The New Rules Of In-Game Advertising with AdInMo | PocketGamer.biz RoundTable

do a friends quiz next week be have knowledges I think it is pretty amazing all said and done that that given the situation globally that we're in right now that um that we do have the technology to do this we were talking earlier uh amongst ourselves about uh about these things and I I moved overseas uh my first time I was in my early 20s and to call back home was like a really expensive proposition to call my parents and you think about how much this is costing me whereas now we've got people from all over the world sitting here chatting no it's unbelievable I remember airil um envelopes there were blue you lit do you remember the ml envelopes yeah going back 30 years yeah we we're really fortunate um we can actually do this from our laptops phones or you know so stay still stay connected um as much as we are um I think we've definitely um like transitioned and hopefully people have moved you know

sort of as fluidly as they possibly can um sort of given the work set up which is yeah be being a being a little bit of a grumpy old person as well I will say I do there's certain things I miss and ASE you mentioned Air Mail envelopes who when's the last time we any of us wrote a letter right and I remember um my my wife would get letters from her aunt in the blue little air maal and she had this amazing beautiful handwriting the handwriting that people that actually only ever wrote would have whereas You Know M mine's more like suppose a keyboard is a godson for me because I can't even read my own handwriting let alone let somebody else read it I think we were very lucky at stealing that when we've always been remote uh so when this remote pivot happened we were very prepared for it um so we were able to kind of hop on the the transition into doing all of our things digitally much easier than a lot of companies might have um which was quite Pleasant really in the gr game of things had steel run any any any purely virtual events I know internally you

must have used L system but had you run any purely virtual events before the pandemic happened or was the pandemic the kind of the the Catalyst for it it was yeah because we we have such a a heavy focus on Live Events all around the world and there was never any reason for us to think um maybe we should do that digitally um but we you know our events team were learning how to operate zoom and how to put these things together as as everybody was um and we had such a quick turnaround to do it as well and they did so well in just learning how all of this stuff works because it's a completely new world for for event managers at this point um but no i' uh we were super proud of how that turned around that's the other fun thing the background noises we're on a Monday uh standup in our company and I uh it seems to be at the exact same time that there's always a fire alarm test in the building that I did I'm hoping there's not one today you never know you'd hope that it wouldn't go longer than the test alarm because if it did then you'd have to just leave your stuff go outside oh

God and we couldn't take the lifts I remember uh when I worked at Trey dubler we're on the 24th floor going down the stairs it's just as painful as going our office in um here in Berlin is on the 16th floor and they're simultaneously doing construction uh on all of the buildings surrounding it um which means that pretty frequently some wire gets cut and uh we we all need to leave uh which means lots of trips up and down uh but 16 is not as bad as 24 so you you have a spe there I didn't mean go to the gym put it that way 11 a.m. cardio I've uh I've got the the subtle queue that we can get started because there's uh some guests trickling in now um so to everyone coming in welcome hello um welcome to the return of the pocketgamer.biz roundtables um I'm your host Danielle partis uh and I'm the newest new is

editor of pocketgamer.biz um this little round table has been put together in association with Adin moo and it's all about the new rules of ingame advertising um so I will first off introduce uh Kristen who is the CEO and founder of Adin moo so hello again hi there hi hi um so do you just want to give us a little background uh into ADM and what you guys do yeah sure um we're we're we're an in gameplay advertising platform so um we place brand in directly into the gameplay of of games instead of being AAL interruptive uh you know the the company came about from I guess two very related frustrations that that I experienced uh the first frustration was that you know existing in-game ad formats are are often great for monetization but horrible for player experience you know the interruptive or click-through nature of banner and video ads means that the gameplay experiences is continually forced aside uh for monetization moments and success means a

player clicks and leaves the game so I thought there'd be a better way to do this uh but that led to the second frustration uh which is if you if you want to put traditional inicial or rewarder banner ads in your game there's dozens of monetization sdks that you can use um some offer Better or Worse CPM some are easier harder to integrate but they they all basically work the same because the ad units they represent are commoditized which is is great because it's easy um but it also means that there there's not an easy way to put in new types of AD units wasn't a similar way to kind of create these in-game brand relationships at scale you know the most obvious example I guess would be a racing game if you're a developer of a racing game and you're wanting to put Billboards into the game with uh with brands that are relevant to racing uh you know you have to reach out to every single brand that might um that might want to do that and uh that's not a skill set that most developers have or even they should have so I want to create a Marketplace for for for in-game brand interactions in the same way that you know map Loven or you know ad Colony

or Verizon media you know you can go and download their SDK put it into your game and effectively kind of flip a switch and quickly and easily have ad monetization occur within the game so so that's how Ado came about perfect okay thank you very much um before we get into the meet of the round table I will let our panelists introduce ourselves um introduce themselves um so we'll just go around the room uh where you are on my screen so we've got Nikki first hello Nikki hello hi my name's Nikki I'm currently Contracting at Verizon media on the publisher partnership side been in the industry for over a decade um and I'd say that I've grown up U with all things digital media which has transitioned from your traditional desktop to mobile and now mobile inapp absolutely love what I do um and it's a pleasure to be a part of this round table today so thanks perfect thank you and on to Nate hello hello um hi my name is Nate firstly it's it's a pleasure to be here

