TikTok: Gaming’s New Discovery Platform

[Music] welcome to the novic gaming podcast where it is our mission to explore the business and future of video games we bring together the industry's brightest Builders investors and thinkers to keep a pulse on current events dissect emerging Trends and games share Lessons Learned and have a great time this podcast is also part of novic growing ecosystem which ranges from free and premium research to Consulting and AD advisory services for more information visit [Music] www.nic.edu and Esports tournament organizers Grid's data infrastructure and Distribution Solutions help game rights holders unlock new revenue streams while empowering their communities and professional players no matter what you are building grid can unlock your game's

data potential through its off-the-shelf grid SDK or fully customizable Solutions Plus if you're a developer or entrepreneur with a live data powered project idea make sure to apply for grid open access to start building with supported official game data today learn more and sign up at grid. or check out the link in the show notes and with that let's jump into the episode what's up everyone and welcome to the novic gaming podcast I'm your host Alex Decay and this is interviews it's been a bit of a break for me given the happenings at Ruckus and I'm excited to be back at it with a killer episode I've been dying to do for months it's not often a new Titan of platform and distribution steps onto the stage in technology and games and especially one who is here to stay Facebook twitch YouTube steam apple and Roblox these are all platforms that have changed the game for game developers and what I mean by this is is that developers and the industry start to play by a new playbook to win on a certain theater of platform

Warfare and it becomes a meaningful part of their goto Market strategy I'm going to quote something from our Silicon Valley favorite Ben Thompson which is really a quote from Bill Gates that Ben then rewrote down but a platform is when the economic value of everybody that uses it exceeds the value of the company that creates it and I'm excited to bring on precisely one of those platforms Tik Tok a platform today that is having a major impact on Modern gaming distribution joining me today are Assaf Sagi head of global gaming at Tik Tok and Rama Vasan head of global gaming business marketing at Tik Tok and we're here today to talk about how Tik Tok is changing the game for game developers Assaf prior to joining Tik Tok has experienced at Snapchat PlayBuzz Summit and Intel as well as our personal NBA favorite The Firm AKA McKenzie um so welcome Asaf it's great to see you again thank you a great to be here I thought you were going to quote Bill Gates for saying content is king um content is also King yes

indeed less cool than meeting in person at GDC though and uh raama prior to joining Tik Tok has a long career in Communications at Marketing in marketing at Marina mayor MSL and publicist she's also been crushing the game and bringing together cohorts of remarkable women in games um so welcome to the podcast RMA it's good to see you again you as well it was great to see you at GDC and at the women in gaming event yes it was the best the best food the number one food spread um because it was organized by women and so it was not pizza um but before we kick off guys um I know that I gave you guys some brief intros um but I'd like you guys to tell our audience a little bit more about yourselves and share specifically what your mandate is at Tik Tok gaming um Assaf maybe we'll start with you okay uh thank you for uh the great introduction and mentioning The Firm it is in my LinkedIn bio um I'm in marketing for about 15 years I'm now at Tik Tok for about four years I'm heading Global

gaming at Tik Tok which means that I have teams all over the world from Tokyo I came back from Tokyo over the weekend uh to LA and those teams are working with Publishers anywhere to just help them thrive on the platform and I will say more about this but a little bit about my background so I've been building towards this point uh working at you know at snap and media startups and at McKenzie and I'm a hardware engineer by profession and I actually wrote algorithms in my far past so I understand what options are an attribution but I'm also a marketer and uh what I tried to do when I was at McKenzie McKenzie Chicago I tried to work on own consumer goods it's not easy because in the midwest you know the you know Insurance uh but it was also good there are some fast food companies also there are some um uh washing machine manufacturers so I was able to to learn quite a lot about how people behave and I'm trying to bring those insights today working with our teams to help the gaming industry grow H that's awesome

terrific thank you for sharing um RMA yeah um so thank you for the intro and um you you're saying my name perfectly by the way but it always confuses people so let me just say my name is spelled r ma but it's pronounced rum like bardi Rama also my drink of choice uh as you said I lead marketing for Global gaming at Tik Tok uh what that means is really think of me as a marketer is marketer uh so my role really is to educate the gaming industry at Large how they can tap into the power of Tik Tok to fuel their new title launches to help succeed with liveops to really fuel success of the game and that's also what our mission is is how we can Elevate the gaming industry at large leveraging the power of the platform uh so in this capacity we work with a large number of Publishers around the world um showcasing what success looks like showcasing those success study showcasing those Publishers and developers on stages Etc and really showcasing this at scale across the

industry that's awesome I am also so excited to talk about some of those uh success stories and um showcases because I think that they are some of them are so clever uh and it's truly the most the greatest combination of creativity Plus game making plus marketing and brand distribution and stuff like that um but before we talk Tik Tock gaming I know that that's where you guys are mostly um involved at Tik Tok since I have you here I kind of want to talk Tik Tock just for a second um you know there are four to five billion social media users in the world and around that's around 60% of the population and Tik Tok particularly saw extraordinary growth between 2018 and 2022 without a doubt spurred on by the pandemic Tik Tok stands above all other social media platforms Instagram WeChat LinkedIn snap and Twitter and fall short of only I believe Facebook in terms of users and we know that users is also not the most important cap to product Health it's

