Reinvigorating In-game Monetisation With Audio Ads - Munib Tahir of AudioMob

[Music] thank you so we'll get started with our first Speaker who is munib Tahir of odomob so please welcome him to the stage I'll hand over to you [Applause] hope everyone can hear me yeah so amunib I'm head of gaming Partnerships at audio mob and uh basically I'm gonna talk about how audio mob is helping the industry being a really key stakeholder in bringing users Publishers and advertisers together so before I get into it as mobile Gamers

raise of hands for all the people who like video or interstitial ads not anyone that's good uh so one second so basically what audio mob is doing we're Pioneer of in-game audio ads what we are trying to do is that bring a very user-centric ad experience to the user as a as a mobile gamer uh you know we have seen a lot of kind of retention damage because users don't like video interstitial ads so uh we kind of pioneered the technology and bring this platform whereas a user you continue to play your game and the ad is played in the background and as a publisher or game developer you have new incremental source of Revenue and then by doing that we are bringing new slate of advertisers

who traditionally were not focused towards in-game uh advertising as well I'll give you a few examples in a bit we're based out of London so basically both of our co-founders worked at Google and they wanted to stream their music in in some of the games that they developed so one thing led to the other and then audio mob was formed a few years back we're one of the top startups uh in London and Europe as well recently named by Business Insider as well the unique thing about audio mob is that it's very user-centric so keeping user in mind and on the other end uh you know talking uh when we work with Publishers we're trying to do the right placements so that it's very least intrusive and uh I'll get into some formats as well where it's very user generated and by doing that we're also bringing new slate of advertisers such as big music studios

Warner Music Sony music to name a few and uh some branding ads as well so what we try to do it is make it as contextual as possible so and I'll give you some examples where if you're playing a racing game then the ad will be of some car manufacturer or something of that sort so uh a lot of flies around but um so actually yeah as I mentioned it's non-intrusive very user-centric it's uh programmatic we work directly with a lot of agencies and advertisers because in audio space there are not a lot of dsps and we don't want to bombard with some random ads so we've worked with the advertisers directly and that's why we're able to offer very good cpms and also try to make those campaigns very contextual so for example it's a puzzle game and the ad will talk about something about puzzle as well I'll show you some examples in a bit and then most

importantly uh with audio ads it's not something that we're not saying to replace your video or interstitial ads eventually I think it might happen though because users love it Publishers gonna have new source of Revenue however it's gonna be an incremental source of Revenue so it's your monetization Stacks stays as it is but we do couple of audio ad placements and what's gonna lead to is no retention damage really good experience for users and as a publisher you're able to add new source of Revenue on how you're generating Revenue currently so just to give you an example here's a social point game by social point it's called word life puzzle game and I'll play the video in a bit so you will see it's a puzzle game and as a user instead of uh you have the option you can watch a video ad or you can listen to an audio

ad and then you continue to play the game and the ad is played in the background so let's have a listen [Music] here's a word q u e s t whether a quest for knowledge brain training and a new word life high score or a quest for strength physical training and a balanced mind body and soul quests make delicious athlete worthy nutrition cookies chips bars shakes and more protein forward recipes that aren't packed with sugar and net carbs Quest Nutrition it's way bigger than a protein bar it's a quest foreign so as you can see it's a puzzle game the ad is mentioning something about words as well so it's very contextual and uh also advertisers love it because it

costs a little bit less than video traditionally and then it has very high engagement rates as well now we often get asked the question that what if it's muted or if the you know so we did our independent research and what we found out that 60 of the users they're listening to some sort of app while they're playing their games so it could be Spotify it could be some podcasts and whatnot so what we our technology does is that firstly we are the only company and we have uh IP on that as well that we detect the device volume level and if it's 30 and above only then uh the ad event takes place only then the ad is played if it's below 30 then we have some other way around it secondly you know if the user is listening to Spotify for example so what our plugin does is that it pauses that background app the ad is played and then