so I want to thank everyone for um joining us and also for putting this on um uh I work at KB games um we are a mobile game developer based in Berlin um our largest game is Idol minor Tycoon um and today we actually just released another game uh which is Idol restaurant Tycoon which is very exciting um our objective is to be the number one idle games developer on the planet um which we are we believe we're well on the way to um we were we're about 100 people um and we were recently acquired by Ubisoft um uh so we just joined their family and we're really excited uh to work with them uh in fact we launched a um a new project for um their just dance franchise where we've integrated that into um Idol minor Tycoon which has been a lot of fun um in previous lives I was um got my start uh at Disney mobile um

in the the sort of earlier days uh working on uh marketing campaigns um and did a four-year stint at an ad network uh chart boost so I've seen sort of both sides of uh of the coin um when it comes to advertising in games um and uh that's probably long and short of it um and I'll turn it over to whoever's next brilliant thank you and last but not least we've got Julian hello hello Danielle thank you for having for having us and and welcome everyone to this super happy to be here I'm Julian I'm VP operations at omag games basically I'm overseeing the the marketing and product team and in the marketing team basically the the user acquisition and monetization managers as well as our ad creatives production team and in the product team our game designers as well as our recent internet Studios that we have set up this years and on my game very quickly we are a team of 75 people now very diverse with more than 50

nationalities in four offices TN friends and also one in Scopia and one in Lisbon and cumulatively now we have slightly over 250 million installs with our two biggest it being skoller and N rank perfect thank you so much guys great to have you here um so before we get into the questions I want to set the scene briefly um talking about a developer Trend survey that Pocket Gamer Biz and added m released recently um and out of that came a white paper which basically discussed um some of the new rules of in-game advertising in more detail now that came out a little bit before my time up PG Biz um but that was something that you had a hand in isn't it Kristen could you tell us more about the the purpose of that and how that went yeah so we teamed up with Pocket Gamer to to support the the annual developer Trend survey um and there's actually two different releases of it the the the key survey conclusions are available from pocket Gamers website um

but you can also download additional findings exclusively from ad oone website in the news section uh I think some some some really interesting Insight surfaced from from the survey uh Trends such as how many ad monetization sdks most developers are are using and I think we can all say it's it's a lot uh hyper casual games continue to be a uh a key genre for developers I think in fact about 50% of developers uh listed hyper casual is as their key Trend um I think of particular ref uh relevance for today's conversation is again about half of the mobile game developers that were surveyed are are looking for new monetization methods in the New Year okay perfect um I've just I was looking for a link to pop in the chat there so people can go in have a look at it just CAU me off guard really uh is it in there oh hang on it'll come um so well we'll get right into the questions um

let's kick off with a brief overview of the the current uh big in-game advertising methods what are the most popular in-game ad formats right now in your guys' eyes do you think I I'm just going to start here I think it really varies um I think video has definitely s of started that's definitely grown in the last I'd say two years um display has been quite Legacy and a massive Revenue driver when it does come to let's say um you know getting that uh let's say the brand out there and um ensuring that there's consistency but it's really driving towards Native now I would say in gaming um again as Christian mentioned um not to sort of disturb in a way um the user experience as well as um ensuring that there isn't let's say just an overlay popup ad that doesn't really resonate with the game so I think a lot of app developers are going towards a native um so feel

definitely okay on my side I would say the so obviously there are three main formats that are used across the industry like the interstitial format the rewarded video and the and the banners I would say one of the trending one out of this is is rewarded ad but all the the very recent Solutions in particular solutions that um players like addin Mo are bringing I think very interesting because they really bridge the gap between enhancing the user experience as well as monetizing uh your game so um obviously there are still three main formats but all of these very recent uh newcomers and new formats are super interesting I would say for developers and and publish I think um one of the strengths of um kbur since kind of the earlier days is a keen Focus on developing games

um that are uh designed with you know pleasing the the player in the in the maximum way so um you know to contrast that from maybe games when I started um in the industry where yeah you would make your game and then there there were discret experiences between the game play and um the ad or the monetization right and it was very um interruptive um and I think inals are maybe a legacy of that um but I think the trend now is to ensure that gameplay isn't interrupted that um the players are um um you know if they're if they're watching ads they're either not annoyed or it's something that they're looking for um specifically in the case of rewarded videos um which um we use quite a bit at at kibb um just because um players see a value in them um and it's beneficial so I think um regardless of um the ultimately like which format type I think the trend has been towards um

things that are visible but not necessarily annoying um which is which is super key and I think where this type of native advertising uh where where it fits into the the landscape of game design I think uh Nate you sorry to to kind jump in but I think Nate you you said something really crystallized it um for in my head you know you said visible but not annoying um because because that's it I mean again from the survey uh the Pocket game an ATO survey um one of the one of the results was I think about three qus uh of developers said that what they're looking for is ads that do not interrupt gameplay now of course adomo ad units are one type of of way to do that but I think rewarded and rewarded is I think about 40% of developers are using rewarded video uh rewarded ad units and and that's another way to as you said to make it visible but it at least there's an opt in there it's not an annoyance uh or not as much of an annoyance to the developer to the gamer and that's the think where we're all trying to get to is to make the these ads seamless The Experience seamless yeah

