Casual Connect 2013: Grow Big, Think Small, Unleash Your Game’s Customer Acquisition Potential

by Mitchell Weisman, Founder & CEO, LifeStreet Media

·         Summary: Sometimes the little things are the big things. The three things to keep in mind when dealing with high volume customer acquisition is that averages lie, real-time bidding is huge, and perpetual listing has come of age.

·         Averages lie. Let’s say you have a $1 average group and a $10 average group, which puts the total LTV average at $5.50. So you pay $3 for acquisition and find out that you don’t even get the high value users. You have to think smaller. Break the two groups into cohorts and buy the user groups separately. Pay $0.80 for the first group and $8 for the second group.

·         Real-time bidding is huge. You used to have to buy one price for all impressions, but now you can pay different prices for each impression.

·         Perpetual, automated testing is the way to go. Static, manual testing is no longer acceptable. You can use the RevJet platform for perpetual high velocity testing and optimization. This increases value of each impression and lifts RPM by 30%-100% or more.

·         Do a glance test (does the user quickly glance at your ad), then do a dwell test (does the user actually stare at the ad), then make a call to action. Animations can easily get a glance and strangeness of an ad can get dwells.

Casual Connect 2013: Monetization Toolkit: Tuning Game Design Using Analytics

by Roxanne Gibert, Product Manager of User Acquisition, DeNA

·         The key LTV drivers are monetization, retention, engagement, virality, and re-engagement. Set your metric targets against industry benchmarks and internal KPIs.

·         The KPIs are user acquisition (LTV by source, funnels), monetization (virtual goods, exchange rates, conversion points), engagement (user flow, progression), and retention (level gates, event completion).

·         Look at level progression of users who installed in the last 24 hours and look at DAU separated by levels.

·         A/B test with virtual goods (price points, conversion points), leveling curve (payouts, level gates), and exchange rates (hard currency to soft). Be careful of metric cannibalization (new features, promotions, events) and always have a hypothesis (expected results, targeted users, change to LTVs).

·         Have cohorts of reasonable sizes (10 to 20 thousand people). If you have a smaller audience, have cohorts of at least 1000 people.

Casual Connect 2013: Message or Media? Marketing Context Matters

by Matthew Kellie, Player Acquistion, Supercell

·         Summary: Create ad programs that are non-invasive, which drives higher intrigue and higher value customers.

·         Developers are performance marketers. We are accountable for the money we spend.

·         Two important KPIs (key performance indicators) are CTR (click-through rate) and CVR (conversion rate).

·         “Games are still a form of art, not a form of science. Games cannot be designed in a spreadsheet.”

·         Sometimes, the simplest and elegant solutions are the best. During the space race, the Americans built a hi-tech pen that could write even when the gravity was upside-down. The Russians just used a pencil.

·         If you change your message, you can shift perception. Message matters, but context also matters. If I told you that the Hilton Hotel was on fire, about 99% of the audience in the room would care. But if the news was about a hotel in another city, then the message becomes much less relevant.

·         Clash of Clans ran an ad on Skout, looking like a dating profile for the barbarian king character. The ad program was not invasive and fit into the context of the ad provider.

·         Ad programs that are not invasive provide higher intrigue, which in turn provides higher quality users (higher CTR, CVR, and LTV).

·         The four tenets to focus on are transparency, creativity, ad execution, and higher eCPM.

·         Get demographic information from Flurry, Facebook Connect, and clickthroughs.

·         Not all creative ads work. Supercell created a rich media ad for Hay Day using the swiping mechanism from the game. The ad did not work so well but there could be several reasons for its failure. It might now have been the right publisher or the right audience.

·         A way to measure ROI for offline ads is to check lift in organic installs and a halo effect on CVR.

·         Global marketing depends heavily on localization. Use localizers to alter the message.