Session: Web Store Popularity & Adoption – What Does the Data Say? - Gil Tov Ly, Appcharge

[Music] we are going to talk about webstore popularity and adoption what does the data say and I think we've got Jill from apch charge Gil sorry Gil from App charge sorry my pronunciation is terrible Gil come on up Gil uh and you'll tell us all about that looking forward to seeing what the data says take it if you like well I think I'm on panel I think I'm on a panel soon so I need to find out the last the last panel I think so let me take a look oh no it's actually yeah it's not for a while so I'll give this to you until then are you again can you hear me okay yes all right how's everyone doing all right long day um yeah I'm

going to talk about Web Store popularity so we've been talking about web stores a lot in the last well say I don't know like five panels um let's talk about what the data says uh I'm going to present um a report that we did recently but before all of that uh just a few words about myself so I see some familiar faces in the space here which is great uh my name is Gil I've been a gamer all my life uh played World of Warcraft more hours than I'd like to admit and I've been developing and building platforms and systems in gaming for roughly 15 years uh I led the marketing team at overwolf for a couple of years and I joined this crazy rocket ship that is upch charge uh six months ago um what is upch charge so upch charge is uh the leading DTC platform for mobile games uh we're processing $200 million a year and we're working with some of the biggest uh games in the space uh we provide a white labeled solution and we give Publishers all the tools that they need to sell Direct to

players so everything from building perfect like fully branded native filling web stores that players love to buy in through actually selling like a Gateway Global check out solution uh an in gam SDK for side loing and other solutions that want to sell directly within the app with iips and a data layer uh that kind of makes a special um utilizing our monetization expertise and analyzing the data and helping grow arpu another Deep dive and analysis and data to give value to our users uh to our clients sorry uh we recently announced a big funding ground and backed by really wonderful partners and investors and that's us um all right so talking about Web Store popularity kind of a tricky subject why is that a tricky subject so if I want to go to find a web store uh do you guys have any idea or any thought on um roughly what percent of the web stores is publicly available I can go to Google and find the web store and get

guesses that right 80 80% all right so uh many web stores are actually not publicly available they either not indexed on Google or does something like kep like a cloak and dagger to only be exposed to VIP players because we don't want to damage game economy we don't want to uh the everyday player to get to the web store many categories so when we set out to just like find out how popular web stores are some case it was easy we just like Google and we find their web stores in some cases we have to draw some strings and and and use our connections within the industry to actually spot and find those web stores but be that as it may we wanted to take this head on and find some data to actually show how popular web stores are because we've been hearing about web stores a lot for the last say the last three to four years but like is it still like the next big thing or is it something that's like has the there's enough critical mass to actually be like a standard monetization Channel and Avenue um we announced we released this

report late last year it was covered with uh navic the Constructor of fun and mobile gamer Biz as well alongside many others and this is what I'm going to share today a bit about the method uh so we uh started with sensor data uh sensor to data to find the top 20 grossing games in the US across each category of games um and then we uh um spread them out to categories again based on the labeling of sensor tow um and then we went out and find the web stores as I said before sometimes it was really easy sometimes we had to jump through some hoops uh so the the data I'm showing you here is some of it is already outdated for example uh Ro your um Angry Birds already have a web store in this report it says that it does not and so on but um happy like I hope you guys will find this interesting all right so the report is broken down into categories and I'm going to do a like a momentary pause here across each days and I'm going to I want to hear you guys

like say something I don't want that to be like a one-way uh Street here all right so again and in the methodology we're talking the top 20 grow in games in this in this case social cazino category so any guesses out of the top 20 gross in games what percent of casual casino games have a web store 20 20 I hear 20 I here all right back of the room 80 80 90 90 all right right so it's actually 100 all right uh I think the slides are a little bit too small to actually see the 20 individual games but I think we're going to send the the slides after right um but it's actually 100% of the top 20 games in Social Casino category already operate a web store um so we see like games like across the board across the regions across uh different uh uh uh culture of players we see this everywhere in this category um games

like uh so probably shows like product Madness and uh of course PLA and bigfish and we see this everywhere so why do we see such like widespread adoption in casual uh casino games uh here are a couple of examples um what I want you to focus on here is the vast like variety that we see between the different stores so this just a few examples uh we see for example here a very clear welcome offer to immediately explain the value of the store we see sophisticated monetization tools like an accumulation bar and these guys in in Social Casino are really like at the Forefront of experimenting with things uh and trying out new things that's why we see such a big variety of of the stores being applied so why do we see this success in this category so there are three main reasons um first off uh and you're going to see this let me do a spoiler you're going to see this reason come off a lot in a lot of the next categories but High rpu games High LTV games have it much easier VIP driven games well driven

