Key aspects for Mobile Game Growth in 2025: UA, speed, monetization & globalization with Airbridge

Players who are more likely to spend on IIP should see less ads.

What that used to look like before was you segmented it based on geographies, but now we're seeing more and more examples of more sophisticated studios actually segmenting and changing the gameplay experience for players based on what user acquisition campaign brought players.

So, what that looks like is that if we look at a game like Hexasaur.

It's 4 a.m.

and we're rolling the dice.

Fate drops,

Felix with ads making those coins rise.

Jackup designs worlds chasing the sky.

We're the two and a half gamers, the midnight crew.

Talking UA adverts and game design, too.

Mateish, Felix, Shaku, bringing the insight.

We're rocking those vibes till the early daylight.

Mate, you aim as your eyes on the prize.

Tracking data through the cyberspace skies.

Felix stacks colors like a wizard in disguise.

Jackups crafting realms lift us to the highs.

Two and a half gamers talking smack.

Slow hockey sick, got your back.

Ads are beautiful, they like the way.

Click it fast, don't delay.

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Now let's get back to the episode.

Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to this special interview with Two and a Half Gamers, a world-famous podcast for all the gaming growth experts and professionals.

So I'm Roy Nam, CEO and founder of Airbridge, a leading mobile measurement partner, MMP, trusted by more than 400 mobile businesses worldwide.

So today, I have this privilege of sitting down with this brilliant minds behind 2 and a half gamers, Matei, Jacob, and Felix.

So hi everyone.

Hello.

Thank you.

So it's such a pleasure to have you here today.

So maybe to kick off things, let's break the ice.

So

could each of you introduce yourself for the audience?

Yeah, sure.

I'm Felix Brauberg.

That means good mountain in Swedish.

I do ad monetization.

I'm an ad monetization consultant.

I've been in industry for about eight years.

I've worked in ad networks, DSPs, always on the supply side.

And now I help large companies with their ad revenue.

That's great.

Yeah.

My name's Jacob.

I do product game design.

Played too many games, I guess, so now I'm doing it for over 10 years in the industry.

Yeah, same working as a consultant with like seven to eight studios on different genres, different games and speaking to these two guys every week, maybe two times a week.

Regular, maybe too much.

So my name is Matei, I'm the UA and creative consultant.

I've been in the industry for 11 years.

working in different companies.

I have my own creative team as well.

And we started this great podcast a few years ago.

It's a lot of fun.

I've helped 52 games, Soft Launch and Global Launched, and I love it.

The UA is amazing.

Thank you very much for having us, Ray.

Yeah, thanks for the great intro.

You know, as a long fan of your podcast, I've been always curious about the origin of this name 2NF Gamers.

Like, why did you guys name your podcast as 2NF Gamers?

Like, what made you?

name this pocket.

Well, you can give the first one and I'll give the second.

Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.

So there are two stories.

when you saw us standing next to each other i mean you can clearly see the two and a half gamer so he's the the good mountain is really tall and obviously i'm the short mountain in this scenario so two and a half yeah

exactly so the two and a half i'm the half in this in this context and then there's the other way felix maybe you can tell

I'm the half gamer because I don't game that much.

I have a console and they don't have consoles because they're all both PC gamers.

So yeah, I game less.

So I'm the half gamer.

Yeah, so we usually play games for the reviews.

He plays usually the most.

Then I play and then he's like, have you played?

Maybe.

So he's like, yeah, we play.

He doesn't.

We play a lot.

Makes sense.

Makes sense.

So when did you start this podcast?

Yeah, we just discussed it.

It was actually three years ago in January 2022.

It was first week of Jan.

I think the first episode went live on the 14th of January.

Yeah, it's been a hell of a ride.

We actually had even a previous podcast only for the Slovak community in Slovakia, trying to help the local community

get on the mobile gaming track and everything.

But at some point we kind of said, let's switch to English because people know English in Slovakia.

We kind of cornered the market there.

So

nothing really to do there.

And we talk to each other anyway, like almost every week, and then it's like, okay, well, let's just record those conversations because it's quite useful.

It should be useful for

more people than us three.

The thing is that

we would need to do these things anyway, like play those games, look at the news, look at the latest trends because we work there with the studios, with wherever we do.

And we just kind of talk about it for everyone else to see.

That's it.

Got it.

I mean, as one of the, you know, one in a community, I've been always been inspired by your, like, you know, all kinds of these creative ideas and inspirations from your channel.

And then definitely want to extend the, you know, gratitude and appreciation to

what you're doing.

Yeah.

Well, today,

what we're trying to discuss is that we're diving deep into what it takes to build successful games and expand them globally.

So many of the questions I prepared today are based on discussions from your podcast and newsletters, which I find incredibly insightful.

So you know mobile games, particularly hyper-casual and hybrid casual games, have become significant export products, meaning that they export their games globally.

So we're seeing developers from countries like France, the UK, Cyprus, Vietnam, China, Korea, and Turkey, and other countries creating games for global audiences.

So maybe as a first question, I want to ask you, like, how do you see this trend evolving?

Do you think we're still on an upward trajectory or have we already hit the the peak?

I can probably start there.

So, the interesting thing is, we actually took a look at the amount of apps in the App Store and how it's progressed throughout the time since the launch of the App Stores.

And the amount of apps on the Apple App Store actually doubled from 2022 to 2023.

So, there's definitely some sort of upwards trend.

There are headwinds.

User acquisition is harder.

You'll have to ask Marty about that.

Tell me about it.

But there definitely seems to be an upwards trend in the amount of developers interested in building games particularly from yeah like you said china vietnam seems to have the biggest growth in recent time and uh yeah we always joke that china is coming because china is coming

well but mobile gaming is dead what are you talking about yeah

the thing with the developers specifically is actually i think good to put into context of corona where during corona when we see this kind of giant uplift that like lifted everyone, pretty much every single genre, but it especially lifted hypercasual.

