we don't know okay the CPI was ranging from 40 to 45 Sons for for a little bit over a year already so it seems like you know everybody's happy but then we are actually you know working together partnering together is this platform in Brazil we are actually um as one of the exclusive Partners launching a CPI influencer campaigns with them okay and everybody because creators on this platform they're all local and we were helping the clients offering 4 Des Sun CPI to run uh with influencers uh for for a few batches

after collecting the results and basically seeing maybe 30 40 copies of everything comparing uh the results itself we probably picked maybe 10 to 20 copies outstanding copies from the influencer ugcs push them back into the infid and we are seeing that with a few months of optimization CPI was lower to 20 cents now that's how much of the change that we're seeing so you see like um yeah this uh for different for clients from different phases you know there are uh always interesting cases that we are we're seeing all right Daniel what was your kind of like based moment in last year yeah actually got agree with liation has always worked well for us not not even um you know like local influencers and stuff like that but just translating that text into another language can deliver a massive uplift um otherwise in terms of uh things that worked well this year I would say um aav actually and Google um

have been good very good for us and uh yeah do do you do you localize the credit for like how many countries them just all Jesus Christ how do you manage those campaigns um well by country by country like it depends we do it by tier and uh on certain channels like Facebook yeah uh I guess you have theow like the damic language opimization placement tation so you can upload creative for language you use Dynamic language optimization okay okay Aris big GE for you as well right uh yeah so for us at a blovin uh in 2023 we introduc introduced accent 2.0 uh which effectively we moved to um using machine learning to power bidding at a very very granular level rather than um buying at an average value for an individual

source so with that what that does that actually mean is that our partners actually oh because apply was one of the best channels for me last year and you know since acent to happen like exactly so that's what everyone saw right like most all of our partners just saw overnight increased accuracy on on their campaigns increased scale and overall um as well a reduction on the amount of workload and that's because basically the with accent 2.0 um you're able to run much more effectively across different GEOS as well so our algorithm now optimizes on a global basis and it it finds the right users the right scale the right value for your campaign across uh the different GEOS and the different targeting that you have and um as well obviously we can run in terms of creatives as well um you can run very different um you can run different creators localized as well I mean that was not a new thing but let's say that it's easier to manage as well through

our API Etc and um also I would want to speak to the fact that with ACC 2.0 also our partners were able to run multiple campaign strategies as well um leveraging different campaign types that opened up with accent 2.0 and effectively being able to tap into different segments of users across those campaigns so for example at raws which optimizes obviously towards ads and you are able to leverage it if you're using our mediation platform Max um I Ras where we have Day Zero and day7 optimization types for like early segments of users or uh later progression users as well as uh obviously blender Ross campaigns that optimize stores both IP and ads and um CP uh so cost per event and cost per purchaser campaigns uh which uh allow you to gather um highly engaged highly retaining users at an overall lower cost so yeah I would say like 2023 for us was

very busy uh for sure but very rewarding and in terms of creatives as well um we also uh updated our creative Optimizer so now it basically Powers the right uh creative to be shown to the right user uh at a very granular level uh versus before and um in terms of what worked uh in terms of creatives I think that was your second part of the question um that was um you know simplic Simplicity is key you need to really get the attention of the user within those first three seconds of an ad so make sure that you get rid of any cognitive dissonance you know in those 30 3 seconds focus on a hook a story line or a theme get rid of your UI you can add it on later on um and make sure that that does speak to your user uh or the user you want to acquire and then yeah I think what you said as well testing and keeping close to the data yeah but for you it's more

the best kind of creative format is what like playables right that's yeah exactly so playables let's say it's um I can't stress enough how important is to have a good amount of playables and a good variety of pbls uh just because does it mean good variety how how often you need to change the like ref the it really depends on the scale of your campaign right if you're running a campaign 5K a day okay so if you're running 5K a day that gives you quite a lot of enough room to to add a few creatives we recommend not to add creatives every day uh keep it every week every 10 days that's a good ratio and uh in terms of video creatives at 3 to 5 for example and maybe test a new playable every couple weeks once a month uh but I think what the important thing with playables to make sure that they are in line with your video creatives and that they kind of follow a little bit the like an extension of the video right exactly yeah uh I mean you can also test out differently right as I said it's better

