Session: Conquering The Multichannel Battlefield With Wargaming & SplitMetrics.

[Music] next up we've got um a talk from Thomas creeg from split metrics and Arina crso I hope I'm pronouncing that right uh from wargaming so they're going to talk about conquering the multi-channel battlefield yeah with war gaming and split metrics perfect thank you very much and welcome everybody uh to the Pocket Gamer connect Welcome to our session where we are going to talking about conquering the Marty Channel as well as Marty platform Battlefield a Cas study between wargaming and split metrics before we jump into it please give us some time to uce ourselves handing the mic over to

Paulina would be nice if you could tell the audience about you oh thank you Thomas so I'm Paulina and I'm user acquisition manager at War gaming I have uh over nine years of experience in digital marketing starting with the web marketing on the engine side and I joined uh game development industry in 2018 already on the product side and now I'm specializing in self reports and networks thank you very much uh my name is Thomas Kuan I'm the general manager at the split metrix agency I can look back in working more than 20 years in digital marketing I'm a ex hardcore gamer and hobby DJ funnily enough this is my third time on stage within the last three days because I've been playing at The Geek last weekend as well uh I founded AA in the year 2015 uh which got acquired in 2023 by split metrics and since then I'm working there at the agency um since we're talking about Marty Chanel and Marty platform let me take you to a short history trip

together also with my personal kind of connections uh to gaming yeah well to be honest I didn't start gaming in 1972 so I'm not that old yeah but this was you know like when video games became the first thing with the release of computer space on Atari back then on the first console 1990 the first mobile device that had its breakthrough with the Game Boy this is also where my gaming career started 1995 we had the PlayStation which was also I think a breakthrough moment 1999 we had Counter Strike which was kind of opening up competitive multiplayer gaming also personally I played way too much Counter Strike Back Then offline and online um moving forward 2010 Mobile gaming became a thing uh I think I guess most in this audience have played Angry Birds or Candy Crush can I see a hand if you played Angry Birds or Candy Crush yeah okay yeah 99% I would say um and in the year 2010 to 2020 I was also publishing

and releasing my own games um more than 20 uh my biggest success was Floppy Bird which as the name tells you was a rip of of Flappy Bird and when Flappy Bird got uh removed from the App Store Floppy Bird was there and captured 1 million downloads within 30 days without a zero uh Cent spent on marketing and uh 2020 I would say was the Breakthrough moment for the next platform which is we are gaming with halflife Alex which is if you haven't played it you know play it it's really amazing in terms of what is possible with this technology and when we look at the gaming Market nowadays I mean here we have some really impressive numbers uh first of all I would say that nearly every second person on this planet is playing video games which is insane if you think about it um the distribution is mobile I think obviously in some kind of way has the highest adoption because it's also the yeah I guess everybody more or less has a smartphone is the story in the

background followed by PC and then we have console players however since we're also talking a about business I think it's also very important to have a look at how much revenue is typically generated by platform and here we can also see a very clear Trend that players uh on the console are spending the most money on games on average per year followed by PC and Then followed by mobile but once again if you multiply the the market size as such with the revenue then you we can you can also see that mobile is the biggest Market uh when we look at how players out there are also consuming games uh on those different platforms uh there are also some very interesting numbers as well as some interesting insights I think uh when we think about mobile uh first of all it's not the most so you don't play you know like the most time on your mobile phone however you typically play the most sessions on your mobile phone which I think is also corresponding very much if we look at the number one chart

which is hyper casual still soon will will most likely hybrid casual yeah but this is where the most sessions happen when we look at conso and PC we typically play longer per session which I guess also makes sense if we will look at the most play chars there as well which are Adventure on Console as well as shooter RPGs and Adventure on PC and when we now look at the combined picture first of all also very interesting stat here is as well that nearly 50% of all players are playing games on at least two platforms um mobile and you know console or PC uh kind of is I think the the most common combination also here I mean no big surprise yeah if you play games on three platforms chances are that you spend a lot of time playing games yeah which adds up to on average more than 11 hours more than 11 hours per week if you're playing games on three platforms and also when we look at the mon monetization of Gamers also there I