And a lot of developers got into the industry through hypercasual, which now is being consolidated into hybrid casual, and not everyone else is able to make the switch.

So I think that's a really important context to kind of see there we're in the headwind that hybrid casual as it is is getting more and more and more sophisticated, but hypercasual as it was, still lives within the industry, not as like a strong kind of genre on the charts, but its

mechanics and its tricks and principles are spreading around the industry more and more, as we see in Forex, like we see in all these fake creatives, hyper-casual-inspired creatives, mini-games, onboarding, still over the CPI.

So, that I would say is like the important part here regarding the onboarding trend.

Yeah, but we are we were talking about your visit in Vietnam and like how companies from Vietnam have quite a lot of still millions of downloads basically each month and they're still earning a lot of money so it's still pretty much going upwards

that makes sense just to recap so we all agree that there was an explosion of these apps during the coveted times because we cannot meet each other offline and then people wanted to meet with these brands brands in the games wanted to meet with the customer so there was certainly an explosion and increased diversity among that time

and the market that we knew doesn't doesn't exist as it at as it was now, as it was before, but we're definitely seeing growing trends, still like this trend growing across the globe, and then especially from China, from Vietnam, and all of these countries, really creating new styles of these games, new concepts of these games.

And you think it's growing, right?

If I can just add one thing to that, like there's a lot of chatter that mobile game growth is slowing down, it's not as quick as it used to be.

It's really big, right?

So the rules of big numbers apply.

But there's also one thing that a lot of people are not taking into account that there is this huge dark pool of money that's not accounted for at all in these rankings because more and more people are starting to use web shop to circumvent the app store payments right and I worked with some people that have had 50% of payments going through web shops right and some of these large games that use web shops they're gonna have significant amount of money that's not accounted for so I still think mobile games is growing double digits

thing makes sense so despite all of these headwinds, you still believe that the market is growing.

And then, because not only just of these traditional app stores that exist in the market, you also bring up this topic of the web shop, which is kind of becoming another source of the revenue for many of these gaming companies.

Got it, got it.

Also, before we move on with the conversation, I just want to add

after our China visit,

we were quite amazed how far ahead China is and all the developers there because if we take an example with Lucky Defense

launched here and then launched basically globally

half of the industry in the US or in Europe they didn't even know

it exists

until we actually talked about it on the podcast

but then we came to China and it was already like 10 gaming companies working on the Lucky Defense clone or an inno iteration

already with the working prototype after two weeks that Lucky Defense launched.

It's insane.

And until this point, I think there's like one or two companies in US or West that are kind of thinking about it, not even having a prototype.

So that's how far ahead like China and Asia is.

Definitely I agree.

Chinese developers and publishers are super fast.

They always explore the new trends and then if they catch the trend, they always jump in and they really do something about it in the fastest manner.

So while speaking of these countries like China and Vietnam, do you think there are other countries to attend to, like those rising countries in the scene of hyper-casual and hybrid casual gaming industry?

I think Vietnam was

the biggest, at least from the trends that we saw before.

Turkey is still on the rise.

Turkey is on the rise.

Turkey is still very on the rise.

Not only in hybrid casual, but also like casual.

Like you could see, let's say, the latest hit from peak, which is still got back on track with Match Factory.

But it's not hybrid casual.

I know, but I'm saying it's not only hybrid casual

and also casual in

okay but if we're not talking about hybrid casual then I mean we are sitting in South Korea and you're doing some amazing stuff as well.

Yeah hybrid schedule is pretty popular here.

One thing we can agree on is the growth is not happening as much in Europe as it was 10 years ago.

Yeah.

It's shifting east.

Well, I mean the new innovation is definitely happening.

All started from these European countries in the US.

So still there are a lot of strong gaming companies in Europe and the US, but you're seeing a lot of these new rising companies in China, Vietnam, Turkey, and so on and South Korea as well.

Yeah, because

the work ethics and approach to work is different and it's becoming four day working week.

Which is doesn't really yeah, it doesn't really make any sense.

If you really want to progress and move fast, it just doesn't make sense.

And this is becoming a standard in Europe and the US as well.

So it's just becoming super slow.

While here, it's the other way around.

And the thing is also that in the West there are

much more games that are kind of established and just like scaled up and working big, like stuff like I don't know, KND Crash, Play Rick's games,

I don't know, Call of Duty and stuff like that.

From East we see much more diverse and new games coming in, like all the time new stuff.

Maybe it doesn't scale that far,

but still it sometimes like breaks the charts completely.

Like I don't know, let's say the new Pokemon game from DNA, like it's 300 million already yeah yeah same

makes sense so it sounds like the speed is really becoming a key to success in this industry so maybe before going into other questions I want to ask you like

since the industry is changing so fast how do you think the gaming companies what should they do to really stay ahead of this trend ahead of this like fast changing industry what should they do

one thing that's really obvious is you need to listen to the two and a half games that's what I wanted to say no brainer no brainer.

I agree.

Shame with plug.

Exactly.

Shame with plug.

And we also have a Korean channel at the moment, so you should definitely subscribe.

No, but seriously,

we are usually looking at trends in Tander Tavern, trying to find the new hidden gems that are launching,

usually coming from East anyway, and then translate that to West.

Like we were discussing this with Joined at Games in Shanghai, because all there against Legend of Mushroom is really hardcore and you need to kind of streamline it for the West audience.

They don't sound like at all.

Back to the speed questions, as you say, I think this is kind of very critical, especially this year, that it seems to be kind of mandatory that if you don't follow this kind of model of templatization, you just won't make it.

The best example for this is always hubby, where if you look at hubby games, it's pretty much all done within their internal template of Rogue Light Action RPG metagame, which they kind of keep perfecting throughout the years from 2019 and they just switch the core gameplays, now the last one being Capi Barrago.

