Product Madness’ Piyush Mishra On Smart Approaches And Seismic Shifts In A Privacy-First Market

[Music] thank you hello world welcome back to the pocketgamer.biz podcast with your team me Brian baglo and my awesome colleague collaborator and co-host Peggy anseltz hello again Peggy hello Brian great to connect we had a couple weeks without each other I had to uh hold down the fort how have you been it's been a while it has been a little while hasn't it it's well it's been all sorts of strange bank holiday madness here in the UK yes we've had time off we've had time back we've had time away and then in between we've been trying to do five days worth of work in four days so it all got a little bit complicated and complex but it's lovely to be back again in the pg.biz podcast towers and talking to you again and what a way to resume our uh our ongoing conversations uh we have a

guest today who is going to be helping us understand an awful lot more about the beauty and value of data yes he is a data I wouldn't say nerd I'd say carnivore he really gets into it makes a a meal out of it we have today piyush Mishra who is head of growth marketing at product Madness and if you haven't heard of him Brian well um I've had the pleasure of seeing a couple of his talks and uh he is the man for a crash course in everything you need to know about privacy he's my go-to go-to guy here for all things privacy first marketing we're in for a treat Brian oh absolutely and weirdly enough I've seen a talk at one of their last PGC shows so I've been lucky enough to hear him but we've never actually spoken so Paige it's lovely to finally meet you in the flesh as it were welcome on board thanks thanks a lot Brian thanks a lot thank you really really happy with the kind introduction you guys have given I hope I lived to the standard of the words that you have provided so that's

the hope but no it's lovely lovely to be here well I'm convinced because I don't know if you know this Brian but you know me I'm always looking around right and if you don't listen in already we all have to because we have a podcast he's speaking here in our podcast today but he also hosts a show of his own called in the sandbox with Adam smart which is also available on Spotify and Apple so just a Shameless plug for our honored guest today thanks Peggy I really appreciate that I think Adam smog would also appreciate that but yeah it's been almost two years of doing it we are on a bit of a break right now but yeah hopefully we're going to resume uh this month don't be afraid to give us any hints tips or pointers you know it's always nice to have an experienced guest on who can you know keep us keep us focused and keep us directed making sure that we're being as good as we possibly can be and and yeah data carnivore I was going to go with data geek but data camera sounds an awful lot more interesting so so how did you get into to the data world in the first in the

first case now first of all thanks a lot for calling me later Carnival data geek because you know with the specs everybody goes for the data you can do it and you know it always it always is like that I started my uh Performance Marketing Journey with a company called in Mobi which was an ad Network I worked for that company like for two and a half years and that's where actually I went very deep into the data in the sense that uh you know we were still in the world of contextual data targeting uh back then this was 2014 2015 the user level data uh has still not being that uh you know become that relevant at that point in time so it used to be a lot of Fascination for me when we used to start optimizing towards a particular you know uh uh data audience it was very uh interesting to see how exactly uh you know the the data was unanimous the data was Universal but the optimization but the you know the campaign setup used to be very different at a at a different different Geo level in certain sense so that's where the fascination began since then obviously I mean I've had different roles I've worked at Uber as well uh

leading programmatic over there and then slowly leading the Performance Marketing bought for Uber and ubereats and mostly getting into brand which is also fascinating for a guy like me who's been very dominant on the measurement side looking into brand and brand KPS and stuff like that so that was that was quite a transition and uh uh you know interesting bit to work on the TV and the radio and stuff like that because there were a lot of offline uh metrics that we use to buy offline media that we used to run from there on transition there and then join product Madness and again got back into data and measurement and attribution and uh when privacy kicked in uh sort of got a lot more into the details of it uh helped uh you know because we are part of Restaurant we had dickfish and plarum as well so we were sort of working together across the board on the process side and yeah it's been really fascinating the changes that we are witnessing and yeah I mean I keep on telling that it's one of the most electronic shifts that we've had in the industry and potentially uh you know going forward also it will have a huge impact you know a growth marketer is different

