Ad placements & Admon trends in Mobile Games: January 2025

Speaker 1 Cheers. What do you mean, why do you need this game on the podcast or in the world? No, no, no, in the world.

Speaker 2 In the world, like, why would you even play this game for more than like two

Speaker 2 days?

Speaker 1 I wouldn't personally, but basically, they got a lot of downloads, right?

Speaker 1 It's a clever use of like, yeah, how to get a lot of downloads cheaply, right? Okay. But don't worry, I know both of you really like cute shit.

Speaker 1 And that is why we're going to look at the third installment.

Speaker 1 Mate, you aim as your eyes on the prize. Tracking data through the cyberspace skies.
Felix stacks colors like a wizard in disguise. Jackups crafter realms lift us to the highs.

Speaker 1 Two and a half gamers talking smack. Slow hockey stick, got your back.
Ads are beautiful, they like the way. Click it fast, don't delay.
Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 He's not coming.

Speaker 2 He's not coming. No.
Jakub is not coming.

Speaker 1 Oh. I thought he was.
No.

Speaker 2 I don't know. He's in the middle of something.

Speaker 1 Anyway, welcome, everybody

Speaker 2 everybody my name is matia vanceric i'm felix broberg we are your hosts today and we have katia right here from burning games can you give us a short introduction and then we just gonna jump straight in

Speaker 3 i'm catherine malaran i'm head of admonitization burning games and uh it's been a while while i've worked with admonitization for about five years i have economic background so my days usually are full of numbers and calculations, and it's really

Speaker 3 good opportunity to take part in this podcast. I hope it will be fun and creative break.

Speaker 1 Thank you very much. I mean, you're not wrong about that because today we're actually doing the best segment on our podcast, right? And it's called the ad monetization review.

Speaker 1 So, today we're going to be reviewing six games that have very little to no IAP revenue and that only monetize with ad revenue.

Speaker 1 Most of these games came out in the last 30 days, and they're getting a lot of downloads. We're going to go through them.

Speaker 1 But I also wanted to say a special welcome to Katya, because basically she can't say this, but I can.

Speaker 1 So, something happens in ad monetization when you basically manage a game that earns more than $100,000 a day.

Speaker 1 Bernie Games has passed this metric quite quickly and is earning quite a lot of ad revenue right now. And what happens then as an admon admon manager, is you know quite a lot of stuff.

Speaker 1 So I'm very excited today because I'm also a bit nervous because I can't bullshit anything because Kat will call me out on everything.

Speaker 2 That is very true.

Speaker 1 That is very true. You don't need to comment on that, but yeah, that's the truth.
All right.

Speaker 1 Good.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 before we start, you know, as you can see, today's episode is brought to you by Maldives.

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Speaker 1 Hey, of course. Come on.
All right.

Speaker 1 So we have six games that we're going to go through today. We're starting with the first one called King Pin by Gaming Studios.
It was launched in...

Speaker 1 in mid-December.

Speaker 1 And the big question before we start talking about this is if have you ever wondered what would happen if you take the fake creatives from Lily's Garden or from any Player X games with a pin game and actually turn it into a real game?

Speaker 1 Because that's exactly what Gamy did.

Speaker 1 And as you can see, the daily active user base, which is the most important metric to look at for ad revenue, has basically increased to nearly 400,000 DAO since launching on I think December like 12th, 2024.

Speaker 1 And it's growing. If we take a quick look at the downloads, downloads are about 70 to 80,000 downloads a day.
And if we look at the countries, we can see here that it's dominated by

Speaker 1 what

Speaker 2 I think it is already happened when the Hero Wars started doing these pull-the-pin puzzles. There was already some kind of game like this.

Speaker 2 This is a game that I'm seeing quite a lot recently. So it's

Speaker 1 yeah, let's uh I'll show you some of the gameplay, but it's it's quite brilliant

Speaker 2 from Czech Republic also, by the way.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you know them, right?

Speaker 1 I mean, so look at this metagame.

Speaker 1 What does this remind you of first to start with, right?

Speaker 1 So, you kind of have the Royal Match metagame, and basically the levels are quite simple. You are a king.
I wonder where they got the idea of the king from, right?

Speaker 1 And basically, what you have to do is you pull these pins to solve puzzles. Is that

Speaker 1 whoa?

Speaker 2 Whoa, yeah,

Speaker 1 and the king is happy,

Speaker 1 and then you claim, and this is the game, pretty much exactly what you're advertised. That's right.

Speaker 1 See,

Speaker 1 oh, click on, click on that ad. What's that all about?

Speaker 3 That's no feel. They show this

Speaker 1 feel,

Speaker 1 it's immersive in game arts yeah so basically yeah before they get a fill they basically do is that cross promotion or basically promotion of their own store right

Speaker 3 yeah they um yeah they i like the how they implement this it's not just black screen but they show the character main character of the click it

Speaker 1 yeah you can

Speaker 3 so it's just static while they don't have what to serve in this placement.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Have you ever tried in-game ads, Katya? Like, what's like

Speaker 1 what's the dealio there?

