UA & monetisation trends in 2018

[Music] [Music] Greg gasps welcome the last session of the day it's going to be an awesome great panel today it's about trends in new monetization and yeah I'm Oscar Mayer I represent shortest and I'm great kind of a minute in the Serbian water from office 7 natural in a company but also doesn't know outfit 7 they are well really really short about them is that they are the creators of the talking tom series and have generated more than 7 billion downloads we also have Robert

Kelly from Popeye mobile was having the the relaunch in Europe from the paya and Alex on equal who is veteran in the industry currently co co founder and CEO of snow print games worked a long time for king when his own company was acquired and yeah I'm gonna let the panelists introduce themselves but that's basically line up today and I want to focus on three things that I personally thinks are really really interesting right now and first one is programmatic it's happening they're both on the US side and on the Malaysian side and secondly on ad formats and game mechanics how does developing right now and lastly on yeah there's one more part sorry guys the last part about yeah general sorry general trends mode session anyway so CPI in order to how that is developing base again so yeah why don't we start

off guys with another round of little bit more detailed introduction maybe hi there my name is Rob Kelly I'm from papaya mobile please forgive me I've got a bit of a cold so I don't usually sound this sexy and husky yeah but I have been doing it especially for you guys like 10 years in Mobile very much on the performance of marketing and monetization side well for a number of ad networks very proud to be back at papaya we are very much ua specialists and looking forward to the panel so you call out our digital sales for out at 7:00 my main responsibilities are making sure that our games get to our users so distribution wise and also that we monetize our games so taking care of all the ed mediation platform and partnerships as well Alexandre equal from snow print Studios I'm on my 13 year now in handheld and mobile gaming

focusing right now I'm trying to break into the very competitive mid core segment of gaming with what we believe is a new approach cool awesome so I want to kick off with programmatic and on the monetization side I think we all heard header bidding is kind of one of the biggest passwords floating around right now one company that is kind of spearheading that port right now on the molestation side is outfit seven so I wanted to ask you either if you wouldn't mind it's describe a little bit what you guys are doing right now and then it challenges and opportunities and and kind of differences with header bidding versus traditional networks in what sessions yeah so we are always on a lookout for you know what's happening in the industry and so on so header bidding is let's say the buzzword of last year or we'll see maybe this year so we're

trying to solve the same problem which exchanges were supposed to solve so we'll see if we do it right this time I don't know maybe we are kind of keeping a very active role in this I cannot say more than this but working with many partners and you know there are many ad networks or and partners who are working on this so I think we will see some consolidation in the industry they will be less importance of ed mediation maybe in few years we'll see as you know as the thing but I don't think it will solve the problem hundred percent it still will you know it it will make the whole thing a little bit more efficient may estimate is maybe five to ten percent more for the publishers at the end so you see okay but but that's the that's the the kind of level of increase so you're looking at you know looking at anything it's not anything bigger than that it's more well it will you know it will level the playing field for demand because

publishers sometimes can be at a disadvantage now because they have to you know choose between different networks which one gets traffic and so on and not allowing them to fight between each other right so header bidding should solve or help to solve this problem at least to certain extent and it will also make like the revenue shares that exchanges take it to maybe reduce it by a certain amount we'll see which should make it then more efficient in this regard okay great on the on the ad format side we have another thing that changed a lot right I mean they the speed a lot of new ads units coming out the last last couple of years there's been a lot more awareness I think with with with developers also on you know how to monetize and when to think about monetization and I wanted to to ask you Alexander if you I mean as a game developer in 13 years in industry how

have you seen those things change in the last years and are you working differently with it now than you did say five years ago nothing from our point of view we've always said that it starts with the engagement of your attention of the players and that we go form our station after that so once you have a loyal fan base and you're sure that you have a good game that's when we move to Tillich atomization I think we saw a bit of a change in that when publishers moved more into the space and started working and we're new to the free-to-play in format because it's telling someone that you're gonna wait with demonisation part and we cool about it isn't that not necessarily the easiest case to make we are very lucky now to be working with King so my previous employer with our game that we have in soft-launched and that allowed

