What will be the Winning Monetisation Mix in 2022? | PocketGamer.biz RoundTable

good afternoon everybody hello welcome to this uh pocketgamerdotbiz roundtable sponsored by the good people at adenmo and this afternoon we're going to be exploring what the winning monetization mix is going to look like in 2022 and the mobile sector seems to evolve ever more rapidly we've gone from the retail model to free to play through to wherever we are right now and things continue to change uh we are very very lucky to welcome a hugely experienced and um incredibly expert panel of guests this afternoon and before we go any further i would like everybody to go around and introduce themselves if that's okay just so the the wonderful ladies and gentlemen people of the internet know who it is that they're actually hearing from uh so i'm going to go around it clockwise from where i'm sitting so kristen can we come to you first who are you what do you do who is it that you do

it for sure thing thanks brian and thanks to the whole uh pocket gamer team for uh for for hosting this uh my name is christian rippers i'm a co-founder and ceo of adidmo we're a uh we're non-interruptive click-free uh in-game play advertising platform uh monetization sdk that uh basically connects advertisers to the uh the hard to reach audiences via the medium of games perfect what a lovely succinct um summary joanne has trained you well uh and moving on alex can we hear from you next please sure thing so i'm alex i'm the product manager from the yoda one uh mass sdk yota one is uh also an ad monetization company uh but our our ads are the standard kind the kind that pops up for is a banner in the in the screen and we're very excited to be here with adam oh and all the others to talk about the future of monetization excited

wonderful that that's great to hear alex thank you very much and we've just been writing about you yoda one earlier this week so i have some very very interesting questions for you anton can we hear from you next please absolutely hey everyone uh really glad to join the uh the round table i'm anton uh i i'm i'm with say games uh say games is a leading uh mobile games publisher uh we uh primarily launch games based on uh ad monetization so we're we're known for really really big hits um with with ad monetization primarily as our key revenue driver i um i i work on the developer partnerships uh so i uh recruit and retain uh new and existing teams as well as help them produce and and launch their titles globally wonderful thank you and er tanyi

hey uh nice to meet you all here uh i'm and i'm from new zealand so new zealand's a market analytics firm in uh specialized in games and and esports and i'm the market lead of mobile at nuzu uh so yeah you know news is most famous for all the grain graphs and and the bar charts but we are also doing consumer studies consumer insights in 33 key markets across the across the globe uh so we we understand you know the game's market from the consumer side as well as from development and publishing sites so nice to meet you all wonderful thank you tany and last but not least mikhail hey everybody i'm mikhail i'm monetization lead in pixel federation and the pixel federation is a game developer based in slovakia and one of the biggest in the region so wonderful lovely and thank you all so

much for joining us this afternoon um this is one of these uh these topics that i think can often be vastly misunderstood and uh there's such a range of understanding when it comes to monetizing games especially in the mobile market because if you're a dinosaur like i am in the olden days you before you played a game you had to go and buy it in a shop or a store um and that's clearly so far in the past that it's almost embarrassing and so let's let's kind of establish a baseline where are we right now in terms of monetization what models is it that your company uses at the moment what's kind of standard and then let's start looking forward from there so i'm going to come to you first alex if i may sure so we have two divisions in euro one we have our publishing division which is where we started and now we have our ad monetization sdk which is used by thousands of publishers around the world both of those use the kind of

standard three mobile ad formats that we've all come to know and love or hate uh banners interstitials and rewarded videos right beyond this we do have a affair about bit of iaps in our published games but uh i think most of our developers around the world are are using those ad types in order to monetize so yeah fantastic and then strangely enough we were just um doing a piece about some of the the the brands and games that i know that you guys have been up to but we're going to come back to that hey tianyi could we could we hear from you please uh yeah so uh news we are not really a game development company and now we you know we we do market research and market studies of the games industry and what we've seen in the past years in the mobile games uh business is actually like the whole industry is really switching from a you know single uh monetization revenue stream to a multiple of what we call hybrid monetization strategy so a lot of

companies are adopting both iaa and iap and also on the iap side that previous it was more you know purely just in-game purchases but now we are also seeing a lot more like subscription based services or ads you know uh in-game standings and uh yeah battle passes which are adopted almost in every game now fabulous thank you mikael yeah basically uh pixel started as uh as free a play and basically we are we were aiming for for in-app purchases mostly but uh we kind of switched uh the trend and uh we introduced uh uh ad monetization so when currently we are using we are using the rewarded video offer walls uh and rewarded surveys as well interesting and then rewarded surveys is something that it's a twist on a classic

but it seems to be gaining in popularity and and anton uh how about yourselves um so we we've we've started as as as purely ad monetization uh company developer and publisher and that has been our uh prime primary success over the last couple of years and uh for the last uh several months we've seen we've seen releases with hybrid monetization as it's known um and we have a few uh uh so-called in-up heavy games so as as we're growing we're progressing to uh more ways to to monetize uh the audience that that plays our games um so we've started with uh solely ads interstitials rewarded videos and banners and now we're uh we're we've introduced in-app purchases within our products as well as well as uh in