But also other companies like let's say Nihoyo for instance.

If you take Genshin Impec, Honkai Star Rails and Lesson Zero, all the same metagame, just different core.

And this is something that you just can't catch up with.

Because if you're working on your template and your metagame and you have data from the users for let's say last five years, you know how it behaves how the monetization works everything you just change the core change the visual produce a completely new game but in the end it's just a perfected version of your previous game there's also the cannibalization question which i don't want to get into but still it's about having as much shots on the goal not as like believing in one giant hit driven game doesn't matter if let's say it's third fourth fifth game what matters is the speed of the next game and how fast it takes you to develop it makes perfect sense So it seems like now the cross-border insight exchange and inspirations that you get from each other is getting more important.

And that's the reason why you should subscribe to 2NF Gamers to get that insight on time ahead of others.

So maybe we can just go into some of these questions about growth itself.

So what are the things that any company would need for a successful launch of their game and its growth?

So I know this question is quite broad, but I wanted to open up the conversation by asking you guys this, as you must have your own framework for the launch and the growth of these games globally.

I do, but I think it starts with the game, right?

Yeah, it starts with the game.

And it's a very cliche answer, but you need to have a good game, right?

I mean.

Okay, game, okay,

let's say decent numbers to be able to grow.

And then in terms of the actual framework, well, it's soft launch is super important, obviously.

The data pipeline, you need to have a good data tracking and everything.

It starts there, retention at a certain level, and then it all goes back to the CPI versus LTV equation.

I mean, it's nothing else.

If that doesn't work, then you can't grow.

Let me maybe shift that a little bit.

Having a good game is not enough.

Having a great game is still not enough in these days.

You actually need to have a great game, know your genre expertise, be iterative, not just purely cloning, having some kind of a,

let's say, like the product is exceptional, but it's still not enough, unfortunately.

Because it's a UA play.

Yeah, it's a UA play in these days.

So even if you've done all of this, it still, unfortunately, isn't not enough because you're competing in a very saturated market.

performance marketing is pretty much everything so if you don't have some kind of a

Yeah, Mate is saying UA play, but in the end it's a UA trick pretty much, which means that let's say this fake onboarding, fake creatives funnel, or a very strong IP which is drawing users from all around the world because it's lowering CPI, or some kind of a additional UA trick basically, like cross-promotion, cross-platform, whatever, doesn't matter.

But if you don't have this kind of a plan for your user distribution, you just won't make it in the current market.

Steel's come back, comes back to CPI versus LTV.

That's it.

It's simple as that.

Obviously that CPI

in that equation, yeah, it's all the UA stuff, different channels,

creatives, and then of course like onboarding, like you said,

borrowed from different genres.

That makes a very big difference.

Well, I think that's a great point.

So the great game is something that

you have to have as a start.

But that isn't just enough.

It's just a start.

You need a great UA strategy, as well as all these data pipeline, retention strategies, and a soft launch.

All of these things combined with a great product, a great game, can make you successful.

But the thing is, what success is, you need to define that.

If you don't have a great game, you can still run a profitable business.

It's just not going to be scalable that much.

For some companies...

having millions a month, it's just not enough.

For some companies, small teams,

that's amazing.

So that's like you need to put that into perspective as well.

I think usually people will consider it as like is the game able to cover our burn rate and something on top.

Like that could be already successful for let's say smaller teams.

But yeah for some companies let's say if we look at like the top of the top let's say Supercell yeah they just kill all all the games that don't met their benchmark because it's just giant opportunity cost for them.

So why they should be sitting in their portfolio.

Which would be already a profitable business for a lot of other companies.

But for Supercell doesn't make sense.

So the thing is

some companies if you make millions a day that's just not enough.

For example if you have a big company

it's different.

You can make a lot of money on a daily basis and it's not enough for them.

But for small teams that can work quite well and they can be profitable.

So that's that's different.

That makes perfect sense.

I think you also made a like great point.

So great games, great UA, great success.

But still with good enough quality games, with great UA, still you can make yourself into into a profitable gaming company.

Yeah, and if you have a small team, it can make such a big difference.

If you make a few hundred thousand per day, well, yeah, for Supercell, they would just kill the game and it wouldn't be enough for them.

That's great.

So, well, since you have all mentioned the UA and marketing, let's talk first about this.

Lately, I've been hearing a lot about UA channel diversification.

a term that you guys have been mentioning a lot in your episodes.

So can you explain what UA channel diversification is and why it is so critical for gaming companies looking to scale globally?

Yeah, can you explain two and third best UA people on the UA?

If you listen to someone who's never run a UA campaign in my entire life, I can tell you that UA diversification is extremely important to reach all your users from different platforms because your users are in different places.

Correct?

Go on.

Go on.

Maybe I can go on.

Yeah, it's just very important to kind of know what works for you and like test it, test a lot of creatives, test a lot of stuff, different platforms with different rules, different kind of traffic setups, so on and so forth.

So just being able to experiment and have as much kind of coverage as possible is just necessary.

So the worst problem that we see, which we see on the podcast, is that if you don't have enough creative concepts for different platforms,

you don't even try these different platforms.

So it's just like more of a yeah.

And these guys are sitting with me every week and they don't don't listen to me at all.

So

I thought that sounded quite good.

I mean yes, but it doesn't really answer the question.

I mean it's just okay.

All right, take it away then.

So

UA diversification.

So it comes back to the point that we made just before this question.

You need to have multiple UA channels running at the same time because every channel has a different inventory, yes.

different creatives, yes, but also different LTV curves as well and different CPIs.

And also, in terms of

the UA diversification, it doesn't need to be only about channels, but you can diversify the traffic and campaigns within the channel.

For example, you have the hybrid game, you have ad monetization on the one hand, then you have in-app purchase monetization, so it's 50-50 split.

