Panel: UA & Retention: How to Pick the Ideal Tactic for Your Target Demographic

here we are at the closing out the morning now with one more panel um it's another goodie and it's going to be uh covering the dark art of ua uh and particularly how to pick the right tank uh tactic for a target demographic so it's gonna be quite um targeted quite laser targets quite focused um should be really useful insightful got a great team of people including representatives from that loving trap like games uh game jam chris cauldron is he there i don't know digi-tac and a4g um knowing chris caldwell a ill-term in 10 minutes he's he operates on his own timetable um but yes oh chris takison okay hello chris hello everybody how are you doing hello i'm good we're all good we're all good we're all good um cool emil of course uh of funday factory you're gonna be moderating this

as you you do so well uh and i've done myself and first so i'm really appreciative of that how are you doing how's your internet connection hold up today better today i took the fusebox last time a few times a while ago uh power cut in the middle it only happened once but i hear about it every single time it keeps on giving which is really nice i think we should appreciate chris just how color-coordinated we are uh i'm loving it for the occasion i'm loving that we're all we're all we're all confident enough to men i can't have to wear pink i like that that's good we're all happy enough in the pig so i'm gonna probably butt out here with my my blue you're only yeah black i'm i'm in my i mean my blue uh my butt i'm completely off off color and i i'm gonna leave you guys to to take it away i'll be in the background if you have any issues and people will be dropping questions in the q a so feel free to refer to that if you need um and yeah over to you uh emma let

you introduce your palace thank you chris yeah so i think uh welcome everyone first of all uh this is a rockstar panel so get excited if you're not already we've got experts coming in from a very wide variety of backgrounds so it's a great panel but before we get started i think it's worth stopping up for a bit and it's uh learning of getting to learn our panelists a little bit better so tony yeah rohu indeed tony dean from applovin do you want to go first and tell us what you do and where you come from sure yeah um so yeah as you said i work for a loving we're a leading mobile marketing platform that helps developers attract new users and ultimately grow their games we also have our own internal studios that make games for millions of people around the world personally i lead the bd team for uk nordics mina and south east asia working with like developers of all sizes and all categories to really help them scale their games up and maximize

the maximize the amount of revenue that they're generating interesting thank you tony and mate from cat life yeah hey guys uh so i've been in the industry for like eight years so far um helped global launch around 28 games which is amazing this was amazing right and now i'm currently working with reply where i oversee the the uae activities for the battle legion and for the upcoming game happy to be here yeah i have to have you and christian attack from the tech did you talk uh my creative genius twin son decided that i'm in the digital world with surnames attack so it became digi tech i spent the last two decades specializing in mobile game application distribution monetization and regulatory compliance lived and worked primarily in emea for several world leading organizations delivering millions of dollars of advertising revenue most recently branched out into the asian markets with

a focus on taking european game developers into china for several multi-million dollar partnership deals two of which are on here today uh working with system integrators and i enjoy evangelizing on the best tool kits available either to acquire new users or generate as much revenue as possible for my customers and partners and i'm delighted today to join this as distinguished guest of panelists and hopefully i can share some of my 20 years of learning and finally at the end we're we're still waiting for i think chris mentioned that chris calron is might be coming a little bit late but we got omar thank you from uh ted champs in a14 yeah so um omar um a4g is a company that is uh based in morocco and uh we have been we have been in the game in uh ua for the for the past 10 years we have started as an ad network and then decided to to step up our game and come up with a product that is top champs um it is a product that is basically

like a gaming arena where people come in and play the games that they like and the more achievements they make uh the more they are rewarded for it so if they reach like a high levels there's beats specific bosses if they uh are able to reach a certain level really fast so and the idea behind this is you know it's like that's why it's called like chap champs and uh yeah that's basically where we're where we are right now excellent thank you oma and finally my name is emil i'm a product manager at fundy factory we're a mobile game student we've done real-time multiplayer shooter games for mobile like bullet which is like a battle royale game we've also developed um xml 5 multiplayer games for snapchat i've worked professionally with games for 10 years if you count a weird indie phase where i did a multiplayer game for the ouya a really not fantastic console well it was a fantastic console but it didn't it wasn't minded super well so i think this