and with the rewarded um sort of model I think that is really powerful but I think we need to take it back to the brand as well sort of within the gaming environment um obviously the brand wants to get their um message across um and again that must resonate with the user um whereas rewarded video the reward actually comes from the game from the user and then um from the user and then once um the player has actually consumed the video or whatever the interaction is um it's then back onto the game which is a positive but again we want to ensure that it's a comfortable environment for Brands as well to sit in um so then that way I think there can be a lot of innovation where Brands can actually um get into the mix and offer um value exchange um it's a us as time time is now commodity especially because we are constantly behind some screen some sort of screen um so I think it's really important to have that balance

there okay perfect uh thank you guys for that just staying on ad formats for a second um do ad formats need to differ depending on the game genre and are there certain ad formats that are preferential to different genas uh how does that kind of work for you I think nature Julian should buy a lead with that one you you perspective yeah yeah definitely um what I can see even within a hyper ual P share portfolio like like the one of of among our 25 games already we can see very big differences actually between maybe more polished games versus more let's say Ultra casual type type of games in our more poish games rewarded ads for instance they account for um 40 to 60% of the ad revenues um depending on the game on on the geography Etc uh whereas on the other it can be as low as 10 to

20% with basically system generated ads intertial and banner really accounting for the the very M vast majority of the uh of the revenue so obviously we can see differences uh I think it all depends also on your on your user base and and and the type of implementation that you are uh ready to put all of that need to be to be so true but definitely we can see a difference in the mix uh of the revenues as well as the behavior of the users within the app depending on the jaw also on the quality of your game okay just sorry I was gonna okay cool um no I agree I think uh it it really depends uh on the on the genre on the um theme of the game um the mechanics um I mean there are certain things that that simply will not work um because of the mechanics of the game so

a lot of the um platforms and AD providers are um extremely um clear when it comes to where interstitials can be shown for instance so if you have games that are um don't have a series of screens um or stages um interstitials don't work um if you have something where you're going through a bunch of levels then it makes more sense and there they tend to be a little bit more amendable towards that type of uh experience and that's where you'll see this a lot with Hy casual which tends to have a little bit more of like a a pacing um the the sort of Demands that the player progress through all of these different screens and stages because um you're you're basically trying to um you know push forward this like fast-paced experience right uh whereas something like a strategy game it it just would not really make sense in the context of the game um maybe depending on you know the type of um um platform you're on things like banners would have more of relevance so for instance if you're on web um and you have a strategy game yeah

maybe maybe you want to put some banners in there because there's like a bunch of unused real estate that you can you can employ um or you know um uh I think in in the case of idol like we see a lot of rewarded video because you're basically in sort of like similar um economic based games because you're basically playing with like um uh pay and time right it's like okay if I'm increasing pay it's a binary and how do we activate a binary okay we we make like an onoff switch that's that is like a rewarded um so in Idol's case you just see a lot of that um and I think for other game types um there's there's definitely like you know maybe more like VR stuffff it it neither of those really make a whole lot of sense like I remember when um uh VR games were getting super big like five like four years ago everybody like like everybody was like really into VR um and there were there were folks were kind of focused on building experiences

that would be like rewarded video because rewarded video was working but it doesn't like they'd be like okay well there there will be a movie theater and I I hope that nobody was working on this is on this um but uh there would be like a movie theater that would pop up and you'd like watch an ad in the middle of like the VR experience which doesn't really make sense for VR like maybe this is a great way to make a bunch of money on on uh Idol games but if somebody's doing an immersive VR experience it's sort of you know uh uh discombobulating um so yeah definitely depends on like What feelings emotions and um an experience you're trying to evoke from the player if if you want them to be immersed that's I think a case where where things like um Native makes a lot more sense it's like has a a value in the universe that you've created yeah I totally agree with that in a way and I think it's um you know sort of the difference between paid for and fre apps as well it depends on the

revenue kpis of certain developers as well obviously the game's their baby but again it's um looking at um most sufficient way to drive Revenue across those games and like you said about genre entertainment that lends itself to video a bit more sort of engaging formats more interactive um versus like a strategy game where if you just all of a sudden get interrupted it's more like you'll just you know associate more of a negative emotion save with it potentially um unless it's your favorite absolute absolute favorite brand in they're offering you 50% off um your next purchase or something so you have to be quite careful okay uh have you got anything questionis or we uh we call those are all great comments cool perfect okay um so in the the white paper that you guys released um we saw that in-game purchases were leading the charge on in game ads by like 58% and that was followed by as agilly mentioned earlier video rewards at 40% and interstitial

videos at 33 but when we were looking at ad formats that companies were looking to trial in the next six months um we saw subscription ads come out on top with um 30% and dynamic uh ingame advertising foll uh with 26% and that's kind of your REM isn't it so I wanted to just dig in a little bit to um Dynamic ads can you just Begin by like explaining what a dynamic ad is and how it operates yeah um I mean a dynamic in the game ad is it you know it's basically you can think of it as a green screen at the simplest level it's a uh it's a developer I think to use Nate's term finding at the very EAS earliest the or easiest way is finding um unused real estate in the game so a billboard you know rather than putting uh a blank billboard in or a billboard with a fake ad um we can fill those or uh we can fill those with with with with real ads that are actually relevant to to the player programmatically um that you know that's the most kind of simple I think most obvious examples the um you the purpose here is I guess twofold from a U

