two & a half gamers session #29 - how to scale your mobile game, CPI vs LTV, Amazon gamescom rumours

[Music] all right welcome everybody uh this is no gaming podcast 2 and half Gamers session number 29 29 so we are discussing latest news having fun and dropping knowledge but let's not forget let's not forget this is 4:00 a.m. conference discussion VIP let's not take it too seriously and now one conference ended so how was Gamescom Mr Felix and yakob I mean I had plenty of 4:00 a.m. conference discussion Vibes a lot of Gossip I'm going to share some of those gossip on this very podcast as well yeah very go very good we did miss you though man yeah I know I know family Duty you know family is always more important than uh conferences but the venue the venue was a little bit let's let's say less pompus less pompous okay I me I I was just

fascinated that stillfront had a bigger Booth than pretty much Google Amazon and yeah like the biggest Booth I saw was still front nice well why not yeah yeah but there were there were very big names missing like PlayStation War gaming blizzard completely zero presence basically well I guess look so um before games come even started I I received a lot of messages about uh like people not coming there there because it doesn't make any sense for whatever reason I mean I wanted to come just because it was like the the biggest conference in in Europe and actually everybody I talked to was uh was coming so I'm not sure like where the I'm not coming because nobody is coming actually came from but but I guess like all these big companies just um saved the money and maybe just uh just going to be um in know different conference yeah we're going to talk talk about these rumors

from Gamescom what's happening uh at the moment with mintegral some news around um the the new game Google gameplay games on on PC which means basically [ __ ] off blue Stacks I guess then I'm going to do a quick update on iOS Tas and then Felix as well update on bidder because he was already like jumping three meters from the ground and this working super well and we are going to talk about how to scale a mobile game because from the discussion I had scaling means a lot of different things for a lot of different people so I think we can start this discussion from from our point of view and then maybe we will continue on some some other sessions as well so yeah I guess uh I skipped the the intro and we have Felix braber here yakob BR and myself m L chish and we are really happy

to kick it off so what the [ __ ] happened during the Gamescom talk to me talk to me so so pretty much you know like any good ad one person we you know we spend uh the whole time a Gamescom sitting in front of the class with the rest of the Nerds and we gossip class or glass class and glass both thing right so we sit up front and the admon people that I know we sit up there and we gossip who's working and who's not working which ad network is doing this which ad network is doing that and the outstanding kind of thing that was the big takeaway from this is that Amazon is up to really interesting things in the ad monetization space so they have an ad network uh they had this big monopolistic stupid rule in place before that you can only use Amazon as a demand Source if your game is not built in unity which is pretty

much every game that's built in unity so before then before now essentially you couldn't run it if your game was built in unity but apparently now Amazon has allowed you to be whitelisted with a big caveat that it takes about two three months to become whitelisted so you know better than nothing but actually you can do it so Amazon ads grew 18% last quarter which makes it the fastest growing ad Network currently out of these big Mega caps and they're actually might even be bigger than Tik Tok but that's not public so I don't know how much that is growing so from some unnamed ad monetization manager sources it's banners that really works on the Amazon Network and they don't yet have any real fill on rewarded or intials and mainly what you're getting here is first party demand from Amazon so that's e-commerce on Amazon which is nice because it would get be super nice

to get another source that would be competing with games as well on kind of performance and what I'm hearing is that the Amazon it's a bidder but they actually have a separate auction outside of the mediation platforms they're currently on so it's quite interesting I'm not sure exactly how that will work with the max mediation stack or iron Source or anyone else for that matter but yeah apparently it sounds really good let's let's pause here so um I remember running Amazon UA campaigns back in days uh it was one uh one option which was a Kindle Fire wake screen so you actually show your video or static image when you unlocked your Kindle device but then I remember they had this ad Network you're talking about and it was really like very limited inventory but it was really good quality as well so if that is if that's growing like hell I'm looking forward to it

actually it was very good it's very good surprisingly good in us obviously other countries are not that um that big in terms of the inventory then I think they opened up UK Germany France but UK uh us was still the the biggest biggest country okay well yeah I mean we're still reeling a bit from the loss of you know Facebook right or meta so yeah it' be good to get another one w there is another rumor that Amazon is buying EA right so uh just yeah I mean it does really sound like a rumor like yeah I mean should we talk about that now because it kind of has a nice segue or yes yeah yeah let's let's do that Remo has a Stern Stern opinion on this already said do you want to start because I know you like you want this to be true because you've said on this podcast many times usual I said it like yeah yeah I think it would make like a good good option for them because