play ads uh which is something new on the market so wonderful thank you and and mr rivers it's you're out there talking to developers publishers all the time what are you seeing out there yeah it's it's interesting the for us anyways um you know we are we're we're very narrow focus uh within the space uh we we do one type of monetization unlike um you know uh you know one who have multiple types uh an anton's company and mikhail's coffee pixel federation who who use lots of different types of monetization um we we just do the click-free in-game advertising um but i think it's the this world uh that we're moving to of of game publishers and developers experimenting with and using lots of different ad types sorry lots of different monetization types is really cool and it is fantastic for us i mean as you said anton you guys are experimenting with with new monetization types yourselves uh whether it's an app or ad and and that's opened up the door for uh

for adimo to have success in the space um and certainly you know we we think it's cool that developers are now are now experimenting and trying all these different uh different ways to monetize um you know the the pocket gamer survey that uh was released i think about a month ago now uh mentioned that about a third of all game developers uh surveyed were looking at in-game uh in game play ads as their as the next type of monetization they'll integrate in the next six months you know more than any other type of ad monetization any type of monetization and and like i said i think two years ago we wouldn't if that survey was run with that same question we wouldn't have had that answer right so i think the the world that we're in now is is really cool and you know i love to see all these different types of monetization uh being experimented with tried and hopefully being successful now that that's a really interesting point kristen and i was going to bring up the survey myself so thank you that that's right no no no no it's good um because one

something that you've um several of you have mentioned is this notion of hybrid monetization now to me that sounds as though it should mean you can have multiple monetization types within a game is that where we're going here anton i can see you sorry alex i can see you nodding vigorously yeah yeah so i think hybrid monetization from what we've seen is any combination of any two or more different types of monetization so it could just be as simple as iap and standard ad monetization could be a combination of non-interruptive and standard interrupted ads i think that we definitely see that this is a growing trend and you know there's a i'm excited to talk more about where the potential lies for those different types of monetization to intersect because that's the really cool thing about where we're going as an industry yeah that makes an awful lot of sense mikhail you were uh sorry

antoine's just put his hand i'll come to you next time mikhail um is this where a pixel federation is going as well are you are you introducing new um revenue streams yeah we're definitely trying so yeah i think that the the the big topic for us for the next for this year and for the next is segmentation so trying to define the different approaches for the different regions different categories and and different segments of your users because it's they're like not coherent so so you're kind of a need to to approach them separately and with strategies and with the different uh formats and different ad formats as well fantastic and an anton i same same thing is it is it is this you know pick and mix approach and proving proving viable yeah so so what i wanted to say is the way that we uh we will look at ads is um you can monetize your entire audience

with ads and only a small fraction of your audience will actually uh make an in-app purchase so that what makes it uh different uh when you're when you're thinking about how you design your products and um and and what's what's what's your marketing strategy going to be for the product you're you're building and uh and also it really it really depends on uh how you define a hybrid monetization for example interstitial ads and the rewarded ad they might look almost the same because one is skippable another isn't skippable and you have to watch uh till the end of the video but where they're very different from the game design and product point of view because interstitial ad is something that interrupts the gameplay and it's it's it's like you're watching a tv and then there is an ad on the tv that you can't skip

right now you have to sit through the ad to to to move on with your with your program that you're watching but rewarded that you will have to actually iterate uh with yourself so you are the player you are making a decision to actually watch an ad to get something in exchange from the game so that that involves different uh game design tactics that involves a deeper uh a deeper meta around the core gameplay that you're building within your game et cetera and uh and when it comes to in-app purchases that goes even beyond uh when um interstitials and rewarded ads in order for a player to make a purchase that means a player uh must be willing not only to invest their time into the game but also their money so so the the approach is completely different

and uh and what we're seeing is the actual hybrid monetization approaches is the winning one when you combine in-app purchases for example with rewarded ads and make sure that the entire audience can iterate with the game and invest something uh in the game and get something in exchange uh and the new things like in play ads there is something completely new when you have a completely non-intrusive ad experience where you're seeing a brand a banner uh within the game world and you don't have to invest anything to actually um to actually iterate or just see the ad in the game so that's uh that's a new approach that we're seeing now you see that's absolutely fascinating and i want to come back to the point that you made about game design because i think this is an incredibly important one and before we before we leave this question tianyi from from your position you know it's a you guys are sort of as you said

um kind of oversee getting an overview of the industry what are you seeing out there are you seeing it's like companies willing to explore and experiment a little more yeah yeah for sure i think over the past few years like uh yeah as i already mentioned this is really like an uptick in trend in the industry that a lot of companies are trying to adopt this hybrid monetization uh and also as anton mentioned it's actually you know it's striking a balance between time and the money like sometimes you know the consumers they spend money or they spend time on ads and that can be converted into a currency so we've also seen like more companies or games are actually taking ads as a new currency in the game so there are like items or weapons or you know skins that are only accessible or exchangeable by watching ads so we've like really seen the trend of like ads becoming you know a currency in the game so i think this is really like a recent run uh innovation in the in the industry