it unpausees the app so as a user you have a very seamless kind of experience and and then you know a lot of actually we see really good traction with rewarded audio ads which are user generated so user is getting some sort of a reward while uh you know they're playing the game they tap on something the audio ad plays in the background they're having the reward uh so I'll show you an example of our in-house built Runners game and what you will see here is that you know as you're playing the game the user uh got a reward of invincibility and but if they reduce the volume the reward goes away and a user gets a prompt to raise their volume they just have to tap it and the ad continues and they keep on having the reward so let's have a look at that 24th of March say hello to Disney plus start streaming the most talked about movies series and

documentaries so right here from Marvel plus Star Wars user kind of lowered the volume and the reward goes away however the prompt comes on the top to continue to having your reward please tap here the user tab said the volume automatically goes up and uh the user can continue and it's very Marvel customizable optional uh if as a developer you want to have it for sure we can do it if not then we can work around something else Plus Star Wars plus Disney plus Pixar plus National Geographic all in one place so uh we have a Unity plugin very seamless integration possible uh we're gonna be supporting native uh games as well starting from Q4 IUS uh q1 so right

now we're supporting only Games built on Unity there are three sorts of formats possible there's Audio Only so the audio ad automatically is triggered and it plays in the background there's the audio Banner where instead of traditional Banner there's the audio banner and as a user you can interact with that it directs you to another landing page and then lastly it's the rewarded audio format where it's typical uh but typical like uh rewarded video ad but instead of video there's audio and for that there are different sorts of placements possible so uh you know a user get a special boost for listening to an audio ad or small reward compared to what they will get uh for video uh but you know I think the more important thing is that it's a incremental source of Revenue so what we're saying is that let's not replace video

ads we're just gonna do a couple of other placements for audio ads so that it's an incremental new source of Revenue to how you're monetizing already so here are a couple of more examples uh first one is uh campaign by Disney it's uh yeah let me play that [Music] hello to Disney plus start streaming the most talked about movies series and documentaries from Marvel plus Star Wars all in one place visit disneyplus.com for more so it's a user generated the tab to get some extra coins then the address plays in the background while they continue to playing their game similarly there's another ad by Procter and Gamble Let's uh have a look at that ever wondered what life is like for your baby you're already living it solving puzzles exploring new worlds now you can explore

together with pampers active fit nappies our number one for comfort and fit with up to 12 hour leakage Protection Plus we're giving away a free pack this June click the banner to find out more teas and C's apply so as you can hear uh you know the ads are very uh kind of contextual as well it's a puzzle game and it mentioned solving a puzzle and click the banner to interact with it so there's call to action so that's why advertisers kind of really like it because there's really good engagement rates as users you know it's great I think the only issue generally that we see with some Publishers are generally with users as they don't like the ads because it's intrusive they gotta wait 30 seconds 15 seconds and it comes every now and then whereas audio ads what we have seen with a lot of publishers is that users really want to have those rewards more and more because they continue to play they are very seamless experience

example of a car racing game uh the problem comes the user gets us a boost and uh yeah the ad plays in the background while uh they continue to play [Music] hi do you have a table for four tonight all right Aussie completely booked out yeah since February forgot to book a table for Mother's Day that deserves your favorite food delivery like Namaste Lounge Chuck Burgers or ask Italian with delivery you can track right to your door in Watford that deserves delivery download the app today geographical restriction Supply subject to terms and conditions so as you're playing a racing game there's an ad of food delivery which is very contextual because you can speed up to deliver the food foreign

[Music] so as I mentioned we have a very robust Unity plugin it's very easy and seamless to integrate you just sign up on our dashboard uh install the latest Unity plugin and you know from that point on we start the conversation we work on what kind of implementations are right we do the actual demos for your games so we work on what kind of placements are going to reveal to best results and you know continue from there from the initial testing phase we had some Publishers integrated within four hours it can take up to maximum you know 10 hours to integrate and then from that point on we start testing if everything is good then we you know generally our Publishers then roll out across their entire audience and gradually to other bigger titles or sometimes they're just testing

on the bigger games from the get-go so uh some of the Publishers that we're currently working with are the likes of voodoo social point I shared one example tab Nation triple Dot and then there are several others that we are currently in talks with and uh they're gonna be launched in Q4 or q1 uh probably with the likes of outfit 7 Miniclip and a few others uh the other thing is on the advertising side we work directly with advertisers so we're bringing this new slate of advertisers that traditionally didn't advertise in-game so it was such as Warner Music Universal Music so we do certain times their campaigns done for artists specifically uh by them where they're promoting their new albums or new releases in games so traditionally that didn't happen before so you know it's a kind of a win-win for everyone having new advertisers in the industry Publishers having new incremental source

of Revenue without any retention damage to their users and then users kind of liking this new format and yeah that's about it pretty much there's this is our inbuilt game it's called Keynes the rush so feel free to download it it's available on both Google and iOS and uh yeah you can test it out it's gonna show all different ads you can interact at uh uh yourself so yeah that's it if any questions [Music] [Applause] oh yes absolutely thanks very much are there any questions we do have time oh wow there's loads of questions we'll try and do as many as we can I think one of our we'll get around as many as we can do hello can you hear me yeah I've got loads of questions probably we should catch up after this but like three cool questions as you mentioned the Audio Level thingy do you require microphone for that or like do you have some other

walk arounds for that and also like in the context of like uh game Connect here like I come from joaka we're a very uh big developer in the mini region do you have any mediated ads for our region and if so I like you you you you you mentioned a lot about the context point of view like how would you handle this here in the Mina region do you have any other local Publishers or how do you go around that thank you so very good question actually so firstly we don't need control uh we don't need permission from Mike to detect the uh volume level secondly you know I'm gonna connect to Tamer who's actually our advertising and sales strategist just for maina region so we try to work directly with the advertisers based out of maina region so there will be campaigns running for Egypt for example for uh Dubai UAE and and different regions as well for actually brands that

are based out of mina for the main audience and that's why you know it's able to do good cpms Target the local kind of audience and yeah we can probably do a couple more questions so there's this lady in the second room so uh I just can't see any hyperlinks uh during the video so how can someone go to the ad if they can't really pronounce the or they don't know anything about the advertisements during the video sure absolutely so we have two different formats so there's all ads without the banner so you can think about it as radio ads you know while you're listening to radio as there's no interaction It's just sometimes brand awareness ads uh and

then there's some advertisers for them it's important that you know users kind of are directed to sometimes something and that's why they're banners so they're audio banners while the ad is playing the relevant Banner will be down there so they they can tap on it and it redirects you so it can it can be very interactive in that sense so yeah it really depends on the advertiser what they want to achieve out of that yeah good question uh sure any any more questions yeah hi um first of all thanks all for the presentation I think audio is definitely part of the future so great to see that it's happening um I had a question with regards to uh the non-banner format so in one of the videos that you showed us there was an audio playing but there was also a banner that was being shown from another Advertiser now from a user standpoint when they're trying to like figure out the words or play puzzle game can get pretty confusing because they're focusing on one thing plus being

targeted by a banner that's different than the audio that's playing so how do you think advertise Publishers are gonna mitigate that and since audio is probably going to have lower cpms than Banner how can they not cannibalize one or the other when they Implement audio ads great questions so firstly I think we need to update that video because we don't recommend that uh kind of placement so usually we will do audio which is uh complementary to the banner so it's by the same brand usually it doesn't happen however sometimes uh some Publishers they just want to do Audio Only and they don't want to disrupt their existing banners so it's not the best but you know whatever makes sometimes a monetization manager is happy we don't recommend that we recommend to have same Banner secondly in terms of cpms actually you'll be surprised how good cpm's audio has compared to banners especially so for

banners traditionally generally it could be even less than a dollar whereas uh audio ads it's it's way way higher so it's not cannibalizing on that and also the other thing we sometimes do is that uh we just replace one of the banners with audio where it's no competition at all in any way in terms of Revenue because very very high cpms for uh audio ads and uh the other uh solution is to do placements outside of those banner ads and also we don't recommend too many uh audio ads in one user session so that there's no retention damage as well thank you foreign

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