Superstar Session: Bold Predictions for H2 2020 PG Connects Digital #2

i see that we have our our speaker here i know we're just getting the uh hello everyone hey how are you really good day uh really pleasant to see you saturday again sort of a bit cloudy here but we're doing all right yep sorry for being a little bit late uh how much difficulties with uh with my um starting the session thing well the best things come to those who wait so uh looking forward to this and since it seems like you're already then i'm going to leave you to it and i'll be back at the end for question answers before you start though the last thing i wanted to say to all the people in the audiences make sure you throw your questions into the q a

because we'll be coming back afterwards to go through there anyway over to you yeah i i'll do my best to leave some time for q a though because i mean i've been wait like spending quite a lot of time preparing for the session uh for the last couple weeks and yeah i prepped a lot and i i spent like another hour yesterday actually picking slides to show and filtering out some which are not that important i mean that's fantastic anyway like i said we've got the discord channel as well so we'll see how we get on cool so yeah let me start uh um when i when i thought what to talk about during the session uh i was like yeah like how can i predict i mean this year is already pretty rough uh we've seen so many um you know unpredicted things happen and yeah i hope uh second half of the year will be like more or less positive so yeah instead of like you know using my magic ball uh i went to like unity insides and

different third-party politics and other shoes uh and picked a few data points i decided to highlight for you uh and then i'll basically try to not to say you like what's gonna happen like i have no answer no one has uh but yeah let's discuss let's let's try to predict uh what will be uh next second half of the year uh in terms of like new games new releases gamers ads ad spenders et cetera et cetera so yeah well let's start with a couple of slides uh about what happened actually uh starting from uh chronovirus uh based on statistics stats um in march device usage increased by like 10 to 70 as you can see

mobile phones were were like the most favorable devices for four people and uh there's like little numbers for germany and the united states could be explained just because march was was kind of early for them to get the heat of coronavirus uh while like spain italy and georgia and china were already covered uh as you can see also like laptop pc and other other type of devices uh took their popularity a lot and then as a little um comment basically uh kovit helped a lot of vr hadn't had sales uh to be fair like after the first week of lockdown i was like yeah why sh why haven't i bought myself like a new oculus uh vr headset and then yeah everything was sold out so uh i haven't found any proof any any big stats but

it looks like amount of vr headsets available at people's homes kind of double during kodi what happened next so amount of downloads everywhere just went through the roof uh literally to the sky and then it peaked at 1.2 billion weekly downloads it's just games it's not apps it's all everything 1.2 billion new downloads weekly it's insane uh it's like plus 40 45 50 percent based on region uh growth uh even comparing to january not not even last year and then i started to dig into and analyze either like even everywhere all type of games became popular and uh i found some stats you know internal tools that like commuter apps like you know this

shorty games casual games was uh easier gameplay like hyper casual like puzzles like fibia the idea increased just by four percent which is relatively drop while mid coin hardcore you know like hd games and console games they grew up by a nice 30 40 percent uh then i i found another cool source which is subscribe report about covered impact uh and then as you can see uh happy casual uh i mean started to slowly decline and that's explainable i mean people had more time to play and then now these games started to recover slowly uh because in some countries restrictions are a little bit up so people started to commute again they have more you know this occasional little sessions like in a park when they walk uh when they go back to work uh when

they can play you know this games which are especially popular because of the short sessions uh casual segment it's like basically plateau since mid april uh and then uh rainy wise it's also like recovered comparing to where it was last year and hardcore hardcore it was a massive spike all over uh april uh not because any huge release it's just like much more new players became hardcore players um some great games have got their new fans because of streaming and reach and popularity of streaming services so yeah uh revenue and time span and amount of sessions everything increased so what my prediction is number one for h2 uh first of all kids holidays are already here so they are not cancelled uh kids will

go back to school in september so all of q3 will still see increased use of all the games uh i won't argue about like whether people will go to travel will be able to travel depends on the country depends on rules uh but yeah holidays are here summer is summer then second part commute again depends based country by country uh and company by company but yeah slowly commute apps will get back to charts uh then people will have slightly less time to to play hardcore games though these games like hardcore games they've got new fans and people who've got new like addiction new habits to play more core games games which require like longer sessions etc uh and then yeah uh during coffee times there are quite a lot of new users became became

gamers so some of them will stick to casual some of them will get back to short short session games like harpy casual and some of them will actually stick to hardcore so yeah segment is growing great opportunity for all of you to enter whatever type of game you're building for so second thing i i started to go even deeper and started to look at like what kind of categories grew up mostly uh in terms of time span in action which is mostly shooters uh i needed the chart second place aboard sports and arcade simulation games became very popular uh when it comes to downloads casual games which is primarily given by a much free game and you know this not directly 3d games but you know this puzzle games uh then simulation adventure iron top