that's again i'm finding this absolutely fascinating because it brings us into the into the uh the topic of personalization but personalization from the players point of view because uh back in in the ancient past you had one model and everyone had to take it or leave it you either bought the game or you didn't so is are we now looking at a a an era where the player can personalize their experience they can pick and choose a little more and and developers can realize value from players in different ways so in-app purchases for those who want to you know give you money directly and incentivize reward ads and interest issues etc for those who maybe aren't as cash rich but who are willing to invest more of their time so is is this allowing developers and publishers to um cater for a broader audience

and i'm going to come to you first antoine for me absolutely and um the more focused you are on in-app purchases the narrower your audience is going to be um so which which means that your marketing strategy is going to be completely different from the broad marketing uh strategy that you have in ads in most of the ad uh monetization based games um and what we're seeing currently in the industry is that um there are there are very popular games um that have the design structure based around uh ad monetization and especially rewarded uh rewarded monetization where game designers actually create systems that

make players interact with certain elements in the game where you're required to do something in the game that will later launch the the uh rewarded ads and when and and it actually becomes uh an integral part of the actual core experience where uh for example you have a character running around a game world and in order to convert your gold to um to i don't know wood or vice versa you will have to um you will have to do something with with the little thing that does the conversion and to speed up the process you will absolutely use a rewarded ad and that uh and and that really becomes the uh the the in-game uh kind of experience and the currency so uh the games that are now games are really designed around uh the the types of the monetization

that is that is um that drive those games from the from the revenue point of view i see okay yeah that that makes a huge amount of sense and and again this this opens things up and i want to come back to that issue of design and development as i say slightly later mikhail pixel federation is this again where where you are heading is it is it empowering players improving accessibility basically uh there are like really good good answers from uh from tianey and and from anton as well so i think that it's definitely something that is a trend and using the the ad monetization and the ads as a currency is like something that we are definitely on and it's for us it's not only about like a player to have like that he is able to decide if he will he will

pay or not or he will kind of pay us with with ads it's about like uh gaining some sort of advantage for him so so he's like on it like he will decide he he will either pay us or he'll pay us and to watch some some ads so it's like uh we do have this this approach that it's allowed for all players like uh players and non-players and they are like having the huge advantage from from ads even if they are like paying paying users alex and what are your thoughts yeah so i think it's interesting because we're asking right what's the direction and will players have more experience but i think it depends a lot on where the developers from and where their players are from whether or not this is really the direction that we're going to go so for example i work with a lot of developers from pakistan southeast asia their players are also from that region economically

it makes sense to focus only on ad monetization because that's going to be the easiest thing for them to build and also for their players to access they may not have the resources invest in iap or subscription they may not have the bandwidth for different ad types they may need something simple right and i think as we look at the the rest of the world kind of playing catch up with those who have been developing for longer what we're seeing is that it's kind of more standard banners interstitials easy to use easy to access on a low bandwidth connection are still the things that are making the most sense for these kind of developers developers who have more resources or more time perhaps there uh they have more experience they may be experimenting towards giving players multiple choices with their ad monetization experience but yeah it really depends on the region and the type of players you're going after so i

think it'll be really interesting to see how we as an industry identify hey this person or this developer it makes sense for them to move into a broader uh ad monetization strategy that includes different different types of monetization it makes sense for their players right it's going to vary a lot yeah perfect thank you alex i'm i'm going to come to you in a second chris i just want to follow up on one topic there which is um is it possible therefore to to have developers and publishers monetizing the same game differently and based on region and based on audience or is that not something that we're seeing out there and i open this up to anyone and oh yeah actually i'll let somebody else take this first okay tanya is that something you can maybe shed some light on yeah i mean i think it's i i can't say it's like a common strategy in the market now but i do see

this you know becoming more and more common in the future especially if publishers are talking about their global strategy and then you know it's global but then localization actually plays a very important little role in the in the globalization or strategy like we actually did a research not too long ago and we we found actually i'm on the top grassy sorry i have to apologize to the light because it's motion control that i have to keep moving that's okay you're the only one being eco-friendly here so really yes usually becoming really great so and then yeah back back to the topic so so we did a study a couple of uh a month ago and then we found actually among the top rossing games in the u.s compared to china so among the top 200 games in the us around 60 percent actually adopt hybrid monetization and in china it's only around 30 percent so like also we are seeing the similar pattern in japan you know china and japan with very high our pool uh

uh games so like you know publishers try to retain their gamers in the portfolio and they don't want to show ads to their super valuable uh consumers so like on that side like a lot of japanese and chinese games are actually using brand activation or brand injection to monetize their players or non-paying players but then for you know more less uh you know or lower our countries like even in the west like the us and and and europe like hybrid monetization especially ia is more common than in china or japan that's fantastic thank you thank you really really great insight and and kristin you know to go back to the topic of personalization but do feel free to to dip into the regionalization as well um i mean you guys are it's it's almost designed specifically to enhance the player experience it's with yeah it's tough for me to to add much to what uh anton and alex in particular had said

