Session: Why Focusing Only On New Users Is Holding Back Your Mobile Game – Vera Manhoso, RTB

[Music] um so we got ver manoso from from The Wonderful rtb House talking about um why focusing on new users is actually holding back your mobile game and what you should be doing when you're retargeting which is really essential advice so thank you defit hi good morning um really nice to see you all I feel like I almost forgot how call that is outside when I got in here it's always really nice to see everyone first Conference of the year as well so thank you so much for tuning in um today I'll be talking about the power of retargeting campaigns and why focusing on UA only is holding back your mobile

game my name is Vera and I'm a gaming account director at rtb house um I specialize in programmatic advertising and have experience in both us acquisition and retargeting campaigns um rtb house is a retargeting DSP really well known to be one of the first major dsps um to roll out deep learning algorithms to its entire product stack okay so I would love to get you to get to know you all a little bit as well so I would like to try this if you have ever tested retargeting or are testing retargeting right now can you please put your hand up nice great oh quite a few brilliant um and the ones that have not tested there's a few as well great okay nice um we'll be sure that we cover a little bit of insights for both parts then hopefully um but yeah lovely thank you so much for that um so as that everywhere you will know

this you know we we breathe it every day as marketers as well advertisers um you always want to be the one that has the best creative out there um everyone wants that winning um ad right I read a blog post recently on LinkedIn I could not verify this Source but it was claiming that the average user would be exposed to between 2,000 to 10,000 ads a day that is a lot right um I found that pretty crazy I tried to um verify this word and I couldn't but I tried to calculate it and it is possible it does not mean that you will see all those ads right but there are a lot of ads out there and you want to be that winning ad um how do you protect yourself against the competition um when there's so much competition out there for both us acquisition and retargeting um everyone wants your players right and we know that they're very limited as well um so a few numbers here um according to Unity on a recent report um on mobile

games mobile games that spend on in our purchase is only 1.83% um that's a very very small pool of users right we know that they super those are super important for your game as well um and then it takes an average of 3.6 days for those players to make their first inner purchase um according to apps fers so if you think of it that way you want to have your retargeting um campaigns ready um shortly after that first install happen right you don't really want to wait too long because you want to make sure you keep those High lcv users in your game and then the cost of um user acquisition is obviously way higher than retargeting to so with user acquisition you don't know your players of value yet you trying to find those it's the bit of shooting in the dark right um of course the cost of that will be way higher compared to retargeting when you already know your players of value you already know who you would like to focus on so there's that benefit to um in terms of combining in both to so you sure you're

a little bit more cost efficient as well what is the key to perfect timing um so I feel like um there's a few aspects to look into it with retargeting you might to focus on TR prevention um and that is how retargeting is very cost- effective as well um because you want to make sure that again you quite quick targeting your users back to your game it does not necessarily mean that they fully stopped playing it um so that is the best time to actually Target those users back to your game after that initial install do not wait um around too long right um it's also important that you define your inactivity window and what does that mean for you and for your game um I feel like often there's that misconception that user acquisition um you don't want to start your retargetting compan straight away because you want to give enough time for that cohort to mature with new user acquisition campaigns um I feel like that misconception was around

a little bit more backed in but it's starting to Flow Away where retargeting is actually a partner of UA and it's important that you use it together and are quick um to Target those users there as well and then just be open to desk really because um you know what is your inactivity window today might not be the same in a year's time um so I'm currently working with a very onone Advertiser that has had a long in activity window for quite a long time of 30 days and we've been challenging it throughout the time you know what is the concept around it um why would you like to wait um 30 days to start your retargeting comp pays is that because you weighs in the middle you know what's the reason there was not really a strategy behind it um and we've decided to test um Target inactive users from day seven as opposed to 30 um and the lift was pretty considerable um so we are now testing an actal campaign where we will change the inactivity wi to seven days and that will be the strategy as we move forward so it's important that you also so keen on exploring what