shards and another huge surprise and it's not actually a surprise you probably remember yourself at the start of the whole thing or walk down that world games became super popular and top charity stop hits are worth games with a strong social element so when you can challenge your i know your friends your your family when you can connect where you can compete when you can play together when you keep playing remotely so these games really boomed and like another 1 000 percent heads up back to charts so people started to play with people with people they live with uh people started to try to play remotely house party all these things helped people to actually play somehow so my prediction number two uh for h2 multiplayer games will continue to grow

uh if you will again look at yourself uh at least myself i started to call my friends and parents every connected with some people i had no time uh to talk to i know last year uh and yeah we started to play some games we started to play social games we started together uh in zoom or house party or other apps and second prediction like casual era is back so again because people uh they tasted quite a lot of new experiences it will be still a spike in h2 of uh you know this board games people will play digitally not necessarily on real paper games uh even personally people will play board games people will compete people will challenge each other third thing is so i a couple days ago i found a really cool fresh

uh report made by alpine idc and one of the parts were about us gamer attitude towards different types of types of ad formats so pretty much how hardcore gamers it's the biggest question of the last year is how mid-quarter and hardcore gamers uh think about ads and then as you can see for the last year attitude of hardcore gamers which is column like right right side column improved massively so in total i like them and they are okay is more than half of the audience is like 60 when historically like a couple years ago the stats was like 75 percent were big haters um and what as what was observed as a result uh especially recently when you know payment in games uh per player decreased slightly

uh is that more and more hardcore companies reaching out saying yeah we're open to use ads so one of the predictions as a result like fallout shelter by bethesda uh they will employ opportunity as exclusive just at the start of this week uh so yeah one of the predictions we see is that quite a lot of known gaming companies started to reach out and work more actually with uh rewarded visa format as well as more you know mid-core and hardcore games strategy games games you would never think they will use ads ever uh got back to us replied our emails we sent them like a time ago to implement ads because for user not having ads in in the game is almost you know a penalty uh that they they already find they know it how it works they know the caveat uh

another finding so i i tried to find you know more precise statistic about that but like that that thing came up when i had a chat with what one of gamers you just see or uh preparing for my presentation so he told me that like look so many games different types of games are postponed during this um you know unpredicted times of uh first half of the year um and that's like only a list of 50 games in wiki article mentioned that they moved postponed to particular date in h2 or without saying exact date of update release and that's only pcn console uh another piece of content i found that pocketgamerbiz uh again like a few days ago is that 53 top games in soft launch

i don't know what was the rule to pick like to call them top games probably it's just you know big titles big ips because that's like rovio that supercell uh that's ubisoft that's activision blizzard so quite a lot of big games are are in soft launch i'm pretty like really unprecedented uh amount of games and soft launch so my next prediction would be basically a second half of the year will be hot so obviously we can't even see how many games were scheduled initially to to be released in h2 and also some games are postponed so yeah second half of the year will be really hot in terms of uh bids in terms of good money for publishers but competition for players will be also insane uh and then i have just little little time uh and want to cover one one more

question so one more questions uh which is interested for people who buy users from from networks from facebook from google uh who monetize those networks uh is what's going to happen with ad spend so when it comes to games it's it's you know it's a performance story so obviously some games will faith with like smaller ltv uh because of recession here and there because players change their behaviors because because players will have less time to play because some of them will get back to work uh but yeah smaller and ltv still performance based a lot of ross products on the market including unity pros product so everything will be driven by performance uh i don't expect a huge change as we discussed on the slide before uh any little change in cpi will be compensated by big spike in demand big spike in

competition non-gaming apps for them it will be kind of harsh time so these charts are about how many downloads happen to taxi apps in the uk uh back in march so for for avs like travel like taxi like dating all of them will need restart the ue campaigns so this market is very sad for example i haven't used uber for three months so uh and okay i i i used to be active user of uber but yeah now now i need to be you know attracted by some of them again it doesn't mean i installed the app but yeah retargeting campaigns will help and then a lot of brands they will slowly rump up uh but definitely they won't get back really soon so yeah uh we we should rely on on ourselves and our like you know competition and then

non-gaming will help to to add some money to market so uh and yeah uh i'm out of time probably i've been messaged about like shut up and stop it uh the biggest prediction i have is like people will continue to play games people tasted games new players appeared on the market people love games we should all build games and yeah second half of the year difficult to predict though it will be successful for all of us if you have any questions i am happy to move to um discord or wherever i need to move to to have a chat with you hi thank you no we've actually got a a little bit of time for a couple of questions if you're uh interested in taking some of the questions from the audience yep yeah so um some of the questions what the first question we had come in was um has cpi increased or decreased