or three if we include the the player um the from a developer perspective the the ads and again to to use uh to use your term Nate um to you know these ads should be both uh visible and not annoying you know we we are trying to I think nobody ads are a advertising in general is a um it's a little bit of a necessary evil as Nikki said it's it's a price we pay that we pay our attention for getting these amazing free games that we're not otherwise having to to pay Upfront for um so but but nobody looks forward to it and the same way that when you're watching TV you're not like oh great here's another commercial break I you know unless you're looking to make a c a pot of te or something so makeing them in a way that's not um not annoying making them uh in the best ways uh make them integral and I think again to use certain types of uh examples there's there's some types of games uh game genres where they would feel weird if you didn't uh have ads in there you know sport sports games I think are probably a great example of that uh

we're we're learning still with um the types of genres I think Sports and real world games are the most obvious ones but as we move along uh puzzle games fashion games uh idle games I think are great places for these and then from the brand side as well I mean you know the just because an ad is visible doesn't mean that it that was meaningful or memorable right and I think we we're all at we're all blind to these ads now to the inter social ad what can anybody remember the last uh the last video ad they saw in a game I I certainly can't and you'll see dozens of them a day so uh you know I guess with a from a a brand perspective and Nikki can maybe uh um follow up on this one a bit more you want memorable you want Vis sorry you want visible you want not annoying but you probably also want memorable or impactful there's another measurement there and what we've seen with the with the adomo ad units for the research we've done is that they're they're about three times to four times more memorable than um than than traditional ad units in games today so that's something that

of course Brands uh resonate with a lot yeah absolutely and I think when you make the user feel special uh even if it is let's say um you know not a boring brand but like Financial client or something like that you want to be able to really take that to the user and make it quite fun um and that I think it's the execution of the ad I think it's the design the execution and how interactive a user can be and what best way to measure the success of a brand is obviously by you know engagement looking at the hotspots where users have actually interacted with clip um you some brands have even inserted um lead forms let's say within their units to drive um user signing up to let's say a subscription or a potential sample but um when I was at Collective one of now Z group one of the main I'd say you PS was actually the creation and delivery of

excellent um units and formats and this was across mobile as well as desktop they were fun you something for instance like the national lottery um on your mobile phone you could actually shake it and then you'd get some confetti confetti falling down that's quite fun that would actually make me want to play with it have a um you know so just see what's actually next um so I think you know when you do get the user really sort of understand them in the sense that your target audience brand knows their target audience the best unless they're prospecting you want to make it fun and going back to your point is eliminating ad blindness because there is a lot of AD blindness there there's a study done um forgive me I forgot by who but I think it was around 10 years ago even and it it basically said that most clicks are driven by uh children on websites so again it's about really understanding the version but trying to get the user down the marketing funnel

um and again I think that's really important in terms of how a brand actually speaks to their users um you know obviously you want to um remind your users that you're there so that's your traditional display advertising Etc but when you take it that one step further youve will be memorable um if der Mo did a game where the gorilla was playing the drums I think I don't know if you remember that ad where Gilla was playing the drums with Derry milk if there was let's say a digital version you can make your own song and enter a competition or something like that um I think things like that really resonate well okay um so I think I I think I like that visible but not annoying thing um it's a really cool way to put it and I think that's where it's beneficial from the user end um but what makes these types of ads more beneficial from a developer standpoint over maybe tried and tested ad and monetization methods that they might already be familiar with like what's the motivation to make the

switch on their end yeah maybe I I'll I'll start and I would love Nate Julian you know your reactions to these things as well and I know You' you you guys have explored a number of different types of native ad units as well um our belief is from a vision perspective our belief is that um the current ad units are are painful for a developer it's a necessary evil right you put them in because it does monetize but as I said your best case scenario as a developer is uh the user clicks on this ad that they didn't want in the first place and leaves your game you know oftentimes to you know to download a competitor's game so that's the you know that that's the price you pay as a developer to get the monetization um to to not have to drive a uh an upfront purchase or perhaps even for those users they're not going to be payers but it's a um it is it's a trade-off but we think it's a painful trade-off and so that that's what we're trying to solve is to come up with a a better way to to create that modation to

create that experience for the players that also is hopefully better for uh for the developers no go ahead oh okay no no to be honest I agree with you Christen it's not something that we have tested yet at at Omar but it's something that we are that we are exploring because as you say I think it's an additional Revenue stream that is a user experience and anything to to many extent as well I think it um it can also on some particular games fit in particularly well as you were saying so maybe in some Runner type of game might be a bit more difficult or although I think it can be implemented but in many of our titles like npic pranks for instance where you have like a fixed camera uh with um background such as rooms in the house or Gardens Etc you can really imagine as you were saying