speaks to the challenge that is inherent in all ua is that sort of the medium then how you communicate really impacts the types of users you're gonna attract and for those of you who might not remember the uea tried to frame themselves as um as the playstation or xbox killer whereas it might have been better positions or something that could sit just next to those consoles but i really like louie um and i i named up it every time i can um but i know firsthand also from from experience that funding uh right we're not a massive team we're kind of small so running ua is something that i've dealt with as well and and i'm really eager to learn from from this amazing line of panelists as well so i think we should just get started um so in terms of finding out like it's how to use that consistent strategy um audience differ uh massively um sort of what what audience do audiences have you've had experience sort of tightening so the width of your head game through

your head to attack both you know soccer moms as well as like hardcore gamers or as are there any learnings that you can take if you if you like in our case really experienced exciting hardcore battle royale mobile fans like a small sliver um is there anything that developers can take with them uh after having sort of done ua in a specific direction tony do you wanna do you wanna go first yeah sure uh so yeah i suppose like that we're being like an ad network we're very um lucky that i get like exposure to uh kind of the broadest spectrum right i work with like kind of hyper casual game developers all the way down to midcore game developers from a demographic perspective we don't collect that kind of data uh everything that we do is very behavioral based right and our partners really work towards roasts or like retention which we're talking about today but yeah i think from learnings that you can take across

from these the focus and the key metrics that you're going to look at are really the same right you want to make sure that your campaigns are profitable um that you're engaging your users with creatives that really speak to the motivations of the players that you're trying to attract and yeah that you're using as many of the channels as effectively as possible in order to do that and in terms of like the the the payback windows and stuff that the developers should be aware of um how how then is like i'm guessing what i'm getting is like hyper casual games are known for having like very short payback windows and the revenue comes back quickly so what you're saying tony is that developers should be aware of their willingness to wait on the revenue and and map out the metrics for the users that that they have in their game right yeah most definitely look i think uh like hyper casual you can get paid back in like a week or a couple of days right um but there's like the the vast majority of

games outside that will have a much longer back window right um stretching from a few months to a couple of years and the the industry is incredibly competitive so what has happened definitely like if you look at kind of match three games as well in order to really achieve scale games have had to push these out as much as possible so yeah there's a very wide um very wide gamut of air and back windows that people are looking at and also like ways that people monetize as well by ads or by ids or even subscriptions so in terms of like as you say there's like an endless gamut and the competition is ever growing there's fierce competition to get the users in terms of like creative variety and the types of creatives that that studious put out it seems like there's some that do like a ton of experimentation and keep rotating and like to instill that sort of feel of freshness in in the the audience is that something that you think is for everyone um to do or is that that much

is that a loser's game if you're like a smaller studios or something other specific uh tactics here that are reserved in general for like larger studios versus versus smaller studios so it comes down to bandwidth in certain senses right um i think what's most important like and the life cycle of a game comes out it comes in is very important there as well right when you have a new game it's going to be very important that you're testing out new teams and concepts but overall i think what's key is that people have a very formalized testing process right and are really experimenting with what are the different motivations that the players could have because you don't want to really miss any low hanging fruit it can be the case that you have your top winning creative that is the best one there for like a month or you or even like up to a year but you need to be sure that you are have really gone through all the different options there in order to make sure that you're not really missing anything and that what you have created

even if it's painful that you're not um creating any creatives that are you know beating your last one you're taking learnings as well from that and understanding more about your players all along the way is that something i'm um i saw you you're nodding not in there is that something that that you recognize in your own process in terms of like massive experimentation and and sort of iterating i guess in both the creative process and measuring on the kingdom cores coming definitely i would say at cap champs since we are you know like a i would say like like a like a gateway where we need to do user acquisition for ourselves and then also do it for our clients so basically we need to we need to first thing grow our audience and then bring the right audience from that from that you know like uh portion of audience that we have to the right games um so so when he when he when he said that for example you need to really be aware of the kind of monetization that

