Unlock Revenue Streams and Transform Mobile Game Monetisation with Aghanim's All-in-One DTC Platform

[Music] hello world welcome to the Pocket Gamer podcast with your hosts me Brian Bago and our Duchess of direct consumer Miss Peggy and Sals Peggy you've been off on your travels again you I'm getting a distinct sense of Scandinavia from you uh where have you been most recently yes PGC Helsinki of course it was massive show I just saw the uh newsletter come through today actually we hit 1300 plus as far as attendees massive show then yes D Toc thank you so much for that because that was a Hot Topic I was surprising to see so many sessions and here's so many speakers talking about how they're going to take back control right it's all about Commerce it's all about going from interaction to transaction to everything in between they want to take that

their Destiny and they're looking to us here on the show Brian to do that as well which is why we're going to stay with that Trend we're gonna stay in that Vibe and we're going to talk to someone with an Innovative approach who is also I think enabling gaming companies to do much much more than just sell but let's let him tell it to us himself Our Guest Conor mclin VP of Revenue and Partnerships at America's and Mia at agon hi everybody how are you thank you for having me on an absolute pleasure so be before we dive into to the sort of the weighty topics and all of the business and learning that I know that we're going to bring to our audience um Peggy pre-brief me obviously and advised me to ask about your um preference and pizza toppings uh most notably I hear that you are pro pineapple um to which I say peace brother I'm with you 100% yeah

it was a big debate uh it's something that I swore off or it is a big debate it's something that I swore off for many many years just primarily for lack of trying right I was introduced to it about eight years ago and uh I've never looked back so um it is uh hard to go to Italy a lot of restaurant ters are not you know big fans of mine however uh uh I'm standing strong leading the front there is a time in a place there's a time in the place you know the the purists will tell you unless it's Neapolitan which is just San Marzano and bu de mozzarella it's not pizza it's flatbread but that's an entire episode all on its own you know so I I am with you it's like the time in the place it might be Hawaii I will fight for your right to to have pineapple on top of your pizza and I I have been known myself I appreciate it Brian it's good to have a another another another guy on the team yeah we we have to stand

together we have to stand together to too true Connor we you have to come to Scotland so not only do we um very unashamedly have something called a Munchie box which is essentially a pizza box with a pizza in it that is then covered with pakora chips Donner meat sauces salad and so the the pizza becomes a plate but we are also the country that invented the pizza crunch which is where you take a pizza you fold it in half you drip it drop it in batter and then you deep fry it so we have no leg to stand on when it comes to this pizza Purity you know okay so we've just acquired an an entire country for the C oh yes oh absolutely absolutely next next big games event in Scotland you're you're on the bill I'm I'm on I'm on the first flight out you were also at Pocket Gamer connect Helsinki I was there too right it was like as I said like a like a boot camp for Studio you know talking

about web shops payments platforms like yours which I want to get to so tell us a little bit more about AGM and also the key message that you shared at Helsinki I'd love to hear that so that we can understand that top takeaway yeah so um agon is an organization that I joined not too long ago um I had been in at liftoff in in app ads for a long time helping Publishers monetize uh and I was looking for the next big idea in in Publisher monetization um essential DTC is I think the biggest idea right now in Mobile gaming in general it's definitely the biggest Revenue opportunity uh I think that every single publisher in our current ecosystem should be using some sort of DTC strategy today if not yesterday um when I first found Agony I realized that it was ahead of its time it was multi-dimensional in a market plagued by one-dimensional

Solutions it's essentially a DTC publisher enablement platform it's an audience engagement platform if you were to compare it to anything that exists today I think you would compare it to essentially a super sized web shop that leads with content first and uh is created by Gamers for gamers right it's not a financial solution to to kind of a gaming problem so um as soon as I kind of saw the idea as soon as I saw the demo I jumped on board within a few weeks and now we're just to get the word out yes it's D to see but it's more than that looks to me like you borrowed a very very important page from conversational Commerce you know and and engagement I mean here's the deal this is how web shops have existed for the past few years right um and it's the reason why you haven't really heard that much about web shops in general and why why Publishers specifically in the casual and Hyper casual space have veered away from web shops in general the reason is is because it's it's heavy resource intensive um um it's expensive

