Casual connect 2015 summary

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Casual Connect 2015 8/11-13 Summary by Kiyat Games

Transcript of Casual connect 2015 summary

Page 1: Casual connect 2015 summary

Casual Connect 20158/11-13

Summary by Kiyat Games

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Outline

1. Day 1a. Finding Success in the Next Generation of Mobile Game Publishingb. Apponomicsc. Publishing in Chinad. How to create a chart-busting game

2. Day 2a. Smarter Monetizationb. Advertising User Manualc. What does "Good" even mean anymore?d. Mobile Monetization Dilemma : Key Considerations for Buying or Building a

Monetization Platform In-Housee. Data Tracking: What to Track? How to Use it?

3. Day 3a. Navigating the $18B Mobile Advertising Industryb. Mobile Advertising in TVc. Optimizing User Acquisitiond. South Korea : The Lastest Learnings from One of Asia's Powerhouse Markets

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1. Day 1

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Finding Success in the Next Generation of Mobile Game Publishing(FunPlus, Chillingo, AppAnnie, Spil Games, Tencent, CGA)

- Tencent is more content-driven than data-driven when selecting new games.

- US market no longer strongest, China now strongest and other Asian markets rising.

- Production and community service are two crucial aspects in live ops. (chillingo)

- Track record is important for publishers. Failure is pervasive and frequent in publishing business.

- Decide first at which point you're going to stop supporting the game. (data wise)

- Both dev and pub have to be in clear agreement in the goals, success criteria, and failure criteria.

- Cross promotion in f2p in non-action moment result in organic network and higher clickthrough rate. Many times it's better than paid ad promotion.

- TV advertisement for smaller studio? it's all about scale and price. utilize smaller channels and targeted channels. TV ad really works if you know how to use it.

- Why does inde dev need publishers if the game is good and dev already has investment? Look at the long run! It's not just about UA, you will need live ops and community management, monetization, retention etc. Publishers can help you scale if your game is successful. Preparing for success and maintain the growth.

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Apponomics(Itay Rokni, StartApp, CRO)

- US mobile game revenue consists of 60% ad revenue and 40% IAP revenue.

- Future is hybrid. Even hardcore games will need to start creating ad revenue.

- Banner ad is old. It's all about interstitial, native, and video ads now.

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Publishing in China(Spellgun, ZQ Games, R2 Games, Perfect World, DDM)

- Start with a game that was successful in the local market.

- 200 plus channels in China. Only 2 in US, google play and appstore.

- China is already saturated with good quality mobile games.

- Elective control (automatic battle) is strong in China.

- Platforms take about 60 to 70% of revenue in China. Publisher and developers take the rest 30%.

- Things to look for : Team leadership & team track record, complexity of the game, innovative gameplay, provide some metrics, presentation and video need to be good, translations, benchmark BM.

- Unity preferred. Game size less than 50mb.

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How to create a chart-busting game(Glu, DeNA, Pocket Gems, AppLovin’)

- Who are the core audience and what are the key market?

- Successful game model plus strong IP is a formula for success.

- Marketing Strategy o Apple and Google promotion for first weeks, be sure servers are ready! o But the game needs to sustain itself! (LTV) o Large UA campaign and cross promotion o Pre-hyping the game is becoming available in US o Put focus on creative assets (screenshots, icons) but don’t waste too much resource o Test dramatically different looks for creative assets o Survival in the top rank -> Indepth economics and monetization.

- Be ready to scale up, or else your game will soon be taken down from the top ranking soon.

- 30 day retention over 12% is great. (according to DeNA)

- Long term retention is all about game design. The game needs to be fundamentally fun! Events, daily giveaways etc are for short term retention.

- Make a game that users are going to like. Listen to your users because you may be wrong.

- Target different level of users with different monetization strategy (casual vs. hardcore users). Numbers and metrics is crucial! Manage your monetizations down to hours and minutes.

- For modern users, 30min session per day is actually pretty great! people are busy! so maximize the game's excitement for first 30min per each session.

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2. Day 2

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Smarter Monetization(Alejandro Manchado, US Gaming Partnerships Lead, Google)

- AdMob - 650k apps, 200bn ad requests/mo, equal growth in aos and ios* Fully integrated with unity and coco

- $62bn by 2017, inapp advertising market size* Inapp ads will be bigger than IAP (it's already bigger in US and UK)

- Backflip - uses a combination of google dev products for both internal cross promotion and external paid advertising (one stop swiss army knife)

- 3 issue/challenges dev faces when monetizing* Know users (paying users vs nonpaying etc.)* How to adopt your strategies for each user* How to optimize and maximize the revenue

- Only 21% of dev use any kind of analytics solutions

- Treat different users differently (realize the full value of each user)1. Users who are likely to spend on IAP2. Users who click on ad3. Casual vs. highly-engaged users

- Cross-promo to high-value users & show paid ads to casual users

- TrueView Video > Interstitials > Banners (different engagement in ad formats)* Native ads are rising as the new player

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Advertising User Manual (1)(Hothead Games, Big Blue Bubble, MobilityWare, Rovio, HyprMX)

- Avoid exposing ads to new players in early stage - too disruptive for user experience. (Hothead)

- Incentive video ads - users that engage in this type of ads show higher retention.