Speaker 3 I really liked it, and you missed one circle when

Speaker 3 you show the start in lobby.

Speaker 3 It's really nice, it's small and also filled with skin when it's no fill,

Speaker 3 but

Speaker 3 can show some

Speaker 3 brand

Speaker 3 some brand ads.

Speaker 3 i know that there are lots of vendors who propose immersive in-game ads

Speaker 3 and they definitely have zero harmony retention rate it looks nice and

Speaker 3 we've checked this that yeah impact of retention is so minimal that it can be zero

Speaker 3 for me it's very

Speaker 3 serious to choose vendor with whom you will work with this

Speaker 3 and I know that Google proposes,

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 it grants regarding their presentations, you can get uplift from 5 to 15 percent.

Speaker 1 Do you know what the fill rate on Google is? Because usually the in-game immersive ads, right, the issue is that fill rate is never above 30%

Speaker 1 in the states if you're lucky on a Tuesday.

Speaker 3 It can be

Speaker 3 higher than 30%.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 what I can say is that they are moving to force their demand

Speaker 3 and they are walking in this direction and it can be better in the end of the year, definitely. And maybe some

Speaker 3 these types of games, maybe they will think about moving banners and going to mercy more.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, what do you think about this little trick that they have here, right? Oh, bonus stage. Oh, so this is exactly the one from

Speaker 1 Player X Lee's Guard in in any one of these, right? The bonus stage.

Speaker 1 So, what do you think about these use of ads that they have here in MREC at the end of every level?

Speaker 1 And then they basically have here, basically, when you finish any level, right, it shows 2,000 is the classical hyper-casual trick where basically rewarded ad for a lot, and then you don't show the claim to skip without an ad

Speaker 1 for a couple of seconds.

Speaker 3 You know, for me, it's like ideal scenario is having ads from the first start.

Speaker 3 The player is surrounded by them. But to be honest, I look how you play and you easily skip everything.
So you are surrounded by us, but they don't frustrate you a lot.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 while I was playing

Speaker 3 and according to some settings, I got in reverted ads I got only

Speaker 3 ideal and merge games. with very satisfying effect in ads.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 I think they use first first-party data to personalize ad experience. And they definitely have very balanced structure of adding all these ads.
Even now, you can

Speaker 3 like it doesn't frustrate you. Yeah, we see ads.
We can skip, we can claim 100 coins and go.

Speaker 3 Like normal,

Speaker 3 this is how I call this.

Speaker 3 Be who you are, show ads, earn money, but care about your players.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 what do we think?

Speaker 2 How much money they make?

Speaker 1 Yeah, what do we think this game is earning?

Speaker 1 So, basically, I made an estimate quickly before, and I think kingpin right now with this geomix, and basically, because it's a lot of Russia, a lot of India, a lot of Brazil, but it is a lot of active users.

Speaker 1 Like, you can't take that away, right? It's a lot of India, Russia, Brazil. Not that much the US, but yeah.

Speaker 2 It's not more than 20, it's not more than 20K.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, no. So, right now, I think this is earning about 8 to 10k per day in ad revenue.
But basically, as you can see.

Speaker 1 Sorry?

Speaker 3 I also calculated it goes to the same numbers, about 11k.

Speaker 1 Yes, good. Nice.
So basically, but you can see, right, it's increasing, right? And, you know, the mobile ecosystem is still very much alive.

Speaker 1 And I thought it was quite interesting because, yeah, it kind of shows that, sad to say, but UA kind of just dominates game development more so than before, right?

Speaker 1 Like, I'm assuming, like, yeah, what do you think are downloads, like, or CPIs for these types of creatives?

Speaker 1 Well, uh,

Speaker 2 it's not that much, honestly, when you don't optimize for purchases or payers,

Speaker 2 even like match-free games and puzzle games with CPI optimization and very low C, well, very low CPIs in comparison to

Speaker 2 the ROS campaign. So, it's like one, two, three dollars.
If you then go for the premium

Speaker 2 payers, then it's 40, 50, 60. So, this is, yeah, this is going to be quite low.
but anyway, and in India and tier for free countries, even I would say below, like 20, 30 cents.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 do you think we're gonna see any copycat games? Pretty much, they just look like

Speaker 1 you know, like Last Wars creatives.

Speaker 2 It's too late, it's too late for that, I think. This is just, I mean, it's 2025.
These creatives were a hit like four years ago, maybe.

Speaker 2 Well, not the hit, but they were introduced by Lexus like exactly four or five years ago. So, it doesn't matter that much.
I think that there will be a different trend.

