The Alternative App Store Bootcamp: The 7 Things Developers Need to Know - Itai Cohen.

[Music] [Music] [Music] up next I'd like to invite I from digital turbine uh to talk about the alternate alternative app store the seven things uh developers need to know okay so uh wanted to talk to you today about alternative App Stores um and in 15 minutes give or take uh cover seven things that people need to know in 2024

about this trend and uh hopefully leave some time for questions so let's Jump Right In um if we can just oh the clicker is here okay I got it all right so I'm itoen I'm SVP marketing and strategy at digital turbine I've been with the company for um two years and have previously worked at fiber and other parts of attech so all in all about 10 years of experience in strategy and attech uh as a whole and I wanted to just spend a minute talking about why digital turbine even cares about this topic and is has a right to speak of this topic so digital turbine as a company has been around for over a decade and as part of that has installed over 5 billion apps directly to the device so the first thing to know about our technology is that we have an installer that sits directly on the device that is not the standard Google Play installer so already we have a lot of experience of putting software directly on the device uh in a way that is relevant to this changing future and then since then we've gone on to you know uh introduce more innovative

solutions including powering the user experience on 800 million devices and so we know a thing go to about engaging users empowering the device experience itself which is again a relevant component of the store we also have an endtoend technology stack when it comes to user acquisition and AD monetizations which are critical parts of the ecosystem if you want to grow your game and then now we're you know engaged in the next wave of growth and you're more than welcome if you want to learn about that to come to our booth that we're also sharing with our friends from aptoid who are also engaged in the alternative store business uh so there's a lot to speak of there but I'm not here to talk about our solution I'm here to talk about how to have the conversation about alternative stores and so seven things that we're going to hit we're going to understand the background and context to Alternative stores we're going to briefly touch over what is changing and why it is a very relevant topic for 2024 we're going to look ahead and talk about some of the new challenges that are going to introduce and new opportunities that are going to be introduced in the context of alter ative stores we're then going to uh

present a framework of how to think about stores in a structured manner so that you consider all the different components as you're considering your approach to engaging with this trend and hit on what's in it for users the impact on developer operations and the impact on UA all of these could be an hour's talk but we're going to hit all of them in 15 minutes just very high level and hopefully have an opportunity to continue the conversation down the line so the history alternative app stores are not new it's not a new thing there are already today over 40 alternative Android app stores that are not Google play every uh Chinese phone manufacturer for example comes built in with its own app store right if you have one of those manufacturers phones then you might have seen this icon on your screen the Samsung Galaxy store has been around for about a decade the Amazon app store has been around for about a decade so this is not a new trend this is not a new thing but it is something that's

changing significantly as part of this trend you also had more Regional players the tens cent store which is actually fairly large in China and um aptoid and one store again uh some of these players and uh these the these are some of you know the yesterday challenges of the landscape uh and they hit these players and the many others that are not on these slides in different ways but the first challenge is getting on the device to actually have your Store icon present on the device it's a given for the App Store on iOS phones on the iPhone it's a given for Google Play on any Android phone that that they're always there and they get you know beachfront real estate on the homepage of the phone but for other independent stores it's not something that could be taken for granted again if the store is from one of the phone manufacturers then it's going to be featured on the home screen but if it's an independent store then it has a challenge to actually get on the device even if it's a huge company like Amazon the number one challenge is get the the store on the device and then the

footprint could be limited either to specific models or specific manufacturers or specific GEOS so for an app developer to evaluate the opportunity of investing in an innative store the first question is is there enough scale there the second question is am I going to find my audience on that store if I'm only going to buy Huawei users for example is that a relevant enough audience for me uh and then another big component of this is that none of these stores actually have a complimentary ecosystem for user acquisition or ad monetization outside of the store it's something that we take for a given when it comes to the iOS store or Google play but it's actually not that uh not something that could be taken for granted when you're talking about alternative stores things are changing because Regulators are intervening our industry is actually quite massive and generates billions and billions of dollars in inapp purchase and in advertising in regular ators are finally making strides