think no big surprise if you play games on three platforms chances are very very high that you're also spending money on games uh and in precisely 85% of players actually do that compared if only mobile for example and then let's say only Mobile on Android chances are that people are not spending money directly on games so the question is uh we're talking a lot of about different platforms and um you you should be there I think is the answer yeah but how do you decide on that I mean obviously number one is the budget yeah it costs you more money to develop your games for multiple platforms that is for sure uh you should also check out if your target audience is there on multiple platforms as well and there we go again yeah um it's also obviously important to have a look at the hardware requirements as well yeah not everybody has a high-end gaming PC for example uh distribution fees are also different per platform it should add up at the end of the day with your overall calculation and last but not

least marketing is also you know super important uh I think it's safe to say uh that the future of gaming is SMY channel uh and it is demanding Mastery on each Channel as such but in the background you need a unified brand strategy to reach diverse audiences and create Global hits and in this regard I'm super happy that I cannot switch the slides anymore yeah we can do with with hand signs as well no still yeah I'm not sure if this no it works thank you now it works again yeah and in this regard I'm super happy to hand over the mic to Pina who will be sharing insights how wargaming and specifically world of tank splits is handling those Marty platform and Marty Channel challenges thank you Thomas um yeah so guys let's dive into this intriguing question about our marketing

strategy as a crossplatform game so first of all for those who might not be familiar with us World gaming is a game developer and publisher with a simple but ambition uh Mission uh we aim to create uh an authentic and um uh immersive gaming experience across multiple platforms uh PC console and mobile uh one of our crown jewels is World of Tanks bleeds launched in 2014 uh a game uh that is featuring a diverse lineup of tanks and uh multiple uh play modes uh it has become a global success uh and reached some remarkable results and uh and um yeah you can hear me yeah okay um and with the crossplatform strategy uh we are increasing our engagement by 30% allowing users to seamlessly jump between

devices um so our platform supports both cross progression uh our game sorry our game supports both cross progression and crossplay and the platforms like iOS Android uh Nintendo switch and PC through Steam and uh Windows 10 allow us to connect players um everywhere anytime but naturally mobile is is at the heart of our growth the accessibility and Global reach of mobile platforms uh is the Cornerstone of our success accounting for the majority of our player base and revenue base of course and that's why uh the main reason for us to uh put our biggest focus and efforts in terms of marketing user acquisition into mobile platforms let's see how we do this so the first key takeaway uh that I want to share today is that you need to ensure

that your marketing strategy is adapting to your in-game seasonality because timing is everything and for us for example uh knowing that our biggest monetization beats are Christmas events and uh a series of birthday events in June uh is helping us to adjust our strategy respectively scaling into hot season more effectively but of course uh we also uh kind of trying to keep we doing everything we can tirelessly to keep user engaged in between those PS as well uh we launching new ingame events every month and sometimes even more often and uh uh with this it can be like any new new season um new season release it can be uh new mode uh in game it can be big collaboration like for example with a Star Trek uh with the Dune

franchise with Ninja Turtles franchise those collaborations and in game events are driving massive engagement uh and they are um always supported by our creatives that we use in our marketing uh maximizing their impact So speaking about gamechanging creative strategy I'm excited to share that uh we are having one modotto anything be your creative it doesn't stop with in-game events only um now I'm asking you to raise hands those of you who is using special creatives in for Christmas or Halloween or maybe upcoming Valentine's Day how many there are yeah not so many to be honest but yeah we do the same uh but we also uh went a little bit further with that um we are tapping into Global News and cultural Trends to keep our campaign means fresh and related how we do so

let's take for example these creatives uh that are kind of featuring uh squid game related Graphics uh this uh particular creative are has become a big success in our campaigns recently with a new Season released uh and uh it's this basically the same creatives that we use 3 years ago uh for the first season and that's just not not just it uh we also have for example like B real snapshot with tanks uh one piece themed wanted poster with tank West Anderson um West Anderson challenge uh if you remember there was such thing in the Tik Tok popular uh some time ago we also utilize uh this and um with this our creative capitalize on topics that are presentate with the audiences you can see that this uh approach is uh boost conversion and also