Speaker 2 What you are talking about always this

Speaker 2 satisfom game and like this kind of satisfying cleanings, tidying up the

Speaker 1 rooms and and flats like already talking about the fourth game that we're gonna talk about today. So there you go.

Speaker 1 So so moving on to the next game. It's called

Speaker 3 I wanted to say one yeah sorry yeah I wanted to say one more point. It's interesting.
They don't block in

Speaker 3 Royal King

Speaker 3 during games. And it's interesting because I think it can increase their churn rate

Speaker 3 because it's the same king story and it can be interesting for people and they can go and install that game, but they don't block it. So I really wonder about the retention.

Speaker 1 Would you block it? Because it's really high ECPM, right? Exactly, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 It's high ECPMs, but it's very high risk to

Speaker 3 lose players.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Very valid points.

Speaker 2 That's true, yeah. But how would you balance that?

Speaker 3 You can check. You can check if their ads really have big children

Speaker 3 and maybe block, not bundle, but some. Fair.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 3 So this is a moment that can harm retention definitely.

Speaker 3 But we'll see.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I would say this game is not like very high retention, although can earn some interesting money because they have a big portfolio of games, right?

Speaker 1 Gaming has quite a big portfolio, I think. If you look at the retention,

Speaker 2 it's too early. It's too early, man.

Speaker 1 Yeah, probably, yeah, it's probably too early. Yeah, it's too early.

Speaker 2 They just launched. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right. Moving on to the second game.
We're flying through the best ad-monetized new bubblers basically on the charts. And this is is Super Car Merge by Stike Games.

Speaker 1 So, this game is actually earning a little bit of IAP revenue, which, you know, that's not great.

Speaker 1 But essentially, also,

Speaker 1 you can see here, it's since mid-December basically, it's gotten three and a half million downloads.

Speaker 1 Active user base is around 280,000 to 300,000. It's decreasing a little bit, but it looks like it's kind of leveling off, which means it's not just, you know, a one-trick pony.

Speaker 1 And basically, we thought we've seen a lot of games in kind of the merge category, but basically, this is the first merge game I've seen that's basically tailored towards the male audience.

Speaker 1 Whereas it's

Speaker 1 supercar merge.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's not the first game towards the male audience, although

Speaker 2 there are not a lot lot of them yeah they're outside of the of the soft launch

Speaker 1 so i'm starting here at the end of a race but basically this is the mini game and what you do is you race you race your car and before then you merge parts for basically use in your race game so i guess it's taking advantage of pretty much you know race games have really cheap cpis like you always say on the the podcast yeah but basically it's combining merge which i guess has a bit bit better monetization characteristic than

Speaker 2 or retention or retention. Yeah, retention.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 it's a very simple game.

Speaker 1 It's super simple. Most admonitized games, I don't know if you've noticed, are quite simple.
Yeah, I mean, yes, okay, okay. Like color wood sword is no exception here, right? Like, it's just,

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 1 Anyway, let me show you the merge. Yeah.
So here, basically, yeah.

Speaker 1 They do have interest a bit later on, but

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 1 okay.

Speaker 1 It

Speaker 2 really reminds me the merge planes, which was exactly this

Speaker 2 like gajillion years ago, where you just had planes where they just circled one

Speaker 2 yeah, circled around or just racing, I don't know, or flying or whatever. And then you were just merging them, and that's it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so yeah, they have banners pretty much visible at all times. They have this here, like before a race, you can get a NOS bottle for a rewarded ad, which we're not gonna do right now.

Speaker 1 And then later on, they actually start with the justicials after each race as well. And pretty much, this is it.
You merge to improve your car, and then, yeah,

Speaker 1 you watch a lot of ads.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 that's it.

Speaker 1 It's a bit hard for me to focus on both, but basically I made some estimates, and I think right now, Supercar Emerge is earning $5 to $6,000 per day in ad revenue with these types of levels.

Speaker 1 That's not a lot.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's growing, right? It's just a new game, right? That's gone over

Speaker 1 how many downloads is it?

Speaker 2 Yeah, well, come on.

Speaker 1 Yeah, 3.5 million downloads.

Speaker 1 Okay. that's fair.

Speaker 1 Did you have anything to add? Because while I'm playing the game, because as we've noticed, it's quite hard to focus on both.

Speaker 3 For me, it looks like the strategic is to

Speaker 3 mainly to rely on your art details, because there's need to use them very often to regress in this merge part.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 if

Speaker 3 if you can leave something over, the length of the

Speaker 3 session is six minutes. It's not too much.
Maybe it's a sign that the the value of works not enough

Speaker 3 for people to sacrifice their time sitting in the battery tasks with long template for sixty, seventy five seconds and just to open one more slot and get another some

Speaker 3 piece that you already have. It's very often situation in this game like this all or pain, because we like just merged something, throw to the beam something, and get it again.