and i think something that you said alex resonated with me but just taking that step back real quick um you know before the call uh before the start of uh tianyi and mikhail and i were talking about audiobooks and audiobooks we listened to and some of you may know i worked for paramount pictures for a number of years in asia leading the digital distribution team out there and i think gaming is unique and we need to keep that in mind gaming is unique unlike any other form of digital entertainment where personalization is kind of built into the game experience and whether that's you know the typical examples of gta 5 and you'll be able to change the radio on your in your car or uh any kind of sports game where you get to change the the look of your team the the the the jerseys that the avatars are wearing et cetera and so i think that um that rewarded nature something we we should be embracing sorry that um that personalized nature is something we should be uh embracing more and rewarded probably was kind of version 1.0 of that this is kind of the push and pull of this where the pull is allowing

allowing the players and this is where you i think what really resonates to be out is what you said we're allowing the players to have some some control over their game experience they can choose they want to watch a rewarded video or not and then i guess the the push side of this of course is the the flexibility and freedoms that all these different monetization types allow game developers to uh to experiment with as well so that's the other side of of giving um you know rather than personalization maybe kind of think about it from a control perspective and giving more control both to the players and to the game developers as to opening up that game experience and we're going we're going to come back to that because i think there's a there's a really big um discussion point around the whole design development process and where this fits in but just very quickly before we move on um two two additional uh you know areas of potential revenue one is data in terms of uh accessing using harvesting you know the use of data players data with third

parties given a lot of the changes in legislation that we've seen in the app stores do any of the panel feel that this is this is a viable ongoing revenue stream or do you think it's going to be locked down ever more tightly and i'm just throwing that out to anyone who wants to pick that one up i can pick that up yes please the silence was just happening yeah so basically as i mentioned we are using the uh rewarded survey so basically we are kind of selling our users data to a third party uh and basically it's it's working and it's it's working uh from my perspective you need to figure out it and a b test definitely but uh it's it's viable because as you know the offer wall on ios is not working at all basically so so uh yeah surveys are definitely for some countries uh are viable available option

thank you and and this next one just again very briefly i guess for you alex um and it's only because we actually did a piece about you one a couple of days ago and about um some of the brands and games and specifically you recently dropped uh transformers into one of the big games i believe in china um and so is is in game um product placement branding is this something that the majority of developers and publishers can look for is or is this reserved for the top tier the triple a if you will right now i think it's reserved for larger developers for sure i think that in order to do brand injection you have to ask yourself an important question is your audience big enough for you to make this investment do you have enough recurring revenue is it going to resonate with that audience sometimes what we see is that with these smaller indie developers the very thing that draws players to their game is actually that is something new something different right and i think that adding

a brand to your game if you're if you're not even you don't have the audience to support it or you don't have uh you have something unique about your game actually might dilute the experience or make it more challenging for you to develop your own unique voice so that's my take on it at the moment we'll see as the time evolves and there might also be interesting opportunities for us to pick indie brands right smaller brands that are have a rabid fan base and then start injecting those into other indie brands and seeing in a whole new way of brands and games playing out not just these large names that we all know globally yeah can you just very briefly again um you know from newsu's perspective are you seeing more interest more engagement from brands and marketing agencies are or are they still keeping games at arm's length well definitely a lot more interest over the past few years i think

most like mainstream brands were looking at esports uh but now that the interest is really coming to games and mobile's games particularly because mobile gaming has very wide audience reach with the diverse demographics so it's really uh you know of course it's still at very early stage and a lot of brands they they still kind of trust traditional uh uh marketing uh so there's still still lots you know education or stuff to do in the market for for them to get get involved but definitely lots lots of interest and then you know you've seen some unbelievable collaborations between like luxury brands and the shooter games you never thought about it before but you know the collaboration went really well so uh very interesting uh space to explore for sure fantastic thank you now i want to actually move on to a topic that we has been mentioned several times which is design and development and kristin you made the point uh just a couple of

minutes ago very very clearly which is about giving developers more control over the the monetization issues and obviously you know you've worked in game development publishing in the past and so is is this are we at the point now where developers can be an awful lot more um picky can this be a far more of a design issue rather than we've got to make money somehow let's just throw in the the usual um you know revenue streams yeah and i'm gonna do i'm gonna cheat and go back to the the previous question real quickly because i thought that was a please no event there um which shows we all have different views on on the world here this is this is the awesome thing about how how um how huge mobile gaming has become um you know many of us can remember and some of us still do uh these very highly integrated um brand and game um integrations you know where it's it's a brand new game basically and that that's one end of the scale um i think the the brand injections that yoda one do are

really cool and as you said outside they require a certain amount of scale um continue what you're saying about brands looking at the space now is is very true i think where where our vision for adidmo is is to is to kind of democratize some of that um that that brand and game interaction um so that in in you know in theory any brand could have um have interactions with game players and any game whether it says you set outs whether it's an indie game all the way up to a super aaa title um could can have access to to monetization through branding so that's um you know i think that's where we see the world but this is i think it's like i said it says something about the um about the space we're in is that all of these are probably accurate and and have uh validity um to the game design part of it then and and that kind of leads into how we look at game design uh from our perspective you know the ad the atomo in gameplay ad units are we've erred on the side of trying to make them um

