Strategies to Get Ready for iOS 15

this is gonna be the growth track uh sp kindly sponsored by the lovely folk at super scale um and although they will be coming up in just uh in just about 20 minutes half an hour but before then to get us started um we're going to launch right into one of those hot topics i highlighted earlier um with simon filet of apt week and game loss claudia trujillo i'm sure i've got that wrong but have a go that's what's important right um they'll be exploring how to get ready for the changes in ios 15. so let me just remove that so do i have who do i have with us hey simon how you doing hey chris good how are you happy pgc birthday i know thank you i know like i just want more excuse to do this i don't there's not enough there's not enough opportunities to do this look i've i've helped myself a bit of bolly here which i'll be having later on uh it's it's it's empty it's an empty

bottle as if it's just unopened here but lovely and claudia how are you claudia hello having fun really good really good good good sorry sorry i've not slept much a little bit too high energy in the morning you've gotta gotta start strong where are you guys based where are you guys are you are you uh you're out in are you in i want to say paris france that right or no no belgium brothers belgium fair enough the eu we love the eu we do i do anyway the rest of the uk is a bit undecided anyway um i'm gonna you are you guys ready to launch into this it sounds a really fascinating subject yeah uh just ready to go so um i'll i'll be giving a very quick intro we actually don't have fly for today we're just going to be talking and trying to get q and a's at the end so that everyone can wake up with the uh delicious sound of our voices obviously that's good that's good well i mean except there's a lot to talk about i'm sure and you guys have got certainly more insight than me so enough hearing me talking and we'll move on to you talking and i'll i'll be here

in the background and i'll pop in um uh if you need help and i'll pop in with the end to sort of mar so to manage questions and stuff so uh over to you guys thanks chris thank you so much so yeah guys uh first of all our topic for today again is about ios 15 uh how uh actual uh game industry leaders are um preparing for ios 15 so that's why i'm super delighted to have claudia join uh my name is simon i'm working at apptweek uh if you don't know us where an app store optimization tool and company uh helping a lot of uh big game studios across the world um we've been here before we've been here at pgc multiple times last time i had actually shared a quick checklist that we recommended for ios 15 and so today since ios 15 is technically out although we're going to discuss about what's still not there uh i asked

claudia to join us to explain what she's actually doing about it because it's more interesting when you get to hear also from uh people working directly at game studios so claudia i'll let you introduce yourself hello i'm really delightful to be here so i'm claudia i work as the aso expert at gameloft and so we are really thrilled to have simon and all the team from optics sharing with us what's the new trends and we can answer some questions about the new features what ios 15 is going to be for all of us developers and so let's get into it awesome um so yeah this uh we're going to try and take 10 5 10 minutes q a time at the end so at any point head to the q a box to to leave questions there uh in the meantime um yeah i i just want to ask claudia so as a reminder for everyone apple announced ios 15 back in june during wwdc

and when they made the announcements uh they announced three super big new features for developers not just for users uh and these features uh are going to be um a b testing called product page optimization some things that uh we've had on google play for a long while now but we're always expecting to get on ios uh so christmas has finally come this year we also get uh custom products pages and so if you're not well aware of what that is uh go check out the replays after the talk but in short they're basically going to be custom app store landing pages and i'm sure claudia we're going to talk about them a lot uh the last feature that apple announced was uh inapp event cards so something that is uh also appearing a little on google play it's in beta on google play right now but so it's a great way for

uh game developers to advertise what new content all the live ops that are going on and so these were all the big three things that uh every developer i know were expecting and ios 15 rolled out last uh last monday and none of them were ready uh so if if you head out to apple's page right now what you will see is that um they are just saying these features will release later this year uh obviously part of the question of why they may not be available immediately could be because um simply they need to have more people adopt ios 15 takes about a month to get to i think 75 percent usually so um could be quite soon that we start seeing the features come out but this is one of the possible reasons why apple is a bit late with the developer gifts i would say

so with that i've spoken enough already claudia just when we browse all those announcements that apple made can you share with us what you've been most excited about and how what's the buzz at gameloft when you hear these words a b testing custom landing pages or in-app events sure so the one that we are most excited about are the product page optimizations which are the ones that we kind of have right now with google play which are the new custom product pages that we are going to be able to create in order to then have the experiments with the icon the video and the screenshots in order to then attract organic users to see how those really are interacting with them and how they feel about them because so we're going to be also having be having the cross custom product pages which are kind of the thing that we could be doing right now with third party tools which are

