Turning Privacy Pop-Ups Into Real Profits with CMPs

[Music] hello world welcome to the Pocket Gamer podcast with me your host Brian Bago and our conly area of consent if not the Godmother of games herself Miss Peggy and saltz hello Peggy it's a pleasure as always how are you I am fine and of course if I'm the Godmother doesn't that make you the Godfather I don't know that star to sound a bit weird it's I I'll SLE for you know special advisor you know parttime okay okay my associate my associate there we go associate sounds suitably Sinister yes so I thought about a couple of topics where we're going to have the equivalent of master classes okay and hearing people talk about Brands and games they're going to get together it's going

to happen this is going to be huge well that all starts with consent management platforms or cmps so if you don't know what they are you have to find out because it's not enough to just tick the box for compliance this is about growth because how Publishers engage with users that's how they build trust and that unlocks new revenue streams especially if you are going after Brands and branding big time in 2025 so this is the topic and this is advice you can literally if we get it right Brian take to the bank because we have two people here who are going to have a little bit of a crossfire between themselves I think I'm almost ready to say in this corner we have Todd Rose he's head of global Business Development and Partnerships at inmobi advertising Todd brings a wealth of expertise especially that's why we have him here in how cmps can Elevate admon and meet the demands

of hey users who are very privacy conscious so first of all Todd great to have you pleasure to be here thank you for having me absolutely in the other corner paulos he is Chief Revenue officer at 52 entertainment we know him from a lot of other companies including recently cry so he has stories to tell War Stories to Tell about navigating the CMP landscape and also leveraging CMP for growth hello everyone always a pleasure to talk about CMP let's talk about growth um how signos can drive Revenue as Peggy said and and here's a quick start to set us off um Peggy a recent survey from addictive reports that 58.2% of app marketers reported implementing custom iOS consent popups and the results was a noticeable boost in user engagement while staying compliant with privacy regulations and so the message is if you're not tracking or optimizing your consent strategy you could be again as you said leaving money

and user Trust on the table so gentlemen I'm going to come to you first to what are your reactions to some of the statistics in this report it makes sense to me cmps have really evolved to become a strategic growth enabler instead of just a simple compliance Tool uh what we found is when Publishers optimize their opin rates they dramatically increase Revenue potential simply put what we can get into some of the stats but what we see is that there is a material lift in ecpm on Advertising for consented users and we see engagement from buyers on programmatic marketplaces significantly higher so significantly higher fill rates on consented inventory great yeah I totally agree with this uh we we experience two tox higher CPM on optin users so definitely you want to

optimized your opting rate um I think in that in the startat you mentioned we need to Define user engagement because on my side this is not what I observe I don't observe opin users to have a higher engagement with the game though since they are oping you might be able to better re-engage them through advertising so this is what it is about but like the behavior of optin users versus opt out users on my experience doesn't change much I can see compliance being important for advertising for admon but for engagement the only way that would work together is you have engaged and you've sort of made privacy into a discussion particularly if you personalize this often you know you can sort of make it a conversation starter in a way I'd be really interested though because I was having a hard time finding stats about this and if you say Todd that you have stats what other uh data

points can you share here yeah let me uh share a couple data points that are pretty uh Salient here now in the US we're in a privacy in an optout privacy regime uh so consent signals are not required but they're certainly helpful in bid requests and what we found and this is based on a small sample because because consent signals aren't required a small minority less than 10% of fills on our exchange uh are against Impressions with consent signals but what we've seen is for that cohort ecpm are roughly 150% higher actually uh yeah that's about 250% of what they are for non-consented users on average in the US in the EU it's even higher because consent is absolutely required so you would imagine any targetable users are significantly more valuable than essentially what is run of site advertis izing so we see the ecpm 2 to 3x uh

almost as a starting point in the EU for consented users versus non-consented that's impressive that's a reason to do it Brian although it can be can be a hassle I totally agree with Stud this is what we observed um basically two things first you need to be compliant because if you're not you cting part of the demand whether it's branding or even Performance Marketing now require you're up to be compliant so you need to be compliant when it's done basically you need to optimize your obtaining your opting rate because the higher the opting rate the higher the revenue once you have the the CMP now about the implementation of the CMP that can be a struggle um I've experienced it the first struggle is understanding um which partner to use um whether you use free