to uh look at the data and whatever work three months ago might not work tomorrow so just keep testing and keep learning um but yeah okay in terms of challenges then like for 2023 where are biggest challenges because yes for example apply was the best Channel but sometimes on some games I really had hard time scaling MH have you seen that in some games any specific genre or monetization strategy or something something that you I wouldn't say that there's like a specific genre or a type of title that um doesn't work on on up to be honest uh what I like in in fact like speaking to what the challenge was was uh back I think it was April uh I can't remember too much of the time because it was crazy for us but I would say that was our biggest challenge right uh effectively we underwent an overhaul of our systems uh and basically everything that we knew had to be thrown out of the

window overnight and uh basically internally we had to learn what the new best practices were what the new normal was as well as uh educating our clients on that and you know really going through every single partner every single campaign and really looking at what the strategy was and what the strategy needed to be to make sure that we were really unlocking that extra scale across the board for every single right because everything every single campaign was different every single title is different and we really need to find like where the opportunity was sounds like a lot of work yeah but yeah but I mean axon 2.0 really afforded us that scale so it was about finding it yeah nice okay challenges on your end denil anything uh you can talk about um yeah I think a year ago um at at those events uh CTV was the bus word everyone was saying like go like let's go CTV you say like year later I I I want to say it

didn't work out quite as well as um we hoped for for there was like a bit of a challenge distribution at first and uh that that only recently got resolved and now uh we're still cautiously optimistic about it but it's not quite the portion of the market that uh it might have been at least what seemed like like a year ago and uh I think uh Facebook as a channel has also been uh going through what seems like a rough patch but actually in last uh months I I'd say there are some positive signs as well those are the major things for me it's for me it's absolutely terrible really performance is not there but okay that was quite challenging as well and what about your uh Roberto I think on your end yeah I mean from from our perspective I guess our challenge is um I I think all of what you're saying is actually about attention and choice of

the player so if you think about even from Facebook or any of these channels really I think from my perspective is players have got more Choice than ever so how do you stand out with even better creative or what whatever that is and for candy obviously is a 11 year old game everyone's got a perception perhaps of what that is so our challenge is how do we build better experiences and that's obviously from my perspective as product marketer is working with our product teams to then be able to empower and enable our our marketing teams as well so our challenge is how do we continue to innovate really and because you know we've been around for a long time which is quite unusual so how do we change those perceptions or keep players coming in and I think a lot of what I'm hear it on the panel as well is basically it's more Choice than ever for players which is great but it also means we need to be quite smart about where we focus I think our our marketing and from from my perspective it's it's building great product experence experiences that we can market so the other way around

that's what I'm kind of really interested in cuz I think that helps for our journey at least and how that helped you to kind of transform to 2024 well I think um from our perspective so from from my team we're kind of working embedded as it were with our product teams which I think helps us to do our jobs in a in a way that is really different and I mentioned Allstars but but even other events and our event section is is is something we're really proud of as well as well as um other areas but that allows us to have really honest conversations I think data is you know no one will be surprised that King is hot on data and um that is something that I think helps us make those conversations with our product colleagues um really tangible so we can build better experiences I think that's quite different um and that's because of years of kind of developing together and trying to work together but also being really agile I think a lot of the challenges and change is because the outside is changing and so we have to be

agile and we have to adapt and then we have to change can you give us an example I think I I I think um it's I'm trying to think of it a specific example I think um from our events area if I look at how we look at kind of are um how we bring those together we have seasons in the game that takes a lot of tried and testing so you know we don't just pick Seasons out of the air we work with our our media teams so you know what are we doing in different channels how do we then build that into a really relevant topic um so a good example maybe something um we that's the in game I think next week which is one of our Seasons which is around Winter Games obviously from a perspective there that that's a conversation that we weren't sure what what that looks like but working across four or five different teams to figure out what our players wanted and I think not to get to kind of 2024 but but really I think the more we can build with our players in mind and for us it's a really different challenge

the better so that's kind of one example I think of of where we put players at the center of what we want to build um and we'll not be too fixed if if we see data or our players say something different so I think that's really important for us all right you how how did you prepare for for 2024 well well I mean it's uh it's hard to get prepared right I know it's on the other hand it's like we always ready it's kind of like um because our role we are the middle man so one on one hand we always need to try to keep up with what is actually available there right what's available in the market what are the new Solutions what are the movements of uh uh uh for example you know tracking stuffs and everything so uh we need to make sure that we get an idea of what is actually working what not working so um we can provide the correct matching services to our clients and that's the the other side the other side is what is