custom pages that we create in order for them to then have ua campaigns redirecting traffic to us and so this is also really interesting for us but not is our top main priority for the three main features that ios 15 will be having the custom product pages as i think everyone knows will be also in charge of how the ua strategies are going on and so this is something really good for us for them to be having a more accurate landing page for their campaigns and then we are going to be just having our install be from our right page and not a fake page from a third party tool so it's something interesting but we need to also interact with the ua strategy and the ua team as far as for the product page optimizations it's purely organic so it's purely organic traffic it's purely what we can change and test for different localizations and

see how we are really doing and not just maybe a biased media of how the paid users are really interacting with these different segmentations and targets that we're going to be having through the uae campaigns and just to mention so the new in-app events it's something that as you mentioned google play right now has a meta it's something that we're working with that we're doing really really good with and on google play and so we are also really looking forward to see how our performance and our insights from what we have learned from google play can somehow maybe be similar on ios or maybe it could be better or see how the users from ios are really different or similar to the google play ones in that sense yeah i love that part because i i remember ever since i started in a so we've always had this conversation about ios users are different from google play users so

it's something where you have to be careful when trying to translate whatever a b testing win you get from google play to ios and at the same time this is still still something i see almost everybody do just because we didn't have any way of doing checking it organically in the store um so this is going to be a big change but one thing you you started mentioning and i'm very curious about is when it comes to getting prepared and the teams that you need to be working with um can you walk us through a little about who are the different teams involved when are you speaking with them uh is there a change in how you plan to speak with them now that these features are going to be coming out what's changing and where does it put your position as a so with the rest of the marketing teams that you probably interact with already

sure so for all the three features so in-app events uh product page optimization and custom product pages i need to be working really closely with the creative team with the designers because we need to have different new visuals to be tested in the different fields and so that it's one base that all of these features have in common then for the product page optimization the ones are going to be the organic testings we also need to be working with the developers because in case you want to test the icon you also need to be adding the new icons that you want to test in the binary of the coding of the of the game of the release that you're going to be sending because the item that they are going to be seen on the store it's to then match the icon that they will be seeing on the device once they download the game and so that is how we're going to be working for that and then we have the custom product pages which not only involve the creative team designers but also

all the ua managers so we don't need to only have them for example sharing with us how they are doing better with the ui visuals but also how they are going to be for example launching a new campaign or how they can improve their results so maybe we can segment one game better for one feature of the game or maybe there is a game mode that can be done better if we improve their presence over the ua campaigns also if they wanted uh if we have a live event itself we can also have a ua campaign more dedicated to that or if you want to segment it more for uh one gender or another or for one age rate to another so we can have different icons different screenshots and so on that those can match really well the visuals that the ua campaign has or even the message the ui campaign is sharing and so in that

sense we need to be working really closely with the ua managers and seeing how those campaigns are really doing in terms of does this custom product page um idea or hypothesis that we have in mind does it really it's worth it to spend all the time creating these new visuals and then having to analyze it all or maybe for one localization we need to maybe localize it better in terms of the culture of the country and then maybe segment it better for the ua campaigns and then optimize not only the ua results obviously for the ue campaigns and the budget but also optimize how we're going to be then having a better conversion rate there yeah i think there's so many so many things and but one thing you started touching on is also that there's different priorities but that also means to me um maybe it's not the same strategy for everyone and at gameloft obviously you

have multiple games so can you share if there's different strategies you anticipate would be adopted by different jars for instance um i i think uh if we he if we look at more casual mid-core or hardcore gamer profiles and games that are put out there for them do you think it's going to be the same strategy to go after uh one custom landing page uh dedicated to each segment or will some games work more on the nap event part or just on the organic testing what are your expectations around that sure so this strategy is really different for its type and general of game so for one game one type of game that could be more soft game or casual game maybe the live in-app events are going to be more important for them because maybe the ui campaigns are not going to be that deceiving in terms of having new

screenshots for example more adapted to those but then we have the hardcore games where if we have a license or we have really different areas or game modes or different features that you can enhance in this custom product pages you we are going to be working more closely in terms of bettering our conversion rate for that sense and then we need to be really i would say peaky or specific with which games are we going to be launching the in-app events because there are going to be different type of in-app events that you are going to be able to be launching it's not like the google play ones that we have right now so we need to make sure that all our efforts in terms of launching these events are also paying apart and having a good roast in that sense because uh so we're talking about custom product pages and how those are going to be giving us a custom url for them used in the uae campaigns but