fairly generic is the wrong word but utilizable in in lots of different game styles game types as opposed to say a very bespoke brand integration um and there is there's this ongoing tension which i think anton and mikhail in particular can talk to all the uh of between the the product team and the design team in in in in publishers and developers it's it's attention that always exists and and quite rightfully so um you know the monetization team and the um sorry it doesn't depend the most station team in the in the product team um and this this tension is a is is absolutely required to create both a good game and a game that makes money um and and i think the you know where we see this this starting to to to open up a bit for the the world that we touch with it within game advertising is you know many of the games that we work with today oftentimes have already been out there uh you know the launch their their soft launch their uh their games are live and

you know we work with the monetization managers to to layer on the these in-game advertising what's really cool is we're starting with um with our own in-house uh game design team to talk to developers and publishers during the gdd phase and actually talk to the product team and design teams and figure out how to how to make these uh these non-interrupted ad units part of the the experience from the start and inherent to the experience as as opposed to something that's layered on which is oftentimes the way that you know video ads have been layered on it's right we'll stick those in at natural kind of break points and that kind of fits into again hopefully not stealing your thunder on this one brian uh referring back to another one of the pocket gamer uh stats uh from the survey was i think it was uh around about 40 40 percent of all devs felt that um the ball developers felt that um the the ad units that didn't break immersion game immersion was the most critical uh design requirement for them

and so um i guess you could argue that banner ads to some degree don't really break immersion just at the bottom of the topic so as long as you don't click on it then it's you're not breaking the immersion that's the um i think this is where we get excited now is to say okay let's let's get into that earlier phase and work with the game designers to to build games around these new types of monetization as opposed to again just stacking it on top of a an existing game type now i think there's a couple of very very interesting points there again thank you it's i was going to um bring up the the developer survey and the fact that developers are are looking for that um non-intrusive kind of experience and and keeping the consistent experience for the player but where how do we balance this tension because anton mchale michael a for you guys specifically is it now possible for game designers and developers to to create an entire game a commercially successful game or do the business team need to be involved

should the business team be involved and at what point should they get involved uh so i'll i'll come to you first mikhail if i may absolutely uh well i think that from my perspective it's it's definitely good uh to have like this ongoing conversation between like product and monetization and uh from the early early stage uh and as early as possible because both of us are on the different fields of expertise and i think it's really important to educate the game designers about like new types of ads new types of revenue stream that could be used and just to educate it educate them uh at some some level that they will be like when they will be creating that game and thinking about that they will be they do have this knowledge and uh i think that game designers are like i are the best in terms of creating

those sweet spots where the the ad and or ad format and specific ad format or some sort of uh monetization will work really really best in their game basically i beg your pardon alex i see you've got your hand up i'm going to come to you in a second but antoine can we can we hear from you first sure so as i said uh before monetization is uh is always a design factor so um you have to uh create the game uh thinking about how people are going to interact with them and how they're going to invest their time or money into the game to uh progress over time uh to come back to the game et cetera et cetera and um talking about the uh the business and and the design so we as a publisher we

act as as as the business side of things and and we also act as a producer side of things so we always uh coach our developers on how to think about ad monetization specifically and um and what are the key success factors here in terms of uh how to mix interstitial ads and rewarded ads what kind of products we're expecting if we're talking about rewarded ad based uh games only with no uh interstitial intrusion now we're starting to introduce in play ads as as an additional way to monetize monetize the the existing audience without um actually interrupting the gameplay so now our teams are actually aware of this monetization method and their

start and they start thinking about uh their games from a different perspective now so we actually have a couple of uh products that have just started working on their new games thinking about oh this is how we're gonna have this this banner in the game so we're gonna see these brands um uh with with uh with a certain technology used for example with edmo um particular so um so yeah we think about uh design uh and monetization in parallel we never think about designing the game and then figuring out how we're going to monetize it yeah that and to me that makes perfect sense but again to go back to our developer survey that there seemed to be an awful lot of studios out there presumably the lower end of the market who are um operating on very slim if any budgets and it still seems to be very much about

making the game if i'm if we make it as good as we possibly can then we're golden and i'm going to come back to that in a second um alex you had your hand up so what were you what were you about to see yeah so it's interesting speaking of that that part of the survey and also that part of the market i think that one of the things that's implicit bias in this question is that there are product teams or monetization teams with some of these developers right i mean i speak with developers every day who are individuals or perhaps one two people there's no team right and yeah for them game design is important but what's also really important is making a living and surviving right so end of day i think that a lot of times what you see in this part of the market is that hey what's gonna work right what's gonna get us enough budget to build our next two three four games and then honestly

there's also a segment of the market that doesn't really care i mean it's very interesting right you look at uh south and southeast asia you have some developers that will literally scrape the web uh and they'll look at the top games on the app store or the play store and their goal is to just copy as many of those games as possible we affectionately call these guys corey the copiers right they exist for the purpose of trying to make a living and then perhaps spread that to their communities and hire developers in order to bring more people uh up economically and so for them it's a very low priority to say hey i want to focus on game design the priority is i want to make money right and i want to make money with as many game properties possible so i think when we talk about this it's important to remember that the the bottom of the market needs to survive first and then thrive whereas perhaps some of the developers who are in the survey on the higher end they're able to

