What Players Do Outside Your Game Will Grow Your ROAS

Hello world, welcome back to the Pocket Gamer Podcast with your hosts, me Brian Baglow and journalist, author and regent of retention, Peggy Anne Saltz. Hello Peggy, it's a joy to see you again. Thank you, Brian. Also a joy to see you because I know you are hard at work working on a couple of very interesting events we'll be hearing more about. And I'm about to go to another event. Either way, uh retention is the word and it's got the world buzzing. Um and that's what we're talking about today. We hear from a lot of people that it's not just user acquisition, it's like how do you keep them when they're there? So as I said, we're looking at retention, but we're not just looking at why it is important. We're looking at data that shows how you can look more holistically at the question of who am I

acquiring, how do I retain them, how do I re-engage them? And the apps, very importantly, Brian, it is the apps that they are in when they are outside of the game. So that's very exciting as well because we always think about acquiring users in the game, acquiring players in the game, retain them in the game, but it's really helpful to understand where they are when they're not in the game. Joining us today to talk about this are two industry leaders who are going to share the top line takeaways and tips from the report I talked about, but also talking about the other apps where players spend their time. So we have and maybe just raise your hand, I have Francois Nadeau, chief marketing officer at I ball games. Great to have you, Francois. And I have seen in prep and in some of our conversations that you are indeed sweet as French toast. So no no pressure there. Correct. Correct. Thank you. Super happy to be here. You know, um I met my wife a long

time ago, so I never got to do the online dating, but that would have been my username, French It was all set, and then I met her. So I never got to use it. I'm sure it would have killed. Whatever. I feel this is a very different podcast to the one we had planned, Peggy. I think so, too, but we've got we've got such great guests and such a great discussion. I'm just going to let it go. And of course, we have Aman Sareen, CEO at Arche. Aman, we won't say that your sweetest friend chose, but what would we say about you? Uh thank you for having me, Peggy and Brian. You know what? We we can just keep focusing on Francois. I call him my French baguette. How about that? Beautiful. Lots of possibilities, you know. I I I I sense a fabulous friendship here. Um so, welcome, gentlemen. Thank you. I Again, this is this is an awful lot warmer than some of the the the episodes

that we've had in the past, Peggy. So So, this is great. Well, listen, before we jump in, gentlemen, and it's a pleasure to have you both here. Um let's find out a little bit more about both of you because I am definitely intrigued, okay? French toast, French baguette, there's there's stuff going on here. Um so, Francois, coming back to you, you've spent uh over 16 years in mobile games now, scaling hits like Jurassic World Alive, and now leading the marketing at Eyeball Games. And I believe you're now working on the world's most downloaded mobile pool game. Is that right? Correct. Yes. So, 14 years at Ludia uh at a Montreal, and and funny enough, uh things happen fast, right? So, Ludia spun off, it was sold to Jam City, and it spun off like a couple of months ago. And so, I'm working with them as well to to help them uh rebuild their publishing arm and the as well. So, very busy there. And then also, yes, I've been working with Eyeball Games for the last 2 years. They've been working on this incredible game, Pool Masters, and it

really redefines the mobile pool pool gaming genre, in my opinion. So, the level of realism, the physics, it's it's out of this world. And you've got some really interesting tweaks. They've partnered with some of the biggest studios in LA to do some awesome brand integration. The first partner, the biggest one is NBC Universal. And the first brand integration will be with How to Train Your Dragons. Imagine having like How to Train Your Dragon shoes, skins, emojis, and whatnot, combined with an amazing pool game. So, we're super excited. That's the latest title we've been working on. Fantastic. Well, welcome on board. Thank you so much. Aman, you yourself, now you're located in San Francisco. And yeah, it's it's interesting not just at Arkey, but in your your life that life balance because you are you are building a company and you are running it sounds like a zoo. Yes, we are you know, we are we are