now than it was before you said it yourself we're in a different landscape people ask me all the time you know what do I do what do I need to do daily not just to stay fresh staying fresh might be listening into our podcast you know Brian and I were here every week but there's a certain routine to doing it ESP you get up you look at Facebook data right I'm sure that's not the way it is anymore no it's not I mean honestly again for most of the partners on Android Google is the biggest partner right so uh Google I mean you can shift from DCB Academy to reverse campaign and stuff like that obviously there are more uh nuanced uh optimization levels that they provide but like you know at a very broadly that has not changed but when you look at iOS site which I mean Frankly Speaking on our side it's a big chunk of our investment I was I think the the role of your managers that uh has changed a lot in that sense fundamentally when you look at uh in the scan data there's not a lot of optimization levels

left uh specifically for srns I'm keeping the probabilistic partners aside probabilistic modeling Partners aside right so especially for SRS you don't have a lot of levels so now you're left with only basically one level which is creative now in the in the entire conversation around attribution one should not forget that the users are still responding to ads what has changed fundamentally one suppression has gone down because now you're only suppressing for users who have opted in right so now you're targeting to a lot of existing users uh and while wasting money in the process so you're you actually cost has a factor of users who should not be targeted but they are getting targeted right second thing post installed data are very limited through scan right so you're limited in terms of optimization you don't have a lot of data to say okay what exactly is changing what exactly is the OS I mean at Max you can write now again I'm keeping scan 4.0 separately uh you can only look at D2 or day one uh you know sort of Ros Target and you can say okay this partner is doing well this partner is doing it but you don't have

any long-term kpi to look at to say which part is actually giving you more fundamental uh revenue and more uh and better OS right so that has also changed and the third thing also is uh you're not getting the same nuanced level of reporting that you are used to uh especially uh you know for Creative for ad groups and stuff like that so when you when you don't have it you're relying basically on a c bear and a CTR kind of a metric or an IPM kind of metric for Creative as well for optimization like when you look at srn specifically you don't have a lot of levers left and that's why creative becomes very important uh in in that conversation while on Android I would say right now we are sticking to to the same old uh method of optimization but I do believe with privacy sandbox changes uh that would also sort of evolve if you think of a I'll just share it with you because it was it was one of those sessions where it makes you think so there was a session I went to with someone from Google they were explaining

privacy sandbox and saying 500 the number of days before we let this loose yeah it's fascinating because you know like they've already done the Privacy sandbox thing on the web so they're now moving to the app world right so it's really fascinating to see how exactly they would they would respond to it because privacy in my opinion has become more of a brand play for the two biggest companies out there Apple and Google right in certain sense and because if you go to the details technically uh it's it's it's what I call differentiated privacy for their own inventory versus you know uh for other partners so let's see how Google reacts to it also because if you look at a very I mean again looking at the macroeconomic factors that are in play right now with the with the with the chart GPD I think Google is losing some sort of market share right now will that incentivize Google to create a privacy sandbox that would allow their uh you know inventory to be

at the top as compared to any other partner will they create something like that will they also be will there also be differentiated sort of uh uh you know pricing model and stuff like that when they release private center or will they try and be Universal create an equal Level Playing Field for all the partners that would be an interesting uh thing to look for I mean right now everything is speculation uh but the good thing about Google is they're working very closely with the industry partners and trying to figure out uh you know what is possible and what's not just really quickly there were two numbers right in the presentation one was the 500s you're like we have 500 days then the other was Zero the number of companies that can wait laughs that's true that is true I mean when I go uh when I join sell the calls with Google my first question is okay is there any update on precious sandbox every single you say no not right now not right now that's amazing now you are on record the same there are two types of UAE manager out there so can you tell

our lovely audience exactly what you mean by that and you know it must be more than just Jedi and Seth surely definitely more than that uh you know no I mean obviously when you try and classify your wide range of uh you know possibilities out there and you try and uh you know create two uh versions out of it it's obviously not easy to call it out like that so I wouldn't say classifying but I'm just saying typically the two kind of humans that I say is basically your first kind which is obsessed with data and the second term which is obsessed with the creative play uh at work essentially what I mean by that is uh you know you you look at a lot of your managers and they you see that you know they're obsessed with data when I say they're upset with it which means they just want to focus on hitting a particular OS Target uh you know just looking at cpay if they are there within the within the range that they have there they have a certain KPS and they want to hit it like purely uh you know in terms of just optimizing towards a particular code that's one set of your managers the other is obviously who are more inclined towards a creative plane