hours and Tik Tok is crushing on that front as well hours for Tik Tok surpass Instagram in 2022 and 20123 and is predicted to overtake Facebook in 2025 in terms of Revenue Tik Tok is hitting milestones at lightning speed Tik Tok broke the 10 billion Mark in only its sixth year a milestone that took Facebook I think over a decade and YouTube 14 years and in terms of what people are doing Tik Tok has ascended Beyond dancing and music clips um an homage to the kind of Vine era I think but towards also advertising and more serious content surveys conducted at Pew research for example found that last year 43% of Tik tok's users regularly turn to the app to get their news and so Rama before we go um into Tik Tock gaming I'm going to turn to you first on this I kind of want to hear in your words you know what do you think the impact is that Tik Tok has had on consumer Behavior as a general whole and who are these people and what are their personas and how do you what do you make of the new social media landscape yeah

um thank you for that question Alex by the way uh prior to this current role that I'm in I used to lead North America marketing for Tik Tok overall uh so this is a topic that's very near and dear to my heart uh and I would say if you think about it and you mention social platforms Tik Tok really isn't a social platform it's truly an an unparalleled entertainment platform that drives action so you you check other platforms but you really watch Tik Tok because it's immersive uh and uh I by the way I was also very impressed with all the research that you've clearly done uh and that you talked about but people on average spend about a movie's worth of time every day on Tik Tok so it's super immersive it's super entertaining super engaging uh and we're bringing uh I don't know if you can see the words behind me but the words say Inspire creativity and bring joy we're inspiring creativity that's our mission as Tik Tok overall and we're bringing that joy to 170 million uh users in the United States over billion globally uh and also

enabling 7 million small businesses to thrive in the United States so why is all of this happening um it's because Tik Tok is super immersive in terms of Storytelling um and it's not about aspirational influencers talking about completely out of reach content and so on it's really about like everyday users being the main characters and expressing their point of view and their stories uh Tik Tok is also super multigenerational uh as you mentioned gone are the days of you know just the lip syncing and dancing and so on it's truly multigenerational and the users don't fit into one specific mold they're you they're me they're really everybody uh and there's a wide variety of interest and content that comes along with that that really reflects that multifaceted identity and it really means that there's no more like gatekeeping of content it's really about like this incredible swath of content that has an impact on broader culture with really diverse voices and perspective which means no one's really left out of the

fun and Tik Tok is super authentic um users and Brands alike do best when they bring their whole authentic cell to the Tik Tok first content that they create that invites communities to really join in the conversation uh in fact I think over 70 70% 71% uh had to get all my stats right of global Tik Tok users really prefer brand posts that don't feel too polished that feel authentic and native to the platform and uh so what does all this mean in terms of consumer behaviors users have very very high expectations for Brands to really bring their authentic fun meaningful selves to the platform to bring that Tik Tok First Entertainment because otherwise people are going to scroll right past uh it's also not just about Mass messaging uh Alex I hope you're on Tik Tok uh and if you are you may have deleted the app because it's taking a movie's worth of time from me every day

fair enough fair enough but if you when you were on the platform you would know that your for you page experience is very very unique and different than everyone else's uh mine for example is all about uh well gaming unsurprisingly but also about uh dogs because I have a dog and about cleaning apparently I'm obsessed with watching people clean their shower gr uh but that's the point is that it's all about these incredible niches and we call them talks to so whether it's the clean Talk Community or the octopus talk Community or stem talk and so on there's all these different communities uh that really speaks to people's unique identities that they bring to the platform and uh I would also say that creators are incredible lifeblood of this platform it's the Creator community that really fuels a way for Brands to show up really authentically to the audiences that they're looking to engage and what I will say and I know this is a broader Tik Tok question but gaming Publishers have always being Innovative which is

great in terms of how they're ahead of the curve with creating Tik Tok first content bringing their IPs to the platform and creating content that really resonates with the audiences with new formats and creative opportunities as you said really clever execution so we're really excited to continue to fuel that yeah well um that makes a lot of sense and I think like it is it is everybody and I think that that's kind of the harder thing to Define is that I think as many of the other platforms have come a little bit more siloed I know for example that my age group sits squarely in the Instagram demographic my parents age group sits squarely in the Facebook demographic I think Tik Tok is doing something really really interesting where it is really covering all you know the baby boomer the jenzy the millennial and all the generations across the board um which is fascinating and it's if you know I'm asking my parents if they're on Tik Tok and what what they're doing my dad likes life hacks okay he likes fixing things and he's getting that content from all over

the world and you're right Alex it's if you really think about it architecturally there is a reason for that uh in the past we focused a lot on the brand as the producer of the content that we trusted the brand then came the influencers we trusted them because they were famous or potentially beautiful or something else but here the content is at the front and then the presenter could be someone famous or a brand or not the content has to be really good and the audience knows already that no matter what there will be another piece of content with a swipe of f finger so it became so Democratic that you know everyone could post on Tik Tok and get discovered and be creative and and be seen by others and it's also uh not limited in age because every age will discover what's relevant for them yeah it's true and actually I was having a conversation with another twitch streamer who actually is a lot older who's not in kind of like the Cody clicks 18-year-old fortnite player but

