Rewarded marketplaces and how surprise equals engagement | Lisanne Vera from Kashkick #PGConnects

We are now joined by Lisa from Cashkick. How are you doing today?
Great. Happy to be here. Thank you.
Excellent. Now, I know I spoke to one of your team members over in Helsinki, but if someone hasn't seen that video, just as a a general idea, what is it that Cashkick does?
Cashkick is a rewarded marketplace where users can earn money for playing games, taking surveys, donating to charity, or doing any of the fun things they're already doing online. So it's that rewarded play kind of.
Yes. So um for gamers it would be uh rewarded UA for that.
Excellent. And your focus specifically is on the UA side. Is that right?
Yeah. I do the user acquisition for Cashkick specifically.
Excellent. So I've talked to a lot of people over the years about this exact thing and the importance of it. A lot of people are talking about the balance between focusing on UA versus focusing on retention and that kind of thing. But specifically on the UA and the making that I suppose they call it a funnel, don't they? the funnel optimization of

trying to ensure people flow through.
Yeah.
In your experience and specifically for your kind of platform, what is the best way to get people on board with cash and with your your version of gaming? I suppose.
Oh, that's a good question. I think um well, first and foremost, one of my biggest rules of UA is you have to surprise the user. If you tell them something they don't already know or if it's a product they've already heard about, they're just going to keep scrolling. So, um it's all about surprising them. And then for our um business model, it's about educating them because they need to understand because we're talking about playing games, right? So we're saying like, oh, you can play these games and it's so great, but they have to really understand that they need to come through Cashkick to get those rewards to actually get rewarded for playing it and kind of how it works that they have to either reach certain levels or make an inapp purchase or whatever it is to actually earn the money. So there's a bit of education. Um but the education has to be fun cuz as soon as the user thinks they're being educated, they're out. So, um, it's really making it personable. We do a lot of UGC for that reason. So, it looks like an influencer

saying, "Oh my god, I play these games online and this company actually pays me to do it." Isn't that great? And making it very like personable and easy and digestible
cuz there is that extra layer of friction, I guess, with your platform where there is that extra quantity that needs to be accounted for and as you say, explained.
Yeah. Um, we see a lot of people, not a lot, and this is something we battle against all the time, but let's say we're talking about playing a bingo game, and I won't name any specific ones,
that the user will just not look at our ad and then download that bingo game and forget the part about coming through Cashkick, but then they don't earn the rewards cuz they didn't come through Cashkick. You know what I mean? So, there is a bit of that just education of understanding that you need to flow through Cashkick and we'll tell you what you need to do to get the rewards. And then obviously once they're in our platform, it's very easy for us to remind them and kind of nurture them through that process.
Do you see a lot of churn from people assuming it's just a regular app or like you say forgetting and then moving away? And is there a difference between the kind of people who do churn out, but those who stick around once they realize

what the what the platform does and they if they clearly enjoy receiving the rewards and get them, do you find there's an extra stickiness to those kind of people based on what you see?
Oh, absolutely. the people that stay, I mean, stay for months or years. Um, and there can be a harder churn. I find that different channels have different levels of churn and, um, the ones that are more um, like just display focused where there's not a lot of that personal education, we see a higher churn rate versus like ones that I would consider more like long for content. Um, but then once they're in, it is a little bit easier to kind of remind them why they're here and get them back once they've come in.
And I it in many ways like the cash kick thing itself is a platform. So the DTOC thing has become incredibly chatty recently. Everyone's talking about it basically. And in many ways as cash kick is like a platform in and of itself is a kind of a form of DTOC, right? Like people can download the these games through the app store, regular app stores, or do they have to come to you?

