Superstar Panel: Walk of Game

[Music] thank you [Music] we've got an incredible panel uh now coming up which is a superstar panel about the Walk of game so this is a hosted by apps fires Adam smart and we have Auntie through small Giant games Mikko from fingersoft and Gabby from Miniclip can you make your way to Stage panelists whilst they're doing this I am delighted to tell you that generous Souls that apps Fire are they have socks for everyone who wants them so I'm going to be coming through with my gorgeous

assistant if she if she arrives and handing socks across so don't be troubled if a man hands socks to you you want socks there we go I'm not gonna do from the stage um but I will come down so don't be disturbed by my man Karen's handing socks out these are your socks okay but I'm gonna hand over to Adam to to manage your panelists so that's okay and I'm gonna get out of the way right uh well thanks everyone for coming this is going to be a fantastic panel I've been really looking forward this is what we need to do we've got three you want to go play Legends here with us today and uh I don't think we need much of an introduction from me so what I'd like to start with is something very very simple and I'd like to know what your favorite mobile game is your go-to game of the moment so Auntie let's start with you my go-to Marvel game at the moment uh has been my mobile go to a game for a few years now and it's Hearthstone uh so the uh blizzard property fantastic fantastic game uh big fan get to play what is it

about it I just like card games uh and collectible card games a lot and uh it uh regardless of being a bit maybe past its prime in terms of years in the market it's still uh still definitely uh it does it for me at least yeah excellent um Mikko hi everyone um my go-to game for a long time it was Empire's Apostles actually but um a year ago my daughter was born so gaming has been a little bit less since then so now it's been just hyper casuals mainly a game called udaku lately okay and what what is it about that well I don't know it's quick and easy to play quick and easy you can watch news or basically watch news while you're playing and just stare at the ceiling and feel tired fantastic and Gabby hi everyone um my my favorite game I guess is a risk I used to play a lot of strategy games

when I was young once and yeah I love I love board games or risk on mobile it's my favorite one yeah definitely okay so I I kind of dived into the question before I went through the introductions so why don't we do a round of introductions Andy let's let's uh introduce yourself as you had a bit of doubt that I might not do an introduction but I'm gonna do one anyway yeah yeah very good I was gonna skip it and then yeah yeah uh antibi guys my name I'm the head of marketing at small giant I've been a small giant now for five and a half years or so uh main job right now is to make sure that my team has everything they need in terms of uh spending as much money as we can but in a reasonable way very nice Miko yeah hi uh my name is I'm the head of user acquisition at fingersoft we have the hill climb racing brand and IP that I'm working with and we have some awesome games also coming up soon

yep head of user acquisition fantastic and Gabby yeah my name is Gabi I'm the CMO of Miniclip working for about 10 years in the industry that's the same and the fun fact I just landed the three hours ago in Helsinki so be kind with me I had only one coffee so if anyone's got any technical questions feel free to throw them at Gabby uh all right so I I'm really interested to know what the what the main kind of things that you're thinking about at the moment are in your role like what's the what's the sort of biggest thing that you've got or the biggest challenge that you've got going on at the moment um let's go let's go let's continue going down the line I like I like this form yeah um for us the the main thing is uh probably like there's two basically two main things one is connected to the other one is of course uh privacy and changes in the industry so both with apple ATT and then coming up later uh is

going to be Google's changes with the Privacy sandbox uh those will both be huge changes to the industry and ATT already has now they're rolling it back slightly to a more usable form in the future but those have been a big impact on our team in terms of what we can do and knowing more importantly knowing what we can to do yeah um and um the second thing then is related to the first thing in terms of trying to find new sources new uh ways of buying new uh types of inventory that we maybe would not have been comfortable with a few few years ago the the two connected there like this isn't that kind of thing along with the privacy kind of are for example I understand that our good friends at abswyer have recently introduced connected TV as a measurement Source indeed uh I read that in the in the in the media uh and uh and that for example is an example of something that we might potentially not have done still a few years ago because it's not that measurable yeah but now as

tools have become available because of the changes in the industry that's also something that we would need to look at at least as an option so we'll uh give it a shot see if it works if it's measurable and then if not then we'll obviously try something else and that's basically it so trial and error at the moment then basically that's that's been the job for for seven to eight years now and and we go yeah well basically um the same as what Auntie just mentioned um post ATT uh figuring out what the scanner 4 is bringing us uh can we do more after that uh what happens with the Google privacy sandbox uh what does it really mean in the longer run um but also personally we've been checking Japan as a market and trying to concentrate there okay investigate what works with whom to work there so iOS and Japan and it is Japan planned expansion or is that as a consequence to um what's happened with privacy changes

and that sort of stuff like is it is it a new plan that's come in or is it is it like we have we have a massive user base and um still Japan one of the biggest still one of the biggest markets we feel that we're just falling behind now obviously raising category might not be the easiest in Japan but still I think that we can do more of their uh learn it just requires knowledge how to do stuff you can only do so much for um from here from the West with the normal UI channels uh that you're using local stuff there interesting okay and Gabby yeah uh yeah iOS probably finish for for all of us I think the most interesting question remains when to scale when to slow down and how that's uh that's the most interesting thing to do and yeah I think it's nice as well okay so I think this time we'll come back down the line so I'll start with you [Laughter]

you mentioned you've all mentioned privacy you've all mentioned ATT like what has the impact been to you guys like what's what what are you actually seeing with that at the moment what's the what's the outcome for you yeah probably we all know that we needed to change some of the tactics that we had uh sometimes do we we need to consolidate campaigns and think about broader audiences when creating a creative say or a new ads so I can mention a lot of things but overall I would say that although there are a lot of changes the UA hasn't changed a lot like we still have the campaigns who still have targetings we think we still have the creative so we still have a lot of tools as a marketing and UI person we need to adapt our teams need to adapt and yeah it's fun I love the how the industry is evolving like 10 years doing the same can be

fascinating but also tiring but I prefer to focus on the fascinating side and yeah it's like a chess game you need to hold it all this all the time think how to win the rest of your competitors and the colleagues and friends but yeah overall it's fun yeah okay and Miko um we've always been Android heavy company so what happened with um iOS um basically we were able to do good UA before that on iOS but we realized that since we have already a massive amount of spend on the Android we kind of started to avoid the whole thing we we pushed for the Apple search ads quite a lot and we've gotten that to work nicely and we're kind of following the situation um still kind of carefully testing out small stuff um but and what what comes with the scan for is something that maybe after that

we're kind of ready to really attack but so far it's been mostly uh focusing on Android focusing on Apple search ads um and that's that's basically it's unfollowing what happens things are changing every three months there so you cannot really start building huge data pipeline stuff from scratch because I mean it's definitely one way of dealing with the problem is just to not use it yeah maybe not the best way but that's that's our way so that's fair it's unapproached it is an approach yeah I guess for us um it's like with doing UA on iOS has been mostly about learning about re or learning again everything about your game in terms of conversion values what is actually happening in the first 24 hours what's actually happening in the first 48 hours and then trying to model the future for example in our case we're in match RPG game in person puzzles done for free on the App Store

um we're a match RPG game and uh um we monetize quite linearly throughout the age of the the users and therefore that means that during the first couple of days we don't really expect to monetize necessarily that heavily because we also want to give everyone a fair chance to to to do what they're doing and and get get into the game so for us that means not necessarily purchase signals but all types of signals that you can really gather is it session length is it uh player product player um progress uh watching ads whatever they are during that very first window yeah that's become even more important than before because it's super easy to just look at your MMP data and look at Ross but then when you time box it and don't necessarily have that row as is another thing and so you're using all of that to tie into the conversion value yeah exactly so for scan traffic that's that's exactly what you would have to do because that's all you have it's basically all you have so so uh and if you do want to still grow your game and we're very much in that business then

that's that's what we have to go with okay um we're gonna go down the line again this time right so in terms of you know it's obviously it's obviously a problem for being able to monitor the the installs that you're getting through the the problems with conversion value that kind of thing what impact has it had on re-engagement for you guys um for re-engagement for us uh um fortunately we have a very uh sticky user base that it is like the core user base has remained with us for years and years at this point so re-engagement we we haven't had to ever really focus on as a main point of our of our UA but is that because of the the sort of live Ops re-engagement that you're running within the game so you know the sort of push notifications emails blah blah blah uh that too so so the sort of functional parts of uh of CRM or whatever the tools that you mentioned the life cycle it has

has emphasis changed somewhat since the the the Privacy changes to enhance the push notifications and email side of of you know live Ops essentially I'd say it's come more as a byproduct of of uh as time has elapsed our get you know games tend to not to get any younger yeah uh so and for us we're in year six at this point so we are still trying to find ways to continuously do that and it just happened that the changes in privacy that the industry is going through happen at the same time okay so so it kind of It kind of coincided so we didn't see as much of an impact there but it became more of a normal uh evolution of our of our game specifically cool um okay um in our case I would say that we're focusing more on free install rather than re-engagement like when we're just creating crowds cohorts uh from the uninstalled events where we see those and and run those um basically it's like you said it's

push notifications mainly for re-engagement then but um and it's like more of a testing we haven't really found a very solid way of repeating the success and you know when do we see that we need to bring the players back immediately or how long and uh what do we value and actually it's easy as the focus changed though in terms of you know sort of since the ATT framework came in has has the focus changed I can't really say it would it's just that uh we are running the test and seeing the things as we did yeah already before that so I can't really confirm that fair enough and Gabby yep I will focus on pager engagement or better marketing so it's pretty dead on iOS like uh it's very hard to to Target devices nowadays in on iOS so it has an impact of course but as I said before it's an opportunity

because now without the capacity to exclude existing users or previous installs you need to think on your creatives as a also some range re-engagement tool maybe because you are approaching a broader audience and a lot of times existing users so you need to think which what game are you marketing why are you are you doing marketing for and think about the creative strategy and maybe sometimes to have a broad approach and the broad a message integrated but sometimes it may be a good opportunity to showcase some of the light bulbs that you have in the game even for new users you will be anyway approaching exiting users on iOS so yeah there are a lot of I I always choose to pick the opportunity and to see the opportunity in the in the in the changes that we have in the market and the yeah that's my take on my engagement so so when when we're talking about sort of emphasis to different business units after after privacies come in how about

re-engagement um cross promotion sorry I'm on the last question already um how how about the cross promotion has has your strategy towards cross-promotion changed much since the the ATT Frameworks come in yeah I think companies in general or developers need to learn how to leverage the data they have the first party data so cross promotion is indeed an opportunity it's not easy to execute as it sounds so it's a it's a process I guess for many companies for many companies but I think all of us are iterating and improving our gross promotion capabilities and trying to do it in the best way possible of course for for us marketers we love the idea of having terministic attribution on Cross promotion or for in most of the cases and iOS which is very tempting and a very nice report but there are a lot of challenges out there as well so uh yeah I would suggest

to invest some time and afford some money internally for every game developer and to try to learn how to leverage the all the information that the companies have or posted to the Past in which the platform had had more data than developers right now maybe maybe changing and I think there is an opportunity excellent maker yeah one one thing that we learned uh over the past four years was that um if you if you're using mediation tools for the cross promotion it will get very difficult um usually the quality of the users is not that good I mean the you have to compete with the with the commercial ads there and um the kind of costs will Skyrocket for you and then the kind of traffic that you're getting uh might be even non-payers everybody since you're not showing all of the ads to your payers so um we've been we have kind of

been building our second iteration of our own cross-promotion tool now for a few years and we're running tests on that and and the results seem promising what comes to act then again naturally for example we are lucky to have huge organic uh amounts of installs there so um naturally we need to leverage that for our other games also and the coming titles so it is a kind of a none no brain in order to to as a whole issue but it has some it's not that easy especially with the mediation kind of the services that um that provide your house ads there alongside with the commercial ads it's it's it's going it gets really hairy really quickly okay an auntie uh yeah for us we've again we've had a few things happen simultaneously so uh while ATT did kick in at the same time we also uh decided to uh deepen our relationship with our

our mother company which of course is Zynga the mobile gaming arm of take two um and Zynga has a wide variety of different game studios so we have uh for example uh Rolex and Peak and Graham and and social Point all of the above uh who are of course also representing millions and millions of installs millions and millions of user identifiers so uh with that in mind it also makes sense for us to really double down on cross-promotion not only because of the Privacy changes but also due to the organizational changes that we've been having so um uh with regards to that uh on Apple specifically because um you can't for example transfer idfvs through different companies where our games are now published by Zenga so that we are able to have so many idea fees stored on one Apple account and exactly exactly limitations surrounding it exactly so that allows us specifically

at least to tap into a wide pool of um of user data that is already in-house but now also to our disposal so definitely has been a byproduct of of ATT sort of that again coinciding but uh definitely made that decision easier for us yeah okay um so when when you're looking at producing new games and how do you take the learnings from the old games and apply them to the new ones is that is that something that you can do every time or is you know uh if you're I guess if you're moving from category to category then or genre to genre then you may find that they the performance is completely different um but is that something you do I guess uh my answer will mostly be pertaining to the marketing side of things because obviously on the game design side of things um you'll have a lot of different learnings like how to operate a live game and this kind of sorry I'm in completely on the marketing side completely in the marketing side uh and I'm also not the best person to talk about the games uh that person's over

there uh so um what uh what I would say is that each game is kind of its own uh its own beast in terms of we for example have two uh match three RPG games on the market one is in person puzzles the other other is puzzle combat they have a very similar sort of core game mechanic but on the marketing end they have completely different needs even though they're both RPG games with character collection in its core and there's a puzzle meta game but at the same time the audience is different the approaches you need to take are very different and we've definitely learned that during soft launch doing Global uh during just operating a live game where the other might really benefit from certain marketing strategies like being more aspirational in ads for example while the other really focuses in on the gameplay so there are core things operationally as a UA team that definitely go over but from creative point of view there's really something you need to learn Case by case

amazing Mika yeah I would I would maybe say that um it's the benchmarks that you get from a successful title if you have one I mean you can you can actually with the new game you have not you don't have that much content but at least you have something concrete data wise to kind of mirror stuff and see whether you're on the track are you falling behind already from the successful numbers or are you perhaps topping those and you know that you have you have a great game at hand even with that little little content there um other than that I guess it is as hard for a bigger company to come up with the new mobile game success as it is for a smaller companies and those benchmarks you would take from your existing games yes exactly and and the kind of that's the role for the existing games and how we could how we can benefit from those so we have all the LTV data we have the kind of cohorts there and we can kind of

compare I'm talking about the UA perspective clear from the user perspective not from the Game Dev like Auntie said you know there are a lot of things that you can do most likely on that side but yeah and should yes um but yeah benchmarks and then but the reality is that it is hard like to come up with new new successful titles regardless how many successful titles you have absolutely in the history yeah and yeah it's hard to beat the benchmarks of your most successful game usually [Music] um itself but yeah I don't think I have something interesting about this but just just to to stick to an assumption like assume something and then try to I'm trying to get the walk the fine line between being able to hear you and not deafening everybody out there sorry yeah you carry on carry on it that's it okay um so I guess all right we're getting low on

time so I'm gonna gonna uh ask something that I've got a personal interest in with everything that's sort of changed in in the world of marketing at the moment what are you what are your concerns moving forward you know what are you what are you thinking about what's the next thing that you're that you know you've got to work on um auntie uh spending more with the lower CPI and a higher IPM I mean that's the dream that's the dream uh but no um I'll maybe piggyback on my first answer which is just continuously finding more sources more uh efficient ways of operating things be that with uh new tools uh that may or may not be provided by our MMP um or if it's new tools out on the market new networks what kind of things we could learn from the networks because that's also an important place to learn things which is not only co-developers and other people in in events like this but also the there's a lot to learn from