you're making and the way you're monetizing your game that's one of the most important things that to keep in mind when you're doing ua um when you have a game you know that is mainly ad funded and mainly focused on games it is not the same approach as when you have a gaming mode that is in-app uh for example in chapters uh we we see we see i would say advertising channels as two types some that are for i would say ua and bringing in new users and some that are for support that will bring in a specific kind of users uh that may you know like come in play a game and maybe uninstall and install the app so in i believe in what tony said what was the most important thing is experimenting with the with the channels that you believe are fit and then the chest chain phase uh should should really not be only

about the otherwise it should be should we be on that should be how how the creatives are done sometimes you may have one within creative attachments i believe we have like a few and we've been running with them for a while on facebook and while on google and they've been still generating um and at the same time i believe when you get to a point where uh you don't you you don't know your position or you don't know which which channels to start with uh i believe as a small developer or as a small app we we had the chance that we had that we were like uh already an ad network so we had the funds but you know in our case we definitely would definitely you know would recommend aso because many many don't see asl as a as a ua channel don't see it you know like as an advertising channel or as a growth channel uh and only you know like a as an organic or organic path to to evolve in but it is a pretty good ua

channel but i believe that's one of the best ways and i i think some of the most the most simple paths to to for example small a small uh a small developer since us i think many of them are here and trying to learn from from people who went through went through the whole process is i believe first would be organic if if you and your team can work as best as possible on the on the stores especially now with apple store you know allowing you to test creatives and everything then go for for the widest audience and then you have you have this cad networks that are your best for start and then the moment you you see that you know your audience you know what you're doing start experimenting and experimentation you know like you should not be expecting top errors from from the start i i think this is this this is i believe the best linear approach that you can go for

how about you might say um is that the same approach you guys take a trap light and sort of basically touches on something really interesting in terms like the right audience right like yeah it's interesting to see like that probably differs from from game to game but uh of course well uh how we well where to start it's uh i almost fall asleep guys come on we need to give us a bit more space to discuss everything uh no i'm just kidding uh so basically um i worked with like different games um in the past from like casual games targeted for male and female mid core and forex and even hyper casuals well the the most important part of the ua strategy is always about like understanding the target audience you are working with at the moment so and i identifying the creative that resonates well with that specific audience for example for us with the bet legion it's it's a mid-core game and we are targeting mostly mostly

male audience and we found out for like very huge creative process and like uh tested out almost well i think we have like 1 000 videos in our catalog of the creatives from the creative standpoint and um we found out one specific uh concept works really well and um and after like half a year of testing so to the point of like focusing on the roi with testing yes and no we still need to focus on the the roi on the creative level we want to make money so uh so yeah so after like very vast um creative process we found out like the mass battles concept worked really well for our target audience and now we're trying to iterate on it spin it from different levels and stuff like that that makes sense but i think then christian um it sounds like generally speaking our our island roy's like hitting that immediately seems to be like the the key point there's of course surrounding metrics that that would

support that but do you agree is it always like go towards goes towards uh go developers should go towards covering their cost first and foremost and then sort of iterate on top of that uh or do you employ a different process i think it's a good uh a good point and i've had a lot of experience working with small devs large devs and throughout the the whole cycle of uh of the last two decades embracing so much change and i think that quite a few of the takeaways that i've had uh number one when i take my hat off to any ua managers out there there's so much uh exhaustive efforts that go into managing and as each of the panelists have explained quite a few of the nuances out there uh whether it be uh searching for for that one element of uh whether it be a creative and then does that created work in a particular country is that there's a new

uh phone that's launched or do you target to that but i think you know pretty much that that get a sense of the the overall efforts of of marketing effectiveness and not directly challenge through focusing it to absolute revenues this is about sustainability and and to grow and what i have learned is that in them and again on this panel here there are many solutions or tool sets available each of us are very open to to share learnings and other game developers to help each other in in this ecosystem uh and and from really from from my point it's it's really to understand exactly what what it is that you want to achieve and how you can do that and there are so many channels available to to be able to get to that yeah i think it it speaks to this the the kind of variety that the game scene has to offer right like it definitely when when we were running