experiment with this and even have the concept between design my favorite thing is to find someone who's never ever even gone to game design school or anything and just happened to pick up cordova or unity and play around with it and then manage to strike gold because that's where things are really cool in the market but for those guys thinking about anything other than surviving is usually a bit tricky right and uh that's the that's the market that we see as growing and developing fastest in the next couple of years interesting interesting you were you were you were nodding along there is is this something that you're getting a kind of a perspective on from new zoo well i i i just found out what alex has said it's really super interesting like about these emerging markets etc so yeah i don't really have something to add on but i just found it really interesting and uh yeah i do see that trend as well because uh you know i i come from china and i i saw this in china a couple of

years ago was exactly the same and now china is more like a matured mobile gaming market and the trend is expanding to other you know emerging markets fantastic that's antoine yes you want to jump in no i just yeah i just wanted to add something that uh i i don't like you with alex with what he said uh and uh we're experts in ad monetization in particular [Music] a business model called hyper casual so this is how we became successful as a company as a publisher by by launching ads based games with as alex said um smaller teams right so um we do we do have teams that we work with uh from southeast asia for example we have a team from bangladesh and um and there are lots of those smaller teams who thrive just because the ad

monetization exists so uh so when um the market became mature enough and there were enough um there were enough uh games and and the audience that were playing those games on the one hand on the other hand there were enough uh companies that would invest their marketing money into uh in-game uh interstitial rewarded theirs or any kind of ads so that big that created the whole ecosystem a whole new market potential uh worth of billions of dollars where um where smaller teams uh became prominent game developers so you don't need to have a hundred a hundred team of people to create a triple a uh enough based products over several years and with millions of dollars budgets now you can uh create a simple enough

hyper-casual game with with a simple with a simple core mechanic that that is sticky enough uh for you to have a positive roi on your marketing spend and since since the game is is tailored for the for the broadest possible audience so for it any hyper casual game is is built for the wide audience with no uh separation between uh gender or age or um or even uh geographically geographical so all the games that global and taylor would be for the widest possible audience so that created an opportunity for lots of smaller teams out there to actually um uh create uh very successful games and become very successful that's fantastic anton and a a very good point very well made um now i'm conscious that time is marching on so i'm going to keep us moving forward so

to pick up on the the point that we've just been discussing is it is it possible to change your monetization mix is it possible to introduce new monetization methods after launch i mean kristin obviously you can do non-interruptive stuff yes i'm i'm assuming works um flawlessly but is it possible to combine other models and and mix and match once people are actually playing it and this is open to anybody in the panel who would like to pick up yeah i'll start but i think i i do think the um the you know anton alex and uh and mikhail probably have have more uh more valid uh input on this the um as i said we we work with a number of game developers i think that was also alex what you mentioned and uh anton you picked up on uh the thing we have to keep in mind is there is this when we talk about game developers that's that's a variety right it is from one person in the garage to uh to a team of 100 plus um and we work with a number of them that the the add in monetization uh after the

fact that an in-game uh in game play at mo style adam um monetization after the fact so it's absolutely doable um and i think some some games lend themselves some game styles lend themselves more to that than others and as i said really i think you know where our vision is is to get earlier in that process but you can you can certainly uh from our experience anyways we've we've seen game developers quite successfully add in uh in game play monetization to existing live games and seeing uh incremental non-cannibalizing revenue as an outcome of that uh you know this is a you know certainly our our dream as adam oh and apologies on this uh uh for you alex our dream is of course to eventually get rid of all those video ads and banner ads but the reality is they exist they will continue to exist and reward the video and there's a good reason for these and rewarded surveys a good reason for them to exist in the right game styles but um be able to easily and i think that's the critical part of this is how easy do you make it as a um as a monetization platform from our

perspective to to to to do that is is gonna be critical to that adoption fantastic kristin thank you very much uh i'm i'm throwing this open to the rest of the panel it's would anyone else like to jump in on this before we march swiftly onwards maybe i can i can add something basically yeah basically we we did basically this so with uh for example diggy's adventure when we launched it on mobile it was like uh strictly in-app purchase oriented and then we uh slightly step by step uh carefully and maybe test by av testing we added the amortization to it and now uh the ads are doing somewhere around 35 percent of the of the revenue of it so it was something that it's definitely possible and you just need to take like step by step and step by step and absolutely uh bring some value to the player and they will be happy to jump on

admiration as well fantastic mikael thank you and i'm going to keep us moving on again and so so one question i would like to ask which i'm sure is relevant to pretty much everyone out in the audience is how do we measure success in in a monetization mix is it lifetime value is it arpu is it art dao you know what what is it that we should be looking for is it great reviews customer satisfaction one some or all of the above and okay i'm going to pick on somebody antoine yeah let's come to you first yeah uh success is measured by uh profits so um and it's it's and and there are lots of lots of factors that uh make a game uh profitable or not profitable right so and and talking about uh the actual product metrics it's also combination of factors