Amazon is pretty much like failing a lot at making the game themselves and this would pretty much give them a nice way out where they actually buy a like Complete product so my guess is it it's just a matter of time until this consolidation hit even though like I think it was already uh denied by CNBC I think like half of the industry denied it already but I guess it will happen anyway even if this is not true currently yeah and yeah yeah yeah if if I didn't know you it makes a lot of sense I would say you parted pretty hard during the Gamescom but I know you don't drink alcohol so I don't I don't listen to that voice he's never had this sexy deep voice ever before so yeah got Co or what what the [ __ ] is happening you know because parties works really great like you need to talk to people that you meet during loud music and everything and you're supposed to talk there it's like the best talking environment I don't know who invented this well it's fun it's fun exactly it's

fun and you apparently are not used to like talking loud you know alcohol actually helps although I I usually have sore throat after all this no [ __ ] yeah actually yeah the thing is like I I apparently got covid like a week uh before my wife so uh but I I thought it's it's just like a a festival you know usual [ __ ] afterwards I I got little be tired and sore throw for one day like yeah well [ __ ] it and uh now I think this is Remo's time like I think it's time yeah yeah it's been my time four times so it's just like [ __ ] fair that don't worry man I just it's twice for me already so uh there you go I mean it's like catching Pokemon yeah exactly right different yeah you just catch different variants I'm making the test tomorrow let's see that's too soon Ben yeah should um let me do my

uh let's continue let's yeah let's continue let's move on to a little current event so if you currently are working with mgrl yesterday on iOS L bidding you will have noticed a massive absolute killer of a spike so I'm hearing from people that is spiked about 80 to 102% in terms of revenue for different people and if if you're thinking that mgrl is the network that has finally cracked the nuts of L bidding on iOS uh just before you do open your bottle of champagne for the weekend it was announced today that it was due to a tech issue that caused a bunch of overbids so banners were apparently more affected than interstitials and rewarded videos so if you're actually monetizing with minl right now this is what you should expect so having worked in dsps

and AD networks in my days I have seen this happen many times so when you're actually working in an ad Network or a DP you actually usually have a monthly Target that you need to hit or yeah be around right so this means that you can expect over the next couple of days performance to go down about by the equal amount that it went up so over a 30-day like stretch of time it will be roughly the same as it always is and usually there's some tech people that get punched or let go so that's what happens all right so Google play games uh opens up outside of the US um and this is apparently their um client on the PC and they're testing markets uh which include Korea Hong Kong Taiwan Thailand and Australia and it's starting today uh those countries will be able to register for open beta for Google play games on

their PC so this is a catalog of games restricted to Chromebooks and under Android enabled devices which is going to be available to run on PC as a native app so this is very big middle finger to Blue Stacks which is exactly the same uh and operates uh on the PC where you can uh play Android games or Google play games so there there will be actually 50 games at loue these includes titles like Su Summoners War Kiran kingdom last Fortress underground and top war so pretty nice um player base of uh for this games so what do you think yakob is it going to definitely kill the emulators like blue St or nox I would I would say um it will also depend how much

functionality they have because don't forget that blue stack has a lot of these like Nitty Gritty things added on top of it like just how how much you can customize the controls and everything and like you can instance it and play like 20 blue Stacks windows at once which is really really handy I always like played like two or three mobile games at once so don't know if they are for instance just the multi client functionality is really great then the other thing is I'm kind of curious if because blueex is basically an ad Network in way that you can throw ads in it I guess this what this what be the case those like icons popping up on your screen on Blue STS which are pretty much from the start I guess no but then they will definitely yeah definitely open up for ads because this is another Revenue stream for them so why wouldn't they do exactly the same as do as blue St it just makes so much sense