Speaker 3 So, like,

Speaker 3 you need a lot of reward tests to progress.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 3 this is main, I think,

Speaker 2 where did you find the game? Jesus.

Speaker 1 Oh, the top charts.

Speaker 1 Okay. Yeah, so top charts.
The top charts of the downloads. But don't worry.

Speaker 1 We will move on because basically what I thought was interesting here is just appealing to you know merge which has better retention and then also kind of yeah, the charts gets a lot of downloads and Yeah, three and a half million downloads

Speaker 2 it is it is true that they're using the the best kind of CPI theme or

Speaker 2 cars in general and then marrying with the merge which can support a little bit better retention profile

Speaker 2 okay but honestly if we when we talk about this next month, this game is gonna be dead.

Speaker 1 That's my

Speaker 2 yeah, that's my prediction. I mean, it's like

Speaker 2 I honestly, I have no offense, obviously, but why do we need this game?

Speaker 1 Seriously. What do you mean, why do you need this game? On the podcast or in the world? No, no, no, in the world.

Speaker 2 In the world, like, why would you even play this game for more than like two

Speaker 1 days?

Speaker 1 It's like I wouldn't personally, but basically.

Speaker 1 It's a clever use of, like, yeah, how to get a lot of downloads cheaply, right? Okay. But don't worry, I know both of you really like Q shit.

Speaker 1 And that is why we're going to look at the third installment of Boo Boo and Mimi.

Speaker 1 So basically, this is the third installment of a game that basically is only ad monetized and it's been around for 10 years. And basically, they just came up with a new installment.

Speaker 1 And as you can see, one and a half million downloads since launching in mid-December. And yeah, basically the big takeaway here is

Speaker 1 if you make cute stuff, you'll get downloads. And I'm going to show you the game.
And that you can talk a bit about Mimi and Boo-Boo, but basic boo-boo and Mimi.

Speaker 1 But basically, as you can see, this is just a pureness of cutie cuteness available always, basically for your younger audience.

Speaker 1 And here, basically, what you are, you're a cute cat that runs around in this kind of fairy tale world.

Speaker 1 What you can do with your cat is you can make it a bit sad, sleepy, you can make it grumpy, you can make it laugh, you can make it angry. And basically, what you do is

Speaker 1 you choose the cat. Yes,

Speaker 3 not only cat we have in another corner.

Speaker 1 What do you mean, this one?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. I have more.
Oh, yeah. You have more.

Speaker 1 So, basically what you are, you're a cute little cat living in a little cat world. You can dress it in different fashion attire and different characteristics and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 And basically what you have to do is you go around in this kind of world collecting stars and gems.

Speaker 1 And this I actually think has a lot of retention. But basically

Speaker 1 this is just pure cuteness UA play, right?

Speaker 1 And what they do is

Speaker 2 why do do you bring UA play into this? It's just, it's cute.

Speaker 3 You also have home

Speaker 3 where you can sit all day.

Speaker 1 Yeah, okay. Sit all day, do different things, dress your cat.

Speaker 2 I mean, this is basically my daughter is the target audience.

Speaker 3 My son plays this

Speaker 1 note. Yeah.
Ah, okay. Do you actually know this game from before?

Speaker 3 He said immediately when I was playing, he recognized it. And I was looking how he plays, and he managed to play about 15 minutes without ads completely.
So,

Speaker 1 I wanted to talk about that as well.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's really, it's really strange strategy, but

Speaker 3 they

Speaker 3 hit games.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. How would you do it differently? Like, would you show interstitials earlier, or would you basically have banner ads here? Because that's what's kind of struck me.

Speaker 1 Like, I'm sure they're kind of going for a premium feel, but basically, I haven't watched ads for maybe 15 minutes of gameplay either at all.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I couldn't see, to be honest, I couldn't see any interstitials. I was playing for two or three.

Speaker 1 It's only rewarded. It's only rewarded.

Speaker 3 It's a kid.

Speaker 3 I really don't understand the really

Speaker 3 miss revenue opportunities. For example, between levels when she plays these mini-games, it will be natural.

Speaker 3 And rewarded ads, yeah, you have them, but in fact, you have so many different options to play without watching rewarded ads that it's not obligatory to see rewarded ads to progress in this game, to have fun in this game.

Speaker 3 But also, we need to remember that this is a kids' game, so they

Speaker 3 copa save them

Speaker 3 children's online privacy protection act and all GDPR regulations that refer to kids applied to their monetization strategy.

Speaker 3 So you won't find a lot of vendors who can monetize this with high fill rates.

Speaker 3 Felix,

Speaker 1 we can go

Speaker 3 with Google, Unity,

Speaker 3 Iron Source, Kiddos, super awesome.

Speaker 1 Who else? That's it. That's pretty much it.

Speaker 3 So, but

Speaker 3 no, like for me, we can add more

Speaker 3 because we definitely wouldn't find any reviews about like we hate ads.