he's talked a lot about the fact that those the people that are playing games are aging up right and he's like my generation is the first generation that grew up with games and why do they not need have the right to be serviced by a twitch streamer who's going to basically appeal to their age group and their demographic um so that's kind of going to your point about the do-it-yourself fix your uper videos um there's kind of content as long as there's a person on there making content for that audience they'll gain traction and then therefore the the flywheel of the platform will continue to grow um so thank you guys for that grounding on Tik Tok in general I've always always been so curious as I think it's such a um a Titan of a force in our social media but as you said entertainment platform Rama um but now I do want to take a turn towards Tik Tok and gaming and very much focus on Tik tok's focus on the sector versus parent company by dance um and so I'm really excited to dive into the meme heavy weirdness and delightful moments of Tik Tok and games as there are so many hilarious stories of quote unhinged marketing you know by companies like dualingo or dumb ways to

die and and more and so Asaf I'd like to turn to you and ask you know why has Tik Tok invested in global gaming and what specifically is your mission it's because of gaming gaming is such an important entertainment vertical if you think about it by size one of the largest within entertainment probably north of $200 billion dollar a year in sales and it's a quite specific industry it's an industry where there always supply and demand issues right now there was a little bit of over supply of games and under demand because people got back uh to work from the days of covid uh there is uh an interest problem in the past it was free to produce games because you could take money from the bank without paying uh just returning it and now it costs 5% a year depending on where you do it that's one the other bit is that um privacy is changing and in the past game company not necessarily did full marketing they were doing user

acquisition if they were mobile or they were launching big time if they were XP and there was demand for everything uh and on top of it that you know there there are many more game companies that are trying to come to Market but distribution is limited to a certain degree there are a few ways you could distribute games on App Stores or uh for PC games there there are a few places you could do it where one of them takes about I don't know 70 80% of the industry so when we looked at all of that we said wow people love gaming those people are on Tik Tok it's a same audience we know that they're spending time with us we could give stats here if you want uh the one stat that comes to mind for me is that every year we're seeing more than three trillion organic views for gaming content on Tik Tok just think about that number okay trillion not billions not Millions so obviously people are interested in games on Tik Tok and we saw this as a as a great uh

importance for us to to be focused on that and it requires expertise so instead of having people in our or you know sitting in Tokyo uh and being managed locally by great leaders you know understand the locality of Japan we wanted to take a global view and instead focus on what it means for gaming how to solve performance issues how to create the relevant for content for gaming on Tik Tok and we we still learn a whole lot every time we launch a new G that's phenomenal um yeah I think uh and also I think the one thing to mention and this is something about the power of even twitch and is that Gamers typically have a fairly High wallet size so those users are um lucrative and they are actually have a pretty strong aptitude to spend and I think that's also a very important part about you know when we do user targeting Discord Tik Tok you know these are the places steam these are the places where your clients are and matching content to to what your clients needs and what they might be willing to

buy I think is that whole stack is actually kind of it's It's relatively hard to achieve but if you do um it really kind of settles you up there as the top of the of the distribution Pipeline and I think I just want to shift there you know talk about what Tik Tok is as a gaming partner um and Rama um you know I think I might have you take the lead on this one but you know we noticed that for Apple for example their partner to games is mostly just on iOS store distribution right can you tell us a little bit about how Tik Tok thinks of itself as a partner to games um and a a success story about how partnering with Tik Tok and partnering with the game contributed significantly to the success or the discovery of the title yeah um so I'm actually also going to tie it back to the question you asked earlier Alex which is why why does Tik Tok have a dedicated globing Global gaming org um it's also worthwhile to note that uh gaming is the only vertical unit at Tik Tok which also speaks to you

about the importance of gaming for Tik Tok overall uh and it goes back to I'm going to take you back in time uh about a couple of years ago when uh we took a deep dive into like what is happening on the platform what is the gaming phenomenon on the platform um and we really analyzed Gamers on the platform and we realized that there were three key pillars driving this phenomenon uh the first is Discovery uh the second is cultural relevance and then the third is performance so Discovery um and you know Tik Tok overall is a discovery platform if you think back to the days of the Peter Thomas Roth I cream and the Gap jacket Etc there's you know many different like case studies around Brands uh but even just like you know General interests like you know the latest in math uh problem Solutions uh my teenage daughter goes to Tik Tok to find them uh so it truly is a discovery platform and specifically as it relates to gaming what we realized is 50% of our

daily users nearly 50% view gaming content which just pretty incredible if you think about it in terms of scale um and what that means is that you are your game can be discovered by a lot of people that you might expect but many that you may not uh because of the unique intersectionality of interest that works on the platform I'll give you a personal example uh I'm a Potter head uh Harry Potter fan uh well nerd who stood online like you know when the books came out I'm really dating myself here but anyway um and I'm also a mobile gamer I'm not uh a PC console gamer uh by the way Candy Crush level 2625 anyone King is listening um but having said that uh because my for you page knows that I'm interested in Harry Potter it served me up this really engaging Hogwarts Legacy content and I was persuaded by that to order hogwart's Legacy to play on my son's switch so this is what I mean by the intersectionality of interest that fuels