yeah then then the other thing is that uh not like at least for me when I try to run some games through Blu they not always went through in a way that like even though they installed they didn't run so I'm really curious if let's say any game could be run on this because a lot of games are just you know nice to have to be running in the background on the other screen on PC when you're playing them that's like normal things how some mobile games are played so my guess is yeah it will also depend on how much features they can push in compared to Blue Stacks itself because blue stack has a lot of features regarding just the custom stuff macros and everything that you can customize there which is super handy yeah and uh it's a good point that I couldn't run actually a lot of games with blue Stacks like any of the supercell games I couldn't run on Blue stacks and I I don't have Android and I uh I didn't want to buy Android device only for playing supercell games and it's like all other games that were not

able to run okay well I assume this is going to be exactly uh the place where you could you could run it because it's Android it's not emulator it's actually Android native app on Facebook uh [ __ ] Facebook Facebook PC why are you lying that's not true well yeah PC you know well actually I'm I'm starting to have a the always like this but I'm really really kind of curious about their functionality we'll see what happens uh but it opens up for these countries I'm pretty sure that until it it happens in in Slovakia it's going to be worldwide release which is going to be we'll see when but yeah okay so uh iOS Tas update um finally getting some interesting numbers so so far so good uh it still fluctuates a lot but I can see see some potential already on some

accounts uh I stuck to the good old Android UAC simplified structure and launched only worldwide campaign on iOS on one account and then I tried to run a US campaign on the other account so far the worldwide is performing like [ __ ] while the US on the other account is performing great which makes sense because us is a very good country and if you if you run worldwide you can get pretty low uh or like tier four GEOS but there's a big butt for Andro campaigns the the worldwide Tas campaign is actually performing always the best thanks to the low cpis from these like tier three tier four countries and the high amount of data you can get from all these countries around the world so you are actually meeting the the event threshold which means you need to get at least like 50 events in the last seven days to be able

to get enough data to optimize and all this black boxy [ __ ] but it it actually works so I would expect the same is happening for iOS uh but I guess I need to rely on that very different geomix because this is not how it works on iOS so now uh again two two accounts two different stories so I'm really really happy that I can compare different accounts I mean I'm comparing it on on my side on the back can't not sharing any data uh with anyone but I need to I I just want to run tier one uh GEOS uh campaign one purchase optimized and one Tas optimized so against each other to compare the results so I mean it's not the exact AB test but as close as I can get the only thing I'm worried about is a cannibalization but yeah I'm pretty sure I'm I'm going to see the the numbers very quickly and uh rule out any

cannibalization so if you can get whitelisted on the Tas for iOS do it as soon as you can uh and start experimenting because you know more data the better and you will be prepared for for the scaling up afterwards so yeah that's it from the the side any add mober update of course yeah so this episode is quickly turning into to this week of Google products yeah yeah yeah I'm yeah I've I've been hearing some uh Google guys complaining about my attitude towards Google guys I love you I really I Google is the best performing channel for me on on a lot of games but if something doesn't work I will say it out loud I mean I mean that's true you know Google we love you guys but you know Mach was about to name his child Google instead of Katarina you know really close close and then you know very very close yeah and then the

campaign started going to [ __ ] and then that's why yeah you know it's always so add more bidder update on Max so so last week you know I was over the moon and it was great and now I've moved most map uh most apps I moved now to a 50% roll out except on L because it's still looking really bad but the results have started to look a bit more realistic so you know 16 and even in one case I had 189% uplift on one thing for a day like it's not realistic it's a bit too much of a win so right now L waterfalls on a test on iOS still down left like 5 to 7% they probably will be deprecated probably after this podcast even because it's not performing yet iOS idfa have settled into a nice groove of between a 1.8 to 7% uplift on a 50% roll out on day 10 of