Speaker 2 I don't think kids can can type.

Speaker 1 So that's the first thing.

Speaker 1 That's the first thing.

Speaker 2 And then second, yeah, I mean, I don't think it's actually

Speaker 2 illegal to put interstitials in between levels if it's a kids' game.

Speaker 1 I don't think, I don't know what you mean by it, because it's not illegal to put interstitial ads. Like, if you still think it's a good idea, it's not compliant.

Speaker 3 I'm a little bit aggressive.

Speaker 1 Yeah, maybe.

Speaker 1 anyway what i also wanted to talk about was here the cross promotion and basically i want to ask uh you katya like this is the only way i've actually seen cross promotion work which is basically when you have a standalone ad unit like this that you have to make yourself where basically you show all the different games that are similar and this is the only way i've actually seen cross promo work and it never works when you do it in the mediation platform i was just wondering if you had any experience that you wanted to add about this because this cross promotion strategy is actually quite good.

Speaker 3 I agree with you. I really liked the cross-promo.
I even noted it to say because it really liked it, really integrated

Speaker 3 smoothly. You can choose, you can move to another game, you can come back.
So it's brilliant, and I think it's working for kids, especially.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I don't know, it's like for me, the surprise was when I was going to the shop and see that they had rewarded ads on items

Speaker 3 in my in my shop

Speaker 3 in my shop i have right there you go to see uh to see reward and try this item that i'm supposed to buy oh yeah very clever interesting

Speaker 3 that's like this is clever you can improve your um

Speaker 3 quantity of rewards but for kids like

Speaker 3 will they buy after this

Speaker 3 your item in the shop when they can try and choose one outfit? I don't know.

Speaker 1 How much of this game's monetization do you think relies on kids misclicking and then parents not claiming money back?

Speaker 3 Just don't

Speaker 3 don't give them play from your phone where Google plays.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 2 That's why my daughter plays on on her tablet without Wi-Fi.

Speaker 2 because as soon as you have Wi-Fi, she was almost just

Speaker 2 my emails. Yeah, my emails.
I was like, what are you doing? Seriously. So, yeah, no, no way.

Speaker 1 And also, Felix, if

Speaker 1 they try one thing, I mean, your kid is angry.

Speaker 2 Well, play, Felix, play. So if they try and they see it, I'm pretty sure.
And if the kids like it,

Speaker 2 parents have to to buy it. There is no other way, man.
Like, this is how it works.

Speaker 2 I want this. Yeah, okay, fine.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right. I think we can leave Boo Boo and Mini.
And there are. Well, how much money did they make?

Speaker 2 Seven, seven Euros, man. Like, I don't think this is making a lot of money.

Speaker 1 7k a day, I think.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 almost.

Speaker 1 Katya, do you think the same, or do you think a bit less or more?

Speaker 3 It's very hard to be honest, to calculate. You agree with me? Because

Speaker 3 really understand how many or what how they play because there are lots of kids who literally stay in home doing this all home stuff and they don't move anywhere so there you can stay almost without it

Speaker 1 so maybe maybe i guarantee you they would have double ad revenue if they had interstitials between levels yeah yeah but you said cruel

Speaker 3 sorry yeah but you said it's cruel

Speaker 2 well i said it

Speaker 1 yeah absolutely.

Speaker 2 You would, yeah, they would double the revenue, but they will double the amount of angry kids. Oh, maybe no, not angry kids, angry parents.
That's for sure. That's for sure.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 So now we're going to go probably talk about the game and probably the game genre category that I understand the least, but is basically making waves and is pretty much responsible for the whole Vietnamese invasion.

Speaker 1 And basically, this is the latest installment from Abby Games and one of their ultra-casual titles called Tricky Twist Puzzle.

Speaker 1 And this is one of these things, like, I don't really understand it because it's pretty much like Perfect Tidy. It's a series of short games.

Speaker 1 And as you can see, 10, like nearly 10 million downloads since it launched on December 10th. It pretty much still gets about 130,000 downloads per day.
But the thing is, it's super sticky.

Speaker 1 So the active user base is nearly a million DAO, right? It's gone down a bit now, but basically it's like hovering between 800 to 500,000 DAO

Speaker 1 every day.

Speaker 1 And for the life of me, I don't understand these games.

Speaker 1 But I'll show it to you anyway, because it's exactly the same as pretty much the other games that we've covered that are kind of in the same genre.

Speaker 1 Wait, did my thing just freeze? Oh, no. No, it's fine.

Speaker 2 Tricky twist.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 ABI. Sorry, it's called ABI, not Abby, but ABI.

Speaker 1 You start here, and you can see it's already focused on the male audience. And then here, let's just start here, right? So

Speaker 1 yeah, here they have an app open ad. And I don't understand why they just don't load an interstitial instead of doing this, but maybe you can shed some light on that, Katya, because I don't know.