You can run in-app purchase campaigns optimized for ROAS for in-app purchases.

You You can have other ROAS campaigns at the same time, or you can run blended ROAS.

Again, there's three different types.

So, and three different types of campaigns, three different LTV curves as well, and CPI.

So, again, CPI versus LTV.

Per channel.

Per channel.

So,

you have hundreds of channels, so you can have so many different campaign types and diversify basically the UI portfolio.

And it's really important because every channel has a ceiling, so you can spend, let's say, $100,000 per month on Facebook, but then you can spend another 100,000 on Google, Top Loving, Unity, TikTok.

And suddenly, instead of one channel, which is 100,000, you have five, which is half a million already,

which is 5x basically.

And it

sounds pretty good.

Which would be impossible if we just have one channel.

Just one channel.

If we had this recording 10 years ago, I would say, yeah, well, just spend everything on Facebook and you're fine.

It doesn't work like that anymore.

Makes total sense.

So what you're saying is that typically people actually have this perception in mind that, oh, like if I spend more, maybe the economy of scale will come and then the efficiency will get better as I spend more so.

But in reality, what you're saying is a lot of these channels, they have their own advantages and they have their own weaknesses and maybe some of them can easily mix out.

And that is one of the reasons why you have to diversify the channels.

Yeah, absolutely.

And also,

if you increase the budget, it doesn't really

mean that you will get more installs.

You increase the budget, then the CPI goes up as well.

So basically, you are getting less for more money on one channel, whereas you can just spend the same, like the incremental budget on the other channels, and then you can get actually more users.

I know this is kind of a silly question, but I can actually, I really have to ask, like, how many channels do you think is kind of, you know, roughly ideal

if we actually reach a level of UA diversification?

I mean, I usually run at least four at the same time.

I think that's the base, which is uploading, Facebook, Google, and TikTok.

And then you branch out from there.

You've got a Unity iron source, kind of.

And then you have rewired UA channels now, which you need to run in bulk.

So it goes from four to basically 10, 15.

I ran a survey on my subscribers, and the the average was anything between like 8 to 12.

8 to 12.

And the budget was, yeah, like anything from 100,000 per month to a few millions.

I see.

That's really a great practical tip.

Like, thanks for sharing that.

So you actually not only just mentioned about the channels, but you also mentioned that you have to diversify the campaign types and the strategies of the UA.

Can you explain further on that topic, please?

Yeah, of course.

So I mentioned the hybrid kind of types of campaigns.

Because in these times you have the mobile app install campaign optimization which is which was default on different channels.

There doesn't really work anymore.

So you need to go to app event optimized campaigns and then purchase and then value because that's where the quality of the players is.

And that is different from channel to channel.

So you have uploading, which is blended ROAS, you have uploading

in-app purchase ROAS campaigns, but then you have value optimization, which is getting kind of like the whales into your games on Facebook, Google, which is called Tiroas, and the same thing on TikTok.

So

you have endless possibilities basically.

Got it.

Yeah.

So diversify in terms of channel and

in terms of like campaign optimization goals and all of the other pillars as much as you can.

I can actually use

the

example.

So for value optimized campaigns on Facebook, let's say you have CPIs of $50 for match-free game.

But also, the LTV is quite high, but you optimize for two years' payback period.

If you run a mobile app install optimization, maybe the CPI is $5,

but the LTV doesn't really exist because the quality is really low.

So you need to mix and match different optimization types and diversify the user profiles.

So that's the also if you target purchase optimization, it's again $30 maybe,

but the revenue is coming maybe in two and a half years.

Makes sense.

So, lower CPI doesn't necessarily mean that it's good because it always comes along with this ROS and the LTV.

So, like low CPI, low ROAS doesn't mean anything, like high CPI, even higher ROS,

better.

So, that's the reason why you have to mix things and balance things out.

Yeah, exactly.

It's quite scary to see these types of CPIs, obviously, but then, yeah, that's the reality these days.

That makes sense.

It's not getting any easier.

Well, then you must have to be very brave to embrace all these chain changes and really just look into data closely to make agile changes to your strategies.

That's great.

So how do you think this trend of UA diversification shaping modern UA strategies, do you think this trend will evolve in the coming years?

And just general advice to the people about the UA would be appreciated.

I think I've been talking about the UA diversification for some time.

It's not a concept.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's just changed a little bit because

a couple of years ago I usually said if you hit one million a month on Facebook, then you diversify.

Now you diversify immediately.

You run multiple channels.

So I think what's coming next as this UA diversification for different UA channels is the rewarded UA channels.

And then you need to kind of run multiple of those at the same time because they're also not scalable.

So now it's just more about like combining three ones right now in the I have no idea we're never really right now I would say what like misplay game like Adjo is doing quite well and what else Almedia is there as well in the mix so it's like it's growing like crazy I mean it's it's like a few years ago it's misplay now it's like 20 of them or maybe 25

so yeah coming back to the question and the actual like the the tip there so yeah you just need to start multiple channels from scratch like from the day one basically which wasn't the yeah wasn't the case a few years ago

okay so it's a great like uh suggestion and recommendation like these like reward based um ad platforms are also picking up some speed nowadays in the market yeah it's great

so

since we talked about the UA, I want to also tap the monetization as well.

So I think hybrid monetization is definitely the hot hot potato.

It's the key to success of these hybrid casual games.

So what's the key to the success of hybrid monetization?

What it actually means and why is it important?

Why people think it is important?

Time to shine, Remo.

Yeah, okay, let me start here.

Yeah, so hybrid is

pretty much taking the best out of hyper casual because it has lower CPI, it has very approachable gameplay, big total the reciprocal market, but in the end it unfolds into something like casual to mid-core progression, which on the other hand gives you the LTV to support big spend, big numbers, big economies.