um such as i don't know uh stickiness what's your attention what's what's what's your ltv we're talking about ltv we are talking about monetization obviously and how exactly you're going to monetize your audience uh how big of a game this is in terms of uh how much content there is in the game uh will players stick around for enough time to actually for you uh to uh to change the uh the ltv curve in order to uh take to to to extend the the time period on where you're actually going to reach the uh the splat the flattened uh curve uh in terms of your um your added uh our pool for the for the average chooser and uh what we're seeing is um every game is different and um it's very as i said before it's very very important to think about how exactly you're going to monetize and

what kind of game or product you're building from from the monetization point of view and then it's very important to a b test and iterate and iterate and iterate during all the um all the different uh uh uh stages of the game development uh and um for example we've seen uh a various um examples of uh how different monetization methods work together or how do they contradict one each other for example interstitial ads uh will hurt your enough monetization so the paid the paying audience will absolutely leave your game uh if you're if you're going to bombard them with with the interstitial ads okay so um and and on the other hand you can you can add uh other monetization methods for the entire audience that plays the game not only the paying audience and that is the rewarded ads that is the

in-play ads and and other specific type type of type of types of monetization that is uh that is specific for your actual product now that's interesting so can i ask and again this is this is open to anyone are there particular monetization types that that simply don't work with particular genres yeah um so um particular genres um i i don't i don't think there are um there are genres that that don't work with ads i just think there are many there are user acquisition strategies that may not necessarily work with ads as a monetization method because if we're talking about ads and ads will most likely affect your key product metrics uh and they adds in general intrusive as they don't help your attention yeah and uh when and when we were

talking about user acquisition for some prominent genres such as match three for example we were talking about very high uh user acquisition costs that uh that a big publisher may not necessarily recoup within a year of operating a game for a particular uh cohort of users acquired on a day x for example so so for them it's it's going to be very dangerous to introduce any monetization type that is going to be is going to be intrusive and will churn the the user base so their their job is to keep the the active user base for as long as possible so they actually can recoup those costs with with the would be uh with the in-up spend um so the the point is you you have to think about all these things all together including the ua strategy uh when thinking about what magnetization types you're going to adopt with your product fantastic thank you very much anton and alex you had your hand up briefly or

were you was it a wave no that was uh that was to get your attention so thanks for that yeah i was thinking about this question definitions of success before this call and i would say that it's very interesting because for as many developers as there are out there in the world there are different variations on the definition of success right um we i mentioned earlier this idea that there's developers out there we call them core and copiers who they just copy games for them it's revenue no doubt and to be honest with you it's not even they don't even look too deep into the metrics they're interested in ecpm so seeing a high ecpm translates to success because they know they'll be able to monetize their volume of games however for some developers it's not just about money everybody loves money it's important right but for some developers it's about acclaim it's about being the most loved game or the game that everybody comments on reddit as being a great experience

overall there's one developer in particular we're working with right now for whom that's been extremely important more so than maximizing his own revenue uh for others it's about uh getting published and then getting your name out there so that's similar to claim but certainly getting that that guidance to grow in the industry so i think success really varies and that's what's cool too is that when we think about these different monetization strategies naturally over time certain types of developers will gravitate towards certain types of ad monetization strategies even at the uh at the very low end of the market depending on how they define success so i think we have a great case where we worked with admo with one of our developers vulcron from canada right these are two guys who started their game studio out of college and i think from talking with them their definition of success was certainly to make a living but also to make a great player experience and for them in game uh

non-intrusive ads with admob were a perfect fit right they started with yoda one and then grew to a point where that made sense logically so yeah brian i i think you're speaking in your own mute though that's okay i have a small child in the background who's just found a whistle so you know it wasn't directed at you alex okay cool yeah but that's what i would say right is the definitions of success also drive adoption of different monetization strategies and that's where we see in the next you know three to five years a lot of this collaboration across different monetization processes happening right is uh and why it's a company like yoda one and admob actually can make a great team a hand across the ocean mr rivers it's i hope you're listening i'd like to hear that we're down to the last few minutes folks um and and we've got three questions coming in from the audience and i want to throw into this mix um i think quite a few of them are

focused more and less on eucharist and so um the adoption of non-intrusive ad formats um how is it going yeah i mean obviously it's doing awesome right um this is this is this is why we're here talking to you in fact we have you know between um the the panelists here we have uh games live with um with some of the panelists here even as alex mentioned yeah it's as i said at the start it's um we're super pleased i think it's a um the time has come together through both uh the brand's interest in in gaming uh game developers and publishers interested in trying new monetization formats the the devices you know the device part of us as well and they're powerful enough and have been for last few years that we could now put you know animated ads into a 3d game environment without in general impacting the um the performance of the of the game with with the atomo sdk so yeah we you know we're we're certainly pleased with it uh we see lots of of runway for us um

and you know we certainly hope this is a positive uh for the game industry as well fabulous okay two more quick questions um from the uh the panel um so how are the fill rates in tier three uh regions like brazil for non-intrusive ad formats again i guess this is yours kristen and maybe you i'll start with this but alex may alex or somebody else may have some comments here as well and anton uh you know say games have already put adamo into one of uh one of their games they may have some comments too um you know i think what we see is to to alex's comment earlier cpms are lower uh in tier three countries as you would expect with just following advertising in general um but we we spent a lot of effort ensuring our sdk as i think i mentioned earlier that it works really well on low end devices so we wind up having a lot of games live in tier three markets and we wind up getting a lot of traffic in those markets too so we wind up monetizing uh well in those places so you know certainly happy something to take

