Speed Panel: How to Get Brands to Advertise in Your Apps

next we have a speed panel and we've got our very own brian baglow who's going to come up and moderate that he's going to be talking to fiber and mobile groove about how to get brands to advertise in your apps brian are you there sir uh hello so i'm not sure you're on camera yet ah here we go that's more like it perfect hey peggy how are you doing good afternoon oscar hi ladies hello world hello hail i will leave you to it fantastic thank you very much indeed oscar hey good afternoon everybody uh welcome to our speed panel on how to get brands to advertise in your apps now uh we we do seem to be one panelist short so i will apologize in advance that uh lev from anzu doesn't seem to be with us however it's like we're going to crack

on we've got a a lot to cover in 20 minutes and hopefully you can join us part of the way through so uh folks i would like you to introduce yourselves quickly it is a speed panel tell us a little bit about yourself and why you're here this afternoon at beth can we start with you please definitely hi everyone my name is beth gilmore and i manage the omni dsp business for fibers marketplace and i work closely with brands and agencies to help them effectively scale their campaigns in the mobile app environment wonderful and peggy yeah my name is peggy ann saltz i'm the founder and chief analyst at mobile groove which is my company but i'm also on the panel not just as someone who understands the mobile industry and mobile apps but also as a board member of the mobile marketing association in germany here where i'm based so i'm bringing some brand insights and maybe a couple requests on some people out there fantastic well it's uh it's great to have you both here and thank you very

much for joining us so so let's jump in with both feet what we've been hearing this afternoon and what we've seen in the last 12 months seems to have been an explosion in branded content in games especially in around the online sectors we've had album launches live performances product placement fashion launches partnerships between retailers and game creators that all seems to be happening in the sort of the pc the console online world where are we in mobile what's what's the state of play for us right now well i can kind of chime in with i've been doing this for 10 years and when i first started brands were very just nervous about the mobile gaming space they really didn't understand the audience it was very confusing to them and a place that they didn't necessarily want to prioritize but it has completely changed um thanks to covid and all our gaming consumption brands are more confident rewarded video

they're more confident in the metrics that mobile provides and i've it's been really amazing having more proactive conversations with them but i still think that they face many challenges when they're trying to effectively execute these campaigns and choosing the right partnerships to effectively do so across dsps and their measurement providers and all of the various data partners that they that they want to leverage for their campaigns wonderful peggy i would even say um in addition to that i'm looking at it just from a business perspective and i have the feeling that because it's such new territory and so critical right now because of the pandemic you know the money always follows the eyeballs and guess where they are right they are in games and it's not so much which channel you know if it's going to be the console or on mobile because i'm speaking with a

lot of brands who are very very interested in this but because it's also new territory leaving aside whether or not how they're going to set it up sort of in the back end i would say the front end is a huge challenge as well it's like okay they're asking me because i uh also contribute to pocketgamer and they're asking me at a board meeting just recently you know who are the top games companies we should be looking at um you know who are they what do they do um it's not always immediately pot you know games companies don't make it necessarily very simple to engage with them you know you have to figure out sometimes just look i mean really look on the website you know is this a hyper casual or a casual game is this mid core what do they do you know how do i really connect with them who's in charge there you know who would it be who is my who is the person i would start my conversation with so to uh beth's point it's very much about getting the measurement and the technology right but i think there's also relationship building uh work on behalf of the games companies to say hey

you know what we're open for business now i find that really interesting because i've worked in the games industry for a long long time and it's always been somewhat insular you know a little bit isolated it's it does its own thing and it's really it's the advent of non-dedicated hardware mobile phones that's really kind of forced the issue and forced it to engage with the rest of the world and i think your point about finding the right people is is a really interesting one because are you finding i mean as experts in the advertising sector are you finding that the games companies themselves want to engage are they coming and knocking on the doors and looking for brands or you know is is all the action coming from the outside in you want to start yeah i mean i've found a combination from the various publishers i've worked with some have direct sales teams and they've established agency relationships in the past and then some do not have any interest

in having a relationship with the advertisers that are running on their apps so i i do know that it is vital for app developers to have a relationship with the advertisers that are that are running on their apps and to help them support the data flow that they need whether it's their they are able to pass first-party data how amazing would that be if they can more effectively pass contextual data that would be amazing as well to help communicate that and i mean why i wanted to join this panel was to just tell the app developers um it's really important that you choose a mediation partner and exchange partnerships that have direct omni-dsp integrations and that and i can go into that a little bit later but yeah um and that have an agency sales team because you need help repping your inventory and you need help making sure that you can build deals and that's how

