What Developers Should Know about Alternative App Stores in 2025

[Music] I'm pegy an Sals this is Pocket Gamer connect London and talking about the top topics independently of coming here to the digital turbine stand talking to a lot of Publishers who are saying this is the year they're going to take the plunge they're looking at Alternatives which is great for youen because that's what they're looking at and that's what they're coming to how is it going for digital turbine that discussion used to be a tougher one than it was nowadays I think absolutely there's a lot more interest and uh the conversations are easier and they're also coming our way so it seems like the industry is going through this educational period there's a lot of curiosity uh around it and we're also seeing more opportunities opening up for developers to dip their toes in the water uh we're very happy to also be a part of that process uh for

them and I think that this is to your point exactly right we're going to see more Publishers experimenting this year and for some of them we hope to see the early success stories that will be the you know the leading path for the rest of the industry what is it like has it gotten a bit easier because again we've been talking about this in the industry for a while and I remember Publishers telling me a couple years back like five it's like sounds good but you know an alternative build I'm not going to do it I'm not going to upkeep it but now what is it is it because AI made it easier or what is going on or they just said you know what I have nothing to lose and everything to gain I think that there are three main components for developers to think about as they're considering alternative um you know distribution opportunities one is the need to actually provide a separate build uh and for some that's a barrier so there is a technical investment that goes into that there are companies in the ecosystem that solve specifically for that so

there are ways to get around where it's not just cumbersome and an additional uh resource investment from your own Tech Team you could Outsource some of that work flection is an example of a company that does something like that we have a partnership with them to facilitate that process for um developers the second component is what is my uh footprint what is my potential opportunity for distribution through the alternative p uh platform and that historically has been a challenge for Developers because they didn't necessarily know how many devices would have an alternative store and again now there's more data available there's more opportunity for developers to get a sense of the of the scale that's available to them and then the third one is is there a way for me to control that distribution outside of just placing a title in an alternative store so user acquisition tools for alternative titles and again those are solutions that are now emerging that are making it easier for you to not only make the technical investment to publish an alternative title but actually invest

in the growth of that title you can control your own destiny a little bit more and that's a really important component for developers to know that it's not just a you know uh uh send your title across the other side and pray for the best result possible you can actually you know use the same creative same uh UA methodologies that you've used in the path in the past but just for alternative um app versions because another thing that's very important is the UA itself at one level yes it's about acquiring the users but again very important the data about the user behavior in fact I'm talking to some Publishers it's almost like not that they're saying it's going to be a loss making business they're just saying it's not going to be huge which is obvious because you you have to be in the major stores too and the alternative stores but the data the data is turning out to be the real prize I think that um we are going to challenge a bunch a bunch of um you know age old assumptions about the

app business as we transition to this alternative uh app distribution reality the incumbent stores are not going anywhere in the immediate future they's still going to be the line share of the business that's clear to everybody but as you're transitioning to Alternative stores a bunch of really important things are changing so the revenue share uh around inapp purchase as it's becoming more developer friendly that changes the math on LTV when it changes the math on LTV it also changes the math on UA because your row as calculations are impacted by your Revenue calculations right by the revenue potential and each inapp purchase is now worth more to the developer so there is a learning curve right now as developers have to redo that math but to your point the data is available as you're testing you can understand the impact on LTV that the different you know distribution footprint versus inapp purchase Revenue share uh whatever ad implementation you're doing and is that the same or different from your uh original versions of the app all of those things change the math but the data is now uh

informing developer decisions in a much more holistic way than it used to and possibly another catalyst is really AI because the testing was going to be beyond our capacity to do it and now it's like no we can scale testing we have ai we have creatives we can just keep on not necessarily churning them out but it is a numbers crunching thing too right and this is now possible so maybe something extra that plays in favor of this I think that the developers that are getting AI right are enhancing their operations so it's just easier to get more done with fewer people or fewer resources and that is the GameChanger here it's not like AI is making all the decisions for me it's not like it even necessarily makes the calculations it technically might make the calculation but there still needs to be a well-informed human behind it to put in the right assumptions in place right and so we're not completely disintermediating the human out of the process but we're making the human more

efficient and more scalable and I think that allows fewer people and smaller teams to get more done and again that opens the door for me to dip my toes into the alternative Waters because I have the capacity to manage that process too as I'm Outsourcing some of the you know menial repetitive work to things like AI another interesting topic I'm hearing more about and I have to say herded at digal turbine first was talking about the attention economy and attention metrics and this was like I don't know two years ago when you were doing your brag report even before then but now I'm hearing more Publishers say you know we do have attention we need to be doing more with it and they're thinking more about being an entertainment play and an entertainment play means ultimately we're going to see some brand inventory and we're already seeing that we're already seeing more of that and that's another side of what digital turbine speaks about talks about shares data about um inventory it's not caught up to