lower CPI kind of proving uh the agil the power of agility in your creative strategy so when it comes to Media sources um the key part of our success is balancing marketing mix uh we are mastering top performing channels while investing in testing new ones uh we also we always allocating part of our budget to explore new channels uh diversifi Define the risks while optimizing our efforts in trusted sources so let's see this in action how we do this uh for example Google ads is our biggest channel on Android and we optimized uh the our our our marketing strategy on Google ads by restructuring campaigns by geog groupings we've had a global campaigns Str structure and it had some advantages course lower cpis

high campaign optimization scores High volumes but uh with this structure over all about 15% of our investments were spent in non-profitable Market markets continuously and also uh with this structure uh we weren't be able to um kind of control where we want to invest and scale the particular uh regions uh because uh with such structure you basically give the algorithms to decide where to deliver so we restructured our campaigns from scratch uh and um launch small campaigns uh with the dedicated small country groups and this is not success at the first because uh it resulted in 24% volume loss and higher cpis but then with further adjustments we combin those uh small country groups into bigger ones and this already was a structure that uh resolved the problems

that we had before uh we achieved uh the skillability uh the better skillability lower cpis by 22% and uh uh 27% uh improvements in predicted Roi under the first on the second months regarding Apple search ads which is our top spender on iOS uh it also comes with its own problems of course especially in terms of for us in terms of uh scal in non-branded traffic and uh the resources consumption as we have a small uh user acquisition in house team uh so we were looking for the solutions uh for uh for this um limitations and that's uh actually where split metrics is Steen in um so the solution of for first um the biggest part and the most important part uh in this uh solution was integrating split

metric acquired tool with our bi system which is uh which gave us an opportunity to seamlessly create a seamless data flow especially in terms of key optimization metrics that would uh further uh improve our optimization and automation capabilities utilizing also split metrics split metric resources we've added uh over 200 uh more new keywords uh in our non-branded uh campaigns uh en reach our scale and uh and with this um yeah we kind of it helps us to touch the uh untapped before uh traffic if it makes sense um also the gamechanging uh the gamechanging uh optimization tool that uh spmx provided us with the outter rules targeting py which is our ke metric the the one would we optimized

for uh so this AO rule uh help us to improve our efficiency and performance especially in the key market like us Germany and Japan and the results in numbers speak for themselves uh our tap style rate increased by 6% in the first months and the CPI red reduced by 15% yeah so um moving on and uh we are not stopping at mobile while um keeping in mind our um objective to always test New Opportunities we are now expanding our user acquisition efforts uh to seam uh tackling attribution issues that are exist obviously we are now testing uh upser uh upser solution uh that has recently provided uh unique opportunity to kind of combine and uh accumulate data from uh not only from mobile mobile and PC uh so we testing this solution

and there is um approach wise you have two ways to uh to test this um you can kind know direct users straight to steam page or use a dedicated Lon page that is uh yeah there two ways uh with landing page uh if it enhanced with a upser smart script you are not only getting clicks through attribution but also view through attribution uh but of course adding one more step into user's Journey so uh when you think of creating this Ling page I strongly recommend you to do this to make it as simple as possible make it sort of a net itself uh just not to confuse user and just provide him with the one simple message go to steam page because that's what that's your final goal um I think that's that's all and to summarize yeah our key to success lies in three simple words I would say is adaptivity creativity and our commitment to our

players that's all perfect thank you very much Pina uh just also quick recap yeah uh so the future of gaming which is already here and it's Mar channel uh because of the seamless connectivity as mentioned you have unified gaming profiles it doesn't matter on which device you're playing you want to be connected anywhere with your kind of um progress that you made in the game world of tank splits fortnite Minecraft many others already Paving the way and this once again is the clear future but I think what was also now very clear is that there are also the challenges that are evolving on the UA side it's not getting easier yeah as we have heard a lot from Paulina it's testing it's figuring out stuff it's working together with Partners who have potentially already figured some stuff out getting in the knowledge as well uh because at the end of the day yeah it's complex um it's briding at platform silos and in the background cross device tracking and budget optimization obviously is you know like not the easy task yeah so therefore um if you need a helping

hand for any of of these mentioned topics uh within the split metrics agency we're super happy to help you also you like just brainstorm strategic as well as really Hands-On when it comes to setting up and running UA campaigns in this regard thank you very much for your [Applause] attention thank you both um I think we got time for one question if anyone yeah wants to ask anything okay right well thank you Bo you