building Arkey. Arkey is a mobile marketing platform, which is 100% built on top of machine learning and AI. Our goal is very simple. We are 100% ROAS focused. We live and die by ROAS. And our goal is to help mobile marketers, like Francois, you know, acquire new users and retain them throughout the user journey. So, we are full funnel marketing platform. Very few of us actually exist because it's difficult to do both of these things together. I think most companies focus on either user acquisition or remarketing. We happen to do both. And we do it in a very privacy-friendly manner. You know, our focus has been like how do we make sure we are building for the future? And if you look at the future, future is going to be super privacy centric, right? What Apple is doing, what Google is supposedly releasing in the next few quarters or years, you know, depending on who you talk to. Um I think like uh client uh or I should say user privacy and like access or not access to

that user data is going to be super critical and how we use those signals in a way that does not violate any of the privacy policies that these big companies have set is very crucial to us. So, that's what you know, that's what we are doing at Arkey. And you know, funny thing is uh this is not my first rodeo uh at performance marketing. In 2012, I built the very first performance marketing DSP. Uh like decades ago. And I swore to myself that I would never do performance marketing again. And here we are, you know, doing it yet again. It's like a bad habit that keeps, you know, that keeps coming back to you. We know about Arkey that you built and Arkey we'll be talking about, but also uh yeah, you're building I think um something there. I was seeing something about chickens. Am I correct? Yes, yes, you're right. You're right uh Peggy. So, you know, this is actually my home office and if I were somehow able to flip the camera, you'll see a little chicken coop. Uh so, uh you know, people

people tell me I live on like a farm I even though I live in I live like 20 mi away from San Francisco, slightly east of San Francisco. Uh but my kids, my wife, they love animals. I love animals, too. So, we have way too many animals to count. We have, I think uh two dogs, massive dogs, uh two bunnies. Uh we used to have goats, also, but our our place is not big enough, so we had to rehome them. But and we have now, I think, like 10 plus chickens and counting. So, if anybody needs eggs, you know where to go. It's lovely to have you both on boards and I I absolutely sympathize that you can't actually see, but if I tipped my screen up, I have one Labrador here. I have one sleeping in the back garden in the sunshine. So, not necessarily, you know, conducive for the chickens, but I feel it gives us a a really warm and kind of personal approach to this episode. We've got that. I mean, I can I can also bring in my two cats and then we will be set here. Um you know, we usually say at this at at some point, Brian, yeah, we want them back for an encore. I think I think we do, but I want to have pun intended cuz that's

me, right? Pun intended because pg.biz also just covered the news from Arkey that they have a recent release also called Encore. So, I thought I would bring us up to date on that. You told us about the company, but uh what is Encore? What was it built to address? What what is this? You know, Encore is our new AI platform or machine learning engine that's lot lot of people would call it. I think these terms have become interchangeable these days. Um so, at the core of Encore is our new DNN. We used to have, obviously, you know, Arkey launched DNNs, you know, with you Peggy actually at MAU last year in May. Um and we have been subsequently enhancing, you know, our model infrastructure and how we evaluate users and various uh models. Uh so, uh over the last years we have now uh launched a new set of uh AI models uh and we call those as a collective Encore. Uh what Encore does is is to couple of things, right? As I said, we are a full fun- funnel marketing platform.

Uh but this time we are heavily focused on privacy-centric ways, especially on iOS, on getting those users. So, we have created some very sophisticated uh algorithms uh on scan and how to get, you know, those scan postbacks to work properly, so that our machine learning algos can actually do the best thing possible for, you know, our clients' media spend. You know, at the end of the day, Encore's goal is to reduce media spend wastage. Like, how do you make sure that your users remain with you and are not poached by other competitive games or apps, if you will. Great great segue cuz that brings us full circle back to the our key retention radar that talks about exactly this. You know, where are players when they're not in your game. Francois, you mentioned in prep that you found that traditional targeting is often like throwing darts blindfolded, you know? Um, yeah, what about this

report changes that? So, I see it in three silos. I see creative, obviously, media buying and analytics. And a lot of the times when you focus on media buying, everybody says, "Well, okay, it's commoditized. It's arbitrage." And everybody knows all the tricks, right? And it's kind of true to a degree, but when you see a report like Aman's and our key's coming out, it it it gets really interesting cuz you always try to think outside the box. Like, where can I find these users, right? And um, I can't tell you how many times in the past I was like, "Okay, well, we advertise in other games. Yes, we advertise in social, but where else could we advertise?" And we've made a lot of assumptions. You do have informations, bits of information about affinity here and there, but it's not packaged like like this report that we see at our key. So, it really allows you to think outside the box. It really allows you to anticipate the app hopping from your app to another. So, having the ability to anticipate where they're going to be next um, allows me to just