our clients looking for and we would always need to try to fill the Gap so the Gap could be you know if it's skill sets it might be the easiest way because we just build the skill sets right try to fill the Gap there and sometimes it's not only the skill sets it's probably um not a ready solution there so in the past uh I I remember maybe two years ago one and a half years ago everybody was talking about ugc here right so so then in the past we've been you know working closely with Creator challenges for example uh with uh uh the CPI influencer program I was just mentioning in the during the success case session uh there was um you know other Solutions as well that we try to uh uh uh work together with the media form uh media platform actually to to make those uh testing features ready for the market so of course um in ideal scenario everything works s everybody's happy but in certain scenarios it doesn't really work then we

move on right so that's uh another aspect like from the solution aspect and then there also also uh um uh uh cases that we see that there might be a big Market demands but probably due to compliance issues or due to other concerns and is actually not open on certain media platforms so this kind of um uh uh opportunities you know last year it existed for rewarded games for example there's a a cash like real cash games there Social Casino we are working actually as well closely with uh uh uh the media site to decide okay if we want to open to towards this this part of the business so these are all the things that we we've been doing and we will be doing as well for 2024 um you know in the beginning of the year we already seeing a few changes here and there uh we see that Brazil is updating the what are the changes tell

us what sorry what are the changes that you see already in 2024 right so uh we're seeing we're seeing Brazil is updating their uh gambling policies so they have new rules and licenses going to be issued so this is probably going to impact you know uh real cash products real open also and um uh we are seeing that China uh released uh uh uh had a few new movements since the end of last year or if it look at before that I looked for the whole year 2023 we're seeing that um uh they restarted to um uh regularly Grant new uh game licenses ISBN for imported games to enter into the China Market again and uh if you do look at the timeline in the past years we see that we are actually feeling very positive in 20124 uh for you know imported games to actually uh strike boom in the China Market as

well Daniel you mentioned the Facebook is kind of picking up or start pick up in the last few months what are your best channels at the moment in terms of the UA if you what are your best channels in terms of the UA yeah it's a fairly standard set apply on Google Facebook and that's like the unity as well I I I would say I I would surpris if I told you the rest of the list okay you also mentioned that you're working on like few new projects right so you know the ATT and all of the fun stuff around idfa how that kind of change your approach to let's say soft launching or maybe launching new games I wouldn't say it changes it that that that much I think my my personal opinion about IDE and all those upcoming challenges around um prob pracy and attribution is that

it's actually less about attribution it's more about other implications for the market so even when idfa appeared like you can still leave with scad there's scad network data you have there's opin data you can look at as well I think people tend to focus bit too much on attribution when discussing those topics while the actual impact is more on the CPM side both mation uh inside the game and by byy side so I I like soft launch yes definitely it did impact attribution to an extent but it's it's an extent that we can manage the bigger question is what long-term applications has for like stuff like uh Roi payback windows and and so on so I I think that's the the part of what we we are focusing on a bit more and on the on the kind kind of evaluation side you're using only the day one data or you're

building know prediction models out of it how does that work on your end uh we're looking into a combination of those approaches and looking into scan 4 and as well which obviously hasn't seen wied option but we we are looking at that as well how does that look looking at scan for look like because it's a nightmare for me and for other companies and nobody's prepared but everybody's oh it's it's already here we don't know what to do well I mean it's it's already available so if you can test it um if You' like which is uh which is actually what we're looking into okay okay uh for you Roberto cany Crush 3DS out soft launching any any changes on on that end or like how do you approach I mean you know I have to ask I mean we've got as I mentioned but um we we test lots of different things in Market I mean my focus is is Candy Crush Saga um and um but yeah we I mean

obviously as a as as a business that's surv you know been around for 20 years and we test and learn and then put put that into place but yeah my focus is very much Candy Crush Saga um which I'm very happy about but is a big challenge you know 15,000 levels it's a slightly different um uh as a from a live experience uh challenge okay so Iris anything uh you can add to for example if companies are using App in soft Louch or is more like okay well you need to have a certain scale and then you can you can work with yeah so previously uh running compan set up loving you really needed to have like hit some key thresholds to be able to run with us uh nowadays let's say that we can be a little more flexible on those but there's still kind of certain you need still have certain scale on your game before coming to a bling to R run UA we have uh successfully launched a few really good um uh soft launches

