Why Rewarded UA Is Built for Indie Studios

first ever Al Media Summit and Eric a great time to connect with you because I remember your presentation at the UA society and we were talking about oh rewarded it it's coming well it has arrived so first of all I guess you feel like yes and I was in there on the ground floor
the last kind of two years which actually isn't that long in the space of rewarded but probably of our budget that has been in the space during that time is probably significantly above average.
I mean kind of happy that it's becoming more and more mainstream. At the same time, it's just more competition for us in a way. I would, you know, it would be great if everyone just
kept quiet about it and let us get on with it. But but yeah, I think it's
it's exciting to see how much adoption there is. I think there's a lot of growth potential in the space still. like it's there's so much opportunity for both publishers and users, which is it's nice when everyone can win. For games like ours in Merge 2, it just the

kind of linear level progression just works so well with the kind of reward structures
and also as a smaller studio, I mean, super solid. Tell us a little bit about where you are in your rewarded journey because you started out early and you're progressing more and I remember last night at dinner you said something that just struck me which was like you know it is made for indies and small studios. What did you mean by that? You see there's kind of this like best practice process of launching games that goes back to kind of pre pre IDFA where you you know you launch a game start applovin start Facebook start Unity start Mob
and I'm not necessarily saying it's wrong but it's super competitive I guess if we in Merge 2 go and do that which we actually did do that when we launched the game we're fighting Gossip Harbor we're fighting Travel Town these kind of Goliaths of the space we say yes
the the costs are super high the return windows are super long when I speak to smaller studios about the UA strategy

I'm often
kind of nudging them towards rewarded
because of that long runway until you see the
precisely for for studios with like
smaller smaller budgets and who like super super conscious of cash flow the lower break evens that you can get on with the rewarded networks is just can be such a big advantage and I think for us that's one of the things that's working so well and it's why we're able to scale much faster than we might do on a a traditional performance network, should we say, where we even if maybe at day 720 the rowass is better.
We've spent two years suffering and waiting for that cash which for again a smaller studio is just a terrifying runway like you say.
Yeah, that's it. And we heard so much about different companies. Even the al media report, we're not doing a shameless plug, but there is a report out with some great numbers. You know, 61%

62% are saying yes, you know, this is what I do and I'm going to do more of it. And we saw the numbers which I can't share. Al Media is sharing the spending as well. Some massive numbers there. Um, where do you take it next? Because it's not just going to be about the spend, it's going to be about the segmentation. I'm hearing that that's going to be the next strategic step because as you said yourself, everyone's in on it. So, how do you continue to excel and succeed and grow?
There's a lot of opportunities within segmentation. There's the there's firstly just should you segment your rewarded users and handle them in a specific way. The answer to that one I would say is is should is basically a definite yes. I mean, the intent of those users is so much different to the intent of an organic user or a user acquired from a video network that
there's probably a better treatment than your default balancing.
Yeah,
they are much more likely to retain. They're much less likely to leave the game if they see an ad because
we know they're incentivized to play for

rewards. They're probably not going to leave the game if you show them a few ads.
True. Um, and also in in a lot of cases they're more incentivized to spend, especially if you present them an offer which will clearly speed up their progression towards rewards.
Mhm.
So I think the the answer to should you be doing segmentation for rewarded is yes.
And then I think the kind of advanced step beyond that is within rewarded there's a lot of variation network to network.
There are networks who maybe are further along the process. I guess our media with free cashache being an example with their max rows product already doing kind of
they're already handling some of the segmentation for you in terms of the bids are different per user the rewards are different per user
um but you can still react to that yourself by identifying who are the big spenders who are the who are the people just playing for rewards. Maybe those guys you should show more ads to. They're probably not going to spend.
Yeah. Yeah.
Um, and but then there are some who are just much further behind free cache who if you're doing static CPIs, you're the kind of you're paying the same price for

a huge variety of user quality and
it's too broad too broad of a
Yeah, exactly. It it starts to become scary to handle them all the same. And
yeah,
I mean, I know a lot of games may have existing segmentation, but I think especially if you're using segmentation models which require
seven days of data or 14 days of data to start nudging people, that's probably not going to work very well in rewarded where
yeah,
you are you're packing so much of the action into the first one to three months in a lot of cases. Yeah, we also heard in the presentation, the panel with Mate, I was intrigued thinking about all the ways that this can progress and evolve, talking about things like, okay, when you have rewards and you know your segmentation, you can ask sponsors in in a very interesting way that I think for small studios might be an exciting way to go sort of beyond games and be more into into commerce or am I reading that wrong? I think that's probably very like a game a gametoame

specific question on how well they can handle them.
But I I guess there's
ad inventory being sold in games and because because I think as you mentioned to me yesterday the intent of users who are playing games is so high like they're so engaged.
Yes.
Whereas they might not be engaged in traditional media or
even social media platforms. So there is definitely an opportunity and I guess link is an example of where they're looking to bring more um of the whole lifestyle into the product and I kind of would be surprised if that doesn't become more and more ingrained in the game itself in the future.
Yeah. And we're referring to the stats that are that are out there multiple times for attention metrics which fascinated me. Makes sense. You know people started out saying yeah spend in social but then the data shows that that's scrolling. That means I've got eyeballs, but I don't really have attention. I don't have focus. Focus is on the games.
Yeah. Please come and buy ad inventory in [laughter] in cook and merge instead

of on TV.
There you go. There. That's the message.
Just put that in as we'll keep that. We're keeping it. We're keeping [laughter] it because it is true. It is a multimedia. I'm I'm telling people, don't think of it as games. It is a medium. If you say you're going to spend on, you know, old media or you're going to spend on um CTV or, you know, that the audiences, where are the audiences? They're in games. So, yes, do spend on his inventory. Did I say that? Your inventory. Yes, of course. Eric, it's been fun. And we're going to have an encore because we're going to go back into your presentation from two years ago at the UA Society. Was it
like 18 months? I think it was.
Yeah, indeed. and uh and I want a refresh, but um something you can tell us, something you can tease us, a reason to tune in when that podcast is that far along. What are you going to share? What's exciting?
Well, I think my the talk the title of my UA society talk was something like 50,000 to 250,000 on rewarded UA
and if we were doing it again, the

number would now be much much higher than that. We've done that kind of that level of growth again. So I think there's a lot of interesting lessons there were there were a lot of interesting lessons in starting rewarded UA and getting that first couple of hundred thousand and then there's a lot more interesting and probably more complicated stuff that happens getting from
low six figures into the kind of uh scary seven figure territory and a lot of different networks work a lot scaling network to network is very different. Um, the reward structure implications are also very different, especially on some of the um, less mature networks. That's what I'm going to
Excellent. And you're going to share them with me. I'm so touched. A couple.
Yeah, a couple. A couple. You're so candid, Eric. We're having such fun. I look forward to it. And until then, have a great summer. Yes, you do. [music]