these in-app events are supposed to also be giving us a specific ua custom url and so those can also be used as a part of the uv campaigns but also through pr communication so maybe we have an event with a license or or we have a seasonality or something really specific and big for us in the game so maybe we can even branch out and see which other strategies of communication we can then use that new url for the in-app event yeah i love it and this is a perfect segue into the next question i had for you because i want to get into the specifics of each feature that apple announced uh we we only have a few minutes but i i do want to try to cover each of them um when it comes to the enact events you mentioned you've already played around them on google play um is there any any sort of ballpark data you can share

um in terms of how it worked for you is there um do you see it's particularly helpful for re-engagement or for new user acquisition and do you expect the results would be the same on ios is there any difference you expect in the ux of the store as well sure so yes we are working with those over google play and have him for a while so [Music] yes as a approximation of numbers so when we have a liveops event on on google play usually have a double of the visibility of the game but we have four times more installs and it is something linked to what you mentioned not only new users and new acquisitions but also a lot of returning users of people that maybe have installed the game and then those users maybe have lost interest in the game but then when they see that we have a liveops event they reconnect with the game and then they connect with us again and so this is something that we

hope to see similarly interacting with us on ios and then from there on maybe we're going to be seeing that because we can also be having different events for different localizations and so on we can interact and engage better with the different users yeah that's that's amazing and i i think just also a couple of information for the audience about in-app events um i think first of all these are expected to be the the first features that will actually come to the store because this is going to be impactful for the users whereas custom product pages a b testing that's going to be super important for developers but might be a bit trickier to to build and so we're expecting this we may be wrong here but um i know we've talked about this and we see this is probably going to be the first thing coming out and at the same time one of the big changes from apple is also that uh you will have

that custom landing page that you can build from the in-app event card and you will also have the possibility to have that page appear 14 days before the event actually starts so you could promote and people can uh tap a notification bell to actually get a notification once the event starts is that something you you've seen works in other parts even with game inside the games with a product team is it something that you're already looking to track in the console as well yes so we are hoping to be able to track it because so we're talking about the main features from ios 15 but there are also new analytics are going to be able to be tracked on and so we want to see how this interacts and as you mentioned also with the developers with the more people that are in charge of how the game is doing we want to see how many people are really engaging with the

new event with how many users how many returning users we're going to be able to catch on and see how these new features or maybe this new specific element that we have when a live event is going on how those are really going to be uh taken into account by the users and then after our event we want to see how they are going to be having some sort of retention versus what we have right now that it's not really that much of a data that is provided by the console versus what we are expecting to see with ios 15. so i i want to turn on to to the other two two uh big changes when it comes to a b testing first um you've mentioned already the question of seeing the differences between ios and android users do you expect that will mean that many games will eventually have very

different creatives from one store to the next or do you think it's going to be something that is tested but will still remain the same in most cases i think that i mean in in everything it can be also applied for applications so when we test something maybe the result that we come up with is not really something that it's in the same sense of a brand coherence in terms of the visual assets so what i always recommend to do is that uh just take the slot and go for it apply the different icon because if what we are seeing especially with organic testing is that a new user is more prone to then maybe click on that icon and then download the game because of the icon maybe it's something that we need to hear and then from that we can learn and maybe add up the icon and the same thing goes with ua maybe we have uh

i would not say wrong but a different approach organically with the visual assets and what we can be learning from the ua team and how they are having the ua visuals and what is performing better on ua so maybe adapting those to this new ways of testing it will open our eyes and our experience with the game and the users better in terms of hearing them better hearing the user more and seeing what is really appealing for them and in exchange of what we usually might be thinking that it's the best for our brand and it's the best for the game yeah i i think that's particularly interesting as well when thinking about the fact that the ux of the store is not the same yeah like in in the play store you actually see the creatives only once you get on the product page uh but in ios

you actually see the first three creatives uh when uh if it's portrait creatives otherwise it's only one in landscape but you you see those creatives in the search results already and then when you if you go to the product page you see a different number of screens and and so i think that's also why custom products pages are going to be a big change it's because now you could optimize for one channel which is purely referrer and it it doesn't have to be only uh paid ua it could also be other referred channel even uh influencer campaigns for instance but you will be able to to really customize the experience to where someone is coming from as long as you know where you're putting that link that drives to the special page and so do you with that i think the big challenge is just that we know it's going to be a url and not all the ad networks actually work with urls right now