um yeah can you talk more about the scale because I usually yeah I want to add Apple in like monetization stage and like always like oh I don't know if I have enough inst it's like 1,000 inst per day from such and Geo or how does that look like yeah so in general we do focus on let's say like around 1K uh P day uh users um on a key Geo right but having said that it's very varies Title by title so let's say there's not like 100% that is what uh always is going to be um but yeah we work as as Roberto mentioned we we are always innovating always changing so we're up for testing different things and different strategies um as well uh so in general even though we do have certain thresholds we don't want to uh yeah that's music to my ears uh uh Roberto you you said you know Candy Crush is all the game like what are what's the you a channel mix for let's say candy and is it also like

quite a lot about re-engagement old players yeah I mean again like our channel to what Daniel said I mean the list won't be a surprise but I think yeah I mean from our perspective you think for candy you know you can be 18 or 108 years old and you could play Candy and I think how you like my why I love the challenge is because it's the scale of that means that the choices that you make always have to kind of be quite mass and then you kind of focus on your actives and you know we've had over you know last 20 years 20 billion uh trying to think of uh 5 billion installs and so we've had a lot of people come and then not play so I think how how we re-engage that is always important to us especially kind of any laps user that that we think maybe we have a different content experience that they will engage so I mean I think the list is is probably the list but but actually we've got a slightly different challenge which

is how do you engage so such a big mass and I think that's that's been really focused on what you're delivering to the player who has more Choice than ever and I think for us that's that's always where our mind goes okay I I guess you do a lot of segmentation of those laps users and then yeah I mean in terms of how we tailor and I think that that in terms of in the future I think how we segment our player base how do we build you know personalization I think used to be a real Buzz work years ago and I think I think it's something that I find personally really interesting because again going back to the challenge we have is is how do you build great experiences where people maybe have sampled or played but then maybe not for a while so that I think is for me something that gets me kind of really excited how do what does that look like and that I think going back to the point that a lot of the panel have mentioned is is being agile and really open-minded and not too fixed on what what that is um so yeah that's that's kind of how I think I I certainly you like could you walk us through like any

iOS kind of strategies you see works I mean not me good you can you can do it after youra you know you can go afterwards sorry could you uh repeat question like any iOS kind of strategies best practic you know you see post idfa kind of can you well that a little bit please yeah so um from our perspective because we don't really do our own attribution uh we work with different media mix to provide the services to our clients um so it would not be you know from our perspective that um uh uh we can influence it in one uh one way or another but what happens is that we see um uh there would be different media mixes or uh different budget we are giving for different platforms because basically they are seeing a different results from there on um we do see that um uh uh very ious platforms that we represent uh they started with their movements towards

self attribution as well so that might be so for example um Tik Tok I I believe they're rolling out by under q1 so uh we do expect to see um you know further changes to how we could be um allocating the budget for our clients as well okay last question how do you leverage AI in your workflow creatives UA but I guess like let's let's start with creatives and whoever wants to start just go guess I can go uh at BL we basically leverage AI across uh the entirety of our systems from axent 2.0 engine which is uh one of the most powerful AI bidding engines at the moment uh to creative Optimizer as well uh we also upgraded our Optimizer last year uh where now it really Powers the right ad to the each individual user as well um and then we also have our internal team spark laabs uh which is our creative team that um use a wealth

of AI Tech uh to generate creatives a scale and you know like opting more for like Innovation rather than repetition uh and yeah so I think there's a lot of things that we're doing with AI and we have a few blog posts and and articles in our website if if anyone wants to check that out under up.com that is quite interested read it after PGC if you're feeling like you want to have a read yep yeah comments no ah come on then you have very strong creatives you have very strong creatives thank you I I really appreciate that coming from you um yeah there are few Partners who who do uh quite quite good U assets uh and I think it's a very much an emerging thing uh so it's uh like if someone is thinking about this I think it's uh the right time to to get on board okay any last comments that I have few but that's yeah I mean I think it's

it's obviously something that King we really believe in um we bought an AI company a couple of years ago and something that we're kind of working to embed across and I think where that goes I think is is going to be really interesting but but I haven't got any specific examples so I used a lot of mid Journey not only for unicorns to my newsletter but also for like static images and then like synesia for fake AI ugc type of creatives and then like 11 labs for any like AI voice in different languages is like quite useful I think that's it thank you very much and thank you very much you thank you thank you [Applause] enjoy