and you know looking into the competitive Dynamics in the market now right now the most burning topic is in the EU and also impacting uh the UK is the digital markets act which comes into effect in March and already forces some massive seismic changes when it comes to Gatekeepers to App Stores but this slide is meant to show that this is a global Trend it might not all come into effect at the same time but it is gradually opening up and in APAC United States and Europe more and more markets are looking into diversifying and empowering consumer Choice when it comes to app stores that means that there's more choice and more opportunity also for developers so what's coming next and how is this changing the future well you know the challenges of yesterday are not the challenges of tomorrow as part of the digital markets act for the first time in history Sid loading is going to be enabl an iOS so you know that reality that actually existed on Mac computers since the dawn of of time where you can

download software directly from the browser is now going to get introduced to iPhones which were a complete Walled Garden up until now so again massive new opportunity I can get on the iPhone not through the App Store how should I be thinking about that opportunity and then does that open the opportunity for cl crossplatform stores you know something that cuts across console PC and the mobile device you know so new stores are going to emerge new independent Solutions are going to be introduced how does that change the needs of developers and the way that they can can address the main takeaway here is that developers need to jump on the bandwagon early if they want to influence the conversation before things are set in stone you now have an opportunity to have a voice with those players as they are shaping their Solutions and actually influence how the problems of developers are getting addressed by the stores where for the last 15 years we've just been accustomed to accept whatever the stores are giving us live by their

policies live live by their competitive Dynamics we now have an opportunity to change that and then on the other side we also don't know how this plays out because you know in fragmentation versus consolidation we just came off two years where a lot of consolidation has happened through the industry but in this R area specifically it's probably going to split up before it's going to come together we're going to have a lot of different opportunities for developers to engage and so there's going to be a choice for developers to make on where to invest invest time and resources to both get exposure to the opportunity but also maximize the Returns on that opportunity so how to think about the stores one of the things that for me uh is particularly uh troubling is that in the media the conversation very much limits uh is limited to payments right we're talking about stores even if you look at the Epic versus Google court case it's about opening up the stores for alternative payment and there's a

problem there because a it limits how you think about app stores and what they do and B Apple and Google have already Express their position about what that means for developers so first of all there's more to stores than just payments there's the device access challenge that we touched on earlier there's the storefront and how my product pages look and how I manage my relationships with the audience through the store there's the back end of the store the publishing process the review shipping updates to the stores analytics security anti- frud all of those things are investments that are made into the store and then there's in store promotions and I'm how I'm able to influence my position can I do paid search what are the promotional opportunities that exist today and may exist tomorrow in a different way when there are more alternative options out there but then on top of that we have to remember the and growth enablers user acquisition and ad monetization if you don't have those as complimentary pieces then the only way that you can grow is

based on what's Happening inside of the store but most growth for most developers is not happening inside of the store it's a in many cases singled digigit percentage of your UA spend where a lot of time and focus goes into spending with the big social media players or spending with ad networks or spending with dsps in order to accelerate your growth that exists inherently for Google Play and the iOS store it now needs to get built for alternative distribution if you focus the conversation only on payments then you're facing this reality where user flows are going to get very inconsistent you're going to redirect user to another space it's going to look one way for one company and another way for another company you now have to regain user trust to give you their payment details they're built into the store whenever you open your Google Play account or you open your app App Store account you put your payments detail it's built into the

process there's no friction in completing inapp purchases but now you have to regain trust in users giving you your payment details and so now you're taking them out of the experience it looks different any every time they have to re um uh re um set up their payment uh details and you have to make sure that you have all of the compliance to battle payment fraud to make sure that it's a safe place for people to transact and all of that is what developers want to to change or are willing to invest in order to get their control over their payments system because we know that developers are not happy with the App Store tax but at the same time they want to keep the distribution they want to keep the support they want to keep the backand they want to keep all the good stuff about the store and just change payments and Apple and Google have already Express the position in other places around the world and in the EU where they said fine if you don't want to use our payments or you want to enable other options next to our

payments then we won't charge you 30% we'll charge you 27% and so now ask yourself if this is worth all the pain because you might get higher net per transaction but lower gross lower in uh transaction volume as you're adding more friction to the payments process so what does that mean for developers so your alternative inapp purchase strategy could be part of your alternative UA strategy because if it's going to be more financially beneficial for developers to move to an alternative store in its Fuller definition right not just the payments uh uh element but all of those components then now it needs to also be worthwhile for the user you need to create incentives for users because they don't care if they spend $5 with Google or they spend $5 with another company they just want to get the virtual current the virtual Goods that they're paying for and so you have to create incentives where where you keep

