Ksenia Yurkina: “Data is what helps make the right decisions for mobile apps”

Hey! I have collected some trends that we’ve discussed with great experts during the Apptica Talks Podcast. I put them into 2 camps for a more clear picture. 

UA

• Market maturation and privacy pressure make it harder to be competitive. Privacy has reduced targeting ability and this puts pressure on running profitable and scaled UA. To stay ahead companies are managing agile channel strategy, turning the focus on “internal channels” e.g. cross promotion
• SKAN 4.0. It’s confusing as we still don’t know how the ad networks will adopt the new features, however, the sooner you dig into SKAN 4.0, the more advantages you will have once its data starts rolling in
• Privacy is key. DSPs and all players in the industry will have access to less data. Partners will be more keen on exchanging data rather than concealing it.
• There will be a reduction in the number of DSPs and ad networks the app developers work with. They will select only some due to transparency and SKAN thresholds; if you spread your spending everywhere, you might have less access to privacy threshold, whereas if you use one DSP, then you allow this DSP to have more visibility of data

Monetization

• More integrations with brands as a new monetization channel (There are 3,5 bln gamers out there, that’s why for brands games turn into a new venue for awareness. E.g. Gucci campaign with Tennis Clash, Louis Vuitton campaign with League of Legends).

• A movement toward competitive bidding

• Hyper-casual/casual games tend to have more banners, interstitials, and app open ads to monetize the apps, whereas games that are less casual, e.g. arcade, mid-core type, and alike are more likely to have IAP as a main monetization strategy. The latter does use a lot of rewarded videos as they reinforce in-app purchases.
• The rewarded videos are the most liked type by users. App open ads are also popular. It is basically an interstitial that will show up when an app opens. They have a high viewability and efficiency rate. However, they might cause an early drop-off of some users.
• There is a strong trend of revenue diversification: publishers are moving to the middle, to hybrid (IAP + IAA; subscription, freemium model, cross-portfolio model). There is also a focus on adding new emerging ad formats such as in-game, audio, and out-of-game.

If we are talking about the questions for the interview, it’s better to have mercy on me and put a person behind it. 😂 All joking aside, AI and human judgment co-exist in a hybrid mode. Luckily for us, humans can make decisions that AI cannot; manual analysis and critical thinking are still a must in many fields of our industry (especially with a contextual approach).

Sure, it will be my second time at GamesForum and first time in Hamburg. I am looking forward to meeting our partners and building new connections.

It wasn’t that challenging actually. First, we put with Josh some relevant questions that might be interesting for the speakers and the audience to dive into. From my side, I tried to collect the questions I saw in the papers or discussed already with the partners during our Podcast recordings, roughly speaking, something that ignites debates in our industry. As a next step, we looked through the points with our speakers, and set priorities. In fact, the preparation process is still on, we are in touch in a secret Slack channel, refining the panel. 

If we are talking about the panel I will be moderating, I am quite excited about unveiling some parts of UA strategies of Sunday and Lessmore; learning data behind winning creatives, and specifics of ad networks from Kayzen and Smadex. In general, I expect a lot of insights into the current state of the gaming industry from both UA and Monetization angles, more details about the trends, and, as a result, inspiration for our marketing projects at Apptica.

For me, it’s an ability to develop a top-notch product/creativity while taking risks and experimenting. It’s hard to apply any formulas, as the term itself is quite vague. Most advertisers measure creativity by KPIs they set depending on the context and goals.

I will trick you here upon permission and put 2 words: accurate decision.

While compiling the reports I am always astonished by the numbers the gaming industry is operating. Only in Q1 2023, we caught 4,1 mln creatives in the gaming category both on AppStore and Google Play from 26K advertisers (gaming apps). 

For the same time period, revenue (IAP) is 9,8B USD and downloads are 15B, which is 51% of total revenue and 30% of total downloads. Numbers are huge.

BTW, we have recently released a new report on puzzle games with various key takeaways. Feel free to check.

It is okay as long as you achieve your targets. 😉 In fact, we see that many advertisers (even with midcore titles) borrow some hypercasual mechanics to boost their ad campaigns. You do not need to reinvent the wheel here, just adjust a proven option and save your time and budget. Nowadays, when the CPI keeps growing, it is a wise strategy. 

I am sure there are plenty of ideas to dig into. For E.g. who could have thought that “save the dog” mechanic would be that popular? Therefore, we will definitely see new “trendy” mechanics in the upcoming future. 

I believe that AI may enhance our industry, and there are already many hybrid solutions in the arsenal of digital agencies and other service providers that help to generate new ideas and approaches, as a consequence, provide better results. For E.g. AppFollow uses AI to generate specific templates for review management and AppAgent uses Midjourney, ChatGPT, and DALL-E 2 to improve ad creative ideation. 

More restrictions in regard to data privacy are coming. We already have TCF v.2 for Europe, LGPD for Brazil, CCPA for California, SKAN 4.0, a project of Privacy Sandbox, and many more.  We still don’t know how the ad networks and MMPs will adopt the new features, however, the sooner you dig into new regulations, the more advantages you will have as early adopters.  

• No doubt that TikTok is still among the top trends. It’s among the 2nd or the 3rd best-performing channels. If you crack Meta and Google, TikTok is definitely the channel to try. While talking about this channel we should highlight spark ads that have better performance compared to regular ads.

• UGC content. Many experts recommend blending video content with UGC and influencer integrations. However, there is a challenge to find micro influencers at a reasonable price that could deliver a quality content.

• Onset of audio advertising. An experimental strategy that is quite promising.

• Deceptive/Fake ads are still there with various integrations in the form of mini-games or onboarding steps.

I recommend checking our recent course on video creatives to explore more trends. And our team is working now on a new part of Ad Intelligence – the deconstruction of creatives, therefore, we will share soon more trends based on our data (spilling the beans here 😂).  

Based on our data (all categories, Q1, 2023), videos take the largest share (58% Android vs 64,9 iOS), followed by images (40,8% Android vs 31,6 iOS) and playables (1,2% Android vs 3,5 iOS). But these numbers do not mean that videos are the kings performance-wise. In fact, playables demonstrate a better impression rate and usually take the first positions in our “the most shared section”.

Thank you! Looking forward to meeting Tappx in Hamburg!