creative testing we didn't do it on thousands of ads i think we ran around 50 uh variations of that fight but that depends on like how much experience of an experienced team you have sort of helping you to run things but i would say i'm actually curious and want to go back to that a little bit running thousands of apps doesn't that require yourself for basically a division of phds in analytics and data science in order to work out like what's up and down well of course i mean but that's the the main part of the whole ua and to be able to to evaluate everything properly and even on the creative level of course like we we have a tool set i mean for the or the data stack we are using our own uh ros tool uh built in house and then like connecting it through apps layer and well obviously we also use a excel sheet for um piling up all the 1000 videos in one um which is amazing for keeping track and like

evaluating everything and we that's that's very powerful thing to do and it's easy and we don't need to pay for for any other tool which uh is out there but then um tony is this something that you see a lot of developers do uh does matthias sort of say represent a rare unicorn in the sense that it seems like razor sharp super focused approach to to creatives as part of the ua funnel no it's definitely like incredibly important i think um people can have their own bi tools internally um some people use like other platforms as well for that um on top of that i think there's been really a transition in the last couple of years towards like network machine learning algorithms right and then having them really optimize towards a raw asset retention metric for you based on the data set of users that they've been able to collect and that that can really help you a teams as well because as we talk about

like the operational workload even from like just managing cpi campaigns is huge like changing um a bid in every source and every geo and every campaign is massive so when you when what machine learning opens up really is the ability for people to go really global um really easily to which and be sure that they're going to hit their targets then allows them to actually spread into more channels and experiment with more as well and even from a ua manager perspective you see the role growing and then getting more involved with the monetization side and even the product side as well and having a more holistic view of their business really which is pretty exciting because you know changing bids can get boring after a while um what sort of this is basically i was saying that the ai ml driven systems like how do you think that's going to change the role of performance markers um like what is is this a bomb under the

role of performance minders or is this simply gonna allow performance markers to like shift their focus so i think it allows people to shift their focus really right um and allows them to be much more expansive than what they do like over the last several years uh ua has become an ever like greater part of what's important for a game like featuring just isn't as important anymore and everything really has moved over to the ua side so the responsibilities that have fallen on ua managers are getting greater and greater and greater um and the number of channels that can be effective are like growing as well so yeah i think it allows you to really scale up on an even leaner team and you know experiment more like creatives as well on top of that and i think this is a it's a great segue basically so tony tony and mate here are arguing sort of machine learning air driven systems is the future is the future here now is is this happening right now have any of you guys have experimented with this in your own games and own productions omar

christian i'd say i think when it comes to mml and ai i think it's it's really specific on what what the product is and how the product is built in in our case for example since where i would say like uh like like a gateway for for people are looking to to grow their gaming their gaming audience um what how we use ml and ai is basically showing the right games to the right people when you get in and you have like uh i don't know 120 games that you know that you are advertising or trying to promote you cannot really show the right ones to everyone so the best way to approach that is definitely ml and ai and that would definitely you know like simplify how we target the white people and target the riot users for for uh for for an advertiser for example uh some of the ways we do that is for example let's say there is like this uh love simulation game that comes

in and we've had maybe two or three in the past that have performed so we're like okay let's let's at first when this game lands in let's show it to the 100 or the 200 people who who have spent the most or who have viewed the most ads and then when we see that for example that model has worked out we scale it up and like until we have some sort of a matching audience for that new game same thing for example for example match tree or word games uh we do the same thing for people who for for an audience that's basically you know like views ads or uh is uh is spending a lot of time you know like in this kind of games and it's fine spending a lot of time playing the games and then watching the ads or like you know like prompting more the bonus parts that makes you watch ads and that usually leads to better airwise so that

is for example in our case how ml is used it's basically you know like checking previous previous behaviors and applying that to metrics that matter to the to the advertiser before giving that audience to the game so for example this is one of the ways that we use ml and ai that makes sense how about you kristin is that something where where you're sort of advising people to to jump face first head first sorry head first into machine learning are you are you more cautious um i've never jumped face first that um arms out and probably yeah but i uh you know i i think that uh it resonates from something that uh that eric suffered uh put out there back in 2009 and it was all about you know sort of machine learning algorithic campaign management and and trying to take away some of the uh the the hands-on uh that the ua managers