brands buy they buy a lot of them prioritize deals and so you're going to need help doing that so make sure that you partner with the right monetization partners to help you effectively do that yeah i would agree there i think you need to make it very easy to do business with you yeah good news is the good news is however that many games companies when i go to the other end of the spectrum and think of those shows and even when i'm moderating here on on pocketgamer connect shows they think they need to have a massive reach that it's only really going to be for the major companies but the brands i was talking to they're like you know this is new to us this is new territory so we're very happy to sort of like dip the tone of water here so it doesn't have to be like the super cells of the world and the rovios it doesn't have to be that it can just be what i was talking to and i can get into that in a moment if you

want me to brian very interesting brand conversations with brands you would not imagine would want to be into a game advertisement but they want to desperately you know desperately and they're looking at um the same way that we've evolved in influencer marketing to the sense that we can say oh there's macro and there's micro and micro has its advantages right that's the same mentality i'm seeing evolving here amongst the brands is we want to get involved the measurement absolutely has to be on the mark but the good news is that you can have the measurement on the mark you don't necessarily have to be the blockbuster title to start the party that's the good news um you want me to get to my anecdote yes please yes so you wouldn't imagine this but uh i was at a board meeting recently for the mobile marketing association speaking with brands and it's like and they're waking up and saying wow you know what our audience they are not here they are not on tv they are not on uh the media we think they are and this is

germany where there's still a very strong print media but a very very uh penned up demand for mobile apps and they're exploding mobile apps and games are exploding and so companies such as bayer for aspirin will just love to advertise here because what they believe and i probably is the case i'm not quite as maybe die hard as you brian and others but uh the whole idea is that if you've been playing games all day particularly on a small mobile you know on a smartphone you might have a headache or you might need eye drops they sell eye drops too so wouldn't this just be great you know take a break from the game take an aspirin or something the point is that it's it's context that they find very interesting so the companies the good news again for games companies out there tuning in is that it's not just about the really really cool consumer goods you don't it's it's it's nike and others absolutely but not only and i think that's where you can also sort of open the aperture of how you approach this and say you know we

can have contextual advertising that doesn't annoy anyone make money everyone's happy as long of course as we have liz's measurement to make it all work out right it's all down to row as yeah oh listen it's everything has to be measured every thousand week has to be quantified otherwise we're all just you know going round and round in circles and i think for me this the thing and to go back to your point beth you've already said um work with an agency you know find some expert partner to help you but uh i'm conscious of the time so what can games companies developers and publishers be doing to make themselves more attractive and to open up this market in a really sort of practical way what should they be thinking about and i'll address that to you first beth please sure so um brands are very heavily investing in connected tv which we all know and to peggy's point that they they want to access this gaming community it's more

cost effective for them to do that verse connected tv um so now is their moment to repurpose a lot of the video creative that they're using on mobile app they can use their social video they can brands can effectively use what they're already creating to now scale and mobile app and i think to all the publishers out there this is your moment to really optimize your video experience make sure that you have a really well thought out video strategy and how you show video to your to your users and how you um price it because um we will see more video budget coming into mobile app programmatic and something we're trying to do at fiber is is really bring rewarded video into the programmatic ecosystem a lot of the ad networks are dominating this inventory source and we believe that

brands will be able to more effectively tap into it through their omni dsps like the trade desk and dv360 as we continue to grow and scale rewarded video in um in the bidding environment and so publishers don't be afraid of non-skip your your users will be if you can reward them for that viewing experience that's amazing um and then just make sure that you're working with the right mediation and exchange partners that will enable viewability reporting and some of the other checkbox buying that brands require to effectively uh scale fabulous peggy do you have anything to add i like also the point about repurposing that's a very good point indeed because um that's another question you know what what is the budget going into this so how publishers could make it simpler for

brands to get involved um yes rewarded video is is also a great format to look at because i think what the brands want most is they want to be assured that they're going to be in a context that is appreciated because the brands have all figured out also that just advertising if the publishers are worried about how it's going to potentially impact the gameplay in a negative way the brands equally so they want to have context that means some data around those those moments as well and and maybe also to rethink your game play slightly to introduce these moments so there's moments of accomplishment you know there's these emotional moments that just make sense i mean i was talking to um someone at uh deutsche telekom he said you know we've moved our budget around so what we're looking for is we're we're focusing on targeting environments and moments so in addition to having everything set up to do business i think it's also make certain