the the green board being replaced by ads and that that would blend in actually very um very well I think so the benefits here I would say it's it's it's on this one on user experience basically monetizing without really losing anything on this side also I would say because it's much more um skewed towards brand advertising rather than you know in hyper casual we we are also running into a a circle where many of our interstitial ad and rewarded ad actually advertised by by competitors and and other hyper casual I would say with this type of ads it's it's radically different so I would say it's a second a second benefit um and then I would say as well as Solutions get to maturity um I think we've come to a place where many of of the partners like like admo have developed sdks that are also very stable um and and and that do not represent a risk for for publishers and and developer it's always you know a

tricky decision to add on an additional SDK into your app because it can generate additional crashes issues ETC but I would say it's come to a point where this type of dynamic ads have are both a new trend that is user experience enhancing a new Revenue stream but as well mature enough so that we can really um decide to put them safely into the games I think um when it comes to ad the thing about ads is that they're designed uh ads are designed to get attention right that's the the the purpose of an ad it's to drive your attention somewhere um and sometimes I think that that attention is that it drives is purposeful um Brands products um games uh causes other times uh it is collateral uh so perhaps um uh from

regulations um from uh consumers who maybe mistrustful of ads um and what this has uh precipitated I think uh in sort of recent time um is uh some push back about the ways that ads as we are used to them the way that these ads function uh right so we have a case the coming adpocalypse that is um the idfa deprecation and POS on iOS and possible um similar steps on Android Google already has a number of protections that are opt in that consumers can use but um I think the writing on the wall is pretty clear that the way that consumers are going to interact with ads um even behind the scenes is going to change pretty dramatically um for most estimation estimations it seems like this is going to have a negative impact on the revenue

aspect of um how the ads are performing um so you know uh if you're if you're um a privacy proponent then this is a very good thing um and good news um for the revenue side uh maybe not so much and you know I think whether or not that's a fair tradeoff is probably topic of a different conversation um but what this means is that developers who have built their um game models around um a certain amount of expectations when it comes to revenue are going to need to recalculate this um when it comes to these changes that are coming pretty soon probably January February um so diversifying um the sources of AD revenue is going to be of Paramount importance um and actually I think here is a case where brands are particularly well positioned to take advantage of this through new formats um and um a sort of renewed push right because Brands aren't necessarily as depend dep on the hyper targeting um that has

driven a lot of the um growth in advertising over the last 10 years or in monetization over the last two years when it comes to bidding um so I think any developer who is is looking for new ways to ensure that their bottom line doesn't evaporate um we'll have to be trying experimenting with it a bunch of different formats um to see if they can kind of compensate um for for um you know that decline likely decline in modification I'm not no seramis but I'm pretty sure it's going to go down um I think the real interesting part um aside from just like the pure Revenue aspect is is always going to be in sort of like creating um a diagetic uh diagetic motivated advertising experiences I think like the number one um like one the best example of this that I can think of um that I think translates perfectly into games is if you've ever seen Blade Runner um where uh it's it's an old movie so um sorry if I'm dating

myself here um but uh basically there's a scene where uh the main character uh Harrison Ford um goes to uh um goes to McDonald's right or one of the cars goes to McDonald's um and you see this Giant ad that's like illuminated on the side of this building and it just it feels like this is the world they live in this makes sense these are brands that I know and I understand and I have a relationship with and here they are inhabiting this um space um that is is more foreign to me um and kind of like ties it together so I think um if you're a developer who's also looking to create these sort of like um experiences that um as sort of Kristen mentioned earlier on especially in sports games in in racing games where it it requires some sort of like a grounding in realism um just from like a gameplay experience um this this could also be useful U to sort of like build these envir environments um I I don't know if Billboards make a lot of sense in a uh um a fantasy Game

of Thrones World maybe there's a clever person out there who has figured out a way to do this um but I think there's certainly cases um where where this can be done actually um while we're on it while we were at um at CH boost um this was something that we saw that a few developers ended up doing a really good job of which was to take native elements we ended up discontinuing um the native program at Cho but they would take uh that's native elements um through our apis and kind of build like real um Quality build bus stop ads and things like that really sort of like added to the the experience in playing the games so I think there's lots of opportunities for clever developers um and there's also a a high need for it starting very very very soon and and we're we're at I think the the early days of this as well it's very much we're all on a learning process here ourselves at Ado included um you know as you spoke about the the

kind of process of um uh of AD typical kind interstitial ads then onto rewarded ads playable ads Etc you know we we the the first places that we see Ado ad units in are the in-game play ad units are I said sports games um Real World Games Etc but we continue to be surprised it's interesting you mention that I I stood up at a Pocket Gamer event I think about a year and a half ago and said you know I don't really think we'll ever be in any kind of um Space games or um or or Fantasy games and afterwards a developer came up to me and said we've got a we've got an arcade style game Space arcade style game we'd like to give it a try and sure enough went into it and we're in um you know we're in um some fantasy games I I think there's some places where we're learning where the fits are better or worse there probably are always way to be um places that need feel better fit better and I think um that's part of our job as uh both as a as a platform provider but also as we work with the um the the the networks that we work with like Verizon to to start getting the the brands to