14 days so Monday is when we have to make a decision on wor the roll out and Android has actually dropped down uh on a 50% roll out after day 10 to a sensible yet nice two to three and a half% uplift so it seems a bit like your end as well M what you're saying like it does fluctuate quite a bit uh but it's a closed beta right so that's very much much to be expected and the bidder does seem like it works very similar to the Google admob placements that it really forces fill for two to three days to test out the game's inventory exactly like adal places do so it's built very similar keep in mind that all the data I'm saying it's a rewarded video only and it's with a geomix of America taking up about 80% so the benefits of being at Gamescom is that I got invited to the Google Booth to have a chat with some nice lovely admob people about the bidder

they serve juice and coffee and were very friendly and I asked also about how long we're going to be able to keep this hybrid setup because you know uh that's nice of them and they were pretty adamant that will be allowed to use this dual setup at least for a couple more quarters which I took to mean for about this time next year is when they're going to start yeah dropping off the placement so that's good very happy about that I'll yeah tip my cap to that thank you uh so I also asked them about their thoughts how come the Google bidder is coming in at around a 50% lower ecpm on bidding compared to placements and they confirm that that's exactly what they're expecting to see because admob tends to bundle up your placements at a very high price point so it only makes sense that the bidder will take up considerable amount of fill at lower price points where the Google bidder is not bidding uh I did meet some product people as

well but they couldn't really tell me that much because yeah they know I have a podcast yeah I know I really hope these uh information are true and not uh we're not going to get any like lawsuit threats again so yeah I mean you know it's happened twice right so you know Third Time Lucky it has to be a third time yeah that yeah I well I hope it won't be but you never know you never know oh okay so if you've built a mobile game for iOS or Android you've experienced user turn you can win those users back but it's getting more and more expensive even more so to acquire totally new users enter cross promotion with ad dict by identifying your users likely to turn early you can showcase another game in your portfolio before they leave forever transforming a lost user into a new user increasing your revenues learn more now at addict.com [Music]

Let's uh let's actually discuss how to scale a game so I have some notes uh and uh and whatnot but I just want to ask you first because uh as I said at the beginning there's the the scale means or scaling a game means all of different things for different people so what does actually scale mean to you and what is actually scale in your your eyes yakob let's start with you because you know you also have a very interesting opinion on this not only me I really like this question when I was asking it like a lot of other teams in way like yeah we want to scale the game and like can you at least tell me a number and it sometimes would like you know make a lot of money like 20 million 10 million and then like oh no no it could be like we're okay with like 500k a month or something like that so there's best answer completely different

scenarios in the end best answer is scale as much as as possible yes yeah that's that's even better what's wrong what's wrong with that like no like come on I'm in the Sal by making ads what's wrong with that like scale as much as possible what's wrong with that scaling as much as possible is not that big of a problem the problem is that there needs to be expectation management because scale as much as possible could be like 5K a day and that's it that that's the that's the possible part yeah that's the thing because if you say scale as much as possible nobody knows what to expect and uh usually I expect from the numbers that I see I expect like yakob like 5K a day but the other other part or the other side expects like 400,000 a day which is quite a very very very different number

sry continue yeah I I would say it's also it's also a matter of like how do you want to even get to that scale because sometimes games just push really really hard right from to start like Global UA is so massive that you know everything just go up and then you have the unfortunate shark fin as we talked before which means that you very very soon figures out that like this is not scalable and you're losing money pretty much pouring them down the drain so sometimes game scale uh this way sometimes game scale the other way around meaning that they'll scale from really really low volume to really really big volume and it's pretty much like a hockey stick graph uh the other thing is that sometimes big updates or like big feature uh big features being added into the game enables you to scale for instance if you look at The Clash of Clans chart like from the beginning when

they added actual Clan Wars you can see how it did scale because that's that's like what enables your LTV and like changes fundamentally the CPA LTV formula and that's also like a game of levers that you know when you're are pushing really really hard on the UA side making new creatives all the time optimizing doing this doing that that's great but you know you can even kill yourself it wouldn't make any sense if the other way of of the equation is doing nothing and the product is yeah the product is great but don't have you know any new content any new live Ops anything so it's is this kind of a game of levers and you need to put your capacity into right utility ratio I would say that you not only doing the outside part of the equation which is the marketing CPI but also the inside out which is the product with the LTV yeah but that's always like a very tough discussion to have and also uh but we you need to have that discussion always

