Originally posted on Gamesforum
The mobile gaming sector is witnessing monumental changes, having realized the necessity for diversified revenue streams and cross-platform approaches. As a result, developers are transitioning from simply relying on one revenue stream to generating both ad-supported and in-app purchase models for long term survival. Oh, and there's the emerging trend of creating games for cross-platform play.
We spoke with RevU President Tanner Hanson to gain some clarity on the trends and specifically why innovative monetization tools like offerwalls are instrumental in helping developers drive user retention, engagement., and acquisition. And that measuring success today increasingly means tracking ROAS and LTV of players. But despite there being no silver bullet, he sees continued education along with changing tactics as the key to future growth and evolution within the mobile gaming space.
This has been the big trend, messy as it maybe for better or worse to term a reversion from not just this year but back jammed up with COVID and ZIRP. Only going ad-supported or only IAP-based are no longer the way to get ahead; most developers have begun mixing and matching. We have also seen studios begin to chip away at those ideas of being single-platform and looking towards a cross-platform model.
We have seen this already bear out in greater inbound interest and demand for our solutions than ever at RevU, which has just impelled us to bring new product and services innovation to market even more quickly. We have a lot of new stuff coming in H2 that we will announce very soon. We have always had a diverse group of advertisers and that is on your side as the economy affects classes of advertising differently.
With no bias and looking at all of our partner data, offerwall is a great retention tool for developers. A clever way to retain and monetize players in a really quite effective manner without cannibalizing on IAPs or other ad revenue. Business Moat: As we have a vast trove of non-gaming demand, while this makes us virtually obsolete in the gaming world. Even if someone else already has it, or can obtain it themselves on another site, there are always so many other things gamers want that few websites truly compete at any given time. We create enough value for gaming publishers to earn hundreds-of-facility-dollar revenue by pushing e-comm and non-gaming offers which often let users come right back into playing more coins from their newly earned currency after clicking through (unlike showing them games where they still need to build up until seeing something purchase-worthy).
Well, everyone should by now that in UA the best players play other games most of the time. Those UA Managers can do it with multi-reward Realm Rewards, which are in beta right now so that they know how to drive a deep enough experience within their title (via the offerwall). This will hit ROAS and retain those players who you had been wanting.
We tell our clients that ROAS is the north star for UA, and with it comes understanding your cost of acquisition (CAC) as well as what are you getting yourself into in terms of average lifetime value (LTV) per player. We want to deliver results here for our clients and get that broad network of scaled campaigns. Our clients are constantly pouring more and more money into offerwall as a channel – we feel we must be doing something right.
We were long ago been of the mind that publishers ought not be signing exclusive agreements for their offerwall. Not a single publisher would only be satisfied with using the sole third-party video ad network — but unfortunately, most other offerwall providers try to pull those sleeves up.
Kongregate was under a contract that locked them into using an offerwall exclusively, but once the exclusivity period ended they declined to renew it and instead added RevU as another available. The result was their offerwall revenue on iOS grew 650%, making the “bonus” for keeping within one-year exclusivity pale in comparison.
If a publisher is unable to buy an app's users due to lower LTVs, that has the potential of stagnating DAUs if/when exclusivity means no offerwall access. We support and want each of our publishers to grow profitably, just like our partners at RevU. Our growth is directly tied to their success with our products and over all ability t o scale, so the last thing we want to do is throttle them due to a shortsighted contract.
Offerwall will always suffer from some lingering misconceptions, but education goes a long way and with continued learning initiatives along the path to success we anticipate more developers than ever experiencing all that offerwall has to offer. New monetization solutions are, at worst, feared to require a lot of work and testing before they start performing. We got that covered with out SDK-free solution ensuring the highest testability & optimization possible for any behavioral change you wish your customers will make. For RevU in particular, while we have been at it for almost 2 decades; mobile is also a sort of emerging space and this led us to partner with great organizations such as Gamesforum so that education on finding the right solutions can be success inculcated into the community more widely.
The fun thing about mobile is that there's always some new idea to have, and the barriers to get those ideas off the ground are pretty low for creative people. One of the pieces to put together is making games you enjoy and that you think people like. I believe those that are new to the industry should begin loving monetization as soon as they can. The best monetization strategies and proper suite of tools are going to make you able to create a game for mobile ecosystem that can earn people their living — or the mega bucks. In other words, experiment, test and learn — you literally have zero to lose by trying things up front just don't push it too hard on the consumer side if your game isn't able to deliver (delivery is a whole different conversation but I'd suggest getting in touch if this isnt something that comes naturally for your studio).
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