mp uh uh a third party CMP that you pay for you need to access the time you can allocate to um test the CMP whether you want to customize it whether you want to AB tested based on your expectation requirements you need to choose whether a third party tool that you have to pay for or a free one like Google for example then once you to implement it one thing you need to be careful about is um making sure that you understand the data flow of the opin users versus the opt out users making sure that you understand what is at risk here is it your user acquisition capacities where part of your user might not be um tracked by your MMP anymore or might go through the uh organic

pipeline whether you understand as well the user Behavior if you analyze it on the Cy level you might lose some of the users and so um you might affect the what you see as a LTV so your LTV might change not necessarily because your actual users are disengaging but just because after the install you don't track anymore some of the user that have opt out up out so talk to the partners talk to um your mediation Partners talk to the the advertising Partners now people have experienced it so we have a better view a better understanding of what to expect when you implement a CMP I was going to add uh I actually agree with a lot of what Paul is saying I think the big concern that Publishers have is by implementing consent flows am I going to potentially turn turn out users or drive

them away and impact that LTV so when you pick a CMP vendor you want to pick a vendor that lets you seamlessly test different customizations of text color uh placement and size of accept and reject buttons um to iterate on those to do ab testing as he mentioned and with a robust analytics dashboard that lets you evaluate performance across a number of different parameters by browser by uh OS by country uh region all of those different parameters time for a little bit of a sales pitch the inmo free CMP allows those kinds of functionality and uh robust customization there are others that do it as well some are paid for um a lot of free ones don't have as robust capabilities um but that is an important consideration uh as Paul laid out when you are evaluating a CMP for these needs totally agree to add to that um you need to be able to customize it

based on the country because the local authorities have different understanding of the the the rules and Regulation and So based on where the CMP is displayed um local authorities expect different things and so you need to have a CMP that allows you not on the regional level but not on the country level to customize your CMP not only are the regulations different but there are simply cultural sensitivities and how information is presented and language is is presented to the user that impacts those those consumer responses so it's important to customize the messaging to the local culture uh and to your point about compliance with uh laws those are moving quickly even in the US right the consent framework has sort of already migrated from from the old I framework to you

know the Google uh gpp framework uh and so those kinds of um considerations need to be taken into account you need to make sure your that your CMP is compliant with the most upto-date regulation and standards this is fascinating because this comes down to everything this probably comes down to shapes of buttons and sizes of fonts and all sorts of things that people need to be considering that marketers need to be consider ing you've done this Paul I mean and you've seen others do it Todd so could you share a little bit of sort of the the recipe for Success here in in getting consent consumers are looking for consistency of experience they're used to seeing certain messages they want familiarity so you don't want to stray too far but within that I think there are some there are some guard rails then sort of set by uh familiarity but within that there are some degrees

of freedom around how you exper experiment with conversational versus a more formal tone uh I think you know certainly just being transparent uh and straightforward with what you plan to do with the data and how it's going to be used for users um that you're not sort of burdening them with a sales pitch but you are very clear about how the data is used to enhance the experience used to enhance uh advertising experiences for them in a way that they can relate to is really really important and iterating on that language is a a very fine art there's a lot of nuances in that but as you said you can also you know very much impact response rates through the visual experience colors placement and sizes of buttons If you recall Marissa Meyer at Google famously experimented with 50 different shades of blue uh for the you know the search button at Google uh the same kind of holds true with CMP

experiences how you present that information to users and I'll say one other thing below the surface that I think uh Publishers need to consider is also what vendors they're actually looking to get permission for to share consumer data with that's part of the cmp's functionality and a lot of Publishers I think default to checking all vendors just so they cover all BAS cases in case they work with somebody else that somebody that they're not working with today in the future um but when you do that that can be overwhelming to a user to see this many third parties that you're sharing data with so be thoughtful about calling that list down to a list of essential vendors that you need to be able to share data with and that can also impact uh consumer opt-in rates and and TOD have you seen significant um impact based on the text

so testing the test the text has an impact on the opin rate yeah I think what what you what we found overall is for a fairly generic experience on a CMP you can get 70ish percent opt-in rates with sort of minimal customization but when you start to customize that experience you can get those opt-in rates up to 90 95% that's what we've seen under best PR practices so you there's a very material difference uh that you can achieve through these various customizations just a quick followup there is this like everything else that you should be continually optimizing and updating I mean it's great to get that 90 and you want to say well how can you get much better than that but in this business every percentage Point counts so would that also be the advice here is to say okay you nailed the 90 but keep going and keep working at it or can you just say set it and forget it I I I'm I'm curious