us for the first probably eight months to complete a disregard monetization when we were in in play test of course that need kind of you need to have some sort of deep pockets to be able to do those kind of tests and such but talking to both platforms and smaller developers we see that there's a bigger and bigger understanding for this and a bigger patience for not kind of throwing in one station and try to squeeze pennies early on also lower conversion offers rather than trying to convert as the high point as possible to get spenders and then focus on engagement to drive a repeat spend so that thing kind of we're starting to get a bit more relaxed and more patient and looking at longer longer term returns on the investments that goes for IEP as well as admin session or difference there is it for us

the way we look at it on ads is that it's is adding something on the top kind of trying to monetize the the rest of the people who are not converting into the paying users right so we design poured from the start we we look at it the same way you have to do it well from the ground up but we don't see it as something that we kind of rely solely on so I would say no we don't see it for ads because it's been to us it's been it's not a main one station conversation driver but we treat it the same way when we design for it okay I understood I understood have you any of you have you have you seen a difference in in IP versus admin session recently the last few years ago I think generally does megatrend that and I don't know where this is sewing which would be reflected

in the audience and that a lot of the developers I've been speaking to have been monetizing more through apps and then through IEP there's a family increasingly difficult to engage people on IEP longer term problem is that it's also becoming increasingly difficult to monetize through apps as yields from traditional units like Amazon few years etc have been falling and you've been seeing very much a crowding towards monetization through rewarded video and playable formats one thing which I own I'm not going to mention which developer sometimes you've actually seen the amount therefore of a rewarded video units being user actually been quite off-putting we're in the user experience and personally of actually what on some games been reduced to putting my phone onto airplane mode Saudi adds weight load so I can actually still continue playing but it's I think it's just a matter of a wider trend that you're seeing that rewarded video is OMA which does fit very well into gaming the other

formats don't fit so well so there's one more to goes hand-in-hand with the user experience but it can therefore be overused to a certain extent okay yeah definitely agree I think we are looking at two different definitely ways of approaching monetization right we have some games that are more around super quick super addictive core loops and you burn out your users for after you know a month or something and then we have kind of the the mid core type of games where we need to look at monthly or yearly retention numbers and be very careful with how we treat creepy gamers and what if we when and if we do the amount the the ads they need to be like a part of the loop and definitely not a part of the offline mode because our game won't work in offline mode I know it's

yeah I think all three of us here on the same page so I would also agree that you know the ratio between the UPS and ad revenue is actually more dependent on the game mechanic and you know what kind of game it is then just you know what you want because what you want is not always what you get right and I would also agree that rewards video is the format which is more suited for games because it's on-demand user can you know select it anytime I want to see this video as we display ads it's kind of forced right so it's a it takes more toll on the user experience that's why users turn faster and so on and revolve video if done right can actually help with the retention as well that's exactly what I hear as well only good stories when it comes to meditation and retention and engagement from a rewarding video properly implemented are you under the impression that what a video is monetizing better now that it

did say two years ago CPM is going up well I would say there maybe there's more competition there you know so bit monetize is better because it's more mature I would say so also you know the main brands are picking it up and so on so it may be more demand out there than it was a few years ago but it's kind of stable I would say you know for backlist for us we see it's it's it's a stable format you can kind of continent we see some kind of improvements done by networks in terms of how creative they are with the formats which might get interesting the future you see but for now it's quite sable compared to other formats the brand is really interesting and I know that you know for instance King had a reputation only want to do ad monetization through brands not throughout the games princes do you do Robert this for you what have you seen there in terms of brand monetization in

gaming is that is that something that's grown a lot lately and it's expected to grow a lot of those in the future is it gonna make a big impact on it I think it's sowing which the industry wants to grow we're talking a lot video particularly is getting a lot of praise here on this panel and it's a one at a few units in Mobile which Dunn wants to really works and that we've created a very successful advertising ecosystem within gaming now I know that certain companies like iron sauce and a number of others are now concentrating on selling into Browns with this provable marketable unit I think it's not about whether it could work its but actually it's still getting over that the belief within the Browns and this is something that they want to engage with at the moment from what I've seen they're still not that much annoyer Brown dollars going into it but it'll only take a couple before that's a break and then other people will start using