and there's a lot of friction points that limit it from being um worthwhile especially for Publishers that index more towards advertising for monetization right so a lot of what web shops have catered the type of client that web shops have catered For publisher that web shops have catered For is that hardcore Gaming Community that entirely indexes on IP because if you can increase your profitability on 100% I by 5% that's worthwhile however if you are a 10 to 20% iip business it doesn't really make sense you're going to maybe add a new SDK improve your cpms reduce uh you know transfer over to bidding you know there there's a lot of things that you can do on the ad side well also optimizing your iip kind of um business then there's Agony and Agony is an out-of-the-box solution that essentially gives the publisher everything it needs to reduce overall fre

uh kind of eases the integration is relatively low lift and is powered by AI therefore it's completely automated right and it basically hits every friction point that Publishers have faced and essentially complained about for many many years associated with that kind of one-dimensional web shop solution so you you touched on a number of the friction points there um Connor and I think you so you you had told us it was lift resources the cost the expense and then of course churn can you dive us a little deeper into that and and tell us exactly how you uh you're achieving this through agen through games Hub 100% so the four friction points that we've established and you know I I I I want to kind of take a step back for a second we were in stealth mode for a year and a half right the reason we were in stealth mode for a year and a half was because we were doing publisher Recon we were speaking to essentially every every publisher within every category under the sun uh getting advisers in to essentially come up with the four friction points as to

why uh Publishers have not engaged with web shops in the past so the four friction points like you said Brian are lift right resources churn and performance the first is lift so how do you how do you how do you kind of first of all connect to a game to kind of a a web shop right and then what resources are associated once you connect and once you set that up and once you kind of have that eye to eye view between between game and web shop then there comes resources right so how do we develop a team to actually manage this how do we extend Mar marketing budget to this potentially third party that we're working with because said what you're doing is is you are marketing to users who live in an app outside of an app with kind of influencer marketing social media marketing whatever marketing budget it's very very it's very very expensive to Market to users who live in an app outside of an app it's also hard

to do right because they how do you get them if they don't have a Discord like you said Brian where are you finding these users so there's all these different kind of techniques for finding these users you have to get really really creative then you get these users then you send them to the web shop right and then there's churn once you send them to the web shop who knows that they're actually going to engage with the web shop in general so then you then then there's churn so it's it's it's it's building out a team it's then spending tens to if not hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars per year depending on the company to Market users outside of the game to get them to the web shop then there's churn right and then there's performance so then the the the the the users get there but how do you know that these users are high quality how do you know that they're VIPs how do you know that they're going to spend what's the performance like that's the problem that's the problem we identified that's the issue in the market right and there is not a solution to that every single company that's out there in the same space that we are and

we kind of consider ourselves to be in our own space because we're just not simply a web shop this is a revolutionary idea that supercharges the web shop and takes and and is audience first and publisher first right this web shop idea is a cfo's solution to a gaming problem ours is a gaming solution to a gaming problem and I'll tell you how we are content first what that means is is that we do not link users to the transaction flow per apple and Google's compliance linking users to the transaction flow out of the game you still incur a 27% uh tax right 30 you get a 30% tax on every inapp purchase if you link users out to a web shop some some people are still doing that some companies are still doing that because you make 3% more so you still get hit with 27% because guess what you're linking them to the transaction flow so take a step back for a second let's say we don't link to the transaction flow let's say

that we link them to content let's say we create an extension of your game right let's say we're talking about kind of a moonactive coin Master right and we for moonactive we put a a website that is all content based events news updates leaderboards page I'm sorry to interrupt Conor sounds like a product page exactly it's a One-Stop shop content-based solution that sends users to an extension of the app that is brand safe and on point with their current looking feel of their entire game the reason why we're doing this at scale so quickly is that we have a partnership with open AI that creates the websites at scale within 30 seconds based on what's published by the publisher on like all across the web via VIA kind of news updates everything that they have published themselves open AI takes brings into a One-Stop shop