Speaker 1 You guys don't even do app open ads, do you?

Speaker 3 but maybe the reason is they hope that it will be more easy to go through this.

Speaker 3 They hope that this app open will close immediately.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay. So basically, what you're supposed to do is, they have an ad, it's pretty much, you know, banner ads, interstitial ads between each level.
You can skip level by watching a rewarded ad.

Speaker 1 It's time limited. And basically, now you have to help the girl finish her homework.
And what you can do is you can click a lot of hints and basically different prompts.

Speaker 1 So basically, this one is drag the book to the doll.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 3 and to the grandmind in the picture.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah. To give cheese into the hole.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 You don't really know how to play.

Speaker 1 And now no one knows how to play, Matthew. That's the whole point.

Speaker 3 Give this book to the mouse.

Speaker 1 I'm trying to give the book to the mouse, but oh, yeah, now it's doing it.

Speaker 3 Now open the window.

Speaker 1 Hello.

Speaker 1 There you go. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Tara. Right.

Speaker 2 Okay, so it is kind of a puzzle game.

Speaker 1 It is a puzzle game. And then you see interstitial ads.

Speaker 1 So basically, it takes about 30 seconds to complete each level, which means that you can probably show per session at least nine or ten interstitial ads at a natural break.

Speaker 2 But look, this is the second interstitial, and it's second time Lords of Mobile. Lords Mobile, Lords Mobile, which is Forex game.
And you said this is actually a mal audience.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, like the all the ads are absolutely great.

Speaker 2 I mean, very tailored to the audience.

Speaker 1 Yeah. On the other hand, on the other hand, what the fuck I'm watching.
Exactly. So, this is the next level.
You're saving the beauty.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Trying, I've seen it.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Trying, yeah.

Speaker 2 Oof. You don't really know how to play these games.

Speaker 1 No, but

Speaker 1 I can see this.

Speaker 3 Take

Speaker 1 the room.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I'm pretty sure this is going to be

Speaker 2 in the creatives in some way.

Speaker 3 It helps. Sooner or later.

Speaker 1 But basically, it's just what they're doing is they're taking Perfect Tidy or like any of the other ultra casual games they've made and basically just changed the colors

Speaker 1 and just changed everything just a little bit and just added a bit of random humor that's like really

Speaker 1 like

Speaker 1 hanging by the cat, you know, like

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But basically, how much do you think this game is earning right now, Mache? Because, you know, you know, it's a lot of DAU, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, what's the country mix?

Speaker 1 Let me show you. I mean, it's not the best countries, it's a lot of Vietnam, but there's also a lot of US,

Speaker 1 right? And that's the thing about these ultra-casuals, they get a lot of downloads in the US because there's a big audience there that really likes them.

Speaker 1 If we remember back to Perfect Tidy, the US was the second biggest audience after India on that game, which is quite surprising, right? And that really does increase the ECPM quite significantly.

Speaker 2 But 40k.

Speaker 1 No, I think that's a bit too high. I think that's a bit too high.
But right now, I think it's earning anywhere between 10 and 15 a day. Oh, it should be more.

Speaker 2 Oh, come on. That should be more.

Speaker 1 Should I? I mean, look at the GM. Look at the GM.

Speaker 1 I mean, Perfect Tidy was earning like 40k a day, right? So, yeah.

Speaker 1 Still.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Do you want to say anything about Tricky Twist? Because

Speaker 3 they are quite aggressive.

Speaker 3 And for me, like

Speaker 3 the quantity of ads,

Speaker 3 I don't think user

Speaker 3 United States have very good retention because they are sensitive to this quantity of ads.

Speaker 3 But I'm sure they have lots of

Speaker 3 reviews saying they hate people's hate ads, but can't stop playing because the plot is ridiculous and fun, and it is a trick that you meet when you add so many ads to your game. And

Speaker 3 what was irritating for me, frustrating for me, that

Speaker 3 inter appears even if I skip the game for a few seconds and answer messengers, come back and again I see

Speaker 1 like non-stop.

Speaker 1 It's like one of these tricks, right?

Speaker 1 So basically, I know a couple of studios that I work with that basically have worked out that you can also, if no one interacts with your game for like like 30 seconds, you can launch an interstitial ad.

Speaker 1 And that's like a cheeky way of increasing ad revenue, because basically you're monetizing on someone not being active, and that's what they're doing, right?

Speaker 1 So, you know, if you get caught doing that, like basically you're not gonna have your build getting uploaded, but it is a very legit semi-legit way of increasing ad revenue. Semi-legit.

Speaker 3 By the way, I saw a lot of ad pods in rewarded arts.

Speaker 1 Sorry.

Speaker 3 I saw a lot of ad pods in rewarded arts. This is a format that combines

Speaker 3 two ads in one impression from two different advertisers. And that was, I think, rolled up

Speaker 3 by Google a few years ago.