like the magic of game discovery on the platform if you think about the second pillar of cultural relevance on Tik Tok gaming really isn't just about the game and gameplay sure that's certainly part of the content but it's much more about the entire ecosystem surrounding the game so Gamers engage with challenges with Trends they create their own interpretations their own like Easter eggs uh and they really showcase their creativity and their competitive Spirit uh while expressing they love for their favorite game IP you mentioned the flywheel there is a really incredible flywheel that's happening on Tik Tok between Publishers creators and the communities so game Publishers many of them as I mentioned earlier are establishing a really creative organic authentic presence which then inspires creators to showcase the love for their favorite fandoms and IPS uh and the magic really happens when communities jump in and amplif the Publishers and the Creator engagement which relates to

thousands of posts millions of views and so on uh a good example probably is um and this isn't a case study necessarily just something we saw happening on the platform with GTA 6 which I know Asaf loves to talk about so I'm going to let him I absolutely and I'm still I'm like any other person in the world I'm waiting to for the end of 25 to play the game um when it came you know when the trailer dropped it actually didn't drop on Tik Tok on the first day there was a licensing question or something of this kind that got resolved afterwards but within 24 hours the community you know created content that led to more than 10 billion views on the platform and we started looking at that asking like what does it mean you know if this game could have sold today like how are sales looking if if it was starting on Tik Tok and it led us to a bigger question what does it mean to be culturally relevant on on Tik Tok like RMA mentioned like is is this

something you have the option to do or you must do and the best way we explain this to ourselves is that a gamer plays one between one and two games at any given time probably one okay and you have the option to convert them to a new game they may not come back to the old game likely that they wouldn't okay so you can either protect your game and have the gamer continue playing it or if you launch a new game you could create a culture and bring many people to play game and we understood that Tik Tok is the place where that decision is being taken and that's very different from any other platform okay this is the conversion point and we started going deeply in Rama I'll bring it back to you the expert on cultural relevance but we started thinking okay what does it mean how do you build cultural relevance I guess what I would say is maybe uh a good way to explain it is with an example um Alex as you requested uh when um Spider-Man 2 was launched uh Insomniac kept players engaged by

creating custom skins uh designed by a wide variety of celebrities so like my formula 1's Lando Ares Brazilian soccer players uh vinas Jr they all created a custom skins because then there was this exciting way for The Gamers on the platform to participate in the game quite literally and see themselves in the game uh which then fuels culture another example um I'm really on the sports theme here but anyway when EA launched uh FC Mobile in emia they drove Discovery with a custom branded effect uh so again it was a player card similar to the one that you would see in the game which means that you could literally see yourself in the game on the platform uh which then meant that many sports creators as well as communities jumped into it which led to nearly 4,000 videos and almost 90 million views so this is the kind of way in which Publishers can really lean into the platform tapped into the tools tap into the creators to really be a part of

that larger cultural Zeitgeist um so that really I would say is the pillar of cultural relevance and then finally I would talk about the last pillar being performance uh and if I was a game developer or publisher I would say great that my game is being discovered great that it's being propelled into culture but what does it actually mean in terms of performance which is of course the ultimate proof point and what we learned from a gamer lens is that Gamers on Tik Tok are incredibly passionate about the games that they really care about after seeing gaming content on Tik Tok 41% downloaded the game 36% pay uh purchase to play and almost 70% of Gamers uh when Tik Tok is part of their Journey even after they've purchase the game we continue to post about the game so we'll continue to advocate for it um and you you know I use you mentioned gamers are a high value audience Gamers on Tik Tok in particular are definitely a very high value audience uh we did this research where we it was

called journey of a launch and we try to understand when Tik Tok is part of a gaming launch what does it actually mean um Gamers will spend for PC console specifically Gamers will spend uh 80% more when Tik Tok is part of the pre-release versus when it is not uh and 64% of these PC console Gamers on Tik Tok will pay more to have the latest and the best features so they're very they're very engaged they're very committed and they will advocate for the games that they care about which are part of that cultural Zeitgeist uh so it's these three sort of pillars of Discovery cultural relevance and performance that is really fundamental to the DNA of like Global gaming at Tik Tok as an organization and in fact it's part of our mission our mission is to elevate the gaming industry's growth by fueling Discovery cultural relevance and performance I I want to jump in on on the game launches which it's at least I think is the most important thing a

publisher could do these days um people are looking for new content and it's hard to make a breakthrough with with an existing game it's possible and we're supporting that uh but we're seeing that new T launches are very successful that's what the data has shown uh so we we took a step as well and we set up a global team that has only supported new ta launches we partnered I think a hundred companies in the in 2023 so 100 new tle launches that we were part of if you think about a new tle launch so you develop a game it depends of if you're a large company or a small one but a large one would spend I don't know $200 million in the game development and then you have two weeks to get it right you know you go to market and the monetization could not be working properly or there is an issue with the game or you're not making progress in some specific markets so we created a a set of solutions with dedicated people that at sometimes are actually flying to

the Publishers you know headquarters and together with them are launching so to to give you an example okay creative is a bottleneck not everyone speaks the Tik Tok language or any new language so we created a service with a beautiful name ttcc but it is an incredible uh service and we basically provide creatives to publisher through uh a network of creators that we we have partnered with we we make it really simple so the publisher basically uploads a brief and the creator has create it and we carry the costs and that has really skilled in a material way not only that it drove new title launches to be successful you don't want to run after $200 million investment in a game you don't want performance to drop because your creative is dying in day three of the launch okay so so we've we've created uh those units to to support new launes but later on we discovered that the same capabilities are important for just everyday