when I say A creatively what I mean is I go back to what I said because in the entire conversation of uh measurement attribution privacy the fact that means that users will are still responding to creators right so it becomes very important that uh in the entire journey of user if you have the current audience targeting in place then you can also have a good creative to back it up and a good landing page right which if all three are in sync there's like the likelihood of a user converting becomes uh better so for example right if I know the users are converting in uh in Vegas in our in our case right uh on a Sunday and I create a campaign Target in Vegas on a Sunday right and then I back it up and I run on Buffalo slot uh based creative and then my app store Page where the user that reader is also having Buffalo videos and stuff like that in the in the App Store the likelihood of a user converting uh becomes becomes better right so that's what I mean by creative play that's a lot of your managers are trying to focus on just try

and testing you know it's basically testing Traders are basically testing so you try and create a lot more versions of creatives and figure out which video is buffering better and you know just keep on playing uh and making changes to the creative production creative and working very closely with the creativity working very closely with the platform creative team as well because one thing that I would strongly suggest is you know uh sometimes the platform creative teams uh when I step back from previous I mean like the Facebook creative team or the YouTube creative team they give a lot better input because they understand the market better and they understand their platform better than uh than the year manager or the creative team on our side it's also very uh good to work with them so in that sense that's that's how I was differentiating you know saying these two kind of uh your managers exist and obviously there are a bunch of us are also uh focused on both so you know that's also true for a lot of developers out there a lot of creators the focus is the player you know and it always has been but now there's a way of quantifying finding out there's a way of of really kind of getting that granular understanding of

what your players want what they respond to and yet data data is the enabler but it's more about the focus on the player so I I think that will speak to an awful lot of people who are listening in that is true I mean and also like again the change that is happening in this industry also is that the targeting is becoming more and more of a problem when I say targeting is becoming problem what I mean is you know the creative angle is still there I think a lot of your managers are being very creative and working very closely with the create team to figure out okay can this work and this work can can we just run some Grant creative and see exactly how that performs and then convert the user to a performance driven and stuff like that right what's the flow in the entire uh you know in the entire narrative is we always relied the industry always relied on its NGA fundamentally right because that's the only uh ad user identifier that that you can be used across industry you want to suppress and the idea of it you want to Target send the idea of it you want personalized ads and the idea frame it has always been an industry where idfa

and GID were significant and you know that's that was the only way to communicate uh with among amongst each other right so I think that has changed and that has created a problem with targeting especially on the iOS side and I I have a hunch that it will also become a problem on the Android side because again if you are doing a privacy uh conversation GID idefar very specific user identifier that is the public information let's say which it should not be it was if you're doing your privacy thing right so if both of them uh you know like IDF is already sort of become more of an opt-in from a user standpoint and GID could potentially go in that again I'm being speculating I'm creating a speculation right now I don't know if it will but it could go in that direction now if that happens what are we left with we are left with essentially using contextual data to Target because now I cannot figure out if Brian is also playing similar kind of games historically for me to Target you with an ad that could potentially uh you know you could potentially convert it now

what I'll do is I'll I'll Target an audience so in this area in Scotland in UK these are side of type of pair uh player who are potentially converting right so let's say a user who is at 2 will be at 2 pm in the afternoon playing a game uh you know in a particular city under a particular in uh like probably using a Wi-Fi and stuff like that all the contextual data that you can collect right and Target that user but the problem is it was always with when users were there when you were targeting when you were doing user targeting the CPS went up because certain users became very uh became more expensive for the industry as compared to other users who were not converting that well now when you're doing the audience your CPM might not be that high but your likelihood of converting a player would also reduce with that right because now you're more or less doing a spray and a pre-con conversation essentially because saying that you know please convert these users but you have a bunch of users out of which some would converted some wouldn't so I think that

targeting is a big factor that has changed uh in certain sense and obviously in the rise of uh you know aggregated data uh what is what I mean by that is like if we look at how the Privacy thing has evolved over the past three years basically Apple said that you know what scan I'm Gonna Give You alligator that's fine you got the aggregated everybody finally accepted it there were a lot of issues when it when it started but now I think everybody's on board and I just feel that Apple loves to give us a math problem every single time with scan 2.0 scan 3.0 scan 4.0 and stuff like that if you look at on the Android side which is Facebook saying that we're not going to share the user level data anymore across the board click or view through conversions right that's a very important thing because I think what Facebook is anticipating is that even on Android things go in that direction let's be already prepared and stop sharing all of these data points I think Tick Tock did that with view through uh and Facebook dealing with click through and view through so all the srns uh Snapchat in Twitter might have certain uh policies in that