customize and precise a message and time it properly to re-engage that user um, knowing where he or she's going to be next, right? So, this is very valuable, but it's not only valuable for re-engagement. I think it's also valuable for for new UA, right? So, if I see affinity between a certain type of game that I'm also going to publish and I know that users for this certain type of game are going to hop onto this certain type of apps, well, I'm going to advertise on this certain type of apps to capture some market share, right? So, I I love that it's like data-based, right? It's really easily actionable as well, and you can feel way more confident about the outcome of it instead of like making guesses. Um and again, this this report you you really have like, you know, clear data, manageable data, easy call to action, low-hanging fruit, and it's one of the first time that I've seen something like this where you can really think outside our typical echo system.

So, I'm I'm going to pick up on that if I can, Ammar. And I think giving people the the sort of the the insight, taking out the guesswork, and and giving them the context, cuz the industry tends to be quite insular. You know, games are everything. And I guess there is a historical, you know, reason for that, but that's not how the mobile world works. So, and then where did the motivation for the report come from? And can you unpack a little for us about how um you used them, which methodology you used, and how it all came together? It actually started out as an internal tool. So, what we wanted to understand was the the user path, like in and out of, you know, a category to start with, and then particular apps itself if they're big enough, okay? And what we wanted to understand was like how does a user start their journey and end up being, you know, uh a user of a certain category, right? And then what happens is what happens after they they leave that app, right? Like

So, that's what we wanted to understand. And the reason we wanted to understand was do do a couple of things. One is to obviously inform our targeting layer or targeting strategies, like as we go acquire new users or find, you know, existing users who have lapsed and bring them back to the original app that they lapsed from. Second was, how do you create in-context creative, which is way more powerful than random creative, to just, you know, spray and pray, and do machine learning, you know, on top of it. Works, but takes a long time and also could cause lots of user um kind of ill will, if you will, right? Like the users sometimes may not like the context of the ad that they're seeing. Um so so that was the motivation. And then what I realized was especially in North America, right? We we thought that the education level for marketers and, you know, the appreciation for remarketing and retention was quite low, right? The in it was under indexing compared to like let's say the Amia region. Then we thought, "Okay, you know what? We have all this beautiful information. How can we now enable, you

know, as an educational tool for our partners to show them the power of like retention of the users." So that's how it started. And at the end of the day, if you think about it, you know, it's very difficult to acquire new users, but it's actually 90% cheaper to retain those users. And in terms of methodology, you know, we listen to the world's ad calls. We are connected to every inventory source imaginable. Um so what what we can do is we can in time, using transient data without storing anything, create user paths of as we listen to ad calls, right? And we can create a very rich understanding of how the users are interacting with a particular ad of a particular category, what they're doing in terms of installs, and then further uh you know, actions, and then how do they then how do we see them outside of that, you know, ecosystem? And that gives us a 360 view of a you know, a user uh and then we can, you know, enhance uh uh a marketing campaign like by giving them the right context, the right targeting layer, and the right, you know, creative at the same time.

Which makes a lot of sense, Brian. You know, you want to think about where we are in the industry, you know, it's beyond games, you're saying. Yes, you know, let's look for players in fintech apps, or let's look for them in entertainment apps, or but what's interesting is not just where the players are, but when you start to understand the patterns among of where they're likely to go next, right? Yes, absolutely. So, you know, many many I think we saw many interesting insights which we would have not uncovered if like we were making guesses like Francois said, right? So, we were able to actually see this with real data. So, I'll give you one example about puzzle games and you know, a huge overlap with something that you would have not thought is possible. So, puzzle game users had a 60% overlap with e-commerce apps. Mhm. Like who would have known, right? And I think our our theory is that, you know, you know, people who are shopping online, right? Like you have your phones and you can instantly buy something. Puzzle games also provide the same kind of dopamine hit, okay? So, we saw that