But first you need to have those economies of course.

The good

point about this thing is that of course hybrid schedule and for instance our internal definition of hybrid casual because there's none of it in the market and usually people kind of everything is hybrid schedule these days.

We consider hybrid casual as a revenue profile.

So it's not defined by some kind of genre mechanic or whatever.

We consider it as a revenue profile where the game makes something around

between 40 to 60%

of the revenue by ads and something like 0 to 40%, even can go to like 50-50, but it's very hard to hit by IP revenue.

So you combine those two and then you have hybrid monetization, which means that the game needs now to have an economy to have like enough spend depth.

Span depth is a big problem that people still don't kind of work enough with.

Sometimes, even when I work with studios, I tell them like, your game economy is spend depth, which means like the amount of money people can spend in your economy is like $100.

Like, there you go.

And, like, is it enough?

Probably no.

If you're expecting, like, I don't know, $20, $30 CPIs.

So, you build an economy, you have your progression, and you slowly unfold the game.

And this kind of a slow unfold is the key here, because at that point, comes a lot of tricks that, let's say, this guy employs, which is ad monetization, monetization, because you need to be able to fully and efficiently utilize your funnel.

Whereas, let's say, at some point, you put in interstitials, you put in rewarded videos, you put in banner ads, and stuff like that, even when before in the start of the phone, there were none of this.

So, it's like a very delicate combination of these things.

There are a few key players in the market that are really excelling at these.

All the big hyper-casual publishers are switching into this and openly proclaiming that they're just moving into hybrid, stuff like, I don't know, Voodoo, Say Games.

Mob Control is the best month last month.

It's growing like crazy.

Yeah, exactly.

There are still studios that proclaim that they do everything.

They still consider hyper casual to be way to go, like Azure, for instance.

Like we talked, like a lot of games from Vietnam are still exceeding at like ad-driven only games with very, very low IP monetization.

But to have a game that you want to keep for longer times, and longer times, I mean like three, four years life cycles, you really need to have that IEP economy spent in the game.

So we've analyzed close to 150 or 200 hybrid casual games and I think the most important thing to remember and the thing that's the tip of the spear is user acquisition.

Teams that have good user acquisition that trickles down to how you do segmentation, to how you get users, everything is about user acquisition.

It's quickly becoming the most important thing to get rights for these things.

It's always the most important thing to get.

I mean I hate to admit it, but it really is.

Like without that you can't have ad monetization.

Without that you can't have cheap CPIs.

Get users.

I talked about the hybrid monetization but it's really important to have the hyper casual looks of the game to be able to get the lowest CPIs possible.

That's important part of the hybrid casual like borrowing that marketability from hyper casual and then getting the spend depth from the casual or mid-core games.

Like that's the best scenario.

Yeah, Yeah, this combination is actually very, very hard because a lot of times people

rush it and they don't get that you need to have this kind of delicate unfolding.

That when you first start up the game, it needs to literally feel like hyper-casual.

So, one-button control, easy to do, no mechanics, no, nothing, like everything in the UI is just clean, hidden, and then it slowly unfolds.

And like, one by one, the mechanics get to like just you know, go and play Survivor I/O Archer, you'll see see it or even even mob control and all these other games they slowly kind of increase the feature set the attention budget and then like slowly take you in because it's all about just having as big total addressable market as possible which lowers the cpi and then in the end you kind of train the players to play a game that in the at the beginning they wouldn't even say that they would be playing

A lot of great insights.

So maybe I should recap just a bit.

So Jakob, you mentioned that unfolding the games slowly and delicately and placing these monetization opportunities along this unfolding structure is the key to success in monetization.

So it seems like you're telling us that the monetization

should be tightly integrated with the gameplay itself.

And the fact you also, Alex, you also mentioned that it all comes down from the UA eventually and Matei as well.

And the UA is definitely influencing how monetization should be done.

And you actually interestingly mentioned about this keyword segmentation.

Can you elaborate more on this topic?

Yeah, the idea of segmentation is that you have different experiences for different types of players.

In ad monetization, that usually means that players who are more likely to spend on IIP should see less ads.

What that used to look like before was you segmented it based on geographies, but now we're seeing more and more examples of more sophisticated studios actually segmenting and changing the gameplay experience for players based on what user acquisition campaign brought players.

So what that looks like is that if we look at a game like Hexasort, if a IAP-driven campaign brings a user to that game which monetizes 30% or no, 70% with the IAPs, basically they don't see any interstitials banners for the first three days, right?

But then if a user is being brought in from a Ad-ROS campaign, they see it after the first time user experience.

They start seeing banners and interstitials.

So they monetize on them quicker.

Well, I think that's where we should kick in as an attribution solution and they really provide this source of attribution to the publishers in a timely manner in real time so that you can segment based on that and monetize accordingly.

Yeah, based on the campaign type, that's the key segmentation.

It's very important.

Remember, and this is also being translated around not only hybrid casual but whole industry.

Like, Felix, if you can tell, like, how did you discover how Candy Crush has ads?

Yeah, Yeah, so

what we did a deep dive on match three is basically to find that they had ads.

I had to look at game players from Indonesia and basically they have a different ad experience.

And yeah, they see ads sooner.

So yeah.

I just had to find players who were bad in Indonesia.

On YouTube.

On YouTube.

On YouTube.

Yeah, on YouTube.

That's really a great team.

So segment the users.

based on geography, attribution result, and especially the campaign that they're coming through.

Awesome.

Yeah.

Well thanks for sharing this great tip.

So

are there any like other monetization related best practices or advice that you want to give out to the audience out there?

You should be able to spend innate

game.

have a robust economy.

Definitely that's like my number one tip in a way that it doesn't matter what the game is, just have robust economy, which means you can have enough currency.

It's not about having many currencies, just like having enough things and content that people can go through.