more of the developer Revenue share that's the developer incentives that's why developers should invest but also transfer some of that value to users so that they have a reason to engage with an alternative ecosystem and then once the users are engaged you need to revisit all the downstream effects on your RPO you might end up with more user incentives so higher percentage of payers but maybe your average transaction size actually goes down because what you've done is you've activated non-payers into payers at the $2 transaction level so is your IAP strategy about transferring whales to where you're keeping more of your revenue or is it about enabling more users to become payers as part of the transition to Alternative Payment Systems that's how developers should be considering this because it's going to impact their UA uh strategy and then lastly uh well that's the one before last actually balancing consistency and optimization across

multiple app versions the world today is still fairly simple you have your iOS version and you have your Android version and you kind of knew that it's a one or zero right like this a very uh uh binary reality but even in that reality your product is not necessarily identical across IOS and Android different Liv live Ops different game economy different user behaviors different Geo distribution so your product and your product team actually manages those titles differently but what if tomorrow the reality looks like this you have more stores and more versions and more app economies and more different behaviors to consider so new tools will be created to address these new challenges for developers to centralized management of their app versions and in doing that developers need to think about what they want to keep consistent and what they're willing to change in order to optimize Revenue last but not least the UA landscape is going to evolve because

we're going to have a reality where one device has multiple stores and so these stores are going to live side by side at the homepage of the device it does exist already today but today in most cases users have to take the voluntary step to discover the new store if developers start adopting alternative stores then they're going to create incentives for more users to come in we have a store today at digital turbine that actually exists on about 20 million devices in the United States right next to Google Play So how do you make sure that users know about the stores they engage with the store they actually come to the version of the game that leaves more money in your pocket as a developer that's where UA changes building an alternative off store UA ecosystem where you can advertise with the channels that you're working with today but have them support non-google play or non-apple titles right not something to be taken for granted and then a crucial part for growth when uh we're looking at how developers are

growing today and so now you have to think also about targeting users that already have the store how do I know which user has this specific store on the device how do I build the targeting around this how do I build suppression how do I maintain suppression across stores because I don't want the user to try to download the same game from two stores on one single device right so those complexities also need to be considered and that's where again from our perspective having technology on the device enables the line of sight to solve a lot of these challenges and a lot of these problems so there's a lot still to unpack there's a lot still to uncover but I hope that this gave you enough of an introduction on how to think about alternative stores and what's changing right now in the industry um happy to take questions so we have time for one or two quick questions

hey thanks for the talk um I'm just wondering about specifically policy that is now emerging from governments around uh I'm just curious about how you what kind of short-term impacts you you think we're likely to see from the changing policy this year but also what the longer term ramifications of that policy will be in regards to this I think that in the short term what we're going to see is new Solutions starting to hit the market and we're already seeing that today so some of the developers that are here in this conference are already building their own stores and that's great for them if they have the resources and the focus to do that they're now also going to have the competitive dynamics that enable them to do that but it's not something that solves it for the entire ecosystem for the smaller or midsize developers that actually need an ecosystem tool to support that and so we're going to see the emergence of Homegrown Solutions from developers but we're going to also see independent Solutions out in the market I expect things to become more competitive but also more confusing

at first and so this is the first year where this becomes a topic for you to learn about for you to explore and you need to kind of choose where you're placing your bets in subsequent years that's where like any Market that matures we're going to see which bets are actually paying off and where we see the enforcement also comes come into play in 2024 it becomes a a law here in the EU in 2025 it might follow in other markets and then we're also going to see the authorities actually enforce the new regulation uh for example how do you open up side loading on iOS is that good enough in V1 or does Apple need to iterate on that so those are some of the things that we're going to we're going to see in the market um thank you so much about to finish yeah I was about to finish and just say we're we're also running a quick survey on you know things that you want to know or things that you already know about alternative stores you can also scan this QR code in our Booth uh and participate five

questions 2 minutes of your time will help us and we'll share the results back with you maybe in one of those next conferences here on stage thank you brilliant thank you so much it's [Applause] I