content delivery platform where you can link out users compliantly and then guess what is on the left on the left on the menu there's a store now the big question that we get all the time is well okay you still have a churn problem right so you're linking users out to a to basically a Content a One-Stop shop content Hub and we're calling it a Game Hub right it's not a web shop it's just not we're calling it a gamehub we link out then what happens because then you just see turn well that was that's that's that's friction Point number three right and we addressed friction Point number three by incorporating a liveops uh uh technology in our gamehub essentially what you're able to do as a publisher is you're able to link users directly from your game to the gamehub and then based on player attributes this this player is above the level of 20 has an LTV that's above $200 let's serve him a reward that is $200 discounted at 20% so as soon as the

user gets to content and they start kind of moving around the content flow we use live Ops based on user data that we link by an API a simple API connection this is not SDK by a simple API connection we serve them by our live Ops and the data that we have on each user custom tailored rewards 5 to 10 seconds after they get to the gamehub that allows them to Max maximize their chances to fun to lead them down to the purchase flow and as a result we're seeing 14% of users transact off app on day one of going live with Publishers the average rate right now for web shops lifetime is 3 to 5% lifetime we put a button in your game we send users to a gamehub we use live Ops to maximize their actual to maximize their actual probability of heading to the transaction flow and it's incentivizing for the publisher because the publisher

doesn't get taxed at 27% or 30% it's an audience engagement platform that matches the exact look and feel of their app and then once the user gets there they're being served rewards that are far more affordable because of how much margin the publisher is taking then then they would ever get in the app and then we use loyalty programs and we give them loyalty points like a highed or like a Delta right loyalty points to keep them coming back imagine this is like oh this is great replace everything but that's also quite a lot of heavy lifting as well so you're using what they have and you're customizing it and you're adding on top of it but you're not replacing it yeah this is an extension of your app it's it's giving the whole purpose here is to give power back to the into the hands of the developer successfully and impactfully you know where web shops have fallen short is they haven't been able to do that if you look again if you look at the profitability rates and the transaction rates and the perform performance rates of web shops it's all below 10% right it just is right now

we're doing 14% off app on day one in the first three to six months our goal is to get you to 55% of transactions off app um within those 3 to six months and if we get 55% of transactions off app um within the first three to six months you're looking at an 121% increase on iip Revenue within six months so this is when I say at the beginning of this conversation when I say this is the biggest opportunity in Mobile gaming it is there's no debate about that and the wi here just to be very clear is really it is a workaround around the 30% so you know all value is good value because anything you can get is a wi there and that's what it is you're basically a workaround around that think about it this way some Publishers say to us listen we love the live up tool we love everything about this but you know what we really love we love that this is a onstop shop place for our users to engage with our brand

outside of the gameplay how do you engage with your users if you don't have a Discord right if you're hyper casual or you're something more in casual and you don't have like one of those Discord Pages or you don't really have a Twitter presence or you're an up andc coming publisher that just hasn't developed that conversation yet where do you take all of let's say a user says on the App Store listen this most recent version of your app was bu or or or of your game was buggy right we didn't like this version we think there's too many ads we think there's we you know whatever they have a they have some sort of complaint you know what you can do in this gamehub you can say hey user we just updated to version 8.5 as a direct result of your feedback to us bettering ourselves and bettering the experience of our users here's what we did for you we heard you there is a prime opportunity just outside of just taking advantage of the you know 27% there is a prime opportunity in this

idea in being in giving Brands back the ability to have a conversation with users outside of just users playing the game how does a user engage with a quali or a voodoo or a king how do they engage with that brand this gives you the opportunity this gives the Publishers the opportunity to create loyalty between user and brand and then at the same time circumvent the 27 and take every single Dollar on the table that's available from a monetization perspective so let me pick up on that Connor because you know we've talked an awful lot about the revenue you've got some incredibly impressive numbers but this whole notion of ongoing player engagement um you know outside the the sort of the direct conversation pulling that power back in how else are you addressing this in terms of the developers and Publishers and building that ongoing relationship yeah so so so we have a few we have a ton of features we can also get as customized as you like the reason is is because a lot of