that's what I that's why I ask about the road map and uh like new features and when they're going to be implemented in the game because we can have a a certain Baseline of spent let's say 3,000 a day and uh and basically that's it and I'm squeezing the the [ __ ] of it but if there is nothing uh from the other side of of the equation coming into the game or any live Ops any special offers any content anything basically that can help it's pretty hard to to grow from 3K to even like 3,500 because there's nothing to uh to rely on but as you mentioned from my point of view and I always say that and even though I'm the the UA guy just scaling in game is not only a function of UA it's just it's all about the CPI versus the LTV equation or well depends also on when do you want to see

your money back uh and uh what if you are comfortable to to get your money back in 30 days 60 days 90 days or one year also what comes into this equation obviously is the long-term retention if you have like 1% day 30 it doesn't make any sense to to aim for pay Bic period of one year oh well you can do that but you will never get that money back in one year maybe in 10 years May been 10 years yeah so in uh in my book but we we have we have a go on yeah I just wanted to mention sorry the like internet is is is not really fast here but we have a lot of experience with even low retention games where the profile still works in a way that even though the CPI LTV formula could like from the surface level could look really shitty but it still makes money and you can adjust to a really

really comfortable scale of something like one and a half 2 million a month which probably most of Studios would really like but if I would tell you that oh this game has 20% day1 Ori attention like yeah [ __ ] no let's kill it yeah but then you need to say you need to tell uh the listeners that day one is 20 but day 60 is say 6% or 8% which is very different story so and if you have loads of content in that game and you are pushing out the content every month or well every week even to keep your players engaged and paying that makes sense yeah so so it's more of as as I said like there's different profiles and and by the way there are games that just work because they already kind of taught the algorithm and the UA is pretty much for free like even this thing still works on the market so you for for free

if you if you mean these like organic wonders like the two games that have done the organic wonders Hill clim Racing and Subway Surface yeah and of course yeah so I wanted to say uh just uh you can scale your budget until the the LTV allows you to do so uh because that's LTV always dictates the the scale you can spend profitably 10,000 a day uh and get the money back in 90 days but if you want to get back the money in like 30 days the scale will drop quite significantly because you are looking at the shorter period of time uh and also if you opens up spent and scale it means you're are trying to widen little will be your audience which means that you are just prolonging the the pay pick

period as well so for example if your LTV is $5 you can run profitable campaigns until you hit the CPI which is like $4.5 or any other CPI that you know you can calculate based on your margins and this is super simplified because as I said like you need to take into consideration the payback period of your campaigns that's like very crucial part of the the whole so if you your day 30 ltvs $5 you can you know you can uh buy players for 4.5 and get profitable campaigns in 30 days if your day 60 or day 90 is uh LTV is $5 then you can do the 4.5 CPI as well but the the scale will be significantly lower but yeah I think let's let's unpack this a little bit and discuss like how it actually looks like from the UA point of view because you mentioned it uh previous or

earlier yeah you can do all this creative optimization blah blah blah yes creative optimization is very big part of the whole scaling business and not only scaling business but the UA business but it won't allow it won't open up fake ads your favorite fake ads your favorite fake ads thought we said you can say fake ads on the podcast for at least another six months yeah I think it's it's coming yeah yeah that's uh for sure yeah it's a very big part of the the UA of of other games and uh and some games that have really high cpis they can decrease the cpis by running fake ads that's how the market looks like at the moment unfortunately but uh we don't know how long it's it's going to take there is going to be some other um iteration of the fake ads but yeah let's let's let's not go there so creative optimization can definitely help you but it won't increase your spend by 100%

there are like different uh different uh elements of the UA um operations that can help uh like Channel diversification and I guess I'm going to be banned for channel diversification as well because I I'm saying it always uh so you need to diversify the UA because what what can happen is that you will hit a ceiling on one one um one channel which for example is Facebook and you can spend profitably 50k a month and then you open up Google and you find out okay so I can spend profitably 50k again so it's it's 100,000 already you open up another like four four channels then you will find or five channels you will find out you can spend profit like 20K only on each Channel but if you combine all of these suddenly you have 200,000 a month and you're running it profitably of course like this is going to take a lot of your time and resources because like managing