actually take on so try and simplify it you know multi-channel marketing automation testing testing one of the uh the first companies that uh that i was actually fortunate to to make a headway with was um a danish uh developer over in our house um and i was blown away at the entrance to to their building that was just covered in in tiles of different creatives and there must have been you know i think uh marriage there mentioned that there's a thousand videos and i'm very convinced that there were over two thousand different creative formats uh even you know the the hat of the runaround subway surfers being shaped from one side to the other and wearing a red jumper versus a yellow jumper and all of this you know when you you look at your spreadsheets and you you get back to where it is that you're you're you're trying to to get this

there's so much data that it can become overwhelming so um again you know a lot of patience and and try and just embrace the platforms or indeed if you if you are fortunate enough to to have your own bi tools to to really to get get that as as neat and as tidy as possible and then duplicate replicate and enjoy some success okay i'm going to go yeah going back to your question about how the ai or machine learning influences the ua life well it made our life easier uh a year ago or years ago but i guess it was only for like short period of time because everything changes so rapidly and like even with the new i ios 15 and whatever else we still even with uh like simplified um campaign structures and ai driven campaigns we still need to be very much on top of our game and monitor

closely all the channels sometimes it feels like being on the roller coaster you know one week google is performing super well then well uploading and otherwise campaign is scaling up with the new creatives really nicely then all of a sudden facebook is not working well look-alikes are performing and then the aaa campaigns are not so it's like even with the um machine learning and ai out there you still need to monitor everything very closely yes it's it's never never a dull day in the life of all of us in terms of uh just just to to add in that it really is so important to keep on top of that regulatory compliance the amount of changes that we've seen over the years uh and it can be challenging but it can also be uh be highly effective in terms of what strategy you do deploy have you seen this like the

the chris you're mentioning this in material i think as well those of the roller coaster of newer updates that suddenly like you used to have a ton of data now you don't uh as regulatory comes in is this generally sort of something that you see as an equalizer something that that allows from a level playing field or is this like giving an unfair advantage to to some of like some developers developers or publishers you promised not to be controversial i know i'm downstream sort of you don't need to name names that's fine you also don't need to enter it that's truly fantastic oh okay i guess there's no one starting that's totally fine uh but there is sort of the reduction in data and like some some systems like machine learning and ais would allow you to so certain systems decide and let them let them run and simmer um i think when when we were using some of the automated tools for campaign management what i felt like as a market was sometimes that i would actually not be

as keen i wouldn't have as keen an understanding of the users coming into my game when like for instance when you set up a convention with google ads you can feed the machine with like tons of text tons of images in terms of videos and then they'll just like put things together in different ways and what that actually led to was that i felt like i lost a little bit of sense of who the audience was that was coming in because i didn't really know what sort of creative they've been exposed to is there at times a is there um a could it be is there such a thing as too much ai machine learning where because i personally felt like i'd lost touch with who was coming into my game and i don't know tony is that something that that you've seen sort of um so i i suppose it's it's difficult right you're kind of like seeding control in some ways definitely yeah um but we on like on our back end we introduced uh like our machine learning like system axon like last year i think this year

versus last year our partners are spending on average like 280 percent more on the platform so the scale has been like that they've been able to achieve has been massive and they also like target their campaign specifically towards like ross like what is saying you put in like just a specific roast go and then the system will hit it so yeah i think look losing control for all of us is always going to be a little bit scary right um but there's massive benefits to it as well um i don't think it's something that's going to go away right um as long as there are certain people that are doing it then there's going to be like a lot of competitive advantages to utilizing those systems but yeah i think like we just kind of have to understand our users and the ones that we have inside of our games for what they are right simply because like uh someone is able to find users that you might not have been able to find yourself that are