your game could adapt to this business once you get it it needs to make sense it can't just be stuck on like a post-it at the end of it all you know it's got to be integrated it's got to feel like part of the experience but of course publishers know how to do that best anyway now you see that that's a very very interesting point because um for many games companies many developers out there particularly uh if it happens in an interstitial if it's if it's rewarded video um it's not their problem you know they they see it as something separate to the game you know and the point of making it part of the celebration or and you know far more integrated into the gameplay in the meta game is to me incredibly um and you know incredibly important as part of the overall experience otherwise you are kind of trying to keep them at arm's length so is this where we're going are we starting to see um ads in general but brands

looking for more you know more alternatives are we looking at product placement are we looking at um you know branded games it was where we started way back in the 80s with things like cool spot um is is this where we perhaps can see things moving up a gear over the next couple of years i would just quickly chime in absolutely because the measurement is so different you know it's really about um you have to think acquisition absolutely i'm not saying that's not important that absolutely is important but you're trying to acquire certain users from the get-go certain players from the get-go and trying to do a little bit less of the of the take a chance right and to your point the same thing happens moving forward it's like it has to be part of an experience because if it's not going to be something that you can deepen

engagement on then why bother i mean the possible exception might be hyper-casual but i'm always hearing about hybrid casual and i've talked to some companies who are figuring out the mechanics to to really make that into a different type of game play a different type of of uh loop so i i wonder i think it's really all for for keeps it's all for keeps fabulous and beth are you a fiber seeing anything any moves in this area well i'll just say that to just give more context into the brand demand that's running on the fiber marketplace i would say the majority of the budgets that we see through the trade desk and now scaling through dv360 and verizon and a few other omni dsps that are focused across all the channels i would for the open marketplace budgets that we're serving um the majority are trying to drive down the funnel kpis so it is

fintech it's um all of the e-commerce sites it's on-demand streaming it's qsr so all the fast food brands are now really looking to tap into mobile app because they know it performs now my big ask to the omni dsp community is to really get it right with measurement because this is a really interesting time clearly where if a brand is using sk ad network or they're using the trade desks measurement or singular and it's not synced properly and they're not able to get the effective reporting that they need you're going to lose that budget to a managed network a mobile first dsp for example or or network that is building that relationship so i we're like at a really interesting time where

the liftoffs and the locos of the world are wanting to go into the brand and agency world but that takes time it's like a 8 to 12 months sell essentially and then you have the omni dsps that already have these really strong agency relationships but need to effectively solve for attribution for them and make sure that their checkbox buying is supported through their platform if they want to maintain that budget and help deliver against the down the funnel uh kpis that are running for these brands wonderful wonderful well believe it or not that's us very very nearly out of time so if i could ask you both one just one key piece of information one takeaway for the developers and publishers out there what should they do tomorrow to make themselves more attractive to ads um peggy let's ask you first one thing i i'm thinking about you know the accessibility because that's that's an

easy fix that's a super easy one yeah that's like pick someone make them in charge of it uh redo the website so i know what you're doing and i i understand and i can see the game um and i can understand this when i'm doing my due diligence and just sort of researching because brand audience game fit is the first number one to to check that box you know it's all about finding that right fit but beyond that um i do know that it would be very helpful to have a clearer idea of who the audience is because they're looking around they're looking at this very broadly and they're saying hey you know i've got um you know i've got aspirin who's going to be a fit with that one well it's probably a mid core because they're going to be more intense so you know let's see oh who has the people in this region or what age group so i would say making that all very understandable before they go to someone like liz because they want to understand first that fit the fit is paramount thank you

very much indeed peggy and beth well i just want to second that because we've been working closely with our publishers to effectively build collateral and and marketing strategies for them on their audience and a lot of them know but some don't and i think it's really you you have to be able to know who your audience is and effectively sell out to these brands but yeah i'm definitely more on the tactical side of how to like make it accessible and i would say again really optimize your video experience um make sure you're not blocking brands that could be running on your campaigns through all the various blocking that happens make sure that you you know who's repping your inventory at your exchange and bidding partnerships and that your inventory is going to be included in deals that they're curating on the brand and agency's behalf

yeah okay well unfortunately we are out of time um such a big big topic to try and cram into 20 minutes so i would like to thank you both beth peggy it was wonderful oscar let's not hang it back it's all good i've actually got a couple of things i want to chuck at you both i mean first thing i love the fact you were talking about data and it reminds me always whenever you talk about data uh a quote from um uh the mythbusters you know the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down which i think is a fantastic so many profound things came out of that show as far as i'm concerned but i think that idea of data is so important but it's in particularly interesting you've mentioned skyard network what you didn't mention was one that's affecting the uk right now because it came into force last week uh i think it was last week which is the aadc so that's the age-appropriate design code i think and and being somebody who's worked who's currently working with the ico to try and provide them with some insights of what game developers can and can't do

