Smarter in-game ad integration with Tony Deane from AppLovin

[Music] [Music] i'm joined now by tony dean the senior manager of business development over at lovin how are you doing today i'm very good thanks for having me good to be here so folks don't know what app love and do what is it you guys are all about ah so we're a mobile marketing platform that helps game developers grow their games and then also maximize the yield on the for every ad impression that is shown inside of their games so we help them grow their revenue and then also scale further we also have our own collection of apps as well we are one of the largest app developers in the stores right now for folks who maybe aren't quite as familiar with the space as other people you get a lot of jargon in this particular area people are talking about scaling and roi and reducing cpp and all that stuff what does all that mean what is it you guys bring when someone approaches you and says hey we need your help sure so um what about their things right i think

what what people care the most about really is understanding that for every install they're getting or every dollar they're spending that they're going to doing that efficiently and they're going to be able to do it profitably so what i've love when you're not only you don't like just pay to serve an impression to someone or even for just installs we help developers optimize towards their raw scopes so the revenue that each user is going to generate so that they know that their campaigns and their ad spend is going to be profitable on the advertiser's side and then on the monetization side it's all about ensuring that you're being able to get the most for every impression that's being served to your users so we provide a mediation platform that gives equal access to all of the different networks so that you're going to be ensured that you're getting the highest price for every impression that is shown inside of your app so is there algorithms in place that kind of match the right campaigns or the right games with the right network is it something listed happening on the fly yeah so actually in 2020 we we launched our fully launched or machine learning algorithm called axon

now that's incredibly incredibly good understanding which game a user is likely to download and play next and then on top of that the more you spend it starts to optimize and learn more about what those users values are going to be so it's able to really hone in on the row us goals like the return on ad spend goals of our partners i think i'd say since we launched it in 2020 to now we've seen roughly around 400 growth on the platform in the last year so and it's always improving and our partners are always growing further so it's been incredibly exciting so when it comes to matching the right kind of game or the right kind of campaign with the appropriate network whatever obviously you've got this algorithm at play which is helping things out but i'm sure there's a human touch that's involved as well how tricky is it these days to lock in on what it is that i guess that the developers are looking for or find something to hook on to that isn't just the same old same old i'm talking i

mean a lot of people talking about different ways of introducing for example ad networks non-interruptive ads things that aren't just pop-ups anymore is it tough to work out new ways to make these things work or do the old tricks still work you just have to do them right yeah so it's actually a very interesting question so there's a lot going on there as well look i think what kind of sets us apart it has been that we have our own first but our own games right so we have our own first party data that we then feed into our algorithms that then powers our advertisers growth right so we're able to take and that's really what differentiates us in the industry really so from that perspective this is something new right and machine learning algorithms are something new as well on the advertising side on the monetization side what we're seeing actually more is that developers are learning how to more smartly integrate ads as they get more and more used to it and then as players get more and more used to it so everything is

like quite developing um and constantly developing as everything is in our industry right now we still see that the most important type of ads are going to be video interstitials or rewarded videos right they provide the majority of monetization for games developers banners are also there too and there's some interesting things coming with native but i think like from a data perspective we're kind of moving towards a way that we can help people scale in a very privacy safe way so the things are changing but it's really everyone's so focused on the same things that they were previously which is understanding that what i'm paying for i'm getting i'm going to be able to generate revenue from it and then be able to use that revenue to fuel your next project or even further projects so that you can grow your game business the fact that you've been able to employ this in your own games has that in some ways made it easier to avoid falling into those data gathering gray areas that are tricky sort of tripping a lot of people up these days or is it still quite a difficult minefield to navigate now with the additional gdpr and privacy

laws yeah um so from our perspective since it's first party data it's very it's very privacy conscious and that has helped us quite a lot i think um the privacy landscape is constantly changing um the one thing i will say about our industry is that whenever there's been a challenge or any sort of obstacle we've been very fast and very determined about figuring out a way to continue to grow within that and also like push our industry forward so that we're doing things in a better way so it's pretty exciting at the same time even if in the short term it causes some frustration for developers yeah the amount of innovation that's going on is pretty incredible how did the business change for you over the pandemic did your clients start asking for different things did you notice different patterns emerging and stuff you might carry forward into the future yeah so yeah obviously the last couple of years has been incredibly challenging and a real real shift for everyone in many ways not just inside the mobile games industry what we've seen i suppose from american perspective is that more

and more people who hadn't played mobile games before have introduce them so the demographics are growing and broadening out on top of that we see that players who have like maybe just started playing or have been introduced to hyper casual games are really moving and experimenting and expanding into more genres so what our clients are looking for i suppose is how they can really take advantage of like the kind of growing demographics that are there inside of like mobile gaming space now and how they can really grow their audience inside of that or ensure that they're you know capturing as much of the value as they can for those users i've seen a bunch of data suggesting that a lot of the people who've moved towards mobile over the past two years the numbers have shot up and they've kind of stayed up they haven't dropped off immediately afterwards are you seeing similar yeah yeah yeah so like honestly definitely i think one of the things about mobile is that after it's after you've understood it as a as a player and i'd say kind of get

into it you're going to like understand that there's a place that fits into how you play games right um even now the people things are starting to open up um mobile games that typically have been played on commutes or in like five minutes like times when you're waiting in line are still there and they're still people just while people were playing at home now they're now have been able to integrate it into their life so we're seeing like more and more growth in the industry which is pretty incredible for something that's been on such an upward trajectory for the last 10 15 years and speaking of growth is that what you guys are looking towards in 2022 or do you have a few projects or kind of new initiatives that you're working on yeah yeah so a couple of projects we just before just in january we leave the acquisition of mopa um with a mediation platform owned by twitter so right now we're all heads down integrating the feature sets to really set our media asia platform maps even further ahead of any other platform so it's going to be an incredible like

integrated solution that brings lots of things that we actually hadn't had before like native demand like direct soul campaigns and mobile was the most powerful exchange um in the whole platform and we have now like almost completely integrated that into the platform so yeah it's exciting we're excited for apparently the growth that it's going to help people have on the monetization side because we know that the combined platforms are going to enable partners to maximize their act out even further which they're then used to fuel their growth [Music] [Music] you