really love your game and like are really into it that's something that's like actually an exciting thing as well even though it is scary in some ways too um yeah i think that so sort of with the new found with sort of the admin of ai and machine learning and like the the occasional times where as matte mentioned the roller coaster like sometimes it's really tough and you don't have any time to do anything else but just like the hyper focus on one project on one one specific problem but in the values of that like when you feel like there's time are you guys spending any time like exploring other like non-traditional channels and do they even work like for instance like influencer marketing or putting effort into community management they're turning players into advocates is that something that that that you've seen sort of work uh omar let's uh start with you uh i think i think uh the way mln ai is is is going currently uh

i believe it's it's it's the best it's the best way we can we can as tony said we can uh keep expecting a superhero role from from an eu ua manager um currently currently you know like in many small small game developer you know like structure the ua manager is not only you know like on facebook or not only on app closing or not only on on google but it's supposed you know like to to juggle and play around with all of them and i believe ml and ai can can actually allow allow you a manager to to monitor and like just you know just be that that link between the company and and the networks who are doing who are doing the growth the growth for for for for the developer and uh i believe at some point we will reach religious situation where ua manager will just be a very focused decision maker where all he has to do you know is be like okay

so this campaign you know has potentially developed to three lookalikes and uh 10 different creatives and uh let me see let me see the best way i can either shut this up but i think more in terms of like the the key thing here is in terms of non-traditional channels and and have have you sort of experimented with with running for instance like influenced marketing campaigns in the past oh i i i think yeah i i really love the question for influencer marketing uh i would say i would say as someone who has always been you know like into performance either back in the ad network days or now in chapters for example influencer marketing or blog posts or you know like potential gaming website takeovers as a performance manager i've never been able to get to get a good return on ad spend out of those

um how about how about the the rest of you have any of you sort of tested out influence marketing is that sort of like a dead horse that i should stop beating well uh influence marketing never worked out too well for me but it doesn't mean it can't work for other games it depends very much on the game you have and if the game is let's say pvp you can watch tons of videos on online and it's actually enjoying you are enjoying it while watching it makes sense i want to see i want to look at like youtubers playing better legion okay fine but then of course we also need to try try and find the proper influencers to actually match our audience as well so i'm still trying to find the way how it can work so um definitely there are ways so just slowly getting there and in terms of the community management we're actually doing youtube streams

every week and we have also a discord channel and doing multiple activities on the social media so i do believe in the community building and that's that's really important for for the game like we have and actually i think maybe there's something in terms of mid core games because one of one of our games which was like this myth called battle royale we also set up a discord server i've never seen like such concise well-structured bug reports from players like if you if you manage to like pull your players into like a shared space where they can be excited about the game and feel like they can have a one-to-one communication channel with you as the developer they will like they will stay up late they will work tirelessly to build up like a really coherent bug report sometimes like like testing what we were able to actually buy in like external qa houses i think definitely sort of beating the drum for uh communities when it makes sense for your game is is super worthwhile how about you christian has have you sort of tested out of any of the

companies you've advised sort of tested out either like communities or influencer magazine so not personally but again you know i work with um around 80 percent of um game developers out there and each one have got different strategies for for deployment but it comes down to again you know focusing on marketing i think you hit the nail on the head there about you know how important is it to to listen to to your clients and any touch point channels that you can integrate and we're all working very differently um you know whether it be you know adding a discord channel whether it be uh you know going back to the basics on the reviews or whether it be adding a support email or a whatsapp channel and people are really eager to to help you understand um you know what they're experiencing in the game it's so important to to listen to that um and so yeah i've seen a lot of hype a few years ago around influencer marketing and i

was quite excited about that you know it opens up a new uh channel to to employ people um and i'm all embracing in in you know sort of new talents coming in and from a younger perspective it's really important to understand you know what it is that they're using how it is that they're using and what that chain of communication is all about uh so for me you know i think uh you know just by having a celebrity or having somebody looking at a youtube channel so they can make a real difference and you know just stand to how you where how you onboard that and if you can board that into to your marketing strategy but you know any awareness any coverage any promotion activity is only going to have a benefit in in both kristen if ways can sort of stick with you for a bit you also mentioned some regulation coming in sort of never changing landscape in terms of like what's happening on mobile um in terms of like the the current legal battle with like everyone epic and and what seems for me