you took the words right out of my mouth I was going to say the number one mistake that Publishers might make in implementing a CMP is to view it as just a compliance tool and a set it forget it tool where they configure the settings and let it run it requires constant tinkering and AB testing and customization to optimize the results and optimize consumer opt-in rates there's no no way around it so now it's a matter of cost versus benefits and basically the the opportunity cost you need to understand what are the chance to optimize my my opin rate what would be the benefit versus potentially working on another feature that will also have a benefit and so it's all a matter of prioritizing where you think you're going to have the biggest impact so that's why I asked whether or not it was worth this in text and and this this chimes with so much of what we hear on the podcast Peggy where it's you know all about the player experience as Todd

was saying you know don't spook the players you know fit in with those expectations and make sure that you're you know testing and refining so all of this is making sense um I I want to kind of flip it because we've heard a lot about the opportunity for developers Publishers bringing the players on board but Paul one of the things that stood out from our initial discussions was was how cmps um give Publishers like 52 entertainment the ability to negotiate better rates with the advertisers themselves so can you share any of that journey and how that's worked out for you yeah so now working with um indeed indeed The Branding uh shares is increasing having the consent is key to integrate new branding Partners um whether on biding or or direct Partners so this is key to have the consent and then there's like Partners where they they want be on your inventory if you are not compliant if

you don't send the consent so it's to be frank not necessarily about only negotiating um inhibitor rates it's just about opening your inventory to a new demand that you wouldn't get if you're not compliant yeah in a programmatic uh ecosystem prices are determined dynamically through auctions right so the CPM uplift that I was quoting before the 50% uplift that we see in the US that's purely based on Dynamic auction pricing so there is no negotiation there it's just a matter of how uh buyers um value uh Impressions from users that have consented to sharing of data and why are they paying that much more uh simply because that data now can be used to customized advertising and you you think about brand advertisers they're all about reaching def find audiences they have audiences on their

side or they're looking for audiences from their ssps however they they sort of tackle that audience targeting challenge there needs to be an availability of identifiers as a starting point so having identifiers enables you know onetoone audience targeting it enables you know model targeting it enables matching of Advertiser first party data against publisher data you know sort of numerous ways in which um that information can be turned into a better understanding of consumer intent and that you know naturally just increases the value of that consumer in the advertiser's eyes what about the Competitive Edge in attracting a brand Advertiser because you can say look I've got this great data this first-party data opt in does it give them an edge from my understanding it does give a edge but is is that edge big enough to change the marketing performance I'm not sure so as far as I as I see branding I'm not

challenging the mobile game industry ecpm and their ability to build super high okay um they don't branding don't have yet a dynamic pricing so usually they are willing to pay a specific price for a specific audience but that price won't change based on any post click post anything Behavior whether the mobile game industry in that case are willing to dynamically change how much they pay for specific user depending on what this user will do Post installs and so that's why currently we see the the top of the ecpm are from mobile game developers while the lower part of the of the ecpm later is from The Branding side our perspective is you know gaming Publishers are are a long of overlooked opportunity for brand

advertisers I think historically advertisers or the ecosystem thinks of gaming Publishers as a place for performance-based advertisers and app install advertisers to advertise uh certainly it's you know generally great for that because you're targeting people who are Avid Gamers but if you think about it for a brand Advertiser advertising on a game is no different than advertising on Leanback entertainment uh Television right if you advertise on The Voice you advertise on American Idol whatever it may be it's the same concept in gaming you are you are reaching people when they are in a relaxation mode filling their idle time uh and so it's an effective medium but the key is being able to reach the users you want to reach so having consented opted in users enables an Advertiser programmatically

to Target just those users that have some sort of predisposition or latent intent for your brand uh so it's a powerful opportunity I think inmobi has kind of served that market for a long time but we're really seeing that uh come into star contrast particularly as we uh see more and more gaming developers leaning into identity and consent management and ensuring this you know the resolve ability of user identity yeah it's going from a media mix marketing to an audience mix marketing um and for The Branding to be able to take bigger re um market share big um sh of voice in the gaming uh inventory they'll have to be lier and so they'll have to be willing to compete with the mobile game