it and I think it's very exciting because this then great were to developers going on game developers this opens up a huge new revenue stream you know you've got a great revenue stream already coming from within the gaming industry to get brands involved it's gonna be very good news indeed do you think it's it the the proliferation now of a programmatic and DSP buying is that is that helping the whole brand brands breaking in familiar with because I've been there buying programmatically in Fruity ESPYs for a while come on you're able to do this into another market that also means you know the main tours birthing it's also when you talk about is how they actually going to use these formats what sort of messaging that are going to get into rewarded video you know what are they gonna use perhaps playable that's for is it going to be then as well as branding but also for lead generation and other things on top

what are you guys has experience in in ad formats for brands then I said is it video is it labels static so rewarded I think it's still maybe you know the one where they use it the most at the moment but for brands to really make use of the of what game can offer and so on I think we'll see more native formats you know integrating the brand more into the game in in certain way which maybe feeds that brand the best and it doesn't work for one another one so it will get more and more complex if you want to advertise you know natively in the your brand in the game I mean I can definitely see that happening in huge publishers like like you guys have but what about smaller developers are they gonna be able to do that as well because you can't do coca-cola integration in a small game basically right that's doesn't really scale it's true but still

maybe we'll also some interesting uses for the existing formats so for sure all the video what we are seeing more and more demand they just want to have like completed views right it's not about the click anymore it's about seeing the video which then builds the the brand awareness and it's a it's a good format because of the rewarded nature right so user wants to see it until end to get the reward so it it works for a lot of brands not for everybody of course this discrete to certain extent yes I think that for a huge publishers like outfit 7 Rovio supercell whoever actually yes sir doing a native integration makes sense to a certain degree but I think that actually what will attract brands to rewarded video is that the infrastructure for quick delivery across a wide variety of apps and audiences israeli-made they've actually got brands have actually got some bad experiences

with doing large-scale native integrations not just within mobile but on you know going all the way back to desktop and the initial things and that they can see as an investment it's almost reinventing the wheel because you're having to build the experience right from the start and it might be a good for a particular product launch or swing burner as a huge budget behind it for everyday brand building I mean I'd be looking for something which is a much more easily scalable be easier to replicate which platform so I think you're gonna benefit the most from that and I guess that kind of development in the platforms in terms of actual providers or yeah I'm thinking more yeah either they're the the DSP or the programmatic providers or the networks or or when the Browns are to go directly to again it's I think it'll be interesting to see whether DSPs who are already buying brand or actually integrate with the

existing mediation platforms like fiber or ion source unable to do in to do this problem is that quite often in this industry actually is his home worst enemy with everybody trying to rebuild the relationships and at the moment yet I could quite easily see the branding DSPs trying to reinvent the will and getting to the various one publishers up I've got significant experience in looking so instigating to publishers and I know how difficult that can be I think it would be much easier for them to work for the existing channels okay another issue that we come up it's quite interesting today is that we talk about different ad formats a writer and we talked about the video player balls have been mentioned and Static we're talking about rewarded versus interstitial and so on things are changing quite a lot now and some of the especially interactive ad units are quite big now

and a bit more complex and one problem now is that is it it's the whole ad formats you know growth is it is it actually getting too complex right now is this actually a problem for especially for publishers that's question I would love to hand in you eager yeah ad format complexity started you do know it is increasing yes because industry you know obviously there is not much going on in the placement so they have to be innovative like interstitial format and so on so we have seen video which is much more annoying than static display right ad for the user and is it's capable most capable and so on so we have seen a lot of things going on with the big bad influence on the user experience not just with the skipper but also the formats are so complex especially playable that there is a whole game running now in the ad right and it takes three sources from the