there's a huge overlap and I feel like now there's a huge interesting opportunity for this category to not only have, you know, other similar apps in their targeting pool, but also, you know, e-commerce app which actually, you know, are ad supported and if we can craft the message which is not a gaming message, but it's more of an offer message, right? In an e-commerce app. Like, hey, you know what? You have a special offer for doing X, Y, and Z. I think that would resonate very well with with the users and players of those games. Yeah, it's it's I'll just interject here because that was super interesting and also the food and drink, like there's a lot of overlap with board and puzzle games. So, you know, I found this like super interesting and the one thing that I wanted to follow up on Aman on what you said like when you said it really resonates with me when you said like in America like the use of re-engagement is under indexed, right? I can tell you I see it I see it with a lot of publishers and I don't understand it, right? Cuz I

understand that it's an it's an incremental spend, right? And investment. And a lot of people say, well, they'll come back anyways cuz if they're engaged they're going to come back. And I don't understand how one can take that for granted, right? Especially in today's world where you've got like hundreds of millions of apps. It's so cluttered. So, you want to stay top of mind, right? And as long as your dollar breaks even or is like profitable, like why wouldn't you invest that dollar, right? To just like keep top of mind, even if it's not a churn user. Even people who are actually engaged with your app, if they stop buying, you got to be top of mind. You got to let them know, "Hey, we're here and we have the special offer you can customize." And so, with this study, you can actually do more of this and in a more personalized way. I think the understanding of the power of keeping your users in your ecosystem has enhanced significantly over the last, you know, few quarters. You know, if you add retention strategies to your UA strategies, like we have seen exceptional ROI, right? And the CPIs

that you get from remarketing are literally a 10th or a a 20th of what the CPIs would be if you were doing a pure UA campaign. So, I think there's huge huge huge benefit in doing both strategies at the same time. And, you know, 5 to 10% of your budget in remarketing like provides the same type of ROI as like a huge budget on UA. Like, it's the the numbers are mind-boggling. We hear this so often. You know, we've had such a range of guests on the show and it's it's everybody says, you know, why chase the new user when you could be doing so much more with the people already playing. And how do you get that re-engagement? So, this is making a huge amount of sense and Francois, you're you're absolutely correct. It's really fascinating listen to you guys talk about this. And and I you're turning data into actionable advice. How do you as a human manage the AI to sort of utilize this and and make this happen? You know, Brian, we believe that especially in ad tech where money is

involved in testing and cold start and model calibration, right? You must Everybody, I'm sure, talks about these terms when they talk to you. Um how do you use human intuition in making sure the models or the algorithms have a head start. We have a concept we call supervised AI. As we grow as an industry, we need human intuition and gut to tell you when the data is low. Because what when the data sets are um just forming for the model to learn, the model can actually go and under and overspend on things which do not make sense. But, as humans you know that hey, you know what? I know from my past life that what the model is doing is not going to work. So, could you just twist it a slight degree in the right direction and make it learn faster? So, that's what, you know, that's what we are trying to do here at Arkey. Um and I think we have seen great results of that, uh especially on, you know, the remarketing type of campaigns where we have humongous data sets, we have the

app hive, and we we we have done several experiments in the past on what creative works very well, right? So, we can see it all this in the beginning of time to our machine, and the machine can actually start running much faster. And AI alone is super smart, but it doesn't pick up on all of them. That's how humans come in. Al France, I want to come to you because you've said before, you know, this is about not being blindfolded. This is about having some superpowers when it comes to UA or also to re-engagement. So, if we look at what this type of data uncovers, you know, what does that open up for you? I think the the low-hanging fruit here is the keyword is for me is testing, right? So, um what I thought was commoditized suddenly becomes interesting in terms of media buying, but I can combine this with like super customized and precise creative and do a lot of creative testing along with these assumptions that I see, right? And then