at least like super uninformed it seems like there's a humor of light on the horizon and that we might be able to take in like external payment structures in general sort of it feels like there's openings in terms of breaking up the current landscape of mobile app acquisition and channels right so you gotta have arcade as sort of a an additional gated community within an already gated community but then you also have other platforms sort of rumored to come in like netflix and other sort of streaming platforms who seem to be standing outside the gates and like shouting let me in um is there something where you feel like how do you envision how do you feel like the the industry's gonna the market for app stores are gonna look like a year from now and i know it's like it's it's that time of depending but we have to talk about the future so sorry but not sorry embrace the future um and history repeats itself and and the beauty of this industry is that it

it's not in its infancy it's been around for over two decades the walled garden where you know you had only to purchase something directly from the mobile operator without actually ever getting anything on the handset um yeah the the compliance there was that you had to buy it from the mobile operator enter 2007 apple completely decimated the mobile operator structure of that payment cycle and i think that we're about um 11 years in now uh so yeah things are going to change and it's an ecosystem that's generating hundreds of billions of dollars it is only going to grow and it will change it will develop but again you know with development change becomes opportunity and it's what we do with that opportunity and how we bring that in into the cycle all for encouraging uh different ways of utilizing the the structures and you know different payments in different countries or alternative payments

less payments back to the walled garden and and more more uh more revenue for for the developers do uh the rest of you agree like it's kind of hard to not agree to like it's a very fine brimstone speech like embrace the change history repeats itself i'm kind of riled up now it feels like feels like yogi um so is there any sort of exciting music that that sort of the people in the uh like the participants should be aware of like something that personally excites excites you about something that's coming uh or something that you think might be happening uh sort of staying within the future track um like new channels new formats again like christian has mentioned you you mentioned christian sort of rules and regulations but only in sort of the sinister broad sense so maybe there's something where you feel like this this actually presents an opportunity to developers is there something where like some new type coming that you're excited about

i think i'm just going to answer that one yeah oh uh so i think i think in in the near future and how how we are approaching all that monetization and uh and revenue for for for any gaming developers um i'm seeing more and more you know like uh gaming developers looking at the looking at looking at their own ecosystem and revenue and the their own ecosystem and like uh own currency uh we have for example i would say candy crush or supercell and they all have let's say those currencies in-game uh but the only way for them to bring in users is to go through the two the two big giants and for those two giants not actually to be to approve of that method of advertising but what i'm seeing now is that there is

this new this new generation of users and this new potential new generation of uh of uh you know like game developers as i'm sure you all heard of it for example xe infinity or a few other you know like top notch play to earn uh game developers who are you know like disrupting the approach of uh of you know like just going through just going through uh did someone leave the caller yeah i think we lost let's say yeah of of go of going through apple and and google for their for their own revenues and found new ways in order to generate revenue either through through their own tokens or through their own their own monetization monetization routes and i'm seeing more and more you know like looking to do that since i mean play to earn is already an attractive thing and getting you know like for the company to make money out of that is a totally new

approach to make revenues because i think now we we have two ways it's like in-app purchases and ads and if if uh if gaming developers can break away from that model they can definitely break away from apple and google in some sort of ways so i think that's that's one of those one of those potential new ways we can see some game developers think of and maybe rethink the way they develop their games the way they approach their their revenue streams uh i i think that's that's my two cents on on maybe this uh breaking away from these walled gardens yeah also sort of play turns or being being something that that's gonna break down some walls it sounds like i think that's a that's an exciting future how about you tony uh what what's gonna happen in the next two years tell us oh god um uh yeah unfortunately i'm not a psychic um but i know i think um there will probably be like an awful lot

of changes there there always is um whether it comes in like policy changes or like scan in the last has only rolled out this year right um and we've seen advertisers have really been able to change how they operate um very quickly so like the initial ragnarok that it was supposed to be hasn't really come to fruition so far and i think that speaks incredibly well of the industry as a whole um like it'd get boring if nothing changed guys um we'd have nothing to talk about things like this um but yeah i know i think it's like incredibly exciting it's one of the things that i do really like about this industry um is that there's always something new and we've always proven to be like incredibly intelligent and how we approach animal changes and incredibly resilient as well um but yeah definitely excited about plate iron as well i think that'll be cool all right and with mate out i guess like he felt like this was too much for controversial subject to touch upon