what we're doing is AI focused so a lot of and we're coming out with we're going to be coming out over the coming months with a lot more AI selfs serve based kind of uh kind of products and techniques for Publishers to essentially say Hey listen I don't want to do this kind of more manual liveops uh uh uh kind of activity I would like and I don't want Agony to do it either want the managers at agum to do it either what if AI could recommend what reward to serve what user at what time to maximize the probability of getting them to the transaction flow and make it incentivizing enough for that user to actually enjoy the reward that they're being given right so stay tuned for stuff like that but we have a lot of features um currently that are currently out so we have news right so publish um audiences can engage with news that's published by the um is published by the publisher we can

also run point on developing that news and kind of scraping the internet for all all the news that's either published or that they would like us to talk about there's events so here are some inapp or in-game events that we would like users to uh get really excited about that are coming down the pipeline in the next couple of months here are the updates that we are making on the uh on the game please update now here's a reminder to update now so that users can take advantage of new developments in game right there are achievements so if users come on a regular basis they can unlock achievements and there are loyalty programs so on every purchase you actually get points on every purchase so that you can come back and use those points to claim further rewards there are YouTube videos we make it as fun as possible we want to gamify essentially it it goes back to what I said before this is not a CFO solution to a gaming problem this is gaming experts powered by Gaming

advisers who are in this space and it's a solution by Gamers for gamers so you mentioned up front that that web stores are not appropriate for everybody you know it's only the bigger Publishers it's the IP first and and certain type of company are you finding now that this is far more relevant to a much broader spread would you say this is this is kind of a a one- siiz fits all solution for almost everyone who's publishing games out there now yes this is an out of the box solution that worked for every publisher out right now and going back to my earlier Point Brian here's another thing a little side note we encourage encourage every publisher to test you know there are some companies out there that say listen you know you should go with our solution over this solution because uh you know once you go with one solution you can't go with the other solution we're saying test test test test test that's one piece of advice that I give to every publisher this again is the biggest opportunity in Mobile gaming right now buy 10x more and that's an arbitrary number but I'm just saying a lot right so and and and and

every single publisher right now should be testing DTC yesterday because the money is on the table all of if if you're following any of the laws you know either from the US Supreme Court the digital Market act all of the stuff that's happening with Google and epic games if anything this industry is becoming a lot less stringent and the future of DTC is developer and publisher first just because we're first to market in terms of being the most advanced outof thebox kind of holistic solution for every publisher does not mean that we will always be the the only one in the market right this is kind this is a gold rush this is a gold rush and every publisher should be taking advantage yesterday of how many dollars they're leaving on the table every day by not acting on on on on kind of a DTC strategy so the numbers are impressive um and we're going to have PE people in the audience you know Brian they're going to be saying yeah for everyone and I can get my 27% back how

can that be a bad thing so they're going to have to wonder about the question I'm going to pose now which is how do you do it I.E what is your business model we Channel we create a channel and a flow in a current for the user to head directly to the transaction flow where at the end they get there and they continue to come back seamlessly right so the first thing you do as a publisher because we're able to link out because we link out to content and because we're content first we're an audience engagement kind of uh game extension platform is really what we are and then we have a shop on the side right but because the the way that it works is you as a publisher put a button that's highly visible in your game right that's the only piece of development work that you have to do so you put a button in your game and you say Explore More content or uh explore kind of explore kind of uh our our news Hub you know some some some Publishers are just doing

like Game Hub right so game name Hub right and they just get users to kind of and they just put it in a highly visible spot users who come back every day and who are highly engaged with your games will click it and we do we have a lot of strategies for ensuring that that button is clicked right so you put that in the game the user clicks that button they go directly automatically signed in via the API connection no need to resign in automatically signed in Via your game ID to the gamehub then you land on the gamehub and on the gamehub you have you landed news or events or leaderboards or updates whatever kind of content or YouTube videos or like howto videos whatever whatever you want right and then user travels for about 5 10 seconds and we have based on user data and based on our live Ops program that has every type of user typically an ad advertising viewer right typically an IAP buyer right typically a someone who buys once every maybe 3 to six months so not

really an IP buyer but like a heavy buyer but also not just an ad viewer and we have different templates to Target every single type of user segment and then when that user comes in with that specific traits they get served a reward at a specified discount that's associated with their specific user profile to maximize the chances of them converting to purchase because you want to serve them the best reward possible so user clicks button user seamlessly gets the gamehub user gets served reward that's tailored exactly to them and therefore our 14% transaction rates are occurring uh you know within that first day that is quite a savings there's a lot to be said for that Prime be in mind this is about your net revenue this is not about what you could make on top of your net revenue this is just bringing down distribution costs right now you have a platform distribution cost of 30% if we bring that down to a blended