it's just a question of testing the entire loop. It's interesting to say to me, what I love is that I have new avenues of new avenues of testing, new new projects, right? It's like it's really getting out of the ecosystem and have like a whole new testing roadmap that I can put together. I was interested in the data, the whole idea of app hopping. Where are players when they're not in the game and how can you connect with them or reconnect with them? So, I also wanted to see how this resonates with marketers. It's you know, it's fairly new information. You said yourself, Ryan, probably something we certainly haven't covered yet on the podcast. So, I went out there in the wild, as I'm known for, right? Going to an event and meeting up with some people. So, I'd like to share what they have to say. So, let's listen in. We have first off, Marina Hollock from Tap Nation. It's a more and more competitive landscape overall for games. It hasn't been easy. So, I think the more and the better you understand your audience,

where where you are where are they? What are they doing when they are with their phones in front of them? So, it's it's thinking outside of the box and I think this is the you know, a deeper understanding of your audience behavior is actually the only way to break through so much competitiveness out there and and to really find, you know, the golden opportunities. Yeah, I mean it's it's it's we're really aligned. I think that's the key message and the key takeaway here because we've all been working within the same boundaries for so many so many years and so to have this like fresh take is um is definitely exciting and extremely valuable, right? And I I think this is the thing for me, Peggy. It has to be said that that we we have so many guests who are talking about the user journey, the player experience, how that's the key, building the credibility, building the relationship, the the long-term lifetime value. But, once the player leaves your game, we've been operating in the dark as as the both gentlemen have been saying. You know, so so this really does give us a

new context and a new opportunity to understand what else our players do. Look, I think Marina made a great point. I think Biggy To be honest with you, I don't know who Biggy backed on. Who was it? Francois or was it her? Our goal is to help marketers operationalize these insights, right? It's great to have these insights, but then what do you do with them, right? And I think Francois mentioned at the top of the hour that there's kind of two or three buckets, right? It's you know, your media planning, you know, or media buying, it's a creative and it's your strategy. So, I think what this report or any other such reports or personas of your of your users, what they can help the marketers do is figure out how do you create the right strategy? Is it a UA or retargeting strategy together? Is it separate, right? I We We think I hope it's together. Second thing is if you know where your users are coming and going from, you can actually create very

impactful creative. I think creative is such a lost art these days, right? People paid the least amount of emphasis on it and I think creative actually shines significantly. So, the focus on content is is a point very well made. We hear that from a lot of people. You know, we've had guests on talking about the quality of ads and how badly a poor ad and poor sort of creative can damage you. So, that low-risk testing I think is is a key here. So, how do you actually implement that kind of testing make sure you have that quality without, you know, burning right through your budget? Yeah. Great very good question, right? And of course, you know, for for performance marketers, ROAS is everything, right? So, this budget has to be minimally used for testing. To all marketers, what I say is you should select a partner wisely, right? Dollars are limited to begin with, right? And you don't want your dollars to shrink when it goes from you to the end, you know, ad slot. Right? So, you have to make

sure that you actually work with a real platform, not middlemen, right? That's number one. Make sure that the technology layer or partner you're using has their own technology, right? They're not borrowing it. Because if they borrow technology from somebody, then you're paying a markup. And finally, um I think uh if you focus on just one aspect, which is creative testing, uh like choose a partner which provides creative services, right? Because most of most app marketers, while they have huge creative departments, they're more focused on assets, right? They may not be focused on actually creating on ad content, right? So, like we at Appy, for example, we have a full-fledged creative team. We offer that service for free to our advertisers. The reason being uh we feel that if we added that value uh to our advertisers, we can actually enhance their performance significantly. Yeah, I mean, I think for me the keyword here and and you touched upon it a little bit, it's it's collaboration, right? So, I to your point, like you

need to go with like a credible partner. They know their platform extremely well. They know their inventory. They know their audience better than I do, right? And they know what works. They have like a plethora of customers, and so they have a ton of data, and they can really guide us, right? So, I have objectives, right? To hit. I have goals to hit, and I can share that with them. And uh um in collaboration with them, we can set strategy. We can set a road map of testing. I can tell them what my budget is. They can tell me, "Okay, well, you know, this is how we should deploy it, or can you do a little bit less? Can you do a little bit more?" And and ultimately, it's all about the results, right? And surprisingly, also looking not just at testing other approaches and being more effective in the testing, I have uh spoken with Bruno Bellistri from Quali, and uh he told me what he was doing to extend to other audiences. We have to understand you compete with every single app in the world, right?