industry marketing buyers to to actually get a bigger sh voice Paul I I want to come back um to you because when you implemented your CMP you know there's a lot in here there's a lot for our audience to take away to consider to unpack but when you implemented your CP what's the one thing you you wish you had known earlier or started a little earlier I think at first when the CMP was reinforced by Google we didn't know what to expect in terms of um Data Tracking in terms of our ability to keep on understanding the user journey and we lost track of some of our users um reducing our ability to optimize our campaigns and even our game because part of the users Wen tracked in court level and so

basically they were lost in the overall um uh daus we didn't know whether they were new users old users and so it reduced our ltvs but on the on the data side not in reality and so we had to react in order to just get an understanding of the dynamic between um the opt out users and the opin users and so having someone explaining us what to expect once um The cmps Well out would have been nice and so I can tell you that if you track on the user Journey you will track the install but then the user will disappear from the coed um from the coed analysis and so expect that don't panic just talk to your partners and try to to understand um how

to retrieve these users or how to basically navigate with that unknown in mind a great Point Paul thank you and Todd for Publishers developers looking to AB test their consent flows what are the key steps they should be taking to improve those opin rates you know I think we outlined sort of the three big areas to think about um when you are testing it's messaging so it's the content of that messaging the style of that messaging is it formal versus conversational uh so that's one area second is visual elements right the colors the layout the size uh and placement of reject accept buttons uh do you have a multi-page or multi multi-step process uh and then the third area really is the vendors that are included in that consent uh so I think those give you a pretty when you get

into the details of it a pretty broad array of parameters to experiment with um so again it goes just goes back to that sort of continuous tinkering mindset um and make sure you have a vendor that enables seamless robust AB testing and analytics to dive into that consumer journey and how these different uh elements affect the user experience and those opt-in rates but once again I think when you are managing a nap over all you need to prioritize whether you are going to test the color of the button or really a new feature and so I think in my case we went more in the 8020 philosophy made one or two ab test on where the Buton were laid out which one you would display uh whether you can reject all or not depending on the the country you are in and then once we had

80% of the results we moved on to developing features and I think on the mobileum publishing side this is this is key is to make sure you focus where you have the biggest impact and so whether you you do another run of test or move on to another feature is key is a a key factor of success I will add another element I think that's that's becoming relevant in the CMP world is modern cmps will also enable experimentation with different commercial models in particular pay versus consent models this may be a little bit more relevant to you know we we think of pay walls you think of uh news content but that model there's no reason that it's a model that gaming developers can't think about as well are there certain experiences that are you know behind a pay wall for an enhanced gaming experience um or you know you can get to that enhanced experience through

consent to to use consumer data so that's an important consideration I think as well uh and when you're evaluating cmps looking into whether they can support those alternative commercial models and it's a very good example of making sure you talk to the partners because the the tods feedback are key to test the one thing that has the biggest chance of creating value and so making sure that you collect the data from the different partners key to get the the best with a limited effort is that happening now Todd or is that just you looking out uh around the edge around the corner and saying this is what's going to happen you know just as we have a premium experience um this is a premium experience for more consent for more data yeah I think we're looking around the corner um I think most casual gaming and and like hyper casual gaming Developers this is all about bringing consumers in

um minimizing barriers to entry right um and then maximizing LTV from there so I think historically game developers have have probably been a little bit more hesitant to put up pay walls for understandable reasons as user acquisition becomes more expensive uh it's more competitive out there um having an opportunity to lock in your consumers your truly uh you know most valuable consumers uh I think there's there's an incentive for for gaming developers to think about those experiences and so it's something that can be supported and that capability has been developed obviously for news content and other developers so you know it's there and a and ready for game developers to experiment with should they decide to go down that path for the most part we've seen game developers as we know you know the trade-off is really between inapp purchases and in advertising when it comes to um uh pay versus consent if you

will um and even there it's not it hasn't been a trade off of pay versus consent but there could be that trade-off even with uh inapp purchases versus advertising right um in order to advance you might need to purchase something in app or you could consent to you know targeted advertising and get to that same level in a game so there's multiple ways to implement that pay versus consent framework and we have a little bit of a precedent for that because we're seeing the explosion of rewarded which is absolutely I'm going to pay with my attention now I'm going to pay with my consent so I can I can see this coming it's GNA be fascinating Brian the the Myriad you know the plethora of different models that are going to happen because things are different now oh absolutely it doesn't surprise me it's putting the power back into the hands of the developer you know and treating every aspect of your player Journey you know from the choice between