offline i don't want to get too see here but it's um we think that's one of the nice things about the the in-game advertising the gameplay ads is they they do work in in tier three markets as well fantastic and and uh the final one from the audience that we have had in um and i'm going to throw this over to everyone but i think given the time thumbs up and thumbs down what are the panel's thoughts on non-intrusive audio ads in-game big yes whatever maybe or is it something that you are going to be exploring right i'll jump in here and i see how it's going to be as well it's it's not it's not some software comes down for me look i i'm really pleased to see lots of other non-intrusive style of ads um you know we have video ads yeah which is basically audio plus video um i don't think there's a i don't think it's a yes or no like in gameplay like any type of advertising um it um it needs to match to the game that would be my view on it and in some ways it can match really well fabulous okay so um we've covered a lot

of ground this afternoon and and we just before we wrap up um we've talked about uh you know um non-intrusive ads we've talked about uh rewarded surveys rewarded video interstitial video banners etc what is out there on the horizon where are we now seeing you know new monetization and revenue streams coming in what what's what should people be looking out for over the rest of 2021 and indeed into 2022 alex let's start with you yeah so i think that perhaps we will see an increase in developers looking outside of their games themselves and into you know alternative ways of monetizing their property as a brand right i earlier mentioned this idea that indie developers have their own brands right if you've got a million people playing your game around the world you've got a brand and you've got characters that you can monetize i think we will see an increase in interest in

taking these online or in-game characters and in-game brands and turning them into offline you know interactive merchandise or other properties that developers can use outside of the game space and i'm very excited for this because i think it's a huge opportunity not only for for the game for the developers but also for the players to get deeper in the experience of the game themselves i'm going to stop you there alex thank you mikhail yeah basically for us for the for the next year the the biggest challenge and uh the thing that that we definitely do work on harder and harder is like the segmentation uh to kind of approach every single segment that we will be able to identify as less as viable for any any kind of ad format and form of

monetization and try to squeeze it out wonderful thank you tianyi uh yeah i think for uh next year like with the trend of malavers or you know social games i think brand activation is definitely a direction to look into uh because of social games you know you you need to have like real life brands injected in the in the game to make it real etc like connected to real life so i like that's what we think is going to be another big hit in the market wonderful thank you uh antoine for us uh a mixed monetization approach is is a key driver of growth at the moment and we will we think that is going to be a uh a very big part of um of what's what's driving the industry forward um uh within the next uh year or two um it it was um for the last few years it was um

it was kind of separated the enough in the business and ads business administration business or uh kind of development the product approach the marketing approach they were kind of very different uh and now we're seeing that more and more enough based products utilize ads and more and more advantization uh publishers and developers start to utilize enough uh in-app purchases in their products so it it kind of gets all mixed together now and uh market is becoming uh mature because of that that's fantastic anton thank you and then the final word has to go to you mr rivers uh um thank you um i wanted to so first of all sorry apologies uh tiny you've got your light flashing off on your side i've got my light flashing off online so between the two of us here um the i really liked what you said alex about um about um

branding and you know every game has a brand now you know i think seriously and um and rovio you know proven that as a game developers game culture you can you can turn your your ip into into a world-renowned brand and and then the other side of that that we you know we would like us adamo to be a part of uh looking forward for to help game developers is gonna sign this which is to to bring the brands other people's brands into the games and whether that's from the animal side or you know as you guys do at yoda1 alex with um with brand injection i think giving any any game developer not just the opportunity to expect to expose their brand out to the world but also to have lots of brands come into world recognized brands come into their game is uh something that we're wanting to do fantastic it's we've got a plea from the audience uh there's one question which is um is there any minimum deu requirements for non-intrusive ads and he said very quickly he's in caps so he must really mean the answer is no uh reach out to the animal team separately and we're happy to talk to you

perfect and on that happy customer note i think we must bring the events of this afternoon to a close thank you all so very very much for joining us uh christian for putting all of this together tianyi mikhail alex and anton it has been fantastic i really appreciate your time some fantastic insight and from all of you as always we barely scratch the surface before we have to move on i think there's an entire event that we could be uh staging an idea for this new media team around and about a monetization and revenue streams because it is changing so quickly and the options are so vast um it just remains for me to say thank you again um please do check out the developer survey that steel media put together earlier this this quarter uh sponsored by adimo it has a lot of insight from developers and publishers across the whole of the industry it's very very well worth the look and looking at everything from the types of game the genres the audiences and of

course monetization it's um absolutely worth your time uh ladies and gentlemen thank you so much it has been a real pleasure to cheer you thank you for making it such an easy and fascinating panel i appreciate your time and i look forward to talking to you all again if not online then maybe in the real world at some point soon so thanks everybody for tuning in and we'll catch you again at some point shortly bye everyone thanks bye bye