And we would like have our advertising within this fintech apps or this different genres apps which are not get only gaming related and bring them to our to our portfolio as well. It's interesting to understand how these users perform in our apps and how can we monetize with them. Normally we go go for apps that are gaming only and given that we're trying the new approaches with different users from fintechs then yeah, it would make sense for us to test this app to test this audience and find something new. I think Bruno is absolutely right. You're competing with every app available for mind share, right? It's a game of how do you get the mind share. So I think uh the best things the marketer can do and I'll go back to creative is like having much broader creative strategy, having non-intrusive ads which do not interfere the user experience for an e-commerce app or you know, a fintech app, right? And then giving them the opportunity to try out, you know,

something new, right? In the right moment. I think that's that's that's my takeaway from what Bruno mentioned. All right. If I can take out a little bit of the guessing game like well, should I try fintech or should I try e-commerce? 100%. Right? And then when I have a report like this, I'm like, well, okay, well, you know what? I thought fintech was going to work. I thought well, no, actually maybe it's not going to work for my type of game. So I'm going to I'm going to try Right? You know, it's it's it's you're refining it. You're refining the testing for sure. So and and I think I think what what both of us are trying to say is that, you know, this report doesn't really just tell you where the users are. It has you know, it has several business implications which you know, transcend different categories of things you can do such as creative, media buying, media planning. Well, I I think this is the thing, you know, as you rightly point out, chaps, we're in a war for attention. You know, the the the cost for somebody moving on, not just to another app on their mobile, another game on their mobile, but all of the other demands on their attention. You know, the TV, the streaming services, the streaming audio services.

Going outside in the fresh air and having a walk, going to a pub, which is quite popular here in the UK. There are so many other things that your your player will have and will be doing with their life. So, taking that guesswork out, as you say, Francois, is hugely beneficial to anybody who's trying to keep that player engaged and and keep them within your world. And and you made a great point about that as well, Aman, that it's also not just reaching them, but it's engaging them. That comes down to the creative, and that comes down to really understanding the player. And this is what came through in my third and final interview, cuz I was chatting with Betul Ozdemir at Product Madness, and this is what she had to say. This shows a lot about the users, so you can be a little bit more creative. You can also look for what they are doing to get these users, and you can also maybe tweak your ads a little bit to reach those audience better better fit,

because this also shows you like it allows you to bring those users a little bit cheaper CPIs, you know? Understanding these personas is like a super important. Cheaper CPIs, that's always good news. What do you make of that, Aman, Francois? So, I think, look, at the end of the day, everybody wants cheaper CPIs, right? Like that's Francois would love the lowest CPI possible. And I think the way you can achieve it, as I mentioned before, is like, let's make sure you blend your user acquisition campaign with knowledge like which not just educated guesses, but real data-driven remarketing campaigns. Understand when your users will churn, right? You can do that easily with a sophisticated modeling for that. And be ready to give them the right offer at the right time in the right context. Be it in a gaming type of environment, right? Where hopefully you will find majority of your users, but also maybe you will find them in e-commerce app or

food and beverage apps or fintech apps, right? I'm just curious. We're hearing about all the opportunities, all the different flight paths where you can find your users for UA as well as for retention, but um how do you as a marketer, how should a marketer still keep a sharp focus? Ultimately for me, it's all about ROAS, right? So, this is how I keep my focus. I need to hit my goals. And uh I will say to Aman, I don't really care about CPI to degree, right? I mean, all things being equal, great if it's lower, of course. But if you give me a CPI that is high, but I hit my target because it's a quality user, because I was able to contextualize the creative perfectly, and uh I found that user uh to have to be like on the on an app I didn't think about, but there's like super high affinity with my game, I'm definitely willing to pay a premium as long as it gives me my ROAS, right? And so, I think