direction but I think that what they're doing is they're fundamentally uh you know saying that okay this may come on Android side as well let's be prepared from the start I'm not sharing anything I'm not sharing unusable data but I'm still using user level data for my algorithms I'm still targeting and optimizing but in terms of reporting no longer you're going to get usability as an Advertiser so it's been quite a quite a fascinating change uh you know on that front it's been very challenging but you brought up a point I want to get back to because I've heard people in the industry talk about how important it is to optimize the landing page but I haven't heard people talk about making a journey out of it that's exciting that there is perhaps a range or an uplift you can share so we are testing some bits of it on with CPP for example the custom product page on on iOS right so and it's been uh honest I mean I can't share the numbers right now but you know like it's it's uh it's really fascinating to see that for some of the partners it's working it's not working across the board or to be very honest

but I do believe fundamentally in the idea I think there is some reporting and attribution issue with uh you know how things are getting reported that's a different uh you know sort of play with with CBP and not part of scam and stuff like that there's a lot of issues on that side but fundamentally I do believe in this philosophy of saying because his here's how you build the trust thing from a user standpoint if I'm if I'm playing a game and there's an ad out there right and I look in an ad and okay I may have clicked on the ad and I go to the Play Store if the ad is talking about something else and the Play Store page is talking about something else and I'm not aware of the brand of this game I might not go for it I'll be like no it's something else you know so that's that's what I mean by having that fascination of having the creative and the landing page in sync uh in certain sense it's the Integrity it's that you know um relationship that you're trying to build with the with the player um and if you don't have that Brand's recognition if you don't have the the

existing trust then building a pathway where they feel that they're being acknowledged you know they feel that they actually have um I'm going to use the word agency I'm afraid but but you know they have some agency but then the the choice mechanism because otherwise you know you are you feel as though that the company is is somehow um letting you down it's being deceitful I think the world you're looking for is potentially misleading at uh you know that's the way but but yeah you know but but the point is that I don't think a lot of advertisers are trying to mislead I think what they've uh what they're failing at potentially in my opinion is having a sink in in what the creative is speaking about and again what what the Play Store is showing uh because misleading ads I mean we've all we've all spoken about it we've seen that in the industry and you know uh especially players there have been a couple of

issues as well in the history but yeah I mean I completely agree it's it's a fascinating journey in that sense and also if we are able to sort out the targeting part with it because targeting creative and the landing page all three right now targeting is an issue because of lack of idfa and you know potentially the same thing could happen in GID as well if you're able to figure that out I think this this narrative could potentially uh work are there any kind of shortcuts are there any sort of techniques that you find that you would care to share where they can maybe you know expedite things a little bit or or get to the conclusion a little quicker or even more efficiently if you are an early stage developer right uh you're probably don't you wouldn't want to play around with a lot of media mix you would want to limit it to just one or two partners right but if you're a late stage one I think what uh you know for example the bigger advertisers but I'll suggest one thing that that that potentially I mean this again my take on time it's not a company state or anything like that but I just feel that I think brand

advertising should become pretty big in gaming industry because what I mean by that is I also believe that for every single kind of category you look at hyper casually look at on the social consumer you look at RMG any any specific subgenres of gaming that you look at the fact remains that there are just too many games now unless you have a brand already built it goes back to what I was talking about user trust right if you don't have a brand already because then then it's a longer Journey then you'll have to run multiple multiple levels of uh you know performance ads and eventually the user might convert maybe play once go back uninstall then maybe six months down the line when the user is bored in a different mind space they use my convert and start playing the game right so it becomes a longer Journey with brand I believe the journey is shorter to the conversion the problem remains right now that because gaming is so Performance Marketing heavy the conviction and the KPS of brand are very different you'll require a different conviction to