kind of understand that relationship and how to fit best into the game because I think oftentimes um Brands just want to be there want to be visible want to be memorable uh but forget about the also can't be annoying so we have to make sure that it's that that that that brand experience is authentic to the game experience and just to add to that to Future proof I'd say for Brands I think it's really important and developers to ensure that the technical implementation and sort of it being able to run um s of is like you know something that's really educated to the brands as well as um sort of supply side platforms because say that there is let's say I don't know if you fast forward a year a brand new format um initially it will have to be tested but I feel that that's that will probably be within a closed environment so it's again about rolling that out and ensuring that it's actually quite unified across the board I mean inter shows and standard video I mean that's run just you you sorry can't speak using a one by one tag or a vast tag and again

as we're becoming more and more advanced when it comes to targeting running activity and just making sure everything's flowing as it should be we are going to see um challenges along the way but again it's about learning those and understanding what's actually working what will work and what's not um but yeah if I had a crystal ball that'd be quite interesting to see forward I like this conversation about um how we can kind of fit these billboard ads into uh into bigger sort of explorative RPGs because I think um sort of more dystopian themed RPGs are really big right now like cyber Punk's coming out watch doog who's coming out and I can just imagine seeing a real world world ad like laced into these types of games but how that would translate uh on a development level is just kind of remains to be seen but it it feels like there's potential there just how to utilize that is a entirely different conversation entirely um so moving on to another question from that is um add placement a developer

afterthoughts do you guys think I it's a question for the devs there isn't it really but maybe if I if I can start I think it's a it's an interesting question because by definition I would say monetization comes a bit later off in in the production process right typically after at least two to three weeks when the Prototype has enough consistency to go beyond the marketability or the CPI um of the CPI test uh however I would say it needs to be really s through the earliest possible uh obviously with the classical uh ad formats and how you you set up your your intertial at which moment more at the end of a level rather than at the beginning not systematically after a click uh paying attention to the frequency of your ads also trying to cap the the pressure so that to do not really uh scare away the the users

rewarded ads obviously because that comes really um uh with a lot of intimacy with game design and and what type of rewards you are providing to to your users and all of the Premium skin additional game play special levels chest chest rooms whatever you you you name it it it needs to be so so true it goes the same in my opinion for D Dynamic ads because depending on whether you implement it or not maybe the the way you design your levels the way you you set your camera uh the way you really design your your your user Journey might change as well so by definition it's an afterthought but I would say the the earliest the developers think about it and try to inter it uh with the design the better yeah we have um a Playbook um at kib Bri

of specifically rewarded ads that we we know are going to work or we know we need to try every time and the it's adaptable to you know each idle game we don't um just make um the same Idol game every time we try to vary like what the the mechanics are but um I think a lot of the um elements of how we are monetizing via ads are are end up being similar um uh and so we want to make sure that we're employing that for every game we're doing um so we do try to think about it pretty early on um and I imagine um kind of like what what Julian was saying with most developers if you're in the stage where you have kind of found your Niche um that it's it's pretty important to think about this stuff kind of early um um and figure where you can um um you know maybe where you can innovate a little bit uh you can improve and where you're just going to need to put in the same type of AD or or

other monetization um uh you know I think of course there's a lot of stuff that that um you won't be able to plan for even if you are trying to plan in advance uh for you know where to place ads a good example of this would be you know any of the new any new technology right so if like 10 years ago everybody was using banners then nobody was really prepared for interstitials and the rules had to be figured out um uh people were using um lots of offer walls right at the time and like as those you know evolved and maybe some fell out of favor um before reemerging as more survey companies I think a lot of people were still trying to figure out like okay well how do I balance my economy if I don't have this like offer system anymore like how do I make my games um so there there's there's always going to be curveballs I think um but um yeah as early as possible I mean it's it's it's 2020 now right we have we're not making art games for fun as a student project like it's

you got to kind of figure this stuff out apologies if anybody listening to this is making an art game for projects yeah I mean traditionally that that was the path wasn't it that you you you you thought about um you thought about monetization as a you know as a game Studio maybe around soft launch right and and then it's been pulled in earlier and earlier um as a as a part of the design process and and that's kind of the path that we're seeing Now with adimo uh dynamic in game ad units is the first games that we've gone into generally it's been it's been to be fair a bit of an afterthought it's we have places within this game that are a natural fit the game's probably already out there uh my my dream and where we're starting to see this is to have that that monetization thought happening actually at the design phase and I think it's even more critical for for for the type of AD units that Ado is as opposed to say a ban ad you can just pop down at the bottom or the top of the screen or video ad rewarded or otherwise that you could do it justi where we're starting to have developers that are thinking about um building in these ad units from

the very start you know whether it's a puzzle game where the puzzle pieces themselves maybe ad units and I think that's I think that's necessary for uh for the type of AD units that we have for that thought to be coming in as early as possible into the actual design phase as opposed to an afterthought and I think because developers are so passionate about their games what their creation think that's the first and foremost thought in their mind so then obviously it takes let's say someone with a commercial hat on to start actually thinking right how do we actually monetize this and really Drive uh the developers into a space that's unknown let's say because it was a World um or is a world that can be quite unknown I think now as consumers as users we're so used to advertising uh smart home apps um devices now connected TV um that's growing in Europe absolutely huge in the US and I think we'll follow on from that I think us absolutely leading away when it comes to monetization scale user

share po ter of gaming but that is having a knock on effect across the globe and I think a lot of people developers people you know um wanting to develop apps or games are looking at that monetization because it's either a subscription so the girl that I follow on an app an exercise workout that I do I pay 15s a month for it that's adree so again I really think it depends on um the confidence the knowledge around the um actual ecosystem as well as the wants and choices for the app as well okay cool um just leading fact because we've um we've brought up Brands and their relationships um getting into this a couple of times um so I know both hom and C both have experience with this um I think Homer released the Nerf branded mobile game this year I want to say it was this year it's been a long year uh in collaboration with Hasbro um so s