performance and you know we then extended that support to everyone who's working with us what is the name of the you said an acronym ttce or what does it stand for uh it stands for Tik Tok creative challenge which is basically a way that you write a brief and then uh a set of exclusive uh community members that have more than x you know force that understand gaming are able to create content for you and they're basically transforming your brief they're making it easier they're transforming a brief that is in text with some visual assets to a Tik Tok creative that really works and and you could start thinking about options we're not going to speak you know about what we're doing in AI right now but once you have a big set of those creatives then you ask okay could we let a machine do some of that right and there are really great ideas that you know we're thinking about right now of how we could in a in a meaningful way

help Publishers scale their creative efforts without having to learn everything about a new platform or just building a huge creative unit right right yeah you guys said so much great stuff here so I'm just going to try to encapsulate Tik tok's kind of overall gaming uh thesis which is anchored around Discovery um performance and also cultural relevance and so you know R you talked a little bit about how Discovery might work for you you know you read Harry Potter and there the algorithm knew that you wanted to play Harry Potter the game and then you ended up buying it um and that's kind of the way that you kind of organically attribute potentially you know interests that may not be somewhat related to games but you're mapping that interest into a game itself um in terms of culture relevance I absolutely love with what you said um I think that there is something to be done with a organic relationship between a content creator and what it means to be linked into to culture um at blizzard for example uh I led a uh electronic

music um cultural relevance Initiative for the one of the expansions for bcon 2018 with a group of electronic music DJs that um happened to play a ton of World of Warcraft and to me it was like an opportunity to say hey look we have this organic group of people who absolutely love and have a tremendous amount of fervor for this game why are we not leaning into what it means to be culturally relevant today in terms of this electronic music scene versus kind of going more towards the old way of bigger brand marketing when this is kind of like where the new forum is and so I think I love that Tik Tok is also you know it's a platform for that and to your creator program you're actually helping Publishers speak that new language because I think it would be particularly challenging to do so um as someone who's also watched several Tik Tok videos like I I don't even think I could come up with them right um because they're just so unique and I have no idea what it's like to think like that kind of Creator and then finally you know you talked about performance um and

I think that's you know where I want to go next is you know why Tik Tok over another platform and it's clear that Tik Tok has driven success for discovery for games um and we know that idfa for example has been a major headwind for UA across the Apple ecosystem and Tik Tok has now been the place for positive Roi UA spend um and I guess a question for you guys sounds like you have a lot of people you know a new launch Team to help with new titles um sounds like there's a partnership on a day-to-day basis of people that are helping you create content videos um can you talk a little bit about uh what platforms and what games you are most suited to help so mobile console PC and maybe something about genres as well what gaming genres do the best on the platform yeah I can dig a crack at this so I the easy answer is every game would be a good fit for because yes because we for every product in the world service piece of content the algorithm will find the relevant

people it's a discovery platform by Design it's a place where you come with they intend to learn new things so the algorithm is really smart about finding you if if the product is relevant for you um so it could be you know we're seeing everything from RPG to hyper casual from Big launches of triaa games to Niche console games that could really go viral uh or PC games that could really go viral on the platform and there is a tech problem to be solved here so I I want to really right from the beginning state that we're pro privacy and we think that the change around the idea phase was important for the industry and it's a step in the right direction and it made us better as marketers because we're thinking about the world of consumption in a very different way and how to serve our audiences rather than to force on them anything and um the challenge for Tik Tok is a little different than for other platforms because we're a non skip sorry we are a fully skippable uh platform

compared to other places where non-skip is available uh for any brand so we really have to uh take everything a notch up in terms of how interactive things are interesting and relevant meaning that you know if there is a platform that will take you for a journey of 120 non-skippable seconds and I think it exists we have the opposite so it's a different challenge so what we've done two things one we created uh Tech capabilities that are on par with industry H today it's a table stake to be able to drive um uh long-term value you know Ras it it is important to know the audience and to know who will be interested in the game to find them at the right time to show them the relevant ad so that will interact at interact with that ad also people on Tik Tok and it's important to State they will consume a product even if they don't click and we think that last click

attribution is a concept that is uh it needs to be updated I wouldn't say that it's outdated but it needs to be updated okay because no one ever you know wakes up in the morning they drink their coffee they see a car then tomorrow the car appears in in their backyard and not a mattress and it's no longer their case for games as well people are really considering what they will consume they want to know that they're going to be part of a culture back to what we said earlier so we took that basic assumption and we said okay what can we do to know for sure that people are uh getting the right content in front of them and we built algorithms as you know you would expect and we started from IOS and that we did it on Android and now we're venturing into the PC industry where it's a little more difficult because there is no client as we call it there is a client but it's not phone client you know people are playing it on a console or on a on a personal computer

with an executable file and it's a completely different sendbox to you know to think about Clos Loop attribution and how to optimize against that but we we built relevant tools and I want to give examples I I just want to be accurate with the numbers to pay the respect to the relevant companies that work really hard now a caveat here okay every time I speak about companies who work with us those are public AE studies um I don't speak about other companies that are successful and there are many so I want to apologize uh if you go to our website there are so many good case studies uh but I wanted I picked a few because they represent different uh areas with within the industry so let's start from using top view tool site during full funnel and it is a concept that we should at some point speak about Exel bolt which is uh a gaming company they have an FPS game and what they did on Tik Tok they ran top funnel activity with top views together with top feed placements and

