Find more of the right users with Google ads: best practices for Gaming

Proprietary + Conﬁdential
Learn more at games.withgoogle.com

Develop Grow Earn
Google Play
Google Ads
Google Search
Firebase AdMob
Android Pay
Google Play in app
billing & subscription
Firebase Android
Studio
Material Design
Maps & Places
Google Cloud
Platform
VR/Daydream
Web Platform
AMP
Flutter

Find more of the right users

Agenda
Industry
trends
Game
lifecycle
Machine
Learning
in Ads
Ads
best
practices

Trends
Source: DataMagic Rocks
What is the expected total value of gaming by 2022?
$200 billion

Trends
Source: Newzoo, Press Search
$39B $61B $96B
PC Console Mobile
Gaming: $200B industry by 2022; 50% in Mobile

Trends
What are the Top-3 genres?
Arcade / Hyper Casual
Puzzles
Action
Match - 3
RPG
Slots
By downloads By revenue

Trends
Downloads and revenue in Q3 2019

Trends
What are the Top-3 countries?
India
Brazil
US
US
Japan
South Korea
By downloads By revenue

Trends
Average in-app purchase revenue per Daily Active Users
(ARPDAU)
Source: AppTopia, App Annie, Internal analysis

Conﬁdential + Proprietary
A real-life analogy
You are opening a supermarket in your area
Photo by Rob Maxwell on Unsplash

A real-life analogy
You are opening a supermarket in your area
GRAND
OPENING!
Outdoor
advertising
In-store
promotions
Are all hypotheses
proven by real people?
Which subsegments like
us the most?
Anything we need to
change in the shop?
Explore
demand
Does the
demand exist?
Who are the
customers?
What are unique
selling points?
SENSE TEST FOCUS SQUEEZE RETAIN
What are specific needs
of the key customers?
What is their “moment
of truth”?
Are there any unique
behavioural patterns?
Does demand meet
supply?
Particular product
groups to focus on?
Specific ROI targets
indicative of LTV?
Are customer-level
needs fully satisfied?
Any customer group at
risk of churning?
Particular group did not
explore some SKUs?
-50%
Loyalty
programs

A real-life analogy
Similarly, your game goes through different stages
Installs Action Value
Pre-
registration
Engagement
-50%
Homework:
Early
adopters
on board
Game of Scale:
get feedback,
debug, tweak
gameplay
Quality leads:
Invest in those
who will love your
game
Money counts:
Ensure
profitability at all
times
Relationship:
Make your top
players feel
special!

Key Launches by App Lifecycle
PRE-LAUNCH LAUNCH & GROWTH MATURITY
Pre-Registrations Ads Maximise Installs / Maximise conversions bidding AC for Action
AC for Value
AC for Engagement:
Lapsed Users
Payers
Uninstallers
Google + App Marketing Lifecycle

AC Pre-registration
Capture pre-launch demand with Pre-registration
How do I get my app
to stand out
immediately on the day
when it launches?
Create public store listing and run app campaign with CTA
for users to “pre-register”

AC Installs
Acquire new users at scale with AC for Installs
It’s launch time, so I
need to get as many
installs as possible
AC for Installs AC for Installs
Advanced
Drive installs at particular
cost per install
Drive installs with higher
likelihood to perform speciﬁc
in-app action
tCPI

AC