there has been mixed articles about it um like first of all i would recommend to join a session of my colleague emery in iran today uh he will cover covet 19 dock he he and his team has been working on in general we have seen that cpi went down i mean at the start of the whole thing cpi was flat so in march no change but then most of big developers uh big publishers big advertisers they realize that lc started to change so basically people play more they consume more content uh but they don't have as much money i mean if i if i watch and experience what if i have twice more time to experience different things it doesn't mean my uh content spent doubled right yeah because my salary is not doubled fortunately i didn't lose my job but yeah in general uh amount of money i spent for content didn't increase

so yeah most ltv curves changed and cpa cpas went down as well as you know brand advertisers start to spend amount of auctions available to buy and participate increased in april may so yeah prediction for h2 it will be at least flat but cpis will most probably go up because yeah as i mentioned like 50 60 70 huge games in soft launch and unlimited amount of like postponed and games which should be released will be released so okay um the next question is uh from an attendee who obviously has a a word game but without multiplayer who says that why do you think word games have become so popular um do you you know what about word games without multiplayer like theirs um i'm not saying word games about multiplayer are bad they they just grew up not as much so you know this games was like social element when

you can challenge someone invite someone connect with someone uh compete with someone they they they became you know this platform for people to to communicate so like evolution of house party when you can play with someone remotely without like see the face or chatting because i mean you know it's fatigue of being zoomed with your parents and with your friends all the time uh but why war games became so popular because they are easy to start with yeah they they have no obligations it's like you know uh yesterday i know your dad or granddad used to make this you know crosswords uh in a newspaper in the local newspaper and now after playing with you i know words with friends uh he started to you know top his his phone you gifted him last new year and he started to play the games so that's probably the easiest easiest

area to enter for new players yeah uh so could be the reason yeah and i think we've got a little bit of time uh with another one so uh what has been the impact on ecpm arpu etc of ad monetization any predictions about that uh so because of the amount of ads during covered increased because such lungs longer people consume more more games and more ads today cbms went down and competition decreased so brands off pulled out budgets non-gaming some of them in terrible shape i mean you know this well-being and business they grew up education grew up organically mostly like travel taxi uh a lot of other ups went down so prediction uh for h2 all these businesses

will try to recover as quick as you know lockdown will be lifted so definitely all these taxi apps uh uber or lyft whatever you have in your region will compete for users will compete for you as a new user pretty much because you haven't been using taxi app for like three four months uh same to dating same to you know all this real life services which were not available for people uh as well as yeah new games so because competition will be higher cpms will be up despite despite the amount of inventory you can sell the amount of impressions you can sell uh will go down because people will have last time they will choose somewhere in real life on park well i got no dutch or some vacation and then in q4 they will be busy during the careers and or monies uh therefore the cbms will be up yeah and i think if we can squeeze it in we'll have one last question and then we'll have to let everyone sort of head off to the discord because

obviously it's been a very popular talk but uh i think a really interesting question from carla which i'm just going to pick out of the selection is um what about demographics are we seeing any patterns here in 2020 and moving into h2 that's a tough one not really prepped i i've seen a few reports uh about demographics didn't end the slides because you know demographics is the most challenging one i would say that my general observation of demographics is like summer and you know this christmas period are definitely huge spike in kids and teenagers playing games despite all of them playing games every day anyway it's like a huge spike of consumption uh i've seen that you know all the not necessarily like elderly people but all the people joined gaming uh but during coffee times it was like

really across the board so all categories uh not no really big highlights it was more or less flat uh spike age-wise location-wise yes some countries which were hit harder by by coming 19 i mean and where long down was more strict they start obviously they consume consume more some countries where things were more relaxed and eased quicker uh obviously i mean it was a little spike but then started to release quicker so yeah um i would recommend to go to upside report definitely find a penny an idc report join every session tonight i'm not usually tonight like 5 p.m or 4 p.m check the schedule uh and yeah uh he will also cover something some findings perfect well thank you so much and you know i know lots of people have some other questions so i'll let everyone take

the the conversation off to the discord if they want to yeah and also feel free to find me like in linkedin facebook or slava uni3.com just message me i'm happy to have a chat about that yeah i know it's it's been a hot topic uh thanks for coming over uh yeah unfortunately i don't have like another hour to talk to you no but thank you so much cheers yeah no thank you right bye