lower funnel and the results were a 24% decrease in CPA on Android okay this really meaningful it's it's not always easy to drive success on Android because the the community base on Android is quite different from IOS that's not the same phones even okay some people buy Samsung some buy shomi at some point I learned that there are probably 20,000 different versions of Android because people don't don't always update their operating system uh go to cplay which is a social gaming company and you know it could be Casino it could be other types um they're you know you would think that they will drive success on Legacy platforms and and they are they're quite a successful company across the board and they're moving fast um you know in in their rankings in the industry but they took the challenge they looked at Tik Tok and they said could we find new audiences and could we drive success and they've definitely proven it uh they

got you know to up to 60 60% decrease in their CPI metrics and they Ed ttcc uh and what they also used is the TTC X platform where you could access more professional agencies in building your content so you know they're not only experts to the content themselves but also they said let's get ideas from others in doing it and I think they deserve big uh credit for doing it so you ask about Jers I I also want to talk about uh simpler Jers like hyper casual where you would think only Ed networks could drive success there but we discovered that actually uh it's the opposite if you're driving cultural relevance you're actually going to see success but it's important to drive that and attack hole is a hyper casual game and they show a 36% decrease in cpis on iOS by using uh two things one ttcc again where you get Limitless content you just need to write the briefs and iterate on what you're doing and they

also used a concept called up profile Pages where we let them to create a lending page experience such that they know a little bit more about the audience that they're interacting with and in a smart way you know they improve their performance they understand what uh consumers care about and they drove that 36% decrease that's fantastic um well sounds like these are a lot of what you're doing in the success case for platform is a draw down in cpis and in general the think the the general metric that I've heard is that cpis are four times lower on Tik Tok than they are on another platform whether that's a combination of paid and organic and it sounds like from these these these three examples that you gave that's kind of the the bulk of what has end up happening through clever marketing through either working with the Creator program the ttcc um or through creating their own landing page you're basically able to short circuit and and drive down the cost of you know acquiring users that's

the two it's the two things it's cpis which you're absolutely right these are important but it's also CPAs the L the you know the lifetime value of the user and the Exel bolt example is like a 40% decrease in uh in cost per action and we're heavily focused on that heavily because we believe that we know the user base of Tik Tok and we know what they will care about and you know if someone is is very active on gaming and very active on you know uh e-commerce verticals there is a commonality between the two and we're able to see those and if I could just build on what Assa said um Alex one of the other things that we've also learned and this has been an evolution over the couple of years that we've existed as a global gaming org is also having teams that specialize in Mobile and PC console so we've actually sub verticalized our teams to have that specialty EXP cheese because we understand that mobile is

very very different than PC console and XP it's the difference between Performance Marketing and entertainment Marketing in a way and even within XP like you know like a console uh marketing a console marketing a console game is very different than marketing a PC game so we do understand those nuances and we have experts both uh within uh assaf's team as well as mine that really likes Deep dive into that to provide that uh expertise to Publishers I see yeah as I was about to say it's it seems like even on Tik Tok there could be that delineation between what is typically brand and in kind for console and PC towards performance any way that is typically present on mobile and I guess that also is a great segue into the into the next question which is you know as a developer you know how do I win on the platform right you gave these three examples and this is kind of the big mystery of any distribution platform but how do you actually win the algo game you know what is the anatomy of a successful Tik Tok video and I suspect that you guys have broken this down into some hard science for sure as it sounds

like you've done with a lot of other things but you know should I be mostly sharing if I'm a developer and I'm you know have a mobile game or console game and maybe the maybe the answer is different per the platform as you probably as it probably might be you know should I be sharing game footage streamers playing the game something totally something entirely else um how often do I need new videos um and also I think and this is a I think a question that I would love to hear from your you guys on is how early should I start considering Tik Tok marketing when I'm actually building my game um I can start ASA and then if you could jump in that would be great uh there's a lot that you asked in there so let me break it down um I think the short answer is that there is no one answer um because each game is different and each game launch is different uh and you really have to think about the game the IP the audiences that you're looking to engage with and so on but I would say from a general principle uh and we recently did

uh a white paper with NRG the national research group around like key uh principles of what modern gamers are looking for in general and then of course on Tik Tok uh and it actually ties back to this idea of connection community and cultural relevance 3 C's we like to think in threes as you can tell uh and what we what we saw in that is that uh it's really about like and we've talked a lot about this gamers are more likely to engage with games that they consider culturally relevant Monopoly go actually is one of the games that shows up very strongly on nrg's franchise IQ tracker as a game that really resonates against these three pillars of connection community and cultural relevance not surprising hugely successful game in the past year uh so how do you do that and bring that to life on Tik Tok so again I'm talking general principles but we always work with Publishers on more specific uh recommendations for their game so so 77% of Tik Tok users really like it when

