MAU'25 Live Special: The App Store Monopoly Is Cracking. Are You Ready?

Speaker 1 Do you want to own that relationship with your consumer, or do you want to be dependent on a platform to go do that? It's part of the build process. Get it on the platform, get it.

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Uh-huh.

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Speaker 1 Okay, let's go.

Speaker 1 Yeah. All right.

Speaker 2 Hello, everybody. This is Matthew Lancher, you fan of gamers.
I'm your host for today. We have a very special episode because we have special episodes, but this one is very special.

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 2 we are at MAU and we are recording with Ixola. We have Damon and Bertha.
Guys, thank you very much.

Speaker 1 Thanks for having us. Yes.

Speaker 1 It's a privilege to be here and to be at MAU and see the positivity, the mojo, the swagger that everything is going going on right now and it's happening in the mobile space. It's a good place to be.

Speaker 1 It's a good indicator of what's going on that a lot of people have attended this year. Everyone's fired up downstairs.

Speaker 2 It's good to see. It's good.
Thanks for coming. Can you introduce yourself and what you do and the company you're working with?

Speaker 1 Sure. So I'm Damon Marshall.
I'm SVP of Mobile Growth and Partnerships. I am tasked with making sure that we grow our mobile channel.
We have a lot of products that apply to mobile.

Speaker 1 And my role is to make sure we connect the dots with all the various products under the Exola umbrella and apply that to the mobile vertical.

Speaker 1 Hey, I'm Berkeley Eganis, Chief Marketing and Growth Officer here at Exola. I've been here for almost five and a half years.
It's been a great ride.

Speaker 1 Seeing the progression that when we built web shops four years ago from an idea to what it has become today and becoming the industry standard and call it the OGs of web shops.

Speaker 1 And like one of our guys on the Artemo product team is the godfather of web shops and like really built these, put these together. Being forward-thinking.

Speaker 1 And so my job becomes to evangelize that and like help tell that story, show what's possible, meet with developers.

Speaker 1 We were downstairs, you know, hanging out with developers and talking to them and explaining best practices.

Speaker 1 How do you leverage the new opportunities, as we call them, that came out of court cases and other things that go into it? What is possible? You know,

Speaker 1 we live in the TOS. Like, what is possible to get done?

Speaker 1 We had one developer just 30 minutes ago say to us that with all the challenges in the industry right now, looking at Exola, it gives us hope and it shows growth and positivity in the industry.

Speaker 1 So that was really a nice

Speaker 1 thing. That's pretty cool.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because now a lot of things changed on the Lipo side because of the ruling. So you said, what's possible?

Speaker 1 Sure. Tell me more.

Speaker 1 Yeah, let's start. Let's start there.
The first thing I think we should talk about is the fact that fortnite just made it onto the app store a few hours ago again

Speaker 1 just just finally launched so that's that's a big win that's a big win right there

Speaker 1 and i think that starts the story it's been a big journey and like going into it and the whole idea is creating this direct to consumer platform and really being able to market, communicate, engage with your consumers and do that as a mobile developer and being dependent upon the platforms, the app stores, call it what it is.

Speaker 1 And going into it, we always say, if you're a mobile game, launch on the app store, put it together. It's the requirement what goes on.
Put that together.

Speaker 1 Now, figure out the monetization channels and the strategies that you want to go after.

Speaker 1 There's multiple options to go do. There's multiple things.
There's always rules in the TOS that said you could do certain things.

Speaker 1 Now, there are certain things you very clearly could not do prior to April 30th.

Speaker 1 Post April 30th, call it the William Wallace freedom opportunity that we have, and then the developers can go do and really do from a direct link inside the inside the game to market to your whales to market to your users and say we have a new offer or you're brand new you haven't downloaded my game yet but you go into you get a welcome offer and it's a one-click opportunity

Speaker 1 up inside the app click additional value offer and go into it through PayStation and put that together through the buy button for mobile games powered by Xola's web shop and PayStation.

Speaker 1 Technologies to be able to make that in one click. And then you can pay with even with Apple Pay.
Like Apple Pay being there, you're on the mobile device. Why not click Apple Pay?

Speaker 1 It's connected to everything else you have and put that together, be able to show that experience. You can do that for a welcome offer.