Speaker 3 It's like in your reporting, you see one impression, but in fact, your users will see

Speaker 3 this ad pod combined from two different ads in one impression. It boosts ECPMs.

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 3 as I remember, you could enable or disable it on account level.

Speaker 3 But I think now it's rolled up

Speaker 1 for all in Google Command.

Speaker 3 But here I saw mainly ad pods in Google Cards. So they definitely have high with CPMs.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But there's nothing you could do to like encourage the use of the double ads, right? That basically is done by the algorithm.

Speaker 3 Just check, you know,

Speaker 3 if they exist in your account, if they are enabled in your account.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Anyway, all right. Yeah.
Now moving on to before finishing off, we have two more games, right? But basically, we're going to get a bit worse on the game quality

Speaker 1 before we get a lot better, right?

Speaker 1 So next game I want to talk about, and I just want to talk about this because basically this is by far the worst game that we're reviewing, but I think what they're doing in terms of targeting is actually really clever.

Speaker 1 So, this one is called Indian Car Highway Drive.

Speaker 1 And what they do is basically they're appealing to India. No, but yeah, but what they're doing is like they're appealing to the Indian market, right, to get a lot of organic downloads, right?

Speaker 1 I don't think they're earning particularly a lot of money, but I think it's very clever. They have the Indian flag next to the car on the icon, and as you can see, it's 3.3 million downloads.

Speaker 1 Most of it is in India, obviously.

Speaker 1 But basically,

Speaker 1 the active user base is nearly half a million. But basically, like this game, I'm going to show you it later as well.
But I'm just wondering, like,

Speaker 1 I'm just wondering, like, why don't more studios do this, but focusing on tier one geos? Like, for example, I know that Germans would absolutely love a German car Autobahn drive.

Speaker 1 And, you know, ECPMs are considerably a lot higher there.

Speaker 2 I don't think this is

Speaker 2 what the German audience wants to play.

Speaker 1 Not the Indian car drive, but basically a German car drive.

Speaker 2 Whatever drive. I mean, these games have high organic downloads from India, Turkey, and some other GIS for a reason.

Speaker 2 So it's not really a big game in US.

Speaker 1 No, but this game is not going to be big anywhere else, right? But basically, I remember back to this.

Speaker 1 Basically, I had an encounter with a German once, and basically he was a crane operator in Berlin.

Speaker 1 I remember

Speaker 1 what he does on his free time, and he was just like, Oh, I play crane simulator.

Speaker 1 So, he works in a crane all day, and then he comes home and prays crane simulator, and then he wakes up the next day and does the same thing over and over again.

Speaker 2 You know, it's the supermarket simulator game that we talked about a million times before. So, I mean, yes, I can get it.
Loading an app, okay, good.

Speaker 1 Oof, Lord, interesting. Lord Mobile again, Lord Mobile.
There you

Speaker 1 Yeah, they really want me to download it, huh?

Speaker 1 Anyway, we don't have to spend too much uh on this game. I think it's earning about five to seven K a day currently, but basically it's an ad simulator.
But yeah,

Speaker 1 we can't even skip the video. Yeah, yeah, ad simple with cards.
Look, look, look.

Speaker 2 Lord's mobile Coca-Cola Impact. What the fuck?

Speaker 1 I mean, I need to, I really like

Speaker 3 it.

Speaker 1 I'm not gonna download Lord's Mobile to for a commission.

Speaker 1 You should

Speaker 1 later on.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 come on.

Speaker 2 We need to talk about Lords of Mobile in the next Creative Trends episode because this is the third time you see an ad

Speaker 2 third different creative.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's true. Anyway, do you want to add anything about this game, or should we just move on to the last game, which is actually really interesting and

Speaker 1 a bit different in terms of quality from the other games that we've gone through?

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 I want to ask, have you found Indian radio?

Speaker 3 Indian radio? Indian songs and wipes.

Speaker 1 You can

Speaker 1 hear?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Choose it.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 3 Yeah, you use driver

Speaker 3 listening all this.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 Very nice. Yeah, it's definitely Indian radio.

Speaker 3 Well, I understand why they uh add so many ads, because it's really hard to minetize Indian market. In fact, yeah, everyone thinks it's easy, but it's not easy, definitely not.

Speaker 3 And it's hard to find a good stack of networks who have stable fill rates there.

Speaker 3 So, to be honest,

Speaker 3 you understand why they need a lot of ads in their games.

Speaker 3 But driving simulators, definitely not my type, despite I can drive a car now.

Speaker 3 I managed to

Speaker 3 do this, but what to say? Lots of ads, definitely lots of ads, and I wonder about the retention rate.

Speaker 3 And also, their garage is a great place to add immersive in-game ads. Don't know about feel.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 it's going to be quite tough.