run brand and you have to start looking at a completely different picture of uh you know how Brand Plus performance overall is affecting uh the marketing instead of figuring out how exactly the brand is going to reduce the conversion window right now and you know the users want to convert quickly brand is a long-term play it will it's probably one two years long term play right so just a small burst and stuff like that I don't think it would eventually work because uh in gaming specifically the users don't have a very long term memory especially in the hyper casual space and you know casual space I would suggest for for them maybe get a bit more into grant for early stage maybe just limit yourself to uh you know not a lot of media mix test a lot because early stage I think testing would become very very important test lot I think marketing should be in sync with product it becomes very important I know we all talk about it but but the fact remains that if the product is speaking a different language in marketing I think it becomes a problem uh and that especially happens in the early stage uh startup or gaming environment because at the end because

you know product is product is the one driving the company more or less but then marketing is uh you know showcasing at something else which is not even working for the users right so having that uh that conviction and having that thought process a Clarity of thought processing that you know what is product what what are the products that are working what are the features of products that are working take that build a creative concept on that and run with it and see how exactly uh you know that goes the appetite for Brands it's like it's building that long-term relationship it's like working sympathetically with Brands it's like and you mentioned hyper casual but you've equally got games out there on the market that are 10 in some cases 12 years old and if you're talking about long-term brand development that's that seems like an area that's right I mean one of our apps I mean if I have to just plug my company in there you know how to Vegas is like 2012. so like it's been 11 years of the app and it's still running it's still doing well so there is a brand Connection in there uh you know so it's it's clear that in long term it works

it clearly oh well so keep a space in your diary I think we might have to come back on that one in on it I don't know if you've seen it but the recent brag indexes that have come out yeah yeah yeah Power of brand and how important that does I mean I think we have to have you back and maybe weigh in on one of them because uh the whole idea that there's a brand velocity and there's a brand impact on UA you can punch above your weight literally as as a game so so small players can have big impact through your brand very much so very much so and yes that's a conversation I want to be in on I do have to get to one topic though um because it's just the topic right and you've said it yourself when we were in prep UA is not UA without AI I mean how convinced are you of that uh look again what I'm going to say is complete speculation it's my take on it it's not something that you know I would say that that is universal out there my take on this is

I think the pace of uh Evolution on the AI side is faster than anything that we imagine till now I mean just to compare I mean blockchain Tech has been existing for like 12 15 years and you know it has the pace of change has not been or the adoption of it has not been that uh at that page are similar to how AI has sort of been adopted right but what I mean by that I know I mean mlai and stuff like that we have in our industry we have heard this this term multiple times like any any partner you talk to okay we have MLA and we have MLA we're working with algorithm and stuff like that it's a speculation which is saying will there be a future five is down the line there will be model good enough to say okay just assign the budget this much twenty percent of Facebook 30 to Google 20 objective 30 new tsps and stuff like that and again we have something like that Medium X model and stuff like that in the market but like what I'm going to say is like if you build some leather and then it automates everything well what I mean by automation is like it can just go to the get the added access on Facebook just create the campaigns keep

an optimizing because they have a kpi in there because the system has a kpi and system will keep on learning from it it will send an email to the bsp managed partners and you know just optimize towards this particular API because what would be the role of your managed five years down the line that's what I've been thinking about and I and I don't know if whatever optimization that we do manually right now or uh you know throughout through your manager's hard work I don't know if those would continue to remain uh in the future technically you can only optimize with certain number of tsps with managed partners and stuff like that but because Facebook Google Tick Tock you cannot do I'm not saying you can't optimize what I'm trying to say is the levels optimization are already very less because they are sort of black boss what they do is completely internal they have a huge product and that product is working for everybody you know so what happens when the the the absolute Brilliance of the product on on the srn side is combined with the uh with with whatever manual thing that a u manager does and it becomes it is also

done through AI what happens in that one then what what exactly would be the role of your manager so that's what I mean by that I mean obviously very early days very very early days but I do believe your managers uh need to start up Skilling keep a keep a good look at how exactly things are evolving on the aisle because right now ai is impacting the artists in true you know like in true fashion it's just impacting the artist and right now that's where the focus has been and creative in generative Ai and uh you know generative creative and stuff like that like that that is becoming very important would there be a tool in the future that would also adhere to the guidelines of an Advertiser and create creators from scratch because right now whatever the creditors are being created are uh are basically around different rendered version of the creator that we have provided them right so will there be an AI tool that will provide you a complete creative from scratch keeping the guidelines of the advertiser in place and keeping the color correction and everything there are very specific brand