works well for you and what works well for your game so now that you sit with your times um and you know that quickness is important you're ready to re-engage um those users back to the game um you have um a question that I hear all the time from um advertisers is the audience sites is my audience big enough um to Target players to actually have a retargeting campaign um so I feel like there's two areas that you should look at in here um your audience doesn't need to be huge to start with right and uh whoever you decide to um support you with as a partner for your retargeting comp banks will 100% give you this advice as well and be able to help you um but if we want to give it a number sometimes two or 3,000 really good players is already enough um and justifies you to run that retargeting activity and that does not mean that you need to have a retargeting campaign on throughout the entire year right you can

of course just tackle a very specific season for you or something really important happening on a game a huge release that you really want everyone to see about you might want to decide that you want to run um a retargeting campaign to get those players of high value back to your game at that time retargeting is really easy as well um so again a lot of um a lot of what we might hear is oh we're not ready yet because there's so much that goes into it and we need to prepare to have our audience um you know what is it that needs um to be in place for retargeting it's very simple you need to have an MMP um because you will need to share postback events um with your partner um so that's quite key um and you need to have Revenue um events with a value attached to those so it will help your partner um find those users of value and obviously um it helps the algorithm as well build its predictions you'll then need tracking links which you will for use acquisition campaign as well um and then

there's extra bits that you can work along as you go such as deep links or creative that would be specific um for retargeting but it is pretty simple um and then the value of your partners and the parts that you choose to work with um I recently had um a meeting with um an Advertiser that I work with at the moment and he was telling me you know what way harder than finding a user acquisition um partner DSP or retargeting way harder than finding someone that has a really good model a really good product you know an algorithm that is fantastic really you know ltech um it is to find an account manager that actually cares about my game and I thought you know that's that's pretty interesting because it doesn't matter how good that product might be if you work with someone that won't be there to give you guidance that can't really support you you just adding extra load onto your dayto day right so you do really want to try and find someone that understands your game that is SK to open and help um and I know

that is hard but through conversation you will be able I'm sure to find a lot of great people to work with um and then lastly um product and retention so you obviously have invested quite a lot um into gaining your new users and then maintaining them through retargeting what happens to retention and how can you make sure that those players continue playing the game and stay engaged with your app there there really needs to be communic ation between your user acquisition team and your product team um if your product team isn't in tune you don't really know what's going to happen next you know are there new levels for those players um to to continue playing what is it the exciting that is coming up um and whatever you're communicating through ads with your um you know use acquisition team your targeting team needs to also come um from your product team so the communication between those is super super key for you as well

now how do you go from um you know getting those lost users to make them super loyal and uh you know just really engage with your game um here it's all about personalization um how do you capture those players attention is saw through tail optimization um creative personalization and you want that message to really be meaningful as well for those players um so we covered earlier that it's really important to have creative um as well and creative doesn't necessarily need to be specific to retargeting when you start a retargeting campaign but it is really important um and it can be simple things as you know your CTA to be specific to retargeting um those players you talking directly to them through ads um and as we said there's so many out there you want to make sure that the message um is directed at your players as well you might want to try to focus on your VIP users and make sure that you have some really exciting rewards to them that you know they will not say no to at all and

will make them feel super special when they see that add targeted at them or you might want to decide that you want to focus on non-payers that are super high likely to convert because they've reached level 100 already so you want to give them a little flavor um of what a reward from anything that could be an inap purchase might be so it's defining what your objectives are as well and work alongside um with your retargeting partner to make sure that that can happen and then lastly just remember that combining both um retargeting and use acquisition does not only have um obviously the value of being cost effective you're communicating directly to your players the message is way more specific and it's tailored um and we do see advertisers um getting up to 150% increase on their conversion value when they combine both so it is really beneficial um and uh definitely a strategy that we see advertisers adopting way more and more um as we um

go through thank you so much for listening Ino do we have any questions from the audience just questions there yeah hello my name is Pina I'm from war gaming and the question is about uh what do you think uh should the inactivity window be the same as re-engagement window uh or re-engagement window can be longer so we can reengage uh the same users more than once yeah very good question thank you um so you will have um re-engagement um a new so the your re your inactivity window will be the same um if I try and understand your question what you might want to do is not focus on user that have just