You can always simulate this and play around just in your head on an Excel sheet and just compare it yourself.

That's there.

And then

the other thing is, back to segmentation, please have offer segmentation.

Don't really throw away all your monetization into the drain by, let's say, giving high-value offer to low spenders, which will be actually, they will be repelled by it and don't want to buy it.

And like I remember this, like one occasion I remember Raid Shadow Legends was running this very big offer and they run globally, which is the worst that you can do, unfortunately, where to the whole player base.

And all the lower spenders were just complaining all over the place.

And the community was very, very in big uproar.

Whereas if you would just segment this and only the big spenders would see the offer and the low spenders would see their own kind of custom tailor offer, they would prevent it as all and nobody would be talking about anything.

That's great.

That's really great summary there.

Thanks for all these components like

robots gameplay and segmented offer and also great UA and spending as well.

Sounds good.

So we want to also tap into creatives.

Playables, we all know that it's widely considered one of the most effective at formats for hyper and hybrid casual games.

However, we also understand that

you know, playables are not easy to develop as HTML5 based, and a lot of developers hate being involved in creating these creatives.

So how can we really do well with this playables?

I mean, it's actually not that hard to build a playable.

It takes a little bit longer, but as soon as you have, again, template, then it's easier.

Also, I built a playable tool which transforms videos to playables.

It's not like HTML5 hard-coded, but makes life way easier because you need playables.

It's playablemaker.com.

You need playables for all the SDK networks.

If you run Facebook and Google, it doesn't matter, but uploading, you absolutely need it for all the Mintegral, Moloco as well.

It's critical.

So you need these playables to use it as a playable and cards because that drives up the conversion and then you get more more players obviously.

And it's Kales.

I mean, it opens up different inventory.

So yeah, it's just, I know it's painful to build, but you need one programmer, basically.

You need one programmer, that's it.

Okay.

It's not that big of an issue, right?

Well, I think it seems like if someone needs to build some

playable creators, they can talk with you.

Yeah,

obviously,

obviously, yes.

But obviously, yeah, like you already, you're already building games, right?

So you just take

the first part of the game, let's say it's part of the tutorial, and start there.

That's pretty easy.

I mean, everything is easy because I'm a UA manager, so

I don't program those, so I mean, it sounds easy on paper.

But yeah,

just take these first bits of the game and then just translate it to playable.

You need

one person.

I see.

So another thing to ask you is, Mate, is you've highlighted in some of your episodes and in your newsletter that TikTok created challenges and AI generated user-generated generated contents, UCC, are game changers nowadays in terms of their effectiveness.

Well, could you share some of these examples and insights into how gaming companies can leverage these new opportunities?

So for TikTok, the TikTok Creative Challenge program, I think that's the only way how to use creatives on TikTok especially.

Because

you just create a brief, then share it with TikTok creators, and then you are getting basically creatives for free.

I mean, you just need to spend on TikTok.

You can't use them outside of TikTok, but you can use AI to rebuild them.

Because basically, you're giving the brief.

You need to be a little bit more specific.

You need to say things like just show your face

in the video, talk with your voice, don't use AI voice and subtitles and all of this.

And then you will get pretty quality outputs from the creators.

And that definitely scales on TikTok.

Outside of TikTok, you need to actually use the AI people just to recreate the best performing TikTok creative challenge videos.

And the TikTok creators are using your assets.

So you just kind of, I mean, it sounds pretty bad, but you just replace the person, the real person with AI.

There you go.

But

AI, I mean, the AI UGC stuff that I use, and I'm using it for almost two years, it evolved so much.

I'm going to show it

during the event later today.

It evolved so much, and you can't even tell it's an AI person.

You can't even tell.

It's not only now

just the head talking head, it's actually people in motion in different situations.

And it's performing even better than real people.

That's why it's like that.

That's our favorite game, by the way, on the podcast.

When Matt is showing the UAP, I will always guess: like, if this person is real or not.

Yeah, is he real?

Is he real or not?

Yeah, you can't tell.

The thing is, it's so easy to make nowadays.

I use different tools.

For example, I use Pool Day AI and you actually just export one video with 10 different AI people in like five minutes.

And

this year, the whole kind of creative

trends and play is going to be about

the velocity of creatives basically like how many creatives you can actually produce because that's how the algorithms work these days and especially on Facebook and TikTok you need to just refresh the creatives often like every two or three days and if you don't use AI tools it's it's impossible you can't make so many creatives you you would need to have like hundreds of people in your creative team to be able to kind of keep up the pace which Chinese companies I mean yeah of course like if you're yeah if you're Century Games you have 100 people for this whiteout survival it's a different thing but most companies don't have hundreds of people in the creative.

Not easy.

So that is why you need to leverage tools.

And these days, I can make creatives.

I can make creatives, and I'm the UA manager, and that's the key.

So yeah, I hope I answered the question.

I mean, it's such a great insight that these AI tools are really innovating the way that you generate these creatives.

The velocity has been much faster nowadays.

And

this is exactly the same as what you've been mentioning in the pockets, like the creative quantity will win over quality and that the marketing is becoming like the volume play.

So what do you mean by this?

And how can companies strike the right balance between quantity and quality and really utilize these solutions well?

So it's the

sweet spot is you have your own creative team building the,

let's say, quality creatives.

I mean, it doesn't really sound right, but okay, but still, like, yeah, they build the concepts,

different unique concepts, and then on the side, you play around with the AI tools, and that's kind of balancing the volume play.

So, you kind of add your own creatives from the team, just refresh them into, or like add them to the campaigns, and then you play around with the AI tools.

Cling AI, Sorai is doing, well, Sorai is not that great example, but Cling AI is good, Runway ML is good.

And you just need a static image, and then suddenly, in a few attempts, you have 10-second video.

That's great.

And

you can run that as an UA creative.