that's my focus. Uh you're right, and I I you know, when when when you know, smart people like you talk about CPI, I automatically convert that into ROAS, I want to spoil the illusion. Right? So, so you know, what I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll tell you something, right? What we have noticed is that cheaper like CPI actually always correlates to higher ROAS, right? There's a huge correlation between If you can cut your media cost down by many strategies, right? By getting a better offer in, by putting the right context. When you when you lower your CPI, your ROAS goes up. But at the yes, you're right. At the end of the day, we live and die by ROAS. But, for me, I think it's it it's still coming back to the fact that you know your players better. You can serve them better. You know, it's like you're um you're not confined to this is what I know about them from the massive amounts of data in the game. But, it just gives you that context, and it lets you figure out exactly where to meet them. Let's kind of dive into this and and

let's like rattle through some of the sort of the key findings. Um So, first of all, uh I'm going to I'm guessing this is for you. Creative tailored by app category, you found boosts engagement rates by up to three times. Yeah, yeah, that's that's right. Once, you know, once you have your user mapped out, right? Once you have your user journey mapped out, uh and you focus on, you know, picking the best like let's say five biggest categories of your user leakage, and you you tailor your creative appropriately, and your your algorithms are able to distinguish between these users and these categories, and on top of it, your uh creative team is able to rapidly iterate, we have seen massive improvements uh in in ROAS. Not just CPIs, in ROAS, right? I I should use the right terms, otherwise, I'll get in trouble with my French baguette. Uh so, yes, absolutely. I think that that has been a crucial finding for us, and we are operationalizing it, you know, every day with our clients.

Beautiful. Thank you. Okay, let's keep this going. So, uh Francois, coming over to you. Campaigns that combine user acquisition and re-engagement see 40% higher retention. Yeah, absolutely not surprised there, because this is something that I've experienced for a very long time, right? So, we've we've launched new titles, we're doing pure UA, and we're looking at multiples over time, right? Like the LTV, like how does it accelerate over time? And then, at one point, we combine it with re-engagement, right? So, 10% of the spend, we start getting like reengagement opportunities. So, we start spending on reengagement, and we combine the two. And then suddenly and and and, you know, every single time, right? Without a fault. Every single time, those multiples um improve drastically over time. So, my LTV improves, right? Because the retention is much better. And so, they stay in the in the ecosystem much longer, and they spend more. And so, the tail is much longer. And so, you know, when I want to target

like D7 ROAS, and I'm going to break even by D365, I look at those multiples, D7 to D365. So, it's systematic systematic, and it allows me to be more aggressive on UA as well, right? So, uh not surprised here. And um but I I think I think yeah, it's important to let let the community know about like this this this this this bit of gem, because it does really help the long-term LTV. And ultimately, don't be afraid to invest in in in in reengagement, right? You're going to recoup that money. So, I'd like to round out our rapid fire here with the don'ts, right? Um what is the common misstep that marketers should avoid, and what comes through in this report? I'll start with you, Aman. Sure. Uh I think there's a couple of, you know, common missteps. First is I don't think your UA strategy should be copy-pasted to your retargeting strategy. I think those are two different things. And uh

but once you have both the funnels working, I think it works beautifully, right? When you're doing user acquisition, you're going after the unknown in the very beginning of time, right? So, you have to have a very different strategy for them. But as you acquire users, you start getting the persona, and then you can have a much better retention strategy, which can then impact your user acquisition strategy. Second is um you know, context matters. Geographies matters, right? Regions matter. So, you cannot have the same strategy in North America than in APAC, right? APAC is a very different market. Your creatives have to be very different. It's very value-driven, right? They look at offers and discounts and the messaging has to be very, very specific to these offers and discounts. Whereas in North America, it's a very different immersive market, right? It's not about the offers, it's about the experience. Letting all these things matter where you don't copy-paste uh uh you know, one strategy from another, right? And you have specific strategies and you work with the industry leaders in those categories to

to have a robust uh acquisition retention strategy. And then I think overall, I would say just holistically, it's like just don't don't underestimate the impact of of uh re-engagement. I go back to what Aman was saying at the beginning of uh of the podcast, right? Where it's under-indexed in uh in America, right? And I said it again, I said it earlier, I said I see this, I see this in publishers, like they they underestimate the uh the power of of of re-engagement and the impact of re-engagement. So, a lot of people are like, "Ah, well, they'll come back, you know, if they're whales. They love our games, so they'll come back." And there's so many instances where like, even if they're whales, like, you know, VIP programs is a form of re-engagement, right? I have somebody who messages with our best customers, our best biggest users and and some other big spenders, we don't we don't tend to them and you see a difference just because you tend to those people, right? And you tend to their needs. Um and so, it's the same on a larger scale as well, right? So, even if they're engaged with your with your game,