i think uh kristen i'll um i think chris you're coming in to tell us that we're running out of time right i'm just yeah i was coming to say uh we're getting near the end i just want to say if you've if you've been checking any of any of the questions in the q and a's a few different ones coming yeah do we have direct time uh yeah you've covered a lot of them there was one very specific one from ali sharpesand uh which wait just because i wanna i wanna give chris a chance to just uh touch upon the regulation and then in a non-sinister broad sense and maybe if there's any i don't want to cut off chris i don't want to cut chris's team no except you know what no one wants i hate to do that so i'll let him i'll sit quietly i've only got one small thing to to add on to that and again you know it comes with the challenges of of compliance but when a country restricts users from playing games for a certain amount of time that's gonna have an impact on on play to earn i can't see that that's gonna

happen in the western world um but yeah i'm all embracing you know if if you can play the games and and some additional currency to spend in another game or achieve certain um points that you can again you know change or bar to for example um it is it's exciting times and you know any restrictions on that i think could be challenging it's a really really relevant point to bring up thank you chris so the question you wanted to call out in the audience which one was it whether it's from ali that's the one yeah i just seem very specific i don't know the answer so i don't know if you do either but uh i guess i can uh like guys help us tell me christian omar help me because i mean over my head here so ali is asking can your level elaborate a little bit on ri on building up the data infrastructure

how wild do you suggest to be spending on it both from money and time the first time just like first attempts to build an mvp how should takes from the investment they have and service analytics so i'm guessing out of here is referring to like building and owning your own bi stack and sort of how to get started and where to go from like what what the starting point should be who any any takers um sure i'll take this one i would say i would i would say investing on your data infrastructure you could definitely be one of the one of the biggest and most positive airlines you can get as a gaming developer or as a platform developer it really depends on what you're working on because uh there's no other platform that's gonna give you as much data as what you what you collect yourself you know currently now with the the whole atchi thing going on and play store working on that

develop developing on your own you know like bi structure knowing your users knowing where they're from knowing their behaviors knowing what each one is doing you know like through through the user journey it's definitely what's going to allow you you know like to go back potentially to to traditional ways of growing those users of re-engaging them instead of always depending on a facebook or something for retargeting you can do that via crm via emailing via terms of different ways if you have your own data but i see that many ua managers are fine you know like with what's given to them on on facebook or on a google creator look alike and that's my data i will i will reuse it so yeah your data is the most valuable thing you have and there's no reason for you to not invest there right anyone anyone has anything to add to um them sure just briefly i suppose

um yeah i think that you can get a lot of data still from platforms right so if you're an indie studio working on the first game uh you really want to make sure that you have something scalable and like a product that that actually is worth investing in first before you really build out the data infrastructure to really understand how to maximize ui um like make sure that you first like are working with networks that you have an mmp and that you're doing all the very simple things first well and utilizing all the data that you have before investing into deep diving into anything really um but yeah yeah i totally really would say like just having gone through that journey of building our own bis like starting just with something as simple as ensuring that the data aligns between just two different platforms is a nightmare so get that sorted first and if you feel like you're confident working out why day one retention varies by four percentage points from say absolute through firebase then once you

understand why that's happening then you're probably a little bit better to uh to go down the path of building your own it's a scary journey jesus um chris what what what does the time say mr clock maybe the clock is uh the clock is wrong i think we start about five minutes uh late and we're finished yeah it's late so i think on that note i'm going to probably say a huge thank you to all of you uh and uh i feel i do feel i should have gotten changed i was thinking about it should i go on stage into black i didn't didn't do it i didn't apologize it would be good i'm not in your band i'm not i'm not in the what is the coolest ua boy bands uh in the industry um thank you so much guys thank you very much christian thank you tony uh thank you oman thank you uh emil for um sorry those people now asking me that loads of pop-ups i can't see any anything there but anyway thank you so much for your time i'm going to enjoy the rest of the show and afternoon thanks hosting emil and um yes thank you

you