realistically um we we think this is a big thing you know this is gonna be a big problem in fact i was actually on a panel last week for campaign to talk about this issue um and i think one of the things that came out from that conversation is the creativity and working more closely with the game developer is going to be incredibly critical and it sounds like you you both felt that was really important do you think that the brands themselves understand that that's valuable or how are we going to basically frighten them from engaging with games industry because we've had this wonderful you know kind of open playing field that's now not quite disappearing but changing are we at risk of scaring some brand brand folks off what do you think um i i think they would be overwhelmed if they had to have direct relationships with each publisher but i think they

will effectively just need all of the people in the middle to support them and make sure that they can effectively align with their campaign requirements so if we can make sure that the omni dsps are certified with all of the mobile measurement partners so that their attribution reporting works through their ui if we can make sure that um the rewarded video placements and the creative that they're running through their ssp renders properly and is effective in showing an end card to help drive up their cta like we all in the middle need to help these brands um scale so are you seeing that happening then i mean i mean so i'd love to hear what people did as well but um i actually given that you i agree with you entirely and i think a lot of that is going to be on our part it's also i think going to be i think there's going to be a lot of effect on the social media and the app stores i think they're going to be find a lot of demands placed upon them not just through the uk government but in

general i think this is going to be coming increasingly uh bug bear and i think it's going to have a rock on effect are we seeing kind of a little understanding on the the middle layer uh the dsps and so forth i do think yeah early days i think liz don't you believe early days early days because i don't think i don't i don't have the feeling they're entirely certain who sits at that table as well and we're calling for the players to come up to the table so let's have a seat and for the brand the brands are thinking well the the agency is my is is my partner and so it's really a bit more of you'd almost want to see closer agency relations between um you know companies like like yours and yeah that is very much strengthening the agency um ssp relationships are getting

stronger and they believe that they do need to have a stronger relationship with their exchanges because the data is all changing and they need to like have partners that are curating these media strategy and media plans for them and building these deals essentially because most of them will operate that way now i think the dsp side is interesting and as the exchange i'm calling to the dsps to to figure out who wants to really play in this game because the agencies are ready and and they effectively need to help support that so it'll be interesting to see yeah it will and i think it's such an interesting time given that you know we're talking about post pandemic something like 80 percent of the population are involved in games even uh you know two-thirds of people over uh 55 are describing themselves as gamers yeah you know so clearly uh i i forgot my

report i can ping it to you later if you're interested um clearly we are in such a momentous position where you know games are now the primary form of discipline saying on the planet so it's that this is where their audiences are and i think the changes that we're being we're facing and actually the aadc and all the other stuff is it's not just affecting gains it's affecting every digital platform so i think we have an opportunity as games because we've actually got quite a sensible structure of of relationships that already exist you know the exchanges the dsps and so on and so forth do actually talk to each other uh i think we'll see a lot coming from games which needs in other industries as well and i think brands will look to trust games in general i suspect if that's my hopeful thought that i'm a optimist as i'm sure you can tell it's the most exciting time ever oscar i mean it's always been interesting but now it's like truly exciting because we

have brands who who you would not have imagined the consumer brands it was it was a given that the pioneer brands the cokes the nikes that was a given but you're having like it's the trickle-down effect is that this is now the new medium and the message in this medium has to be one that is co-created by the publisher and the brand but there's got to be a lot more education probably give you a couple ideas for a couple more uh sessions next time around for uh pocket gamer connect we really do need the agencies um to be in on this as well yeah absolutely i've actually uh been talking to michael at the ics so he should be joining us for pocketgamer9 as well so hopefully we'll be able to pull something like that together for the next session uh guys that's been fantastic thank you very much and thank you for indulging my my crazy questions um there was one last thing i'm gonna just sneak this in uh beside hyper mx which dsps or sdk networks are really focused on brands if you have any kind of suggestions you'd like to throw out

there that would be great well the trade desk um is definitely a leader in the space and has all of the agency relationships to date uh same with google dv360 that's where you're going to see a lot of the scale but the mobile first dsps um like liftoff and moloko are starting to scale there they're absolutely yeah yeah so i would say the budgets are in the trade desk and dv 360 at the moment so you heard it here you want to get the budgets talk to those guys um beth peggy thank you so much brian thank you for uh so uh eloquently hosting that session and we'll move on to the next piece so thank you all thank you thanks peggy