Julian what was your experience of that branded partnership uh and what worked well while you were um leading that no to be honest it's one of the um great successes of the year uh we've released Nerf epic pranks back in April accumulated already more than 45 million inst on the game uh it's really been uh um yeah a huge achievement for us and and and a very good collaboration I would say with with asro obviously we got in touch very early on with them in the design of the game because in particular we were um developing some some assets for them as well so all of the Nerf guns and the darts uh within the game I think it enabled us to um positively impact the game on two sides on the marketability side given the the strength I would say of of the Nerf brand to reduce our our CPI and our

marketing cost as well as on the monetization side uh in particular through Ina purchases and and and rewarded ads in order to offer additional blasters to uh to the users I think it's a great example of collaboration um that we have we also did again Jam back in in September um specifically on Earth so you might see a couple of additional releas is in the coming in the coming weeks on this on this front Okay um was there anything that didn't work so well um in that campaign that you can talk about no um you know it's it's always a challenge because when you are a publisher you you are always kind of the middleman and and you have to organize the process and to also bring your value here you you add on an additional partner so obviously you have to take uh extra precaution in your process and in particular with the brands such powerful

as Nerf being extra careful not to damage actually the the brand in the game that you are that you are producing as well as in the advertisement within the game so typically we um we restraint a lot the type of uh of of ads that we were able to uh to show within the game in order to avoid vion content for instance or or other type of content that would not be compliant with the uh with the brand so obviously but that's our job so additional process and work and collaboration um but very positive overall okay cool um with Cal with you um I'm less familiar but do you have any gu um any examples of brand activations and uh successful Partnerships with brands on your end um so the most recent thing that we did um that I mentioned earlier was a a partnership but it was partnership internal with um with Ubisoft um so it's I think it's sort of

like a special case where um we were part of the launch of the Just Dance 2021 um so um not an external brand I think there are a lot of good lessons there when it comes to um working with um IP holders um that's pretty valuable I think um if you're if you're a developer who's used to sort of existing in your own uh microcosm where you make all the rules and you decide what you're going to release um the having other stakeholders is sort of a new experience um I think it's a good experience um and it's interesting I think a lot to see what is valued um you know what you're thinking about and how it differs from say what a brand or uh an IP holder might um might be thinking about so they might be thinking things like well you know I we really it's really important that you know XYZ logo is shown um because that's that's like a big part of it whereas it could you could be focused

on like oh I just want to make you know use these characters because they're cute um um which is important learning um I think in terms of um the effect that it has on the game it's definitely extremely positive um so um you know in our case for instance um we saw that it was very helpful for driving additional downloads um it can be extremely helpful for um Partnerships particular with the platforms um so um I think um you know I don't although I don't want to speak for Google and apple and some of the other platforms out there I think um they have very close relationships um because they're in this you know Fortune 100 space with these Major Brands um um and other IP so for them to see these types of Partnerships um where they're thought out um they make sense um they they like that sort of stuff so we got featured for for um the Just Dance updates that we did um specifically um I think other

times that we've tried to do this um with you know brands that we didn't necessarily have relationships with or foot in the door can be super challenging um simply because um you have to kind of learn to speak their language which can be tough um oftentimes they're on like Brands traditional Brands like you know Proctor and Gamble and stuff they're on completely different schedules um they have different uh ways that they allocate their budget different um different expectations and so um coming from a developer world where you want to jump in and say like okay I can give you like we've got these da and like our retention is this and you know um I can give you like this really cool um uh you know this number of Impressions price this like it's like what are you talking about you know they they s sort of think um if you're trying to go directly to them so typically it's easier if you work with a media buyer um on their side who who understands um the language like

language of digital um as as opposed to just cold calling random people at these uh large Brands which I can tell you from personal experience doesn't work that's I think some of the the tension the in this business right um is you've got I guess at one end of the scale you've got uh advertisements for other games that are appearing in your game so you know and and that's that's great for the the competitor games that are advertising in your game but maybe not so great for you um from a from a brand I guess where you really want is from a brand and a developer perspective you want that fit you know whether it's Nerf or whether it's just dance and and and both parties are looking for this this fit to be good uh The Advertiser doesn't want to from a brand space a brand safety perspective doesn't want their brand to appear in in in in places that would not be relevant to it and vice versa as the owner of a game there there's types of brands types of advertisers that you just don't want in either because it's not a good fit or