keep them engaged. Invest that extra resources. Don't just like target churn users, right? Keep people engaged, more engaged over time cuz it's so cluttered out there. This this has been fascinating and you know, Peggy, we we hear this in different contexts all the time. There's no one-size-fits-all anymore, you know? You can't treat all your players alike and you can't treat your creatives or the platforms they appear on alike. There's a lot to learn from non-gaming apps. They have their loyalty programs. They have their, you know, bronze, silver, platinum, gold. Maybe that's the way the player experience needs to be recreated and rethought, you know. Absolutely. Like, we we've been experimenting with this a lot, like the VIP programs, and you know, absolutely. And there's so many examples out there, right? This was my inspiration. It's to see other VIP programs out there. Um it has been genuinely fascinating. I think there's so much our listeners are going to take away from this. But, before we let you go, uh there are a couple of questions that we ask all of

our guests. Um First is, what are you playing right now? What's fascinating you? What's keeping you from your work? And then secondly, favorite game of all time. So, uh Aman, let's let's come to you first. Sure. So, uh you know, recently been playing a lot of matching game called Matching Story by a company called Gluon. Uh very addictive game, obviously. Um and I think all-time favorite game, like I think maybe maybe I'll say two or three of them, um in no particular order. First one is Clash of Clans. Uh Supercell was my very, very first client in 2012, believe it or not. Oh, wow. When I think we were their first kind of you UA partner, and they were that, you know, the first dollar spent with us. So, I kind of became crazy about Clash of Clans. Uh I love playing Candy Crush, and now that's, you know, summertime, like Pokémon Go uh would be back in action, right? So, so these are my kind of top three. Beautiful.

And Frans, well, Yes, so okay. I mean, it's it's a shameless plug, but it's true though. I've been playing a lot of Pool Masters because I have access to that game, and and it's just like pretty addictive. So, I've been playing a lot of pool. Um uh you know, uh summer is out so yeah, Pokémon Go is one but I prefer Jurassic World Alive I'm on. It's It's pretty cool. Um, best game of all time for me, I have to say Clash Royale. Mhm. When Clash Royale came out, I was just I had my he was like 6 months old my kid and I was just totally absorbed and addicted to the Clash Royale and playing it all the time. My my wife was way yelling at me. It's like, "Okay, it's your turn." I was totally totally addicted and and and and caught up in that in that world. So, Clash Royale has always been a big one for me still

today. Um, Candy Crush of course. I like I like Brothers. I like Subway Surfer. I got to tell you. I played a lot of that. I played a lot of that. Some very strong choices and you lose no points for picking a console game or indeed your phone game. Aman, Francois, it's been an absolute pleasure. Um, and as you said at the top of the show Peggy, I think we do need to ask them back at some point in the near future and find out more about how this is going and how it's helping mobile game set in the wider mobile world change, evolve and adapt to you know, the future. A genuine pleasure. It's been a master class I think in understanding UA re-engagement in games but more importantly outside of games. Understanding what players are doing outside of their game and yes, I agree Brian, we will have them back and I think there's going to be another report at some point. So, we will be back to deep dive into that one as well. Thank you both so much. Thank you Brian and Peggy. Really was a great conversation and Francois, thank you so much for making it fun and you

know, you are a rock star. Thank you. Ah, thank you so much everybody. Thank you for having us. It was very very fun. This show is all about how to do your job better, how to make an amazing game, how to market it, and you have a say. So, if you have a story or know someone we need to shine a light on, then we would love to hear from you. We want to hear from you. We want to reflect the reality of the mobile games market in all its wonderful complexity and strangeness. So, if you have any suggestions for us, if you have any feedback for us, you can always get in touch. You can email us at [email protected]. You can find us on Twitter @pgbiz, 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/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'll look forward to speaking to you in the near future. Until then, I'm Brian Baglow. I'm Peggy Anne Salz, and that's a wrap until next week.