- Wait and observe new users for a while, if they're non spender, start showing ads after when you think the player is invested in the game.

- 2-3 per day for non paying users would be suitable.

- Rovio is using a mixture of 16+ ad partners. (Adcolony, admob, applovin, chartboost, hyprmx, iAd, kiip, mopub, tapjoy, unityads)

- You will need a dedicated team for ad integration!

- 3rd party Mediation platform? (help you manage all different sdk) If you can do it internally, it's better.

- User segmentation is the way to go! Paid ad for nonpaying users. (age, gender, region etc.)* Users don't necessarily dislike ads. they just don't like seeing irrelevant ads.

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Advertising User Manual (2)(Hothead Games, Big Blue Bubble, MobilityWare, Rovio, HyprMX)

- 1 month non-paying users -> never likely to spend any money during lifecycle (aggressive ad)

- Allow directly competitive ads? (ie. rpg ad in rpg game)* How confident are you in your game quality? if you're the best in market and you can back it up, showing competitive ad should not impact you negatively.* Avoid showing competition in launch period

- Feel free to consult the ad partners for the type of ads and placement/moment for your ads. they are experts and have data from different games.

- Average US eCPM (cost for mile/thousand)s on ios?* Static interstitial (non rewarded) - $1 to 7* Rewarded video - $8 to 25

- iOS users on average are more engaged for rewarded video (25-40% better)

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What does "Good" even mean anymore?(Aaron Loeb, Head of NA Studios, Kabam)

- Common traits of successful games (kabam hyphothesis) - sophisticated* Better graphics (more demanding and savvy)* Varied gameplay (more than just one core gameplay)* Fun at any level of spending* Show high fidelity gameplay in the ad video!

- Users are sophisticated and have specific preference of genre and game style

- Users are aware of old f2p tropes, and they are skeptical of clones

- Spenders are protective of nonspenders (social & community experience)

- Community rejects obvious pay to win

- Users begin rejecting calculating tricks. Users show preference on theme, environment, long term engagement.

- Old monetizations tricks won't work anymore (make it interesting to spend money!)

- Game makers need to know and love f2p (because your players do)

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Mobile Monetization Dilemma : Key Considerations for Buying or Building a Monetization Platform In-House(Storm8, Wooga, FunPlus, Fyber, Mobile Marketing Master)

- Making platform in house is not hard, but once you start having large traffic and has higher demands for different types of ads, resources become exponentially greater. It's then better to outsource the platform and add a mediation layer.

- Treasure paying user data.

- BI (business intelligence) is the most integral part to consider for mediation service.

- Talk to many people to understand and validate each ad network and platform. There is no one best network at the moment, each service brings different benefits and pitfalls. Assess your own goals for each network. And lastly, test everything.

- Smaller studios... focus on making a great game. It doesn't matter whether you have mediation platform inhouse or outsourced if you have a bad game. Mediation, ads, and monetization should come after.

- Reward videos. Be careful when using this for high value players. These players don't care much for having 10 extra Gems when they have thousands of Gems already. It will only disrupt the user experience.

- Super important to track UA by cohort, yield, and long term value.

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Data Tracking: What to Track? How to Use it?(Tune, Kochava, Adjust, Appsflyer, Chartboost)

- Why do we still have so many attribution partners? Have we not solved attribution?* Basics are solved, but we're discovering deeper metrics and BIs.* Things are changing rapidly, and user behaviors are changing rapidly too.* There are better technologies being discovered everyday.

- Do inde's need to care about attribution and measurement?* Understanding audience and its behavior is crucial!* Inde's need it more than big publishers and devs (Kochava)* However, you don't need sophisticated metrics. Just need basic barebones* So you can just go with big platform analytic service (fb, google etc.)

- Nothing is organic. Your users were somehow influenced to get to your game. Do you know what influenced them? Are you tracking those media?

- How should decision making process look like in deciding attribution/lookback window? (1hr or 7day or 28day?)

* Depends on the type of app - hookup is fast, game is average (22hr), finance long* 7day last click attribution window is standard for Appsflyer* TUNE started with 3day, but 7day became industry standard.

- What piece of data we missing out?* Long cohort analysis* Rich inapp event/session analysis* Re-engagement and incrementality test

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3. Day 3

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Navigating the $18B Mobile Advertising Industry(Storm8, Gamevil, SEGA, Heyzap)

- IAB put out a new number for advertising this morning. as big as $30bn now.

- To maximize the benefits of ad network, your designer needs to stay with the network for every step. Implementing SDK is just the first step. If you want to control your ads and manage monetization, be tenacious with the ad network.

- Before deciding to buying/selling the ads, can you scale out the solution? Can you continue to support the system? Check your resources vs. opportunity cost.

- Try to get brand games to publish their ads to your games. Find a partner that has many brands inventory.