Speaker 1 You can do that for a whale and personalize it in the United States. A user, and we're very, very clear here, user in the United States and where this has and what's going on.

Speaker 1 You can be a developer overseas, but you're users in the United States. Same rules apply.
U.S. developer, user inside the United States, rules apply.
You can go do this engagement.

Speaker 1 Now, what we're seeing, we're seeing developers test this. We're seeing them push into going into it.

Speaker 1 You heard about Spotify being one of the first ones to be able to enable that and put that together. I mean, who's not on Spotify right now, but to be able to do it?

Speaker 1 The big pain in the neck for them was, I want to upgrade my account, my subscription. They're like, this stinks.
You can't do it. You have to go log on the laptop sitting over there to go do it.

Speaker 1 And you're like, what? What's going on? Like, from a Spotify perspective, but now you can go do that. Same thing for games.
One click, you can do a welcome offer.

Speaker 1 You can do an offer to your whales that has additional value. You can customize it, personalize it, and put that together and really be able to do that.

Speaker 1 So we're seeing folks test through the buy button. We send it to the web shop to look at multiple offers.
But the unique one is go to a specific SKU.

Speaker 1 Okay. And to be able to go, hey, we have a promotion during, you know, it's May here in Las Vegas.
It could be something around something specific during the month of May.

Speaker 1 It could be July in the United States. It could be July 4th holiday promotion.
You could run that and be very specific to that one SKU and put that in there.

Speaker 1 One click, player makes the purchase, they're back in the game playing. And then who knows? They're in this in the session that they're in.

Speaker 1 And they want to top up, they'll go do it with an IAP and put that together. And so, honestly, everybody wins in this scenario.
You get more value as a user perspective.

Speaker 1 You get something that's unique. It could be, hey, I want to spend more than $100 that was previously capped in the App Store.

Speaker 1 I want to spend $250 because there's that additional value and opportunity. And I see that, so I can be able to go put that together.
Developer wins, more profits to invest in the game.

Speaker 2 How does that attribution work then for that specific SKU? I want to be able to identify everything and then the users and

Speaker 2 how does that connection work.

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 1 so those are things that we look at and partners that we have engaged with with apps flyer okay obviously presenting mau i've got a column out here and a partner of ours you're going into it so now through some of the announcements that we made through you can look at the full funnel okay from that perspective and only at exola can you do this with apps flyer and put that together instead of your studio head or data analytics head for your agent for your uh developer you're at the studio you're like i'm looking at this.

Speaker 1 I'm looking at Google Analytics. I'm looking at Ops Flyer.
I'm looking at

Speaker 1 Publisher account, which is the Exolo platform. You're looking at different places and where all this data is coming together.

Speaker 1 Now you can go into one place and measure the attribution of what's going on. You can run that program, test it.
You could go, hey, this program worked on a Tuesday.

Speaker 1 This one didn't work on a Thursday. You can do different things in mechanics and really dive into that.
And also optimizing your advertising strategy.

Speaker 1 So knowing where the consumer came from and being able to watch that journey all the way through to the web shop, whereas before it was disjointed now you have the ability to track that journey from say a Facebook ad all the way through to purchase okay so what what changed for you guys when the ruling happened

Speaker 2 you heard the news like okay what do we know what do we do now so I think that one of the things that happened is the

Speaker 1 apprehension or the You know, a lot of these developers, Apple is, you know, despite what some people will say, Apple is a friend. Apple has one of the biggest stores in the industry.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Yes, they were charging a high fee to transact in that store.

Speaker 1 They were so nice.

Speaker 1 I was guided by my marketing.

Speaker 1 Not to say anything bad about Apple, but they are one of the biggest stores in the industry.

Speaker 1 And they make it super easy to transact. So this is not an either-or situation.
This is how do I augment or incrementally add to what I'm already doing in the App Store.

Speaker 1 So, right now, what changed

Speaker 1 this burden or this secrecy of trying to secretly or indirectly message my users. Now we're going much more direct to say, you can buy this either in the app store or for a benefit.

Speaker 1 You can go out to the web shop and get a better deal, more value, something more specific to who I am as a user.

Speaker 1 So there's a lot more segmentation, a lot more, like Berkeley was saying, it's either a first-time user or a whale.

Speaker 1 Now I can take my, what we have is one of the most robust live ops platforms in the industry and figure out how I can use loyalty programs. Or now I know it's a first-time user.

Speaker 1 Or is it time-limited offers, scarcity offers? So,

Speaker 1 you know, all these various ways in which we can incentivize people to move to the website.

Speaker 2 Give me an example.

Speaker 1 How does that work? So, in other words, let's say you have an item that's in the app store,

Speaker 1 funneling them over to the web shop. Not only only do you have that item, you get 20% more and we get what's called loyalty points.

Speaker 1 Loyalty points you can accrue and then get something for free through the

Speaker 1 web shop, which is not something that you can do. You can't do anything.

Speaker 1 Some of the things to your point is like time, period, specific offers, FOMO offers. Take it to your top 50 whales.

Speaker 1 And you know who those people are based on the data points that you have and push that out there and it was like, this is only for you.

Speaker 1 And this is a unique opportunity for you.

Speaker 1 You do Discord channels, literally, you had a conversation 20 minutes ago downstairs about what I should do on my Discord channel, offer it to your Discord channel and what's happening, and offer that unique offer.

Speaker 1 And it was like, Only you, we love you and your community, we love what's going on to promote that.

Speaker 1 And then, when you're in there, they've made that purchase through the web shop, go into the game, and then you serve them another like one-click with the buy button and to be able to offer that opportunity up for an additional value.

Speaker 1 And that's what we say: people are like, Should I discount? Shouldn't I just discount? Like, don't discount. No, absolutely not.
Provide additional value. These users want value.

Speaker 1 They will call your bluff on what's going on. They also want intelligence.
So this is also about creating a direct relationship with your users as opposed to generalizing in the app store. 100%.

Speaker 2 How does that kind of

Speaker 2 Discord promotion works like from the process perspective? You create a link, you share it with the the Discord channel, that's it.

Speaker 1 Simple as that and drive to the web shop. And it's only unique to those users'cause it's you'll put like a codify and like put that information in there.

Speaker 1 Goes to the web shop, pulls up a dedicated landing page, it goes into it for these welcome game ABC Discord offer. Here we go from a web shop perspective and be able to put that together.

Speaker 2 Okay, so h how do you help developers after the the ruling happened to leverage the the web shops? Like because now everybody's like, oh, I should have a web shop

Speaker 1 so it's an it's an interesting conversation april 30th happened so it was what a wednesday night when it all came down so everybody was like

Speaker 1 thursday you know everybody's pulling all-nighters like trying to figure this out because it was like what does this mean yeah yeah so you spend the first week everybody was like what do you what does this mean now we had some people testing straight away because they were ready to go They had ABC scenarios figured out.

Speaker 1 They have huge LiveOps teams, big monsters, AAA games, can figure that out.

Speaker 1 Then we had others that was like, because we were down in, I was in Brazil at the point in time at Games Comm Latam, and I was literally on stage on Thursday and we were talking about this and like, what is happening?

Speaker 1 What does this mean? And the developers were like, yeah, we're going to try it. Here's what's going on and putting things together.
So you spend the next week trying to, okay, what are we going to do?

Speaker 1 Now it's like, let's go. Like, let's put together what we don't know.
One thing we always say is, like, should I have a website? Web shop? That's the wrong question.

Speaker 1 It's, why not? You should be doing it right now from day one as you go into it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, I just want to say we have 500 web shops live, so it's not like no one's doing websites and all of a sudden everyone's like on the web shop train.

Speaker 1 We have plenty of web shops out there, it's just that a lot of developers were a little uncomfortable with how they promoted the web shop and how they drove traffic to the web shop.

Speaker 1 I think April 30th opened up that kimono to say, now just drive it down your throats a little bit more.

Speaker 1 There's no, I mean, there's still some shyness, but I just we saw huge games right right? When you log in,

Speaker 1 go to the web shop. Pokemon Go, I think on their, in their store, they have another, in the in-app store, they have a banner that says visit our web shop.
Those types of things.

Speaker 1 Those things were not happening prior to April 30th. Now people feel more empowered to really promote it and push.

Speaker 1 We're seeing average capture rates and capture rate is the percentage of revenue web shop makes compared to your overall revenue. Capture rates were as low as 5% to 10%, maybe up to 20%

Speaker 1 for on average. But now we're seeing, now we're going to push to that 30%, 40%, 50% because we're going to see a lot more promotion right in your face in the app itself.
So that's that's the goal now.

Speaker 1 And with that, with the margin, you know, going from 30 to say 5 or 6%,

Speaker 1 that's going to be extremely meaningful to a lot of people.

Speaker 2 But then again, like, how do you help the developers that don't have the web shop to actually start?

Speaker 1 So, it's like, how do you get going in the conversation? So, there's a lot of consultative conversations that we have. We don't do the hard sell.
We like how

Speaker 1 best practices, how to do it step-by-step, go through those processes, and then we like my team will get engaged from a marketing perspective with those games and how do we promote it, give them feedback on what's going on.

Speaker 1 And Damon working with different ad networks and other people like that to put that stuff together. And really, it's a cohesive project.
It requires an ecosystem to do what's going on.

Speaker 1 The interesting thing we've seen, it's not limited to AAAs at all. No, of course.
We're seeing, call it garage games, call it whatever levels you can call it, indies. Indie or mid-tier.

Speaker 1 I think it's in the mid-tier. So we have an instant web shop that you can get up in minutes.
Okay. It scrapes your app store and brings all the SKUs into a web interface using your assets.

Speaker 1 Very simply. We have Site Builder, which is the second step, or maybe where a mid-tier would get a little bit more involved.

Speaker 1 And then there's a third tier where Xola actually comes in and works with you to customize a really brilliant, well-thought-out web shop for massive users.

Speaker 1 I know there are a lot of shops out there or companies out there that do just the templatized thing, but we have a full team of 100 developers/slash product people that will audit your site and make it an extension of the gameplay.

Speaker 2 Well, and then the question is how much better the custom web shop can be in terms of your grabbing.

Speaker 1 it's pretty straightforward well in that instance

Speaker 1 so in that instance we really push the live ops platform testing the variance because that's when you're really leaning in

Speaker 1 and we've had all various types we had companies that really are leaning in and have leaned in for the last few years and then others that are just testing the water so depending on how much you want to invest we'll come with you and hold your hand you have a client success manager that will that has gleaned a ton of information and best practices from the 500 shops we've already launched.

Speaker 1 So we know a lot that we can share with the community to

Speaker 1 evaluate your game and then figure out where to test.

Speaker 2 What are the best practices then? Well, at least like a few, if you can mention, like what are the insights you're taking into consideration when you're actually building?

Speaker 1 Absolutely. I think we've talked about it a little bit, but it's knowing your user.
So first of all, segmentation. So are we dealing with a first-time user?

Speaker 1 There's some friction. I mean, again, going back to Apple, the benefit of Apple is it's super simple, right? And the consumer doesn't care about margin, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, so they want the easiest thing, right?

Speaker 1 Making sure you understand: is this a user that is a first-time user of the web shop and coming in, giving them a heck of a deal right when they get there, maybe even a free item?

Speaker 1 I mean, something else we've employed all the way through to the whale. So, Berkeley mentioned that we can have more than a $99 SKU.

Speaker 1 So, if there's, we've heard with the social casinos, having to go in and buy $99 packs on the App Store is a pain. So now, hey, how about just buying a $500 pack right now?

Speaker 1 So you only have to do it one time.

Speaker 1 Knowing the user segmentation isn't one thing. We talked about loyalty, so that's another thing.
So accruing points and getting something other than the

Speaker 1 item that you're buying

Speaker 1 in the game.

Speaker 1 You're getting some extra value building up those points and redeeming that for something special that you can't get in the game uh or in the

Speaker 1 you can't buy a la cart uh or you have to grind to get it now you can earn it and that's another thing those are a lot of the things that we

Speaker 1 and those are only possible in the web shops and like really get into it like the personalization i think is the understated one and going into it i mean you hit the nail on the head personalize that offer you know based on user experience what they're purchasing on it could be tuesday fridays is the days that somebody makes a purchase it could be you know, I come in once a month and I hit it, and it could be after a paycheck.

Speaker 1 It could be whatever the scenario is and what's happening, or you only buy on holiday.

Speaker 1 So gas that holiday offer up to you because you're a holiday user and you're like every 15th of the month, I'm in here buying, right? 14th, here you go.

Speaker 1 Here's your offer because you're a well and you know those numbers of what's going on

Speaker 1 to get it above that $100 transaction. We're seeing $250,000, $500, $1,000, $10,000 transactions for a mobile game.
Previously, you're like, what? What is happening?

Speaker 1 Like, somebody's spending $10,000 on a digital package. I worked on the bundle.
I worked on the bundle. It happens.
Yeah. I'm not even surprised.
And everyone has their VIPs.

Speaker 1 So they should already have a direct relationship. So it's communicating to those VIPs to get that personalized offer.

Speaker 1 So there are a lot of different programs. Another thing that we're announcing and about to launch is our offer wall product.

Speaker 1 So the offer wall product, I know the offer wall is a crowded space, but now we're going to attach an offer wall to the web shop. So now we have a browser-based

Speaker 1 offer wall, not SDK.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I think the way we're going to envision it or launch it is you have your web shop and then you have another tab that's offer wall. So you can either buy in the web shop or earn in the offer wall.

Speaker 1 And the great thing about our offer wall is the rev share for publishers is incredibly aggressive. We're giving 90% of the revenue to our developers, which is extremely competitive.

Speaker 1 Well, Exola's strategy is to provide all the various tools for a developer to succeed. And it's not as much about how much margin can we make as a company.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's obviously important, but we do a lot of different things and we have a lot of different products, OfferWall being one of them. And it allows us to get aggressive with regards to that.

Speaker 2 Do you think that web shows are, I mean, it's not a question if if you should have a web show, but like how does that change

Speaker 2 within the different genres?

Speaker 2 Because obviously with casual game, it's quite hard.

Speaker 1 Well, so I think the buy button, to Berkeley's point, helps casual games tremendously.

Speaker 1 Because you don't want to go through the friction for a 99 cent item. No, of course.
It doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 But if that 99 cent item, you hit a buy button and boom, you're just in an overlay one or two clicks and it's done.

Speaker 1 That could really benefit the developer and the consumer because hopefully you're also offering something special within that one quick purchase.

Speaker 1 But we're really excited about the fact that now we can go back to these casual developers and say, okay, now we've got a solution that will actually work for you. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It doesn't have to be a first-person shooter, a big free-to-play. Like the casual games, the user is SKUs, obviously, a little older.

Speaker 1 They're used to making a transaction online and making that purchase or using the mobile browser to go do that Google, Safari, whatever, to put that in there, depending on what phone.

Speaker 1 Obviously, we're talking iOS here and like what's going on, and be able to make that transaction. So it's a normal behavior that they're used to.

Speaker 1 Sometimes they get into app stores and get a little, it's not as it's a little jarring sometimes in situations.

Speaker 1 The rest of us who are playing other games and other things are used to that dynamic, but casual games has actually picked up and we're seeing numbers upwards in the 20, 30, 40%

Speaker 1 purchases being made on the web shop for those casual games because it's just a normal behavior that they have from an e-comm perspective. Just go back to e-comm 101 and like what they're doing.

Speaker 1 Also, with all the news over the last few weeks, you can't ignore it now. It's kind of a FOMO thing.
It's kind of like everyone's talking about web shops.

Speaker 1 I've got a number of companies that were like, we're an ad-based

Speaker 1 game and we're never going to do IEP or it's not as meaningful. I think that now they're starting to pay attention and even change

Speaker 1 some of their strategy to offer a little bit more because

Speaker 1 now they have the freedom to do this.

Speaker 2 Do you have any benchmarks for the web shop revenue? Like if you have mid-core game, you can earn 30-40% more on the web shop.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, I think that, first of all, you can get up to 50%, I would say at least 50% of your revenue coming from the web shop. But like I said before, capture rate is what we would.

Speaker 1 That's our goal, our North Star as far as like how much, what percentage of your revenue is now coming from the web shop versus your total revenue.

Speaker 2 Okay, then let me rephrase like what's the percentage or like the increase of money you're now processing after the ruling?

Speaker 1 So that's an interesting question. So we were on a call, we were on a call yesterday, I think it was, and we were putting it into it.
So game experiencing 20 to 30. Okay.

Speaker 1 You should be expecting 30 to 40. Okay.
Like because it removes the friction. You use the right word.
That's right. Less friction with one click purchase and then put that together.

Speaker 1 Go pay with it with Apple Pay or whatever your preferred payment method is and go into it. It's less steps, less clicks.

Speaker 1 You can literally, in one click through the buy button, be able to do this and put this together.

Speaker 1 So you're going to see that conversion rate go up, capture conversion purchase rates, and then continue to go up. And then you're going to see that.

Speaker 1 I was like, I can do this because I was like, I ran out of currency last week. I need to double down on this and put this together so you can see those transaction rates.
And also, messaging.

Speaker 1 Before, we had to send, we couldn't send people directly to the web shop. We had to send people to a blog or to Discord.
Or the creative world.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and it was a very indirect route getting to the web shop. So now we're seeing a lot more, like I said before, with Huge and some of these other guys.
They're leaning forward.

Speaker 1 They're getting aggressive. I will say one of the biggest hurdles, one of the biggest challenges right now that I hear in the marketplace is we don't want to piss Apple off.
That's still there.

Speaker 1 The threat is still there. Are they not going to feature me? Or or am I not going to get the love that I need to get?

Speaker 1 You never know. I mean, this is always very.
And they can't say it, but

Speaker 1 they can do it. But I think that if, you know, again, if everyone, if the movement takes shape and it is taking shape, there's not a lot that Apple can do.

Speaker 1 They can't punish everybody.

Speaker 2 Yeah, they can't punish everybody, but I can see the world where they say, if you use our payment solution, we'll feature you more.

Speaker 1 We'll give you some

Speaker 2 additional discoverability. of the root.

Speaker 1 100%.

Speaker 1 And they've been doing that for a lot of different reasons all the time.

Speaker 2 You open up stores and there's like the feature, the hero banner is like five or six, seven same companies all already

Speaker 1 big ones.

Speaker 1 Come on.

Speaker 1 Come on. So what is the threat? Yeah, is it really the threat? I guess people are really believing that Apple will do something for them.

Speaker 1 You know, again, like I said, you don't want to become enemies with Apple.

Speaker 2 No, no, of course.

Speaker 2 I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that.
It's just,

Speaker 1 yeah,

Speaker 2 if I want to earn more money, which I should, because I'm not doing anything wrong and I don't really believe you're like getting enough value out of the 30% cuts.

Speaker 1 Thank you very much, Mark.

Speaker 1 But it also

Speaker 1 the question we should be asking is, what is Apple going to do?

Speaker 1 What is that? Apple's not just going to sit there and talk about it.

Speaker 1 This change represents significant revenue.

Speaker 1 And so what I've been asking, and I don't know if the answer what the answer will be, but Apple may lower that rate, right?

Speaker 1 And in that case, they become a much more legitimate competitor. And then how do we react to that?

Speaker 1 I would say that you still don't have a lot of the benefits of creating a direct relationship with your consumer.

Speaker 1 I don't know if they'll do that, but that's one thing that they can do. And there are a number of other things that they can pull up there.

Speaker 1 That's the thing.

Speaker 1 Do you want to own it? Do you want to own that relationship with your consumer? Or do you want to be dependent on a platform to go do that? It's part of the build process.

Speaker 1 Get it on the platform, get it. And so, we always say, pay online, but play on the device and put that together.
You're always going to come back to that device.

Speaker 1 Yeah, something like that. Somebody wrote that one one time and put that together.

Speaker 1 And it's a good, like, Tyman, you're like putting it together, but it's the reality because you're still going to see people come to the game, be in the middle of a session, and need a top-up right there.

Speaker 1 They're still going to make that IAP within the App Store. It's still going to happen.
It's not a replacement. It's an and thing.
It's not an or it's an and.

Speaker 1 And we're also, there's some incrementality, right? So there's because you're offering something special in the web shop. I may not have bought it in app,

Speaker 1 right? But now I'm going to go buy it on the web shop, and that's an incremental sale as opposed to just replacing the app store.

Speaker 2 Do you see any interesting

Speaker 2 web shop strategies after the ruling?

Speaker 2 Meaning shifting instead of just doing all the crazy creative stuff, just doing

Speaker 2 in-your-face web shop, here you go, like you mentioned before, like anything interesting that people should know that they can try as well.

Speaker 1 I think you're going to see people take a bit of a hybrid approach. Yeah, okay.
They're going to test the buy butt and put that out there.

Speaker 1 You're going to see fast adoption to that route because they're like, whoa, like my card abandonment is off the charts. My less friction, my speed, my capture rate, all is going to go up.

Speaker 1 So you're going to see people double down on that. What's going on? They're going to watch a few people.
There are some that are going to watch. Yeah.
They're going to be

Speaker 1 slow movers.

Speaker 1 I want to wait and see

Speaker 1 what happens. It's only a few weeks away since the ruling.
So people are,

Speaker 1 we're definitely seeing a lean in. We're getting much more, many more phone calls now.

Speaker 2 You have to help you get into Barnabas.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, you look at summertime and like user behavior and like let's talk about kids and like out of college, high school kids, whatever, making purchases they need something to do and they're gonna be making one clicks and putting it together that's why we do what we do and look at you know child protection and things like that that go into conversations and two-factor identification like you figure all that stuff out to make sure that that's all set up but it's all programmed into that experience so they keep it safe you still keep it safe even though it's less clicks because they'll keep a safe transaction a validated transaction and go through it and they get people into the game and just literally enjoy minimizing friction we already talked about it but again the login experience, right?

Speaker 1 When you get into the web shop, how are you authenticating, right? And there are a number of different ways in which you can do it.

Speaker 1 But we have an API that connects to the login where you go right into the app, get authenticated, and come right back.

Speaker 1 It's just a matter of how the developer wants to do it and how much they're willing to take advantage of the technology to make it as quick as possible.

Speaker 1 But I think that every step of the way, you first you market and message, then you get them into the web shop, you got to authenticate quickly and easily, and then they're in the store just searching around.

Speaker 2 Nice.

Speaker 2 Oh, everybody should get in the web shop.

Speaker 1 Why not? And

Speaker 1 be smart when you're looking at it because there's multiple providers. Let's call it what it is, right? Yeah.
That are going out. How did you get

Speaker 1 making smart decisions? What's going on? Look at someone who's validated.

Speaker 1 500 web shops.

Speaker 1 We were asked in London, at PGC London, and was like, is this a real thing? And some folks were were on stage and didn't have the answer, but we were at 500 web shops.

Speaker 1 Over 2 billion in incremental transactions have been accepted through Xola web shops to be able to put that together.

Speaker 1 It just comes with the math and doing 500, what's going into it, and that's continuing to grow. And we're seeing months, which months are continuing to grow and expand and put that together.

Speaker 1 Look at the licensing agreements that people are giving you.

Speaker 1 There are VC-backed companies out there right now that are looking at it and that are lowballing and putting these things together, but there's escalators that are rapidly being put into these contracts that are not always advantageous to a developer.

Speaker 1 You have to look at that. Have your legal team go through these.

Speaker 1 Have an outside legal counsel if you're a garage, if it's like us three as developers, like putting it together. We're going to go to an outside legal council and take a look at that.

Speaker 1 It's worth the time to go do that conversation. Look at when escalators happen.
Look at what the value that's being put together.

Speaker 1 We charge these customization websites and from a web shops, we charge zero yeah on the front end we do not we're not like an ad agency we're not a creative department that goes into it where we're going to charge you a hundred grand to go build your web shop we're not going to charge you zero if the game's successful then we're successful

Speaker 1 after the transaction after the transaction

Speaker 1 the better for everybody

Speaker 1 right so we're on the same team look i would answer it this way Exola, I don't know if a lot of people know this, but Xola is a 20-year-old company. Okay, we've been in the space for a long time.

Speaker 1 We've been in the e-commerce space for a long time.

Speaker 1 It's difficult. And there's a

Speaker 1 problem with you. Right.
But like commerce, there's customer service.

Speaker 1 There's fraud. There's tax and compliance.
We act as the merchant of record.

Speaker 1 I know the other companies are also trying to do that, but it's hard to do with a... 20-person, 60-person company.
We're over a thousand people now. We have offices all over the globe.

Speaker 1 We have a thousand different alternative payment methods for every emerging market to make it easy. And I mean, I also understand that we have a safe way, a Subway gift card that you can pay with.

Speaker 1 So a kid that gets a Subway gift card for lunch can now actually buy

Speaker 1 solar gold is what we call it. So

Speaker 1 we have the experience, and I think that's a major differentiator for us as opposed to some of these other up-and-coming companies. Obviously, now with this ruling,

Speaker 1 and this is hot for the United States. So you're going to see countries role in theory, like as you call it.

Speaker 1 You're going to see, is there the other guy, that other platform that's going to make some changes? If you're reading articles, we wake up every morning and go, okay, what now?

Speaker 1 Like what's happening in the space and going into it? But a thousand different payment methods to be able to do this in local places.

Speaker 1 Because if you're in Brazil and you're an unbanked player, you're going to use PICS as a digital wallet. It's one of our preferred partners that we work with in Brazil as an example.

Speaker 1 I say say that because i was just down there for two weeks talking to folks and like the real impact from the economics that what goes on and then you go to southeast asia you go to india india like very challenging market it's got a ton of people there so how do you transact in india i would say that we're the experts in india

Speaker 1 um another differentiator just because we've been in the payment space for a long time

Speaker 1 i think that you've got to look at and then of course the stability of the company

Speaker 1 the other thing i would say is that

Speaker 1 I heard, this is something that someone at Exola told me today. I'm a little bit new to Exola.

Speaker 1 You're doing fine. You're doing fine, man.

Speaker 1 3,000 games, different games.

Speaker 1 4,000 now? 4,000 different games touch an Exola product. So that's a lot.

Speaker 1 That's a lot. No, I don't think a lot of people can taught that.
So, again, tons of experience at Exola.

Speaker 2 So what's next for Exola now to onboard or like help with websites?

Speaker 1 So one of the, we're going to see live ops help the support that goes into it. That's the critical factor.
You look at it from a best practice perspective.

Speaker 1 How can we help in that perspective and give recommendations and support services that go into it?

Speaker 1 And then like we're going to push, we're going to push with developers and they're going to pull us too. We have a lot of developers pulling.
Like, come on, come on, come on. Let's customize.

Speaker 1 And we do.

Speaker 1 We look at our roadmaps and where we're going from our products and work with the developer and like, let's co-develop on something because it's so specific to them and what's going on that that's the freedom and the choice that we give to developers it's not take this off the shelf shove it in your game and it is what it is and we're doing the best we can because we're a vc backed company it's like we will do full customization and put that together those are really the problems we're trying to tackle that we're like seeing already i mean we've been here what four hours and like here at mau and we're already having these meetings lined up and what's going on and we have more people we had one guy was like like solo what are you doing here?

Speaker 1 Like, you're at MAU. I'm like, because it's mobile.
Of course, yeah. We have to be here.
This is where developers are, people that are making decisions, people ahead of growth.

Speaker 1 And I think that bodes well for the entire industry. I mean, it's going to be a little bit more challenging or more expensive.
Yeah, thank you for

Speaker 2 making my life harder.

Speaker 1 I can like

Speaker 1 it.

Speaker 1 We're making more money.

Speaker 1 Again, it goes back to that comment that we were talking about earlier where Exola represents a positive in the industry that has had a lot of challenges over the last few years.

Speaker 1 So we're really excited about it and I think that Exola will help lead the charge forward after this. The one thing I will also say is

Speaker 1 the battle's not done with Apple and Epic.

Speaker 1 Things are going to change. This is probably a temporary.
I don't want to say that it could be a temporary thing, but jump on it. It's changed so much.
It's changed so much.

Speaker 1 So don't sleep on it, right?

Speaker 1 Take advantage while this window is open. Who knows what's going going to happen six months from now? Yeah.
But the door is open right now, so it's time to jump on board.

Speaker 2 Thank you very much for coming.

Speaker 1 This is good, Tom. It was good.
It's good. I appreciate it.
Thank you very much. Thanks, Matt.

Speaker 2 Thank you very much, guys, for listening. See you next time.

Speaker 1 Bye-bye. Take it easy.