you're just against it or whatever and so to to to your point Nate that you know that that challenge you said of trying to as a developer go out and and create all these brand brand relationships that's what we're trying to to get rid of is to to ensure that that fits there and then you know we we have a game design team at at Ado that work with uh game developers to help try and figure out where are those places within the game that to make sure as well from the from the gamers perspective that it um back to it's not annoying to them it's actually relevant to them so it is trying to balance that tension between all the participants in this I think a big part of it was also previously more than anything was tracking so it's so much easier to track campaigns across M web as well as desktop but now um we've become Advanced as users and that's across TV environments as well as inapp um there are a lot more sophisticated technologies that are coming out that are helping unlock that specifically and it's just education we went through this with some of the largest agencies and

some of my previous roles it was about literally as you said Nate speaking their language and delivering that in a safe way uh because all of a sudden some Brands some of the larger Brands might think oh my God inapp is too sated it's too um you know um there's not enough scale Etc but the fact that inapp is such a personal experience to the actual user if anything it's one of the best places is for a brand to connect with their users um so I think it Brands will open up and they are starting to open up it's just that education process and you know letting them know that it is safe getting case studies use cases um and pushing that out there as well okay perfect um so we're coming to the end of the hour now so I just want to close off with a a final question um about the future of um of ging game advertisement um what do you think that kind of look like are we are we closing in on that um real life McDonald's Blade

Runner situation or is it a little bit more Nuance than that um in how we progress with uh with in game advertisement I can jump in here um and again I would love Nate uh and Julia in particular um reaction to these things I think um we where where we want to get to especially with this this idfa apocalypse with uh the fact that idfa is going away there is going to be a new future here um and and and the the way that the advertising is targeted the way that Brands Target uh these players is changing uh we know we know that from from a game developer perspective we need these advertisers in the games to to monetize the games and we know from brands that uh the brand advertisers want to be in these places uh the the chief digital officer of of laal said recently you know we want Our Brands to be where people are and increasingly Their audience women are are spending more more the time in gaming platforms so we know that's where it needs to happen I think one of the things that

that that I would like to see and this is certainly Something That We're developing within added MO is giving the player more agency in in that interaction with the brand so and kind of like the rewarded I think rewarded video is partway there where there is at least a choice in that but um rather than us as an industry trying to figure out what is the right um what's the right advertisement to show to that uh to that player uh have the player have some voice and what's being shown to them um and and I think that creates a stronger relationship between the player the brand and their experience with the game okay on on my side on the so I'm not an asist as well as as n said a bit a bit earlier in my opinion I think I think the future looks bright to be honest when I when I think of 2021 and all of the challenges ahead obviously it will require developers and and Publishers to to adapt to the

upcoming changes like iOS 14 and the N of idfa obviously um to emerging geographies to latest formats available on the market and that can enable actually uh Revenue diversification as well with the in game dynamic as we spoke of I might think of audio as well um uh and basically all I from what I try to summarize is that all of these latest trends um they are looking for ways to blend in your the monetization within the game play to many extent and so this type of adaptation and making sure that we smartly find the right way to both monetize our game and to enhance both the user experience and The Advertiser and and brand experience I think that's where the the value will be for for many of us okay yeah I was just gonna say I I don't think I could have uh said it better

than that um I just think the only thing that I'd add that's probably going to be um pretty pretty key going forward um I think people are just going to get a lot better at pacing of ads um figuring out where and and and when to show them how to mix them together um given that you know you you can't be entirely reliant on a single format um I think that's going to be really important segmenting users will continue probably to be pretty important and that's something that we're working on a lot um uh and I think that's um my guess is we will see at some point um a better blend of or a better meeting of uh of like e-commerce advertisers and mobile game Publishers which like right now if you open up any mobile game and you watch like most of the ads or see most of the intials they're for other games um and I think the the time time is upon us when we're probably going to see like say you know the the Amazon of the world get a little

bit better about like targeting particular games with particular types of ads that work really well for that um uh and then following the the player to the through the like purchasing funnel that's just my my guess and I think as we gather more findings from open market activity and the performance I think that's real good ammunition to go to France to and speak to them around um you know where their actual users are where they actually are potentially spending and how you can really sort of um strategize that because again brands are going to be um in a culous world let's say um it's almost like they're going to have to rebuild themselves up based on depending on their business model so yeah I think that's really important to consider okay perfect um I will wrap that one up there but thank you guys so much for coming in I just want to give you one more opportunity um to let people if you've got any questions where they can find you uh so Kristen we'll start with you uh you can find me on

Twitter on LinkedIn or Kristen ado.com perfect Nikki hi you can find me on LinkedIn Nikki cha is totally fine um and I'll sure I get back to you cool Nate uh you can find me on Twitter um also on LinkedIn or email me nate. Barker colb games.com um and I can answer whatever whatever questions come my way perfect and Julian as my colleagues LinkedIn obviously and my email so my initials jbag games.com perfect uh and again thank you to adding Mo for uh putting this together with us it's been great to have you guys um and I hope to all see you again in another talk somewhere I'm sure we've got lots of uh digital events on the horizon where we might meet again or indeed physical ones if we can get back to that uh next year but yeah thank you guys so much for your input uh thanks for everyone for coming in watching thank you so much a lot of fun take care