10% by getting or whatever by getting 90% of your transaction power which could by the way be 5% of your users or 05% of your users in a lot of cases 05% of users make up 90% of Ip so if you get these 05% of users remember it's transaction power it's not users if you get 05% of users which is 90% of transaction power over to the gamehub at 90% of transaction power you are making 200% in that Revenue I I'm going to throw an additional question at you Connor if I may which is so when the users are in the in the games Hub it's like are there additional aspects that you either have you're looking at which allow you to sort of further segment them gather more data and kind of push them back into the game in a slightly different way so you're you're actually giving the developer the publisher a a better idea of how the user is interacting with your

service with gamehub we have a publisher dashboard that basically reports on a lot of like the user activity so that uh Publishers can design and reiterate on the live Ops to make it as powerful as possible um watch this space for for an AI kind of development on that but but but for now yes Publishers get all of the reporting so that they can reiterate from a dashboard perspective also it's very important to note that users obviously don't see any of the liveop stuff right that's publisher facing a user gets to the Game Hub and we want to make the the the experience as kind of pleasant and uh kind of exactly like the game as possible this is the idea here is not only put the power in the hands of the developer right not only give them back the power but also create a One-Stop shop that is exactly like what they saw when they created the game so really that seamless experience that is where open AI that partnership comes in and you're getting the look and feel and

everything right because you've basically you know ingested it digested it and given me a new version of what will be that transition that link between being in my game and going over to my presence I'll call it with the news with the stuff with the rewards all the rest of it yeah and and here's the other thing um in terms of filling it with content open AI I mean AI does that as well it fills it with all the content this is just like if you want more content or different content or want to customize it you know there are Publishers out there that just say this is great let's set it up it takes three to eight hours of one developer's time and then maybe two days of like you know QA or thinking of new ideas to create kind of a leader board or something else that's specific to this game hub but if you just wanted to kind of like use it as is as an out ofthe box solution and just see how it performs we can go live in a day does this for for Publishers does this sit within UA marketing

Community Management you know is it the live Ops Team you've got so much in there as a as a developer as a studio where where where are you seeing a lot of people seating this this is the this Brian is the I I would say kind of the thing that we're working out right now right it's very very hard to educate people about an invention right especially about an invention that works because you need reliability you need credibility right you need to be able to explain it in a really simple way this is not a web shop it's an invention it's completely new so when you're dealing with something that's revolutionary you have to talk you're right you have to talk to a CPO a CEO a cbdo a COO you know what some Publishers they say We'll assign this as a project to a producer right other other Publishers say well this is great

because we want to use this net revenue increase that's quite dramatic for user acquisition so that we can compete more heavily with our competitors and rise up the ranks of the App Store so maybe a UA specialist will kind of manage the revenue there some people put in a finance person I mean it's a low-lift project but we don't require a team therefore the publisher kind of has to imagine who they'll put as kind of the owner of it because it doesn't require a team the whole time time you're explaining this I'm just thinking one thing Connor I'm just thinking you got the backing of major BCS you know best Venture Partners a16z where everybody right probably they're thinking what I'm thinking just in the back of my head right now coming from having done a lot in Mobile and marketing and digital content companies and it's like you know what it may start with games but it doesn't have to end there everybody who's selling something every content company you know the economist could use