six channels profitably it's not an easy job but it's How We Roll on the UA side again it will be like a very big portion of your scaling business but uh you won't be able to do it or like scale uh like by 100 of percent just step by step it's it's it's a part and then these days uh there's a lot of discussion about iOS 14 campaigns and all these at [ __ ] we had a podcast with with Neils and Kate uh very recently so you can uh you can go and check it out about at and how it's not actually any apocalypse because I'm running pretty profitable campaigns on the on the iOS side as well it just you know sometimes you need to think outside of the box which is a very interesting buzz buzz word but not to be scared about running the campaigns uh well I

don't want to say blindly but I would just want to say in the the Blended uh evaluation uh point of view because you are running campaigns you are getting some baseline in terms of the revenues on iOS if you start scaling it up or growing the budget uh step by step adding one one channel at a time you will be able to see the the Delta between the Baseline and the the well let's say the new Baseline that uh you will see after you start one one channel and then again you are starting to stack up the the iOS channels and D diversify and try to think about how the Blended Blended RW works if you have a data team you can work with the LTV predictions which is possible on the iOS side and if you have a bigger or well more um senior data team you can also work on the media makes modeling and try to think and see how it actually works

what changes um actually affect the the whole Baseline of the of the revenue so those are like some of the things uh I have couple of more things but let's uh wait can I can I ask the the blonde question of the week um ASO I'm just wondering like how much can you actually improve there if you do ASO like is it 10% 20% or like how much can you actually unlock there of extra spend because I spent a lot of this Gamescom speaking to some people from different ASO companies and I'm just like what can you actually do like how big is it yeah it's uh I most probably won't give you any any specific number but if I had to I would say again like 10 to 15 20% on the ASO side because you can really improve the conversion rate on the on the even on the UA side but also on the store by running store asset testing you know

all these like screenshots um icons because that's something that is really visible like the first site for the players but what is really important and U this also goes back to to fake as a little bit but you need to create a seamless like expectation flow so players see an ad in some visual design they land in the store and they see something else very different expectations so they just you know know drop off immediately but if you create like a very similar V visual design on the creative side on the store as well and then the game is actually the win-win scenario because you're creating a really nice expectations and that's why some of the fake ads don't work and some of the game like fake ads are actually implemented in the in the store and then they're implemented even that even in the tutorial of the game so it's a I now remember the the game called

Mighty party which is a 3D CGI absolutely stunning Graphics but they actually run really big fake ads with green Tower defy type of bullshet they put it in the first two screenshots because those are the the most important screenshots and they they even put that fake at before you start the the the tutorial so you you create the that ex like the seamless flow of like fake fake seamless flow but apparently that works because they they could scale quite rapidly when I was checking it in sensor Tower so and then like I was checking the comments on the reviews in the store like hey why the [ __ ] is there like this this green Tower Defense before the the actual game play the game playay looks amazing but what is this [ __ ] but you know those guys don't understand like how the fake ads

work so yeah fun stuff fun stuff man I would say it also is a matter of your benchmarks if you really under your benchmarks of course you can improve it as such as this kind of low hanging fruit but if you are you know hitting some kind of 5% over the top or like under average I don't think so it's that big of an uplift if you are like up to standard in a way like no no magic trick definitely yeah but thing is like uh on the ASO side it needs to be like a always on testing because also like there is a seasonality and if you run one icon test and uh let's say the icon 2 wins you can run it again in one month and then like the I icon 2 that was a winner now it's a loser because well traffic changes seasonality whatever else it's just kind of like influences the the overall convers rate so you need to run these tests like

continuously but um good question it's definitely part of the of of all of these like UA scaling business and I'm going to finish up with uh with one last thing that I have on my mind and then I will leave you and uh comment on on all of these because there's one important part which is the the campaign optimization diversification again but uh it's important to to know how you can actually optimize those campaign types because if you let's say have a like 5050 split between inup purchases and inup ads you can run almost all of the campaign types uh and run it uh very profitably and just um try to mix and match so for example on Android running a purchase campaigns plus value optimized campaigns and addas campaigns can create a very healthy mix of uh well let's say other was very short per