original game which then on some devices or depends on the what kind of game we have you know causes different problems like crashes and so on because just of the complexity of resource exhaustion and so on and you cannot test this because the test time you don't go run through all that that you know exists it just runs and it can make a big issue in the production later on you know depends how big you are and so on how visible this is but the problem having bigger have the big enough problem you will get feedback from the users which is not good is that mainly the problem that the access port hardware or is it is it the size issue of the of the actual play it's both it's both so one thing is just you know playing that ad on the on the device and then also bandwidth issue and you know uploading all these ads and everything and of course user doesn't know that it's going to do that but still it's it's your problem if the app is using a lot of bandwidth right something you experience as well Robert

here again is from when we've been speaking to publishers again whenever been running okay when we've been looking to monetize it areas that have always treated issues has been with regards to the way to the SDK therefore this means that publishers are all very reticent about swapping out at SDKs for new units when there's no guarantee it's actually good razor or significantly raise the monetization potential if you're going to lose a number of users or potential users or as a result this can actually offset any monetary gain you might make through a high yield for the ad unit again it's her something which a lot of publishers are actually quite happy where their mix that have got in its swing which is only gonna generate an incremental gain in revenue as opposed to a quantum leap in revenue

it's only a more often treat with caution yeah I mean coming from an ad network myself I know that the reluctance a lot of publishers have to adding as the case I mean they don't want to make a game figure and more complex and all that it's gonna Drake if it's successful for another game you could dream their users away yeah true true absolutely it Thunder is this something you guys think about as well they're developing the games in terms of number as the case in their or for admiration or analytics others thanks definitely size is always one of our main concerns not only for but we definitely the technical choices we make from day one is to make room for what we will need down the road that's one of the things that we need to design for from from the storage right our game right now has 30-plus characters in

there and 160 something new levels with guilds and boss fights and such and we're still under 100 mix as we push it out and it's full 3d and the 3d there is one of the tech choices we made to be able to have overhead left for for other types of SDKs that we will need to have to make it a successful business ok good I have a kind of a simple question I wanted to ever kind of go around and and it depends it's it's only based on the on the trends so looking at at user acquisition for instance I mean don't we have we do we are we are we looking at a sip environment coming out with CPI's are gonna go up a lot more making it even harder to acquire users what are we looking at a kind of a now with more automatic programmatic buying that is

actually gonna be relatively stable because you'll be cannot be able to do you know pick the users a bit better what's your well what are you guys opinion about the CPI transcendence again I I think just looking at the CPI cost is actually ignoring quite a lot of the actual trends that are going on in advertisers minds what I've seen is actually the CPI itself has become secondary to the clarity and transparency of the install one of the reasons why we concentrate on social media advertising now yeah it's because what we've the feedback that we've got from clients is that it's not so much the CPI itself but the trust that they can have that the CPI has come from the installers come from a recognized source also then the price to install KPIs LTV of the user again they have to measure

that again see our food that they're going to make on it but it's one of the things that we will lose campaigns now if we are not able to provide that sort of level transparency and clarity on the post install events and I think one of the things that advertisers to a certain degree we're coming to realize is that they can't dictate the CPI like they used to no like a you'd used it used to get a brief from that saying okay this is our CEO what have you based it on the budget and where did you get a budget from the budgeting department it's not actually based on how much it really cost to acquire that user and what that done is has done by actually looking to acquire users more cheaply than users are really available for there's a whole shadow market and installs and we've seen these installs are usually not actually worth the reduced amount that are paid for

them many advertisers are coming to realize that as a result there has been continuing an upward pressure or on CPI's now one area where CPI's has been going up quite significantly is within Facebook Facebook for minigame developers is a preferred route to market but because it is one of only a couple of preferred routes to market so much budget has been piling in there that it's now ridiculously expensive sometimes on Facebook to acquire the sort of users are you looking for so the alternative I think the market is missing just to a degree therefore other as trustworthy routes to market I kind of agree with that but just making it very simple I know if there is more demand if you

talked before with the with the brand demand right if there is more demand for the same inventory the price if you go up so we see slowly creep no CPI slow creeping up but it's just one part of the story as Rob mentioned you know we have to look at all the LTVs and you know the strategy how you make the ROI positive and everything you know it's not only about the price that you are paying for some but it will probably creep up as mobile itself becomes more mature and it just becomes part of the advertising ecosystem yeah we are still definitely very positive for the the outlook about the care of the LTV and CPI a relationship we definitely monitor all the CPS and the channels and we work efficiently with shutting down different channels based on each campaign so it's not necessarily so that the same channel will always perform as well for each point in time or each country so we monitor it for each campaign for the

creatives that we're using for the country that we're in currently and we are also seeing a lot more [Music] experimenting with different channels except for purely SCP I could have driven more social like you mentioned is definitely a huge trans to also to work with the the influencers and then we're gonna have the install attribution and problem and that's kind of the the thing that we need to start cracking to be able to be as sophisticated as we are now with the different channels where we are getting users here do you see any port is now offering actually to buy own robust or return on advertising spend or or why that you know yeah give us a budget of ten thousand ten percent seven-day or I for instance are you seeing a lot of those kind of offers right now in them I'm not that deep internet part of okay animals I don't remember seeing

something that no no no would you like to see it yeah but how exactly this you know they know they need data from you you know so it's very hard for advertisers to promise something like that well they need a postback of the purchase post parker but even then it can measure they are why themselves and but it's not all it's not only about the UPS it's also advertising right so how do you calculate the LTV of app which monitor is mostly threads and so on you know it's it's it's a more complex problem there will be a lot of reluctance in sharing data back yeah and one more thing for the for the brands I now remember when you say brands want more data for their targeting right especially like location-based or something and this is a problem for certain apps like ours which it's not really it doesn't make sense to have that permission for for geolocation right and it will never pass the review for example if you have that so it doesn't it will not work always and

having more data and putting them into advertiser cans it will it will be more and more precious in the future I think as well yeah excess okay in terms of another simple question relatively I guess on monetization trends are you saying that or developers in general not making more money per user two years ago and two years from now is that still gonna go up if it's going up well my my guess is I can't speak in exact terms is that you'll probably see that the larger ones are gonna keep making more money from the users they have and that's gonna kind of I think it's gonna be more and more consolidation towards the larger ones being able to grab more money especially as the other trend that we're seeing a lot for developers right now is they are

learning from kind of the Japanese LiveOps culture and with that comes the baggage of being able to break down what works what doesn't work looking at the KPI for each of these campaigns and and LiveOps and there are a lot of them we relatively small studio or running over 150 ish LiveOps just per month at this time and we are kind of just start getting started if you go to the Japanese culture or the games then they're running your thousand and so just imagine the segmentation and all the things that you need to so the ones that are capable of doing that or kind of earn more and more from the deface

they have in there and that's why it's so much more getting more and more important that you have something where you'll keep the players in their engagement retention because once you have them you'll get more and more sophisticated through LiveOps through live events and getting more money out of them from my experience at independence are very much on the developer and they have the formats which are able to display older developers with legacy apps and a non interactive formats are looking to be making as much as a ones who actually it's installed the more interactive formats mono megatrends own I have noticed is a actually emerging market you're seeing higher levels of a monetization per user and they're starting to catch up more and are still a significant gulf between those only a more developed markets I think that over time and yes sir

there is more money going into mobile no but it's gonna be it's not simply enough to developers will make more they have to be attuned to be able to catch that money and have the right ad formats for right user experience and right adding gameplay for them to be able to do it yeah I agree we have seen the same with the roll the video like four years ago it was nowhere right and now everybody is using it for the games and we had like my talking tom was already out four years ago so we had to adapt you know and it's about adapting your product to whatever industry is offering at the moment and keeping up with the trends and if you want to have that longer lifetime out of your games and you know whatever you have you just have to you know change and embrace the change and not fight against it and yes also in emerging markets we'll see more and more aware video because currently it's maybe expensive because of the bandwidth cost so display still kind of the King there but this will change with

