Pocket Gamer Connects London Highlights: User Acquisition Tips and Trends for 2020

One of Europe’s premier mobile gaming events, Pocket Gamer Connects London, is now over, but the lessons learned and connections made will have a much longer-lasting effect. Sensor Tower’s own Head of Gaming & Entertainment, Chirag Ambwani, hosted a panel session on the UA Universe track entitled ‘Tactics For Low CPI and High User Quality,’ focusing on how to scale mobile game user acquisition efforts without breaking the bank.

Ambwani was joined by Next Games Performance Marketing Director Yiannis Alexopoulos, Infinity Games CEO Muhammad Satar, Boomzap Creative Director Christopher Natsuume, and Snap Inc.’s Head of Emerging Interational, Advertising Solutions Samuel Bevan.

Below we’ve assembled some of the key insights from the panel to help you with your own UA operations.

What’s the Most Important Metric?

Ambwani kicked off the panel by asking what sort of metrics the panelists track when calculating return on investment through advertising spend.

Snap Inc.’s Samuel Bevan said there has been a “tectonic shift” from volume-based bidding—trying to get CPM and CPI traffic—into ROAS. He explained that while ROAS is a broad term, one interesting trend he has seen is hyper-casual publishers shifting from not only trying to achieve high CPIs, but actually moving towards serving ad inventory in the most monetizable and effective way.

Infinity Games’ Muhammad Satar echoed those sentiments, stating that, instead of targeting as wide an audience as possible, his studio is now targetting specific audiences similar to those that pay money and spend the most time in their own hyper-casual games.

For Boomzap’s Christopher Natsuume, the key metric is retention. “If you can get your retention numbers up, everything else kind of follows,” he said, explaining that his studio works on midcore games, rather than hyper-casual.

How Important is ASO and Organic Traffic?

App Store Optimization (ASO) is a great way to get unpaid, organic traffic, but it’s unlikely to deliver the kinds of high numbers and quality, paying users that highly targeted paid UA can bring.

Satar said that while he used to see organics more on Android, organic installs are decreasing, particularly following the studio’s shift to premium games. “You have to spend money on buying users and those users that you buy they have to convert into positive revenue for you and to profit, so the less you rely on organics, the best,” he said.

Natsuume warned about the effectiveness of ASO for certain types of games, such as hyper-casual, questioning exactly how to draw someone into such a simple title with effective keywords. “I've never in my life searched for that game,” he said. “So, if you're doing super hyper-casual stuff, it's going to make more sense to just go out and buy users, because nobody is looking for that. But if you've got a project that has some real appeal to some group of people, then that suddenly starts to make a lot of sense.”

Next Games’ Yiannis Alexopoulos also cautioned against building a business case or product on the expected organic traffic. The game, he explained, needs to be working on the metrics that are measurable and for which you can do something. “Organics is something that will come, as long as we're doing everything else right,” he said.

How Important Are Creatives?

As Bevan explained, creatives are becoming increasingly important in mobile to bring users to your app. “If you aren't getting people's attention, aren't doing something which is initially captivating to them, you are going to lose,” he stated.

He added that when Snapchat launched its first round of three- to 10-second ads, “everyone was thinking we’re crazy”, but claimed it’s now the norm within the industry.

“Increasingly, more and more our competitors are introducing story ad type formats and this is because you can get your message across in a short amount of space,” said Bevan. “It's just key to be leading with things like your hero message, what exactly are people signing up to, and being very upfront with your creative.”

Looking at creatives from a user perspective, Natsuume said it’s important that they target users that will like the product and stay, rather than just making a creative that will pull in the most users.

“A lot of people don't make that logical jump, they're just like, how do I get the most people to see my game?,” he said. “But you're paying for that. If you're paying for them to come and then they're getting something they don’t want, that's really a bad value proposition for you.”

Where Do New Ad Networks Fit in Your Stack?

It’s fair to say there’s a duopoly in the advertising space ruled by Facebook and Google—something Snap’s own Bevan admits to. He argued that to achieve great success across the board, marketers can’t have all their eggs in two baskets.

Satar agreed, stating that when you have more platforms, you can target people that otherwise might not be possible to reach, such as those users just using Snapchat and TikTok.

Offering an indie perspective, Natsuume said it’s worth looking at what similar titles are doing—such as where they got press, video and streaming coverage—to plan your own marketing strategy. For the cost of a few Steam keys and time, he said, developers could get their game into the eyes of hundreds, if not thousands of highly targeted readers and viewers.

As this discussion made clear, the evolution of hyper-casual as a leading mobile gaming category, amongst a plethora of other genres and business models, has necessitated new tactics in both paid and organic UA. Sensor Tower can help marketers measure and understand the impact of these efforts with offerings such as our App Intelligence platform’s new Keyword Downloads feature and Creative Gallery within Ad Intelligence, which provides unique insights into the characteristics and performance of app install creatives.

Discover Sensor Tower's latest insights live at Mobile World Congress 2020 from February 24 to 27 in Barcelona. Sign up to attend our analysts' market chats by clicking below.