because they usually optimize with their own signals and so do you do you expect those networks to make efforts to be compatible or do you think it's going to take a while to have all the advertising networks be compliant with the requirements for custom product pages i hope so i hope to see more networks be having this url extensive extension for them to be having these campaigns for the paid campaigns because so not only google play ios and other stores are moving with a quick pass and so we're moving really fast in terms of what we can embrace our users to be seen and so by having that and especially now that we're going to be having the custom product pages so product pages made mostly for ui campaigns if those networks are not going to be having this some sort of result of this option for the developers maybe they are

going to be having lower amount of developers or campaigns and maybe we're going to be opting for more networks that allow us to have a url as a result for the campaigns and so maybe this way we can push further what they can offer to us yeah so uh unfortunately there's so much we could talk about but we have to get to the q a just before uh i'm opening the box right now but at the same time i just want to mention to the audience that if you want to learn more about ios 15 you can head to aptwik social media we have an ios 15 guide uh also an ios 15 hub on our website so there's a lot of information and obviously um both uh claudia and i are available on multiple social media platforms so if there's any question we're not able to cover today um share it with us as well

now uh looking at uh the questions already left in the q a uh if you see uh someone's question particularly relevant please upvote it as well that's super helpful for me to know which one to pick first uh but i'm just going to be picking the first one i have uh under my eye and it's how do you think the new notification system should affect the approach i i'm assuming this uh is about in-app events uh given that the seem to be bundling notification and deciding on the best time to deliver when the user is focused will that weaken developer controls sure so this is something like we talked before so we're going to be able to maybe re-engage more with returning users in the sense that maybe so we have games it's not really about apps and so when games when you search for a game you maybe download a couple of games maybe you play it a bit and

maybe you're not really that engaging it but you still have it downloaded on your device so maybe it would be a good way to maybe reconnect with them and tell them hey we have this event maybe you're really interested into it maybe this is a way for you to come up and play with us again and this is the way that we're going to be able to reach out to them instead of waiting for them to replay our game or maybe just waiting for new users to come so i i see one question which obviously speaks to me which which is what tools and systems are you using to monitor all these variations of campaigns sure so as i mentioned before we're going to be having new metrics on the console so this will be able to see how users are going to be interacting with each of the customer pages we're going to be able if you have the api of the app store for example you're going to be having uh more segmentation about gender 8 range

localization in terms of the language of the region you're also going to be able to see in which screenshot does the user lose their interest and so on so this is the way that we're going to be tracking it internally by the api and not only the dashboard of the console online and so this way we're going to be having it more of an organic approach to saying something and then we're going to be seeing how the ua campaigns are going to be having these custom urls from the christian product pages are going to be then having um in-app events or having um new users new registrations and so on yeah i i think on that front also um it's all about the console first and this is where also the eso tools come up so this is where uh i can just tell all the active users out there keep an eye on what's coming next in apt week uh i see jen uh i i see chris is all also here so i i'm just going to pick one

last question i'm very sorry but i see this one is coming up you're good it's okay i have another question that's fine uh it's just i see multiple people ask uh about the amount of efforts that seem to be needed and uh where to focus first so um i'll just let claudia share what she thinks is the best way to focus and give my opinion after sure so i would suggest that if you have a lot of ui campaigns going on if you have a big budget i would suggest you to focus on the custom product pages and then from there on realize what you can maybe implement or test organically but if you don't have that much ui budget i would suggest to go for the product page optimizations and just test this new visual assets that are going to be able to be tested for organic users and see how those interact with your audience yeah my take is pretty much the same i would just say it could even be in-app

events the whole point is talk to your team your team will tell you this is the most important priority right now look where your users are already coming from if you're trying to address a situation where it's all about the engagement that's where you will want to look at the in-app events if your challenge is just having uh an upgrade to your creatives overall turn to a b testing and if you're already good on the overall front and it's more about the contextualization that's when you speak with your ua team and do the custom product pages awesome that was i mean i'm sure you could go on there's quite it sounds like it's quite a lot to unpick there and obviously as not all of it's live yet um we won't have that much data until it's all live but i'm sure we'll come back to that in future shows and yeah it's it's i was aware of obviously some of the change but not all of those things so thank you so much uh simon and uh and claudia for sharing uh sharing that insight and your experience so far i wish you the very best with these new

features in the ever-changing app store which keeps still in business it keeps us all engaged um thank you for your time this morning um if you want to talk to uh to either similar clothing you can find them in the meet to match your discord or whatever and then you can continue to ask questions i'm sure they'll be able to help you certainly much more than i would um but i'm gonna go and read up on that myself so thanks guys i'm going to let my good good strong start well a lot of detail there to begin with