And these days, yeah,

that's what matters, and that's what performs.

Got it.

I think the important fact here is that your team building the creatives usually means your team iterating on the creatives of your competition.

Kind of yes, but

kind of yes.

Yeah, because

it's

again, like it's coming back to what we said before, the Chinese companies, they are so far ahead.

And everybody's just getting

heavily inspired by the other games.

I think there's a big thing in the app space, right?

There is no app police.

There are no laws.

There's no black and white.

There's no app police.

Like, yeah, you can copy your competitors' creatives.

I've seen examples where they just want to copy-pasted it and then just stuck on their own watermark and then brand new A.

Well, obviously, inspirations and benchmarking.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Because I've started this creative investigation column on Friday on LinkedIn, where I just go exactly and try

deep in this and try to to pick different games and like who is actually getting inspired by who.

And it's all like it's the same same games all over again.

It's you know, what starts with Evoni, then it comes to Royal Match in two weeks, and then after another two or three weeks, it comes back, it comes to Fishdom.

Like, the inspiration is just from Forex.

Well, okay, so from hyper-casual or idle to Forex, from Forex to actual match free, and then to other genres.

Like, this is how it works now.

You don't want to reinvent the wheel.

Yeah.

If you see the creators performing, because you see them all over the place so it has to be performing you just adapt it and that's it.

Well it seems like the part of velocity is definitely coming from getting inspired by others and especially your competitors.

Competitors yeah and then yeah the other

changes as well.

Yes and the part of equation which is really important is like the AI kind of evolution because I've been playing with AI for years with MidJourney being really good asset for Facebook in terms of the static images.

But now

that Mid Journey static image is actually becoming a video, and that's a game changer.

That's basically a game changer.

So, two-dimensional becoming like three-dimensional videos, and all these like creatives, like simplistic creatives, evolving into the better ones powered by AI tools.

That's just amazing.

Yeah, yeah, because now Dark War, which is a 4X game, uses all the AI-driven creatives, and it's static images becoming a video, and it's a sequence of, let's say, 10 of these videos with a story-driven narrative and then AI voiceover,

you can build this in an hour.

Seriously, like.

That's great.

Yeah.

So Midjourney and some of the tools that you mentioned, like Clean AI and Runway AI, and all of these tools getting mixed into one like set of combination, it really works well for nowadays.

Yeah, it's great.

So like, I want to actually tap into one interesting topic that we already talked about, UA influencing the other components of growth.

And you said that everything just trickle down down from UA.

And it seems like UA marketers' role is changing as well rapidly.

Like they used to do media execution and optimization, mostly that.

But now they're going beyond their role, and then now they're really starting to influence the monetization, the gameplay, and everything about the soft launch and all that.

So, do you think this consolidation is happening in the industry?

If so, why is it happening and why do you think it's necessary?

Yeah, because the UA,

I mean, we are hearing the UA is dead for 10 years, basically.

It's just performance.

The thing is, it's kind of evolving, and you need to wear multiple hats, obviously, and sit on multiple chairs.

And this is the part of the reason.

So you need to be able to run the marketability tests, be able to...

to be a part of the product team for soft launching and like kind of explain different KPIs and CPIs and the numbers to the team so they can change the onboarding, for example.

Also, the same thing with creatives and also the comes back to the AI point because now the UA manager kind of needs to be a motion designer.

Not the real motion designer, but still.

All these things, like it's, it was a critical part of the UA for years.

It's just UA managers are lazy.

I mean, yes, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to piss off a lot of people, but here we are.

Usually, there are targets and KPIs UA managers need to hit.

It's usually one number, which is day seven ROAS or day 30 ROAS or whatever ROAS it is.

They hit the goal and they don't care what happens afterwards.

And it's like, yeah, well, I hit the goal, so I don't need to do anything else.

But now, when the market is really competitive and hard, and the UA is really important, and becoming not only the media buying, but also all the rest, Like,

that's the differentiation between the good manager, not good UA manager, and

regular manager, let's say.

Regular.

Let's call it regular.

Regular, yeah.

Okay.

So maybe that's the reason why you three are actually, you three form the team to really solve these things together and that wearing multiple hats is now becoming a necessity for all the professionals of growth.

Absolutely, yes.

Well, I mean, something that we observe in a market that is really interesting that

really interesting is the agile marketability testing.

Well, I listened to one of your recent episodes where you discussed using mini games for testing rather than the full game.

Could you elaborate more on this tactic and some of its advantages?

Yeah, it was actually you that brought the great point of a fun plus and tap for fun using

the platform

sonar.

Because we, I mean,

it was back in the days, like you just had a video, you ran a video, and then that basically was your hypercasual game.

But it comes back to the point, you run the CPI test, and you need to see the CPI, so you kind of need the

game on the store.

Something that's installed in the game.

The CPI, exactly.

Because the marketability test before was all like CTR tests.

But it really doesn't give you the real CPI.

There are some multipliers that if you run like Voodoo or any of these big publishers, they have the

very big amount of data, so you can kind of see

what CPI you are going to get.

But you need to really have

the APK on the store, be able to install the game.

So now we see companies from China, again, having different onboardings, as you said, like the mini-games

for the same Forex.

game and they're just testing different onboardings just different mini games to see how the CPI for these different mini-games and onboardings kind of evolve.

That's pretty much.

Because they have the end of the funnel already.

They know it will be a Forex game, which they perfected, mastered, and everything.

But they only care about lowering the CPI.

And as Matte said, just running basic CPI tests is not enough.

So what they do, they just, you know, take the first, I don't know, 60, 70 minutes of a game, cut it and like version A, B, C, D, same game in the end, and just run it.

Oh,

that's really interesting.

Yeah, that's what we literally see on FanPass portfolio, for instance.

Makes sense.

So CPI, although, is an important metric, but because like you too much be obsessed with the CPI, actually, you could have missed the other components that you can care for.