Speaker 3 But usually, like banners on the walls looks nice.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right. So before showing the last game, which is a bit different, I'm just going to show you the first time user experience.
So this is Gold Rush by Say Games.

Speaker 1 And this is their latest installment of a hybrid casual game. And Matier, you're just looking right now at the artwork and the first-time user experience.
What is this?

Speaker 2 It's White Out Survival or Frozen City or whatever you want to say.

Speaker 1 Exactly. It's straight up whiteout survival creative.
That is the first-time user experience. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right, so basically this game got launched on Monday, December 16th. And basic has been downloaded 3.6 million times and there's half a million dollars in IIP revenue outside of the ad revenue.

Speaker 1 And as you can see, the active user base is growing and it's basically around 300 to

Speaker 1 350k DAU. But basically, this is like another category completely, right? Because this is Say Games that's coming out with this.

Speaker 1 This is a they basically came out with three games in December, but this one is the one that's scaling the most.

Speaker 1 I don't know if they're doing a global launch yet, because most of the users,

Speaker 1 India, Brazil, and Germany. So I don't think that it's really scaling yet in the tier ones.
And I probably think that's on purpose.

Speaker 1 Probably they're honing in on something, but it's still earning quite a lot of

Speaker 1 IEP revenue as well.

Speaker 3 Because it's hybrid, it's perfect hybrid, yeah,

Speaker 2 but it's not

Speaker 2 there yet, so we can talk about it in the hybrid casual segment.

Speaker 1 No, no, it's very, it's getting close, right? Yeah, but basically, what I think is super interesting here is like basically they're taking the

Speaker 1 yeah, they're taking the

Speaker 1 creatives from White Out Survival and basically

Speaker 1 like you do

Speaker 1 as an onboarding, which is super clever.

Speaker 1 Frozen CD.

Speaker 2 Sorry, go on.

Speaker 3 I appreciate how they implement rewarded ads. And you definitely feel control.

Speaker 3 You definitely feel control of all the third pressure. You sit, you stack in this long rewarded ad,

Speaker 3 but you have motivation to do this here because you got valuable resources to progress the game. and you can choose if you will watch your right or no, anyway, you can play.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I liked it.

Speaker 3 Also, I can mention that they have inters very often, very frequent. This frequency can scare.

Speaker 3 But maybe, yeah, but

Speaker 3 all interstitials are easy to skip. So you also don't stack.
And

Speaker 3 maybe this is a moment to

Speaker 3 say

Speaker 3 that keep in mind you can choose different templates,

Speaker 3 different templates of showing us for full screen. You can

Speaker 3 here, they really need to

Speaker 3 control the lengths of interstitials to make them easily to skip and short, but they can allow themselves to use the longest

Speaker 3 rewarded as template because you really feel the value and you can can wait for these resources.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I mean, it's a say games game, right? It's like a different category, right? Like the quality is really good.

Speaker 1 It kind of looks like one of the aesthetic games that they used to make, but basically, it's around the hybrid casual kind of template, I guess, that they have, which is like you move around a character, you interact when you come close to it.

Speaker 1 And basically, it's a very proven concept. They have My Perfect Hotel, which is kind of similar to this, but basically, instead of being in a hotel, you're outside in the wilderness.

Speaker 1 But it looks looks like this game could potentially be

Speaker 1 like

Speaker 1 yeah one of their new hybrid casual hits and yeah we'll be monitoring it very closely uh do you have an ad revenue estimate for this katya

Speaker 3 it's hard because of their countries but i think i do think they got 100 grand

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I basically think that in the last month when they've earned, what is it, 400k in IAP I think they've earned probably about the same in ad revenue if not even a bit more so 55% ad revenue and basically that's probably where they're at

Speaker 3 their revenue definitely have more ad revenue

Speaker 1 survival creative nice

Speaker 2 there was also Lores Mobile before which was definitely very heavily inspired by whiteout survival there was the bear there was the yeah everything comes back to the whiteout Survival. Anyway.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Anyway, that wraps it up for all our six ad-monetized games.

Speaker 1 Don't forget to like and subscribe. Any takeaways that you want to say about ads or implementation of ads since you know everything, Katya.

Speaker 3 Can repeat here about people, but earn money.

Speaker 1 Cool. All right.

Speaker 1 Don't have anything else to add? Please don't forget to like and subscribe.

Speaker 1 We have more episodes coming out, and we are probably going to go to Vietnam, Matte, right?

Speaker 2 I am coming for sure. You might be coming as well.

Speaker 1 Might be, might be, hoping for the best.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, middle of, it looks like middle of April to the end of the April. So, yeah, stay tuned.
We'll definitely keep you posted. Miguel, thank you very much for coming.

Speaker 2 I hope this was the first and not the last

Speaker 2 appearance on our podcast?

Speaker 3 Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 Bye. Bye-bye.

Speaker 2 Bye-bye. Thank you.