games all I need to do to have a successful web store is maybe convert like 5% of my players and to put things even better for Social Casino Games many of these games already started out with very sophisticated VIP client management infrastructures with VIP client managers and uh communication methods and crms so it was really easier for them to get that very uh High engage uh player cohort and get them educated about the fact that the store exists and have them gravitate towards buying on the store that's the first reason um we also see a lot of culture of innovation like I said in the previous slide these guys will try it um player trust is important we're not going to want to erod player trust but within the the wiggle room within like the degrees of freedom that we have these guys will try these guys and our partners will be open to expanding with with thing and and you can say the same on some of the other categories I'm going to get to in a second here um all right next

up strategy games out of the top 20 uh growthing strategy games what percentage have adop at the web store let me hear some guesses sorry 80 80 all right 80% uh so not as successful as casual casino but uh again like we don't see the full list I guess like in the small slides but we have here games like Pokemon go that we're going to get to in a second and uh a lot of others like the the the we see uh a lot of adoption here as well we're going to get y to in a second uh let's see some examples so what I want you to focus on here this is Pokémon go so what I want you to focus on here is the middle screen right so when you adopt the dais strategy uh effectively and accurately what we see here is a support article right and you can also see this in in how they do like one-on-one support with support tickets when you want to adopt a habit you want to make it available for your players to

find resources about where you want them to gravitate towards and purchase so we want to send them to the right places want want to educate them about where to find the best offers and want to get them to um um gravitate towards that place and and adopt this as a habit uh so breaking down why strategy games are so successful again we see the high rpr right um just just to put things in perspective uh like Call of Duty is the number one LTV game uh in 2023 number one uh Pokemon go is number three right so we're seeing the highest LTV games out there which makes it again very easy to to find success within the web store and that's like one of the main reasons um so another interesting thing is established player bases so these games many of the the the games who populate the top 20 chart here have been around for ages like five years or more and having been around for so long gives those developers time to establish those communication Channels with those players and talk to them directly already and when DC enter the scene it

was easy to use those channels again to educate players that these things exist and to get them to adopt this as a habit all right moving on to action games um I'm going to move on for the guessing because it's actually really really similar to strategy we're looking at 75% adoption out of the top 20 uh one mistake here with the Angry Birds that's no longer correct we just saw that Angry Birds have a web store as well but um these are the numbers and when we look at the uh Deep dive analysis this is Call of Duty um so what what we want to see here is uh how how effectively they communicate the value of the offers that you can find in the web store uh looking at the break there's a sorry about the PDF error there and breaking down the word breakdown um but two interesting things you to note about strategy games again like Call of Duty like the other ones uh with the comparative nature so many of the games we saw in the previous categories it's more along the lines of the games that you play solo versus strategy games where um you would often sorry action

games which you often play in a competitive advant in competitive environment so things like skins things like visual upgrades things like uh um expressions of your personality within the game become more prevalent in this category which contributed to why theyve seen success all right and then lastly casual games I am going to do a a guessing game here out of the top 20 casual games in the US how many operate a web store in percent 60% I have 60 here 80 80 30 30 interesting so it's actually 30% so it's a stark difference from the other categories that we saw we're going to get to Y2 in a second but looking at the list here it's U again like I would even attribute more of that 30% to the way sensor data labels games like we see bra Stars here an example and um so other than like Moon active and other ones who are actually like casual who are operating a web store they very few examples of casual Publishers who are

effectively operating a web store and we'll get y to in a second uh talking about Moon active and queen master um we see here two examples uh what we want to focus on here is again this is a casual uh publisher but is is is implementing a lot of sophisticated monetization tools kind of like the accumulation bar that we see here um to grab to to educate players and get the habit forming around um keep coming back to repeat purchases so keep keep coming back tomorrow keep coming back for an updated report reward and all of that all right talking about the breakdown again with a broken down word um so the number one thing that casual games will suffer from in this in this context is uh with a lower LTV so we saw in all the previous three categories about how important how effective High LTV and high arpu are to generate a success within the web store and this this is the exact opposite case so if in casual kazin I I only need to to get I don't know like 3% or 5% of my