- eCPM is important, but you need to look at other metrics and aspects. Where are the users coming from? What's the fill? Are we getting high quality, brand advertisement?

- Key KPIs? You need to create what KPIs are important for your app.

- What's going to be the next trend? (Mediation seems to be the trend for now.) Brands integrating with mobile ads. Direct deals from mobile ads. More automation on mediation.

- Too many SDKs busting up the size of client. When do you say no more? It depends on your DAU. (ie. If under <50k, no point of having many number of SDKs but just focus on increasing DAU.)

- Storm8 received about 40% of new installs from ad networks. Killshot is about less than 20%. Both expect this rate to decrease in coming future as these studios are developing inhouse platforms.

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Mobile Advertising in TV(John Garguilo, SVP Biz Dev, BlueStacks)

- Puzzles & Dragon huge tv campaign in Japan 2013. Other big games are following the trend in Japan. (Candy crush etc.)

- 2014/15 : Everyone jumped in to tv commercial. ($210M market in 2015 so far)

- 4 benefits : Install lift, re-engagement (people coming back), lowers digital spend, branding/credibility (tv makes it legit!)

- Creative : many already has (video trailers for appstore etc.), don't restrict to gameplay.* CoC Liam commercial : 54m youtube views, 473k likes* Top ad agency (250k to 1M dollars)* Regional ad agency ($50k to $200) local focused* Animation ($1k to $10k) - good ones in latin american studio* Crowdsourcing (free)* Testing is important (fb, youtube etc.)

- Media* Large national media (really expensive, but great buying power)* Smaller local media (more personal, specialize in the market)* Use FB's Insights Tool to find your market

- Time PNs with TV commercial

- Huge opportunity in TV market now.

- Using celebrity? They are really expensive and not super efficient. Users will not be likely to say "i love the celebrity so much that i'm going to download the game."

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Optimizing User Acquisition(An Vu, UA Lead, Rovio)

- The core of UA : LTV > CPI* Both equations depend on cohorts & segments

- CPI = (CPM/1000) / CTR / IR* To lower CPI -> increase CTR and increase CVR

- CTR (ad creatives) : high quality art, videos > banners, CTA, characters/brand, gameplay, trendy

- CVR (meta product) : ASO- display related, icon, screenshots, ratings & reviews, video, description

- LTV = customer lifetime * monetization * k-factor* This is always prediction, a calculated prediction

- UA Team Build : data, creative, campaign management

- Starbucks test : provide a meaningful experience to the new user when a Starbucks barista is making the coffee (1 min)

- Good game design is more important than growth hacking. So make good game, make polished game.

- Reaching new audience - non gamers, celebrity/influencers

- TL:DR* Spend profitably & at scale to succeed* Have a kickass UA team* Increase your LTV through product design (good game!)* Decrease your CPI with better ads* No risks, no rewards in mobile games

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South Korea : The Lastest Learnings from One of Asia's Powerhouse Markets (1)(NCSoft, Smilegate, Gamevil USA)

- Current trends in Korean mobile market and specific titles?* Competition is greater than ever, and the pie is not getting larger at the same pace* Mobile studios are no longer nimble and agile - big team, longer dev period* Top 10 grossing take about 70% of the market share* Hardcore rpg games and users are comfortable with spending for IAP* Pay wall comes really early in Korea compared to western market, and users ok

- Kakao is becoming less relevant in the market, taking too much cut. Large publishers are looking for other partners (ie. naver) or self publish.

- Many small studios in Korea is skipping Korean market and move to foreign market because the competition is too steep, especially against giant publishers.

- Kakao is, however, still a great platform for instant UA jump if you're a small dev team without a strong reach to market.

- Marketing in Korea?* Traditional marketing very effective in Korea (billboards, tv, radio etc.)* Supercell started offline commercials, and many Korean devs follow.* Offline events, celebrity endorsement, pre-registeration* Online space is very crowded* Much like a movie industry, too fast to do KPI (CPI) analysis etc.* Increase in budget, challenging for small devs, need partners

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South Korea : The Lastest Learnings from One of Asia's Powerhouse Markets (2)(NCSoft, Smilegate, Gamevil USA)

- IPs in Korea* Future Fight, Guardians of Galaxy not as big as in US* Old pc gaming IP integrated in mobile game (MU Origin)* Using IP to lower UA cost

- Find a success in Korea first before moving into global market. Make a game that would work worldwide.

- How to make a good game for Korea?* Graphic and quality fidelity* Genre is very important (saturated with action rpg)* Either make a really creative unique game or action rpg with better graphic...?* Koreans very sensitive to trends n brand, so try to create a new trend and brand

- Bringing games from Western... what's good?* Auto battle widely popular in korea* Social features and social pressure* Different BMs - subscription, bundle items

- Partnership opportunity* Need both UA (distribution) and operation (live ops) partners* Adjust to Korean user behaviors (monetization, social etc.)* Localization & culturization

- Production cost is getting higher for Korean games : $ 3 to 5 m. Used to be $500k about 2 years ago. High fidelity games!

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