Brands reveal more about themselves a look behind the scenes right so gameplay is great but like what is it about the game what's the like Easter eggs what are the like ins and outs that they can really like play with and make part of the community and that drives the cultural relevance uh humor also works really well uh globally Tik Tok users are 1.4 times more likely to credit humor uh in a Creator's motivation for like resonating with a particular brand so developers can also find success by leaning into content that shows that they don't take themselves too seriously you mentioned paid and organic uh that is another key principle on the platform we're seeing that a combination of both paid and organic is key to success on Tik Tok um and it's related to the question you asked earlier which is we I we think that Tik Tok should be a part of the journey even before launch uh because that's when we're seeing the greatest uh impact so so support new trailers and releases with paid support but also invest in organic Creator or

creative content that really keeps the audiences engaged so like GTA 6 is actually a great example of like and you know that game in any event would have that Community but like really tapping into that fandom even before the game launches uh and what we've seen is that when users first see organic content from the brand it really primes the paid content to be even more successful uh so we see greater recall 27% greater recall 12% more attention attention to branding when there's that organic and paid uh content combination uh The Sims uh Sims 4 in particular did this really well like bringing together organic paid and partner content so these are some general principles uh and uh Asaf I'd love for you to jump in into how like we maybe brought this to life with a couple of Brands as well yeah I you know thinking about uh game Executives you you invest so much money in a game that you really want to get

certain results and R just presented like you know how the content is working but we also asked okay what if it takes time to learn this or a company may not assume the risk from day one and this is why we created our new title launches unit So my answer is if you launch a new title or you you want to do a live OB activity come and work with us okay like reach out to us today as soon as you know that you want to do it because we're able to start working on rent strategy together from the early stages to tell you what it would take to get to specific metrics how much time it would take how much content we need to produce together and we have enough examples to give you good guidelines you may not need to produce it yourself you know like we we could definitely help with that um so I think that's a relevant time if you're asking how to make something viral right now I don't know that anyone has the answer and when when you understand that it's hard to create

virality the best way to approach a problem is to take a portfolio View and to say I'll be cultural relevant you know I'll use the right people I wouldn't be cringey uh but also understand that some different videos will be relevant for different communities and I'll try as many as I can and I'll produce all of them before the game launches and I'll try dropping them in you know in batches of 40 until uh I understand what's working and from our experience we saw that this would work great now let me pick a specific example uh one thing that jumps to mind is you know you asked us about Brands and mobile games without a brand okay so it's really about IP and not having IP okay like trying to build a new IP so a mobile game studio uh called lesmore from Europe this um we're very proud of that because it's a game Studio really got to the top of the absur and all the success is due to their novelty

and uh you know their genius brilliant game we are warriors but we were there to help and we went exclusive together we said let's let's remove the noise from attribution work only with Tik Tok so at least you know that every paid download or even organic was driven by Tik Tok at least as a secondary ripple effect so you can measure us properly and together we created content that is based on ttcc meaning that Creator uh creative Challenge and also ttcs which is a more uh professional agency work that we have facilitate for for them I I think it's quite incredible to see a game Studio go into the first stop in an app store and and they were able to do it and you know we we we we looked at that and we said it probably means you don't need to put the lightning into a bottle it means you need a game that people could connect but then you good you need good execution on the launch

week or launch month and that's what we recommend focusing on good execution we are supporting uh but the publisher also needs to decide that that's what they're going to do in their launch period yeah makes sense and I think like yeah you're addressing two points here the one is kind of like how do I prepare and how do I make videos and I you know it sounds like you work very much alongside either live games or for live Ops and new games is part of your ttcc programs or your TTC X programs um and then you know to your question about what makes a video go viral nobody knows and theoretically also cultural relevance is well Geographic age um my my life cycle and my own like U maturity you know relevant right it's like nothing something could be culturally relevant in London that's not culturally relevant in Tennessee and so the having a v variety of creators around that content is what helps it make it culturally relevant and kind of localized maybe to the Target part of where it actually belongs which I think

is really fascinating and kind of you know Tik Tok is allowing that Creator Community whereas before like you were saying the brand had kind of only one identity and had limited Flex Points to be able to Target people that weren't you know already Beyond its core which I absolutely love well yeah oh okay thank you um well so for the majority of this episode so far and as we approach kind of the end of and the conclusion of our talk we focused on how Tik Tock can be thought of as a partner to games um you know through discovering through helping the creation of cultur relevant videos through performance and attribution and generating Ras right but in our concluding few minutes I'd like to open the floor to kind of what's next for Tik Tok in the gaming vertical uh what are you guys planning on doubling down on if you know on what you already do and what are the next uh new key Focus areas um ASA maybe I'll throw this one to you okay I'll start the raama uh can definitely come afterwards and you know we we have an incredible team that I just want to pause for a second and give

credit uh Team of experts uh you know it's not only around my myself they're sitting all over the world and they're thinking every day how to help the publishing industry um so of course performance is a lifeblood and we every day we make it better and better in order to make sure that Publishers are able to drive success on Tik Tok but we're also thinking about those what's next elements so with more than three trillion organic views you could obviously understand that we're looking into that and ask ourselves is this measurable could we do something with it could we help Publishers really harness the power of the community because until until today almost eight out of 10 companies we asked like how we structured they said social is separate from paid you can't speak with a two teams or you can't have the same person speak with the two teams and we're challenging that we're asking why okay because when it comes to Tik Tok when you have strong organic presence it