something like this exactly I think I think I think the point there that's really that that kind of 72 besser a16z like you mentioned that they see and the value that they see is this this is a multi-dimensional solution to a previously crowded onedimensional kind of Market attitude right I mean like the market the market has looked at this problem one-dimensionally we're looking at it multi-dimensionally and I think that our you know 72 besser you know a16z and you know all of our investors and the Publishers that we're working with the Publishers that were on boarding at a at a at a at a very quick rate are kind of seeing like okay this is where it's going let's jump on board now and like I said at the beginning it's the Publishers who are jumping jumping on board first that are winning the race I mean this is thing Conor and and to pick up on picky's point you know

it's it's as you said at the top of the show it's that long-term engagement it's ownership of in this case your player but your listener your consumer your fan and I think that that for me is is one of the biggest things it's it's not just direct consu to Consumer it's building in that credibility on the podcast we speak to so many people who tell us it's all about the player it's all about your credibility it's all about your reliability and that long-term relationship so I I can absolutely see how this would work start with games but then move out into the wider world yeah I mean to that point Brian like we wouldn't have been able to create this solution if we were not a fan of games you know there just hasn't been a solution for for this game specific problem right it's a it's there it's just like these are Finance solutions to a c specific problem where's the game solution and it comes from fans and I think that's kind of and and that's the backbone that we built this Solution on and that's why it's resonating so well with the Publishers of the market and

and again it makes perfect sense you know when you look at games the passion the enthusiasm you know the the the spending that's there it it's absolutely one of sort of the market leaders but the transformative power of games Tech and that gamees experience has such a broad application you know um I I gave a talk to the JP Morgan team um here in Scotland uh a couple of months back called design for Joy you know we build experiences that people want to spend hundreds thousands of hours in so why do your banking apps suck so much you know why can't you TR try to make people happy you know functionality starts with the word fun um which is not strangely a four-letter word I might I might still I might I might steal that use it with my blessing so a last question to you before we're wrapping up I'm just curious um yeah you've been in stealth for a year but you've been in the industry for over a decade we share a little bit of legacy and a little bit of

um background also in uh in liftoff where I was uh Consulting for for8 years so you've been there I've been there but you have been connecting with Indie developers in this stealth mode you said talking to them doing your your research um what is the biggest what is the one piece of advice or the biggest piece of advice you'd give to them if they're looking to stand out in today's market I think I think take risk right test everything we are in a market right now that is Shifting rapidly and the companies that are coming out um that are on really the Forefront of the next stage in monetization and this is the backbone point of this this kind of podcast it's the Publishers who are acting with agility that are winning and it's just and so so be agile right test trust the product be quick be quick to Market go be ahead of your competitors

and you'll continue to win Connor this has been fantastic I'm sure we could talk to you for another hour at least and we're just scratching the surface so you know we may well have to ask you back in six or 12 months and you can tell us how you're taking over the world but before we let you go there are a couple of questions that we ask all of our guests that brings it right back to what's important to everybody listening to this podcast which is the games so two questions what are you playing right now what's obsessing you what's on your phone at the moment and then secondly favorite game of all time ever okay those are very good questions what I'm playing right now and what I've been playing for which is really my favorite game at the moment is super Place dice dreams obviously they've been all over the news recently um I love that game and then in terms of my favorite of all time I'm a huge I mean the PE you know every Englishman is going and woman is going to destroy me for this but I'm a huge soccer fan and so I love first touch games is uh Dream League Soccer huge fan I think uh I think I mean it

hasn't been around for my lifetime unfortunately I had score hero before but uh I love dream Ley soccer I love what they've done with it fantastic and you know what there are no wrong answers and given the uh the previous comments about pineapple you know um I I think we're beyond the sort of the comfort zone right now good good good good well we'll have to celebrate in person absolutely with plentiful amounts of pineapple ches yeah when he takes over the world he can he can he can invite us out Brian yes that's true we'll expect we'll invitation you know it's we'll come to your Island and uh your personal chef can oh stop something think we're still far ways away from away from there but thank you that sounds good okay sadly we are going to have to call out Connor Thank you so much uh it has been enlightening uh interesting valuable and a whole lot of fun so uh the very best

of luck for the future and hopefully we'll have you back speak to you again soon Brian Peggy thank you so much it's been a pleasure talk soon 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 and 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 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