attention you know attention spent in games is not the same as brand spend in games but how is that evolving because 2025 we're at the start a lot can still happen I think that uh the trend is inevitable and it's because Brands appreciate the quality of gaming inventory more and more and it's both because of the diversity of the audience I've been to some really great sessions here at PGC talking about you know gamers are actually becoming more diverse because as people age they no longer stop to be Gamers so the uh community of Gamers around the world is becoming more diverse and more relevant for more types of Brands but on top of that it's also a great technical environment to deliver an ad it captures the whole screen the user is already very engaged it's not a second screen when you're playing a game it's not like you do when you're on your phone while you're watching TV you're fully invested in the experience so you're more attentive also to the advertising that is coming through and because of these gaming mechanism like you know rewarded

advertising the value exchange experience creates this um beneficial effect to how brands are being perceived because they are part of this process of being rewarded and making progress in the game that you're playing so all of these things work in favor of this marriage between Brands and games and then I think another really important Trend to recognize here is that the user experience from an ad standpoint has only been declining and once you incorporate more Brands into the mix you actually Elevate the user experience your your game becomes more premium when you have a more uh diverse set of advertisers you know interacting with your users and it's not just the same repetitive and sometimes aggressive user acquisition ads and also the Publishers have evolved they're thinking more about first party data they're actively working on strategies to pass the right data what does that data look like nowadays you know because Publishers are also asking me I'm in the industry they say what are people telling you about what the data is because that's also

changed a lot you know it's about trying to figure out what do the brands want to have but the brands don't actually say what they want to have so you have to sort of backward engineer it a bit what does that look like what is the data that's most valuable for Publishers to be thinking about you're raising a really good point because um historically developers have been thinking about data in the context of their own business so segmentation in favor of serving liveops or into in favor of serving user acquisition the brand advertising lens to data is very different because Brands buy personas so they have a target audience that is defined you know by a certain age range by gender by certain behavioral patterns and a lot of those can be deduced or sometimes even provided in a consented manner inside of a game environment and so developers now have more than one way to package first-party data some of it is for the performance user acquisition use case or segment to optimize

monetization that's the bread and butter business but then if you find the right partner that can actually communicate these uh data signals around a Persona then you're going to attract more brand demand because you're going to be matched with Brands looking for that specific Persona that is part of your user base so it is about making that match and there's a lot going on a lot of Dynamics in the industry I'm feeling 2025 is going to be very very different what is the digital turbine contribution going to be to 2025 what is is coming or what are you deepening I think there are three main areas that I would want to call out one we that we spoke about is uh the alternative uh distribution opportunity and we believe that that's when we'll start seeing scale and we'll start seeing success stories coming out of that which is again going to kind of show a path that this is possible for more and more developers uh hopefully that also creates a better user experience in the alternative stores because it's going to create diversity of more apps that you're able to find in those stores and so it's going to be a a

benevolent cycle of of more and more engagement uh the second one is um just providing a better user experience to uh app users to game users through this diverse advertising experience and I think that's something that we bring to the table which is again a mix of performance and brand demand and an ability to directly match those first-party signals that developers have with uh different types of advertisers and then the third component uh for us is uh just creating uh more opportunities with getting apps directly to devices uh we're seeing increased interest in that you know age-old bread and butter business for digital turbine and I think that in it's a mix between new on device experiences that we are going to launch this year that are going to um just reinvent some of the uh uh distribution opportunity in direct to device user acquisition alongside with a growing Global footprint so the same experiences are also going to be

relevant in more markets that's true and and more opportunities to be on device because that's what I'm hearing about the GEOS I was just talking to some people who had great research from Mina that like this year may be pivotal we've been talking about it for a while but I think we're going to see things like that where are you excited about which GI is uh I think Latin America is a very interesting opportunity um and uh it's uh it's a very it's a highly engaged audience it's a highly engaged and currently underserved uh audience for many developers uh and again as more hybrid monetization strategies are being utilized by more developers it's reconfigures the math for markets that maybe previously developers struggled with uh and then some key markets in uh APAC as well I think there are uh a lot of opportunities where the scale exists the engage user base exists but maybe the access wasn't as good in the past or the ability to optimize wasn't as good and I think some vendors that are going

to make progress in those regions are going to unlock opportunities for Developers for Global expansion in in those two like the what was considered beyond the traditional Focus markets uh for many developers I like that note going Beyond you know pushing beyond the boundaries and the barriers and uh certainly continuing the conversation with you to see where you'll be pushing off to thanks for the idea on personas I'll be watching that you Tai it was a pleasure and it was enlightening thanks so much thank you you very much 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

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