period payback period purchase and value um definitely going to get you a lot of high quality players that can actually um produce a lot of AD revenues as well and on iOS if you know how to how to operate on iOS um UA field you can run value optimized campaigns and purchase optimized campaigns plus add some on some networks so again you can create a lot of uh different campaign types and scale on all of this because it's not that easy if you have only let's say otherise campaign you won't get that scale as if you have all of these options so yeah simplified but uh even if all of this is happening and it's super hard work you can help or it can help you improve the numbers overall maybe just like what like 20% if if you connect all the dots that's full stop

it's it's not going to get you to from 5K to 20K a day it's just not going to happen you need the LTV support and you need to support on the monetization side from ads as well right yes so what is this to say about ads so I've never worked with Hyper casual obviously ads there are super important and you need ads for hyper casual so I work more on everything non related to hyper casual so everything in my point of view here is kind of just related to non hyper casual so right now the bell of the ball and the Queen the best thing you can get highest ecpm is still rewarded videos they are typically twice like pay out twice as high ecpm as interstitials uh so a good starting point that doesn't upset your user base is starting to make optimizations around rewarded video what does that mean that doesn't mean you slap it on later on it

means you basically integrate it into your core gameplay uh idle genre typically what you want to see is eight to 10 Impressions per du on rewarded so non idle like good one to aim for is four to five that's quite good if you're able to hit that and an ad view array you want at least that to be somewhere between 45 to 75 so that means that that portion of users actually interact with the ads every day if you're able to hit that Benchmark uh in any kind of genre that's not hyper casual that means that users are kind of accepting your ads in the game and you should be able to scale if you're not getting Impressions per deu on rewarded above four they won't add that much to your bottom line and they won't be helpful at all so that is kind of the benchmarks for hitting scale or to actually helping it cuz if we think about it ads is you know the third

little pillar of monetization it can help but it's like it can't make or break your game right you need monetization you need I APS and that will be what allows your LTV to increase enough for it to be actually meaningful so I'm probably like the most you know useless thing here it's still important but you know not as important as game design useless it's actually pretty important because if you have 50/50 even if you have like 40 60 uh towards iip it's a you know a very big portion of the of the revenue and uh and you and your optimizations can help me to scale on the other side things and mo usually these campaigns are way cheaper than the purchase and value campaigns so it gets more volume which creates more let's say organic uplift as well and it's just you know like like a Snowball Effect afterwards yeah yeah so kind of what you want to do with rewarded is you want to

test it early and like don't be afraid like users these days are kind of used to watching rewarded ads you'll get the least amount of backlash from rewarded ads even zero backlash if you're still not earning enough ad Revenue at the end of that that's when you want to test intials banners as well they also screw up with your retention so yeah it's kind of a last resort and you usually want to add starting adding interstitials kind of on nonp purchasers after a certain time period usually I recommend starting to add interstitials around day six or day seven uh after the users and seeing basically and slowly moving it back in AB tests to see if you can kind of keep the same yeah yeah retention so that's the most important thing some interesting things now I want to test out on some games these um Splash ads where basically when you open when you come back to the game and it's remained open that you show like an ad on 70% of the screen I think that's like a bit less intrusive than an interstitial

coming up at a random point just don't know if Google is going to be out it or not that's the thing right that's very gray area very gray currently yeah yeah yeah if you can operate on the slippery slope it's fine exactly that's where that's when and where you make money I would say exactly but the most important thing is here to test as long as you're in between the Delta of four rewarded Impressions to even like 14 per session I would say like that's like that's where you want to be that's the goldie spot Goldie Lock Zone and like if you're hitting one or two that means that you're not using the rewarded placement in a good enough way because users these days are used to watching a lot of ads because they're getting the game for free there you go so what I'm hearing is uh improvements on the ad monetization side game design side and UA side mean scale there you go you can call us you can call us anytime and with that in mind easy I yeah easy

thank you very much for being with us listening and uh we really appreciate all the feedback you are sending is mostly positive so um if even if uh there is anything negative please share uh we will talk about it and then move on okay Jokes Aside thank you very much until next time byebye bye see y [Music]