like there was just last year in India there was a new mobile operator and the prices of of 3G like dropped by a factor of 50 or something like that and you see you know distribution skyrocket because of that so you know technology changes and improvements okay cool time is running a little bit out I wanted to to end on the outlook for kind of d-day in the developers or maybe more to touch on what you said Alexander but you know how it's so important that you have you know retention but I think also that you have a strong monetization so that you can make money from the users and invest in further use acquisition and if companies some companies the big ones or becoming so much better monetization then they may also push out the smaller guys right with being able to offer much higher CPI's but I wanted to ask you guys what do you think is it it's the trend right

now going towards the bigger guys taking bigger part of the pie and make it hard and harder for for for in this or is it actually creating opportunities for for small guys that play the account nish game what are you guys as a final question what do you what do you think what's the outlook for in this well I think it's a bit of both I think definitely we'll continue to see the consolidation that's already happening and it's going to be harder and harder I think both larger platforms that we are talking to dance and following closely in terms of Google and Apple are doing great things to have different highlights and such which is of course super important and I hope that that can also continues to to get better because I think we'll have a healthier ecosystem but it's always super hard we see it kind of with other platforms like Steam

and such where they once was we're a good place but they get flooded and then now it's not going to be the next thing with didn't tell us which and oh pretty soon we're gonna see kind of a flooding there's as well and that's kind of kind of lead to that same type of consolidation but I definitely think that if you you there are niches that you can still find but I'm not sure that necessarily is going to be depends on kind of also hide fine the the Indus bases because we have a lot of big companies now and we're going to continue to see people starting new businesses big there and have a lot of experience from these monsters and techniques and leverage that in their own business good point so I think it's the today of course it's hard to get into the market and it was like five years ago but still it's a matter of money right and there is lots

of VC money around so as market stabilizes there will always be someone who can do something to disrupt it a little bit and we are seeing this you know going in circles I guess so yeah it will consolidate but then again there will be something new which we haven't seen before I think it's a perhaps a difference between indie developers and publishers I think you know people don't tend to remember though I believe King didn't even actually develop candy crush themselves Portillo for some third party no this is a story that somebody told me down the pub which was again you do see that there are a lot of independent companies developing games you'll go through and achieve a scale through a large of publishing groups and I think you'll see actually people trying to get into the market by actually almost like aspiring rock stars used to go to the

music publishing companies and they're selling their wares and I think that's a song which will be growing in importance my finger the markets a dynamo it works in a handsets of constantly changing the dynamics are constantly changing its finger is actually going to become static is not going to be the case that's for sure I think yeah that's that's a good point thanks guys I don't know do we have time for questions as well from the audience oh yeah yeah they did or if it's a possible resurgence in the sense that phones are becoming taller I'm a publisher we have several titles and examples of games will leave snuff banners in they've had no impact on retention and basically like revenue was brought in maybe half

of what you would see from an interstitial or a video policeman I've been trying to convince advertisers to bring back banners and its success we had two networks in the last year Grayback replacement so venison nor did we we actually were you know discussing this internally maybe two years ago or something like that but then it kind of stabilized and we I think we will see being more creative in terms of you know creatives like interstitial also just a static display right at the time and now what banner is but I think it will change in the future as well I banish them all that it's at least I agree I mean we're bringing it back to its happening yeah we'll talk after yep I know it I mean abanazar that there are still a significant amounts of money going freedom about to repeat what eagle

said I think you'll see that there will be developments in the banner to actually make them a more engaging and more visible the problem at the moment is not that anything about this but people automatically managed to block them in their vision you don't see them you know when was the last time you actually remember seeing a banner you know you've probably had a hundreds displayed to you in the last couple of days so something which is actually gonna make them move is one making more engaging more interactive they're probably actually slightly bigger yes way forward but I think that if we put all the eggs in one basket with regards to rewarded video that's equally as dangerous any other questions oh okay well thank you again guys so much so thank you [Applause]

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