impacts your paid as Rama mentioned earlier and vice versa so that's one area that you know you should be on the lookout for announcements uh from our end um another area is live Tik Tok has um a very successful live platform within the app we're growing continuously I don't know that we have shared specific numbers for that but I will say that we're seeing it as one of the best ways to discover new games because people like the live medium it's a it's a live room where you could interact and write comments and then we're starting to ask ourselves okay what could go there behind uh the scenes you know that will be more interactive that will help people not only discover a game but engage with the game uh so those are areas we're thinking about there is always a question that we're getting I know you asked us when we kind of you know we met pred this if we're planning to be a game publishing platform um so I I I just wanted take it and and address it in in the best way possible Tik Tok is a Content Discovery

platform first and foremost and game Publishers are Publishers by virtue of their names and we're not planning to take their place now will there be an IP deal that someday you know a good IP will run a Tik Tok is a game maybe we tried H5 before but we're not planning to replace Publishers by all means with think Publishers and doing a fabulous job we believe that platforms are consolidating mobile PC console so we will let Publishers lead on that end that we will help them be successful even if it you know in some cases there will be examples that you'll see again on Tik Tok yeah I think uh the other piece I would say is we um Assa talked a fair bit about uh the new title launch support and team that we put together uh that team is also doubling down in terms of liveop support uh because we're seeing a lot of shifts uh as companies are focusing on you know greater efficiency and more like controlled Revenue through life service games so our we have a a team called The

Advertiser Solutions team which focuses on new title launches they're extending their remit to also focus on liveop support because we know how important that is to sustain long-term success and as a platform we want to make sure we we continue to fuel that uh and new title launches will continue to be a focus um we've actually never shared uh this data before so we're going to debut it on this uh so I have some stats to share with you in 2023 a 1,69 new games launched on Tik Tok and a third of those games partnered with us on our new title launch program so about 33% uh and seven titles including lesmes we are warriors Niantic paradot worked exclusively with us to get 40% extra organic users uh and over 1 million installs I'm sharing this data to say that this is like really a big part of our Focus moving forward as well this

idea of how we Elevate our value to the gaming industry uh by focusing on new title launch on live Ops and then of course performance as an underpinning uh to the success of the games wow that's fantastic well congratulations um first that's a 40% increase in organic is is is quite the number and um you know 16767 sorry you said new9 yeah 69 that's that's a lot of new games um and I think like that's exactly the the challenge you know today of today of game making as creation costs go down to zero now the Lynch pin is on Discovery and distribution and so if Tik to is a platform that can help with that um I think it's actually remarkable to make sure that you start doing these Partnerships very early with these teams and it sounds like you guys um overall has a lot have a lot to offer um a concluding thought from this is absolutely Tik Tock to the moon and do not ignore this platform is is is generally my takeaway from from this uh

from this hourlong episode um but we typically conclude by kind of asking you know hey if if if a if a company wanted to partner with Tik Tok you know in in the variety of capacities that you mentioned either through liveops through the new Creator program through the TTC X you know if I'm a developer you know how do I get in touch with Tik Tok and and and start working on with Tik Tok marketing for discovery of my gate ping us on we're very accessible Rama myself we were rout to the relevant teams there's no over hierarchy you know we're we're trying to be friendly with the industry and really work with everyone and uh we have it ingrained in our mission we're trying to help the industry Thrive we never said like big companies from that specific country we just said the industry which means that sometimes it wouldn't be a publisher that is coming to us it would be a Creator or an orts league and we're always open to those ideas and we have relevant teams you know working on all those segments uh you know an organic team that is not within our work but is

also an incredible team that is creating new products we will find the right home for those reach out to please write to us got it okay so tldr find you guys on LinkedIn and shoot you guys a and shoot you guys a message it's very it's very simple um guys this was such a pleasure to have you on um and any concluding thoughts from you guys before before we close as Safa Rama um I think just we are really excited for the future we know that it's a really challenging time in the industry uh but we also see the incredible potential that gaming has as an industry as a category as an entertainment platform you know all the trans media crossovers that you're seeing there's so much potential alongside the challenges and we are here to be those Partners to tap into the potential and to see the success we're really invested in the gaming industry success so in addition to LinkedIn also in a lot of events so come find us talk to us we're really super accessible uh

and uh we will do our best to help you all I you know it would be hard to exceed that the only thing I'll add is you know gaming Executives CEOs uh board of directors like are thinking deeply about what they're doing with their companies and where to go and we are here to give advice if you want we're here to speak about numbers and what we're seeing coming we believe that the industry is uh on the cusp of making another big leap but some things will have to change and we we will be happily you know come and discuss well that's fantastic well Rama I know that I'm personally looking forward to the next event that you have or throw at any kind of conference and Assa thank you for those parting words I mean I think that it is exactly the reason why I was excited about this episode is because there are so many people that are thinking about what the future of their businesses are what the future of distribution is and Tik Tok is most certainly going to play a role in that so guys this probably concludes our

episode um as always um to all my friends that are listening uh if you have feedback or ideas hit me up at alexandr nvic.org [Music] sure to like subscribe comment or give a five-star review and if you want to reach out or provide feedback shoot us a note at podcast nvic.org .n. thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode