The days of black box ad networks are gone | Maggie Mesa from Chartboost

foreign we are delighted to be joined by Maggie Mesa from chartboost how are you doing today I am well thank you for having me we are here on the second day now uh the first one was very hectic second one will probably be likewise how are you holding up uh I saw my voice so to win we'll see what we can do about that uh for folks who maybe aren't familiar with sharp boost what is it you guys are all about uh so sharpness is an advertising platform we're a unified advertising platform with a DSP so sharp is advertised so programmatic DSP we have our sharpest Marketplace which is our exchange and then we have chart boost media which is our supply side mediation right so how a whole Suite of kind of opportunities that's right we help developers generate Revenue either through user acquisition or ad monetization gotcha okay now I always start with talking about the gdpr changes in the ATT changes over at Apple

recently because so much of advertising and the way it works is about data and even if it's programmatic it's feeding data into an algorithm how has that affected child boost the way it works and have there been any positives negatives to come from it I mean I think everybody had to adapt to Apple's privacy changes last year and I would say we're no different than everybody else in this room I think it's a great opportunity for everyone to evolve and really think about being a privacy first compliant platform and that's essentially what we did we definitely saw things shift and change and adapt from our perspective there's still a great way of reaching users on iOS through other means without with being privacy compliant and it also still expands opportunities into Google Play and Amazon and other Platforms in which you can reach your users so you know for us it's just about being adoptable and continuing to serve and reach advertisers or what's the most common service that folks come to you for because you notice like two or three

different things they can approach you for what's your most popular service if you like I think our DS DSP is our core product which is helping advertisers find new users to their games as well as our sharpest mediation platform which is our SSP those are our two core products and that's essentially a developer facing products so those are two things that most of our partners work with us on and when people approach you and say look we need help with our game we want to obviously boost engagement we want to increase UA and all the rest of it what is the most common I guess mistake you see people making why are there games not being noticed why are their users leaving from your your perspective I think the one the one that we always want to preach is that it's always about testing and iterating you know there's not one size fits all for any game developer so whether it's testing creatives or testing GEOS or testing different models on our DSP It's always important to find your sweet spot for each developer it will be slightly different based on genre and goals Etc and so we

always want to practice and preach that to our clients is to have patience and continue to test and iterate and really learn as we go along how can they help you do the thing that you do is it more information from them if the more data they give you the better or that's exactly it it's about you know being transparent with one another sharing as much data as possible you know we only see as much as our clients in the mmps are you know willing to share with us and that really helps inform all of our technology in the back end that's helping developers reach their goals so at the end of the day anything else they can share with us is extremely valuable and I'm assuming that helps you fit like the right campaign to the right game if you're like all the right Apple products are there certain Trends you've noticed like particular kinds of for example lifestyle apps maybe work differently to uh a free-to-play game with a you know live upside are there different trends for different types of apple I think the thing that we've seen the most is just new types of genres and new types of verticals and merge out of

gaming so obviously you know an app advertising heavy uh apps like hyper casual and Casual have had immense growth over the last couple years and so supporting that with an adoros model was a huge investment for us on our platform so I think that's one of the biggest ones we've seen is just integrating more and more types of genres onto our platform to help support whatever the user acquisition needs are whether it's about engaging the user to drive IEP into the game or driving users to have long LTV and continue to use the app for days and months essentially I was speaking to a developer earlier on and they mentioned at one point that they were dropping the game on mobile they were doing a port from a from a PC and console game and they mentioned they were dropping it uh premium and that's a slightly more rare thing these days yeah everyone's eyebrows does what yours did oh really that's that's Brave uh did my face read that I I wasn't sure yeah do you ever get approached by photos like do you work with like premium developers and if and you do so is it a a very

different approach there because in terms of the way that advertising Works obviously they try to avoid putting a lot of that stuff in their game and their user base tends to get a bit upset or resistant to anything that resembles pop-ups or in-app purchases or anything like that so how do you deal with those yeah you know I think it's really up to the developers I know they're gameplay the best and they know their user base the best at the end of the day it's sort of their decisions on how to integrate ads if at all or you know to go the freemium model there's the subscription model we typically find you know free to play games are usually the uh the folks that we're working with to dry in UA and certainly on the ad monetization side as well that are fueling the revenue versus the subscription model but we definitely have uh developers that use subscription models for certain apps and then they'll use it for other apps based on you know uh their user engagement so we find both it's the mix and at the end of the day it's a game developer that's going to know the best based on how their game and designed is so for us it's just we're here to support whatever whether it's UA ad monetization whatever they're

doing to help generate revenue for those apps and how much data do you hand back to the client I know some people they talk about black boxes where it's all very opaque because it's all based on algorithms and you just kind of have to go look trust us you've got the info but equally it can be a bit dangerous to just throw endless charts to spreadsheets that someone who maybe doesn't have the context then go there you go fill your boots like how how much do you hand over and what's the value of it I mean I think game developers are some of the most smart and Savvy partners that we have and so at the end of the day it's all about trust and transparency for us so the days of being a black box ad Network or any type of advertising platform in my opinion those days are gone it's all about you know providing as much data whether it's through dashboards or apis we certainly provide those services on our site because we believe that's the difference between us and our competitors and quite frankly it's what our partners want gotcha and what about 2023 the world changed significantly during the pandemic period user Behavior has changed everything

suddenly went bikes and engagement went right up and then some went down again afterwards some have maintained it's it's been an unusual change I don't see the economy is doing weird things well in the UK it certainly is all around in the US as well right so from sharp boost angle what's 2023 all about is it new initiatives is it growth is it what no I think for from our perspective it's continuing to test and iterate I mean I think there's gonna be new things that drive engagement whether it's new creatives or new GEOS you know we definitely know several developers that are launching new titles this year in the second half of the of the second half of this year so definitely not a time to go quiet and not continue to invest in marketing but it's definitely about being Smarter with your marketing dollars and you know whether it's trying you know something that you haven't tested before or going back to an audience profile that you've targeted in the past I think from our perspective it's we're going to have you on Creative services and automation and scale so try new countries and new GEOS to help Drive users and you know in a market that you haven't reached before

thank you foreign