DLC as piggy just said the attention that you give to rewarded ads but right down to it's like this is how I want to be treated so it really puts this back into the hands of the designer the Creator and says okay you get to decide how your player experiences every aspect of this game so I I think you're absolutely right Todd this is not looking around the corner very far because I can see this coming quite quickly uh in in 2 and Beyond this gets me back to the thought of first party data obviously is important because it helps with targeting but um it's also going to be instrumental in retargeting and maybe bring that strategy to the four again I see you nodding already Todd so I feel as if I'm on to something here what do you see about that are there examples or successes to get us excited about retargeting again I can't say that I've got uh concrete examples of success there

but certainly uh the ability to identify users at scale enables retargeting um I I think more of you know in a world where retail media networks are becoming coming more and more to the four uh an opportunity to Target those users offsite in other uh environments is compelling it's an area of tremendous growth for retail media and for advertisers take advantage of that that retail media data so just imagine essentially re retargeting retail media Network proprietary first-party data uh for users in this Leanback entertainment mode uh it's a natural sort of Confluence of Trends in the marketplace exciting times for 2025 and Beyond I think I'll just wrap it up at this moment one tip from each of you on how to get the most out of implementing a CMP in the new year um Paul to start off

with you obviously you've done it been there done that and you know what you need to do and what you need to prioritize so just that question for someone doing this for the first time they just tuned in and they're like yes let's do this what should they prioritize in order to maximize its potential first choose the right button now if possible the one that enables you to customize on the country level second optimize your opting rate to I said so optimize it the higher the op rate the higher the revenue third make sure you know manage your data flow optin data flow opt out data flow and last increase your awareness because with awareness you don't need to do user acquisition and so you don't need to track the overall user Journey and that really increase your Oran downloads solid advice there Todd you

from your position um it's about positioning cmps as growth tools I was just gonna say is uh don't think of your CMP as just a compliance tool think of it as a growth lever be thoughtful and transparent with your consumers iterate and don't be content don't set and forget solid couldn't get it better there's been some absolutely fantastic um information in here guys uh I I know our listeners are going to have an awful lot to take away from this it's an area that we've not heard a lot about sadly we are going to have to wrap it up now and but before we let you go and get on with the rest of your day we have a couple of questions we ask all of our guests it brings it right back to the core of everything which is the games so for both of you um what are you playing right now what's obsessing you what's either on your your your desk or in your pocket that that you can't stay away from and secondly favorite game of all time and Paul you're looking very eager

so I'm gonna come to you first all right so now I'm playing quite a lot of Spades a card game that I appreciate quite a lot from blackout alltime best game for me is Clash Royale I had to get banned from them because like I was playing too much so Clash Royale is is is the best game ever for me strong choices strong choices and deeds and Todd how about yourself uh I am a a a word game kind of guy so um letter boxed has me entranced um I I do that daily as long as it doesn't take too much time out of the day because it can take a while uh but I gotta say a tried andrue old favorite Scrabble I mean there's there's no better word game than Scrabble this this is true this is true doesn't matter we're not going to ask whether it's the the digital or um um physical version digital lets you play with your friends wherever they are so yes that is awesome I do it too yes

exactly so so thank you both it's been an absolute Joy an absolute pleasure and as I say I I suspect we will be seeing more of you in the coming months as uh as we invite you back to hear more about this incredible new area of opportunity appreciate you having having us with you today absolutely great to have you and yes we will have you back because it is an expanding area it's another area of concern for marketers so thank you both thank you Peg thank you Brian this show is all about how to do your job better how to make an amazing game how to Market it and you have a say so if you have a story or know someone we need to shine a light on then we would love to hear from you we want to hear from you we want to reflect the reality of the mobile games Market in all its wonderful complexity and strangeness so if you have any suggestions for us if you have any feedback for us you can always get in touch you can email us at podcast at pocketgamer.biz you can find

us on Twitter at PG Biz and you can reach out to us through the pocketgamer.biz website if you're interested in listening to all of our podcasts you can find them at pocketgamer.biz SLP podcast and we would love to hear your thoughts on future shows and we've got you covered on all the major platforms so subscribe to the audio podcast as Brian said look for us on YouTube if you want to read it hey you can do that too because we have a companion post for you as well on the pocketgamer.biz website tune in again for the next edition of the pocketgamer.biz podcast and we look forward to speaking to you in the near future until then I'm Brian Bago I'm Peggy and saltz and that's a wrap until next week