player base to gravitate towards buying even sporadically on the web store here I'm looking at 30 to 40% because if I want to see success in the web store there's a lot more uh volume of players I need to convince um we kind of heard it being mentioned in the previous panels um about um um AI tools to do communication at scale if I need to communicate with 30 to 300,000 players I cannot do it oneon-one this is exactly the thing of like economies of skill that happened here when we are trying to uh um um move and migrate hundreds of thousands of players to somewhere else uh it's not as easy as like doing it with VIP client management and do it with a 10 or 20 or 100 um and then latest the last reason is that casual games well all games have this but casual games have this specifically where a lot of the purchases are being made in a like behavioral way in terms of like impulsive uh we again we heard this in Archie talk about introducing a friction and then AEV that friction with the

purchase so we see that a lot in casual games and uh when we think about a web store a web store is an experience that is outside of the game so having forcing the player to stop playing the game and go into the web store even to alleviate that pressure is something is harder to establish and do right on a casual game than it is in some of the other categories that we saw all right so uh wrapping things up I guess the PDF really screwed this up I'm seeing the 72 yeah right um so wrapping this up um when we look at all games I didn't show this on the on the on the slides when we look at all games it's actually 72% uh it's different games than the ones we saw appear on those charts but it's actually 72% of all top gross in games um this is no longer the next big thing right we've inhaling web stores as this promising thing this upand cominging thing a field that is waiting for regulation it's waiting for no one it's not waiting for regulation it's not waiting for anything to happen it's already live and kick it's widely adopted and many of the

Publishers that I saw that I showed on those uh charts there are finding amazing success uh with the web stores all the way up to 10% 15% 20% of the revenue and even more than that uh they're waiting for no one and that's the kicker so like I I'll wrap my my my talk with that so when we look at like U um terminology and monetization that that that we used in Mobile gaming for the last couple of like the last decade really uh um we used to talk about monetization via either ads or iip for a while and then hybrid came on and became this thing that we need to have like a sophisticated strategy that combines the two in a in a in a balanced way what we're getting to now is that there's this third venue of monetization that is widespread and uh ubiquitous and we need to start thinking of how like the new hybrid is actually a Three-Headed Beast it's no longer these two of of of ads revenue and AP the new hybrid is

three-way and and a word about balance and Synergy so when I say a three-way strategy I don't mean just build the three let your players choose it's not just about choice to do this effectively what we saw being used with the best uh uh polishers that we have uh the ones that are seeing the most uh the most amount of success is that a good strategy is something that looks at the three uh or the two if you don't do ads in a combined way you want to have um a stry that that makes these Channel complement each other it's not just about migrating or cannibalizing a portion of the revenue in iip and transitioning that outside to a web store it's not about just increasing like a bigger size as a pie it's about increasing the overall Pi we want to have something that complements we want to increase the the incremental Revenue not just migrate it and when done right when strategies are done right to assume your player have multiple Avenues to purchase on some of them um fit to a different type of behavior some of them

are impulsive some of them are intent based if you think of all of that together and you balance your strategy accordingly that's the recipe to find success in this field all right um if you're interested to hear more reports or uh more case studies we often share information and data on our LinkedIn be free to follow if you want to ask us anything about monetization we also we always love to geek out about monetization and see how we can help your Dy strategy grow uh thank thanks any question thank you very much great trying to work out I think can probably sneak a quick question if anyone wanted to ask one anyone willing to or able or desire okay so in that case I'm going to say thank you very much and uh I think it's really important that we kind of understand that we are connecting to where players are and if we're ignoring that kind of web interface we are ignoring a massive opportunity for people to connect with us it's it's a matter of choice the more option and

choice that you give your players um they're going to buy more that's what I meant when I said it's not just a matter of like migrating their transaction value from place a to place B is giv them more option option that behaves differently when you are intent based outside of the game you go to the web store you have intent to buy give more Choice one of the things to reinforce that is one of the aspects I'm always concerned about which is I don't think we spend enough time thinking about what the player is doing outside of the game at that that point you know there's reasons why we choose a particular device a particular game that's represented by what are we're currently doing in our in our life stage in our kind of real world circumstance and if we ignore the mode of use of a player we are going to miss massive opportunities and that's why for me to not have access to that stuff means you're cutting off a possibility and that to me seems like a mistake spot on cool thank you very much thanks that and on that note we woo