uh limitations that an Advertiser has keeping everything in place will there be a tool like that I don't know but if that happens to me you know again the peso Evolution would be fascinating to see that that is a great question and I think it's a question that you should feed straight into chat GPT and ask it directly uh yeah I would have definitely I think we should definitely next time because I asked you know what like I asked uh Chad Jeopardy and this was before when it was released back like in October or something like that and that was the first question that I asked how are you feeling and it responded by saying I don't have any emotion and stuff like that and it was really fascinating then that became a meme at a later stage also but activities yeah it's interesting yeah it's really interesting and I'm gonna put that question Brian thanks for that so I guess the last question just to to round off what we were talking about is have you ever had any direct experience with AI chat GPT or any of

its colleagues and competitors that we've tried to rule into your your work try to rule into your um everyday tasks as it were I mean except on the creative side now I think we're testing uh generative creative uh genetic AI created basically uh that's something we are testing right now but yeah I mean apart from that I have not seen it but yeah I do believe I mean in terms of the set of areas it's set to impact marketing would come in pretty last because they have bigger bigger things out there that that it will impact first but yeah I mean going back to your question I think creative is one area that's directly seeing an impact and uh it's it's just fascinating to see how many versions of one Creator you can create and again you know we've had a couple of really great podcast recording sessions with people working directly um within the AI realm and from people using it for played straightforward creative um or content creation through to those

helping to find efficiencies and and kind of um sleeker ways of doing things now we do have a couple of questions that we like to ask all of our guests so we'll we'll leave you for these two so first of all what's the favorite game what game are you currently playing that you're kind of playing more than anything else and secondly what's your favorite game of all time right now I'm not uh a big too much in the game but the game that I'm playing is today smash uh it's uh you know it's more of a Simulator game and it's really fun all right just destroying things not using your brain it's it's really it's really interesting and fun to play with but the question to your my favorite game of all time is I'll say because I used to play a lot on console and PC basically and I would say Call of Duty and Hitman uh there was a game called Hitman as well uh Hitman 47 uh you know uh so those two games I'll say I mean always been because it's also nostalgic because we used to play a lot when I was a kid it Still Remains one of the best games

wonderful and the nice thing about those there are no wrong answers or at least yeah there are wrong answers but we're just doing broadcast those you know you're being polite to me thanks Brian not at all not at all but it says so listen one very last question in terms of you know we know you're out in the road a lot so so where are we going to see you next where will our listeners be able to see you in in terms of events now hopefully again as I said we are restarting our podcast I think we've take we took a break of like three four months also because I was getting married uh entering the process so congratulations but yeah I mean thank you so yeah I mean I think we're going to restart that uh by end of this month that's the aim that we're gonna restart and hopefully do it again but go back to bi-weekly that we used to have in terms of the next conference I'm not sure I have not signed up for anything new till

now but yeah I mean let's let's see not not till now but yeah I mean I'm just thinking which one do I go for well I have to say it's been absolutely delightful I've already got ebooked for another one pH because you brought up some really good points and you're so practical and you shared you know here it is for free on our podcast thanks so much and we do have to get you back on because I want to I want to drill down into some of those big chunky topics and and have another good conversation with you so you're welcome back anytime always up for it thank you this show is all about how to do your job better how to make an amazing game how to Market it and you have a say so if you have a story or know someone we need to shine a light on then we would love to hear from you we want to hear from you we want to reflect the reality of the mobile games Market in all its

wonderful complexity and strangeness so if you have any suggestions for us if you have any feedback for us you can always get in touch you can email us at podcast pocketgamer.biz you can find us on Twitter at PG Biz and you can reach out to us through thepocketgamer.biz website if you're interested in listening to all of their podcasts you can find them at pocketgamer.biz forward slash podcast and we would love to hear your thoughts on future shows and we've got you covered on all the major platforms so subscribe to the audio podcast as Brian said look for us on YouTube if you want to read it hey you can do that too because we have a companion post for you as well on thepocketgamer.biz website tune in again for the next edition of the perfectgamer.biz podcast and we look forward to speaking to you in the near future until then I'm Brian baglo I'm Peggy Ann saltz and that's a wrap until next week foreign