installed the game recently for example if that is your concern so say that you have used acquisition campaigns running at the moment and you won't want to waste you know um or or even show more ads to those users that literally have just started your game two or 3 days ago your inactivity window will be the same but you can tell your partner for example hey I do not want to Target any new users to the game that were you know had an install say over the past six 6 months if that is what you would like so you want to focus so it's the difference between last login um and inactivity window I think there that you're probably thinking um so you might just want to focus on the last login but put aside all those users that you um got through the game via user acquisition most recently so that is possible any more questions just a question

uh do you have any tips on how to kind of estimate what kind of budget or investment you can have depending on your audience size for targeting Etc any tips would be welcome thank you yeah definitely um again as you're saying it really depends on your audience size um you don't necessarily need to commit a certain amount of budget if I can give you a figure um you might be able to start a retargeting campaign with a daily spend of $300 a day for example um of course this depends on your audience size that will have to justify that um and also you make you want to make sure that is sufficient for you as well but that works for internal budget but that would be a really nice starting point if you really want to give it a number um but then of course that will be dependent on your audience size as well that leads to my question for you actually when you're talking about people being reluctant to start retargeting campaigns do you think that's from a budget perspective do you think that they're looking at taking from a UA budget and putting into

retargeting I think a little bit yes because I feel like the feedback is that UA is our priority right we really want to make sure that we get as many new users in the game um this is often where we would hear for from developers or advertisers um but that doesn't necessarily mean that you actually being cost effective with your budget right because you will have way more value for you to focus on those users that you already know but it doesn't necessarily mean that they're playing your game any anymore they've gone somewhere else already because it's so competitive out there um so obviously does make sense that you have that data that data is precious why not just use it and make sure that those plays of really high value keep coming back to your game CU this is a recurring theme that I think we will hear much more about the data that you hold yourself and investing in your first party data do you find that um in terms of retargeting messages and creatives that they're starting to become a little bit more sophisticated ated as people start to think about

building their communities you know from a re-engagement perspective yes 100% um and there's you know so many developers out there doing um fantastic testing around this it's become way more more personable than it was for sure it's becoming really quick as well um you know it's how to have um your campaign set up is so specific and targeted to do users where creative might be specific for each of those groups of users that you really want to Target um and there's ad is out there doing this really well um something really really interesting too um even though user acquisition you know continues to take place as our priority compared to retargeting we actually recently had an Advertiser that has asked to start an integration when their game is actually not ready yet so their new game is about to be launched but they already started integration with us as a retargeting partner and their feedback is that they want to make sure that we start um collecting their data from that initial stage and so when

they are ready they can go straight away and Tackle those users um whenever they have a a big enough audience um as well so I find that really interesting and that's is it it's like you're ensuring your collection of your first party data by getting in there and knowing it before you start retargeting definitely that's fascinating that's an interesting shift um great any more questions which oh here we go one at the back do this lady here in the white sorry in front of you there you go that lady were you asking a question I Oh I thought you were I think at the end sorry I see hi uh thanks that was a really interesting talk just out of interest because you you quoted this 150% uh return on investment stff uh so obviously that works if you're kind of an a new again when you're looking for

that kind of prevent churn for uh for new users if you were looking at a uh retargeting campaign for users that have been out for say kind of an extra couple of months or you know you're you're trying to kick some life back into a game how do you find that the return on investment changes compared to that recent re inactivity window it will be very different for sure you will know this um so when you of course you will see that the um your compan that will get better traction will be the ones on those users that um are in active most recently right but then what you might also want to have is have it broken down by two you want to focus on those still because you want to make sure that they continue playing but you also want to tackle users that got in active longer ago and that also works you might just see that the scale will be way smaller right naturally um but it does still work um so we actually do have that set up um for a lot of the advertisers that we work with where still want to make sure that they focus on those users that

stop playing up to I don't know 90 days is quite over popular you know those 45 to 90 days or 60 to 90 days in activity so we sure that we still continue to tackle those but obviously the return will be a little bit lower compared to your most recent um inactive uses great thank you thank you thank you ver I have clients work rtb house on retargeting campaigns um and uh these guys are the best so definitely um grab ver afterwards if if you have any more questions so thanks ver thank you so much thank you thanks for tuning in