Yeah, okay, makes sense.

Well, I mean, we're heading towards the end of this interview, and then maybe amongst the last of the few questions I want to ask you, Matei,

about this, you know, predictive LTV.

So recently we're hearing a lot from these gaming companies that the payback period has been much longer than before.

And that is exactly the reason why they can't wait for another like 14 to 28 days to see the actual ROAS.

Rather, they choose to just come up with their own PLTV models and just do it, like predict it early on to make faster decisions.

So

do you think that this PLTV

getting important

is kind of a trendy thing?

And is it important?

Or what are your recommendations on how you can build this great PLTV model?

Why is it hard?

It's really important.

Obviously,

again, back to the day seven, Roa's point and goals.

You need to have the numbers on a daily basis, and ideally for the cohorts, like in the first three days.

If you are waiting seven days to make a decision, like that's already too late.

So the PL TV comes really handy in these situations.

If you have the PL TV on day one, day two, day three, you can make decisions faster.

Because people and companies are now not now, but different genres obviously target different payback periods.

From what I see, and the PLL TV is really common, it's for the games that are optimizing for one year, two years payback periods.

So it's really important.

It's really hard to build.

Most companies fail at that.

Also, what most companies don't do is that they build a PLTV model and that's it.

They don't refresh, they don't look at the historical data,

and then it's a mess.

I've been in the situation where I started working with one company and I found out like, guys, like

the predictions and the realities doesn't really check out.

What do you mean?

Like, yeah, well, look at this.

It should be 150% ROS, but it's like 90% in reality.

Oh, wait a second.

They went back,

checked the data,

and then had to restructure the company.

Because yeah,

it wasn't just recalculated or it was really inflated, basically.

Thanks so much.

So build and forget is something that you recommend.

You should definitely deliberate the model continuously with the actual history of the world.

Of course, like every three months, just recalculate the model.

I mean, build and forget and then be surprised.

Oh yeah, no, wait.

Yeah.

And you have already seen these companies just building one and just forgetting about it.

Yeah, it's like, oh, yeah, we have the PL TV and that's it.

Like, come on.

Surprise because great advice.

Okay.

Well, since like many of the audience today listening to this interview are coming from China, South Korea, and Vietnam and some APEC countries,

I want to actually ask you just one special question that what do you see as the biggest pitfalls and mistakes these APEC-based companies could make when they go global?

What advice would you give to these companies when they want to go global more effectively and without falling into this pitfall?

I think it comes back to the creative approach

because we

mean

On different conferences like years ago, it's like, oh, you know, if you go to Asia, you need to have very different different creative approach and it goes same way like oh well it's the same just the other way around you need to go and have different creatives for let's say western audience because what works here doesn't really necessarily work in the US or Europe and

I've been working with different companies in Asia and I also work with World Complete on the legend of slime and we had very different creatives and when we were discussing this with the team like yeah well those creates are really westernized and I was like okay it was quite surprising for me but then it makes all the sense so like that's like that's the biggest thing you need to do just

maybe actually work with someone from West I mean not necessarily me but

but no like seriously yeah I need to stop with this but you definitely need someone

that has the experience for the for the different fashion on creative expertise basically

I'm going to say basically that not recommending going like to the global recommendation but the Western recommendation.

I think this is the biggest friction there, like Apex companies going to the West, Europe and US, is that feature sets are just much more robust in Asia.

And I mean like three times more robust because people in Asia are just much more feature hungry.

They are okay with like very heavy feature games, with like a lot of systems, lot of progressions, a lot of stuff, especially even from the beginning.

Lucky Defense is like a great example of that.

If you give it at the US or European Union,

it's basically lost.

So in Korea, it's like super popular because people like it here and it's like very, as I said, localized, adjusted to the audience.

So whatever you do when you're trying to move your game to the West, make it more streamlined, make it more approachable, more easier.

And we see this all the time.

Like for instance, if we take, let's say, Rush Royale, the games from my games, which is just basically...

this kind of process done from random dice.

Exactly that, just streamlined, not like Korean art is taken out into streamlined westernized art, much more approachable funnel, much slower mechanics build up.

That's it.

That's great advice from both of you.

I mean, embracing the Western Nyangs

in terms of your creative is such an important thing.

And also, like, you know, APAT-based games tend to be feature-heavy, but still, like, you want to make it approachable and easier to play for the Western game.

And I think that was a great point.

So, the most fun question, how can we work with you?

How can we find you?

Where can we find you?

I already said like 10 plugs.

But yeah, I think you can join our Slack channel for sure and find us on LinkedIn.

It's Matejal Ancherich on LinkedIn.

And I have my website.

Or you can subscribe to the Brutally Honest newsletter as well.

Yeah, I think really, really good point is to join the Slack channel because it's kind of pretty big nowadays.

more than 200 2400 people now or something like that.

We have people all over the world there.

It's completely open to everyone, not really making any kind of differences between anything and people tend to even kind of get the questions themselves so not that we like we answer questions there of course but you can get a lot of answers from the people that having the same problem there and we also put a lot of our content even beforehand like people like to know what we're going to cover we just say that we're going to cover this game that game so on so forth and it's like a very friendly uh like welcoming community We can add our emails into the show notes as well.

Sure.

It's great.

Yeah.

So definitely you should sign up for the Slack channel with 2400 industry professionals.

Follow the channel and of course you can follow them respectively on the LinkedIn as well.

Yes.

So thank you Mate,

Jacob and Felix for participating in this great, great discussion.

I really hope that this is helpful for the audience who are listening to this interview.

And also this is part by Airbus DMMP,

your fellow friend when you want to measure things correctly.

So we're here with you, airbus.io.

So thank you everyone for joining this session.

So I want to close it right right now.

Thank you for having me.

Bye-bye.