the ad networks that you work with the partners you work with the measurement Partners you work with um but that's probably the main thing is just to continuously learn more and for me personally having a team and making sure that the team has all the all the things that they need making sure because we're all we're in the people-based industry anyway at the end of the day so making sure that we have all of the tools all the data all the time the power that is needed to make good decisions the channels that you're looking at expanding to are they outside of traditional Performance Marketing I mean are you looking at other avenues I think you said earlier about connected TV and stuff you know these these does this now open the door to be thinking more about that sort of stuff uh I'd say that door has been open for a few years now for us specifically uh it would be connected TV it would be uh influencer based marketing

um it would be uh uh not even connected but just TV um and and a lot of different things that kind of have existed in the mobile landscape but we for example have noted that those not necessarily our core competency but it is something that should be uh due to the Privacy related changes or other changes in the industry sure excellent Miko um yeah I mean the business has been kind of changing forever it's it's kind of a constant there and whenever there is a change there is also opportunity so maybe one concern is for me personally is that which of the changes are the best opportunities and how which to attack because on a daily basis you can you just don't have the resources to know basically everything about everything so so kind of pinpointing the stuff whether to push for the Privacy changes and kind of trying to um change the basically the whole company called trains trusting more

holistic way of of seeing UAV results both on Android and iOS or whether you should examine the possibilities that maybe maybe there is one day or there already is other ways than just two stores to sell your product but um like there are the biggest concern is to like kind of where where should you that's the kind of gamble that you have to do like what is it that you attack like fair enough fair enough yeah choosing your battle yes choosing the battle and Gabby yeah okay I I don't think that I'm concerned about the changes but I'm more concerned about having enough time to read and learn about the changes so for me and from my teams and they will continue to happen but it's it's increasingly hard to have enough time to to iterate and to read and to learn and to test so yeah I would prefer to have a like less

changes every year yeah yeah but I'm not concerned about changes I'm more concerned about global warming but not about potentially in gaming that you didn't expect to hear that on a mobile ads panel but here we are yeah there we go um all right last last question um other than in the sandbox with which is which is my podcast and I'm winning in the nordics which is the the the absolar nordics podcast what sources of information do you go to you know what's what's your for anybody out here that's in user acquisition what sources of information do you trust and do you think are uh you know do you look out on a daily basis um for me at least um is a lot of peer uh feedback peer review not only within uh the not only within Zynga the various Studios that we because we're obviously in a

um quite precious situation that we have that to our disposal uh but then also listening in on uh on for example other Industries slack groups that uh have a lot of UA related things product related things everything that we can just like soak up as a sponge and try to think about okay if this would be best practice how would we do it uh think about things critically and and really approach it from there uh events like this for example now that they're finally re-emerging in person in person potentially but also online uh why not um and then grabbing basically every and any conversation with people that you see as verifiably an expert would really just understanding because there's a lot of material out there that we can put cool Miko we do share quite a bit of news articles in our company slack Channel and uh if we notice something and know that which team is handling that so quite easily we cannot just share information I think um The

Constructor of one is a good podcast for example and uh and um yeah the kind of venues like this happenings talking with other industry professionals usually I think the most trustworthy and kind of a genuine information you can uh is here right now for example just to talk with everybody and share your own information whatever you feel or know something so those are great discussions always awesome Gabby yep uh probably the most valuable resources talking with friends talking with colleagues for there are a lot of podcasts known podcasts and newsletters but I still find talking with friends and colleagues the most insightful source of resources yep awesome well thank you very much for joining us how to spot on time thank you very much for joining us and

thank you to everyone for for listening thanks everyone awesome thank you so much for that that was thanks for being both interesting insightful and also brief which is uh it takes all the boxes thank you