They would still have to go through the app store. So they would come to us, they would click to download the game, it would still take them to the app store to download it.
So I get Yeah. So it's like there's consumer, then back to the app store, then back to you guys again.
I see. And I know that sounds like an extra step, but what's important to understand is it's almost like a qualified lead. The intent of a user is so much stronger when they come through Cashkick or probably any rewarded platform than it is if they just come from the app store or direct from an advertisement because you have to think instead of just seeing something and they're like, "Oh yeah, what is it?" It's like we've really nurtured them through the funnel. We've educated them at every step and then even once they get inside of Cashkick, we're telling them about your game. We're, you know, showing them what the gameplay looks like. We're telling them about the different levels and what they can earn. by the time they get to your game, this is like a very high intent user at that point and which is why our gaming studios say that they see much better retention through us than anywhere else.
Okay. And in terms of like discoverability, if people find Cashkick, the platform, and then go that

way, obviously they understand that there is this extra layer, can people just download the game from the app store, discover it on on, you know, Apple's app store on or Android? And then is there anything to indicate by the way if you go back to cash kick at this point there is this extra component to this particular game. Can you like reverse?
No.
Is it really has to
it has to originate. Now if you a user played mobile games right now and then you find cashick and there's new games that you play and you discover them through cashick. You could get rewards for those. But if you're already playing Monopoly Go and then you download Cashkick and you think, "Oh, now I'll get rewarded." No, it doesn't work like that. The games don't want to pay us for users that they already have. Sure. So it the the the journey has to originate through.
That makes sense. That makes sense. And the kind of users that you attract, do you think that you are identifying a section of the market that was under catered for? I.e. you're finding people who have always wanted to kind of earn money to play games or do you think that you're converting traditional gamers and going, "Hey, by the way, as well as

playing the game and having a good time, you could earn a little bit of something on the side." And and like do you think your audience is populated by one or the other or is it both?
It's definitely both.
So, um I think one of our big cells is if you're already playing games, we can pay you to do it. And we see a really good retention from users that are already playing games because they have an affinity for it. They like to play games. So, it's very easy to say, "Hey, play this game, too, or play this game also." And and you know, we'll reward you to do it. And since it the thing is with users, you'll never get them to do something they don't actually like to do, no matter what the reward is, right? Um, so if you find people that like playing games, it's very easy to just convert them to, well, I don't want to say easy, it's it's e it's doable to convert them to a new game. The people that don't like playing games, yes, we can surprise them and say, "Hey, you did you know you could play games on your phone and we'll pay you." And sometimes those users are really great and sometimes those are the ones that churn because everybody that wants to play mobile games is playing mobile games.

We're not surprising anybody with this idea that you can play mobile games on your phone, right? Um so there is this element of if they're not doing it already, it may not be the thing that they like to do. But in those cases, what we try to remind them of is there's so many types of games like maybe they don't realize that they like solitire as a card game. They can play that on their phone too. they may not realize that they could play Monopoly on their phone or you know any of these games. They might be thinking of traditional kind of like video game types. Um and it's not just that. So um again just going through the education but I would definitely say it's both higher quality is with the people that are already playing games.
Okay. And what's the biggest challenge when it comes to that initial step to actually getting people to find and cash kick in the first place? It's a incredibly crowded marketplace. We've now opened it up to the point where DTOC exists and that everyone's got their own independent little platforms and app stores of their own. So now there's even more there's even more shops on the high street, let's say, for the player to visit. How do how do they get to yours? What's the what's the biggest challenge for getting you know Cash Kick out there

in the world?
Well, the the challenge is always just being unique because if you look on the you know on the social platforms on the DSPs, all the ads kind of look the same. Um, so I would say the challenge is always sticking out because I think users get accustomed to seeing ads and they get very like, "Oh, it's an ad. Keep scrolling. It's an ad. Skip." And so the challenge is making it not feel like an ad. Making it feel native to the experience on the platform that they're in so they actually want to watch the content. And then once we have them watching, we have this like finite opportunity to convince them that they should, you know, download Cashkick and see what we have to offer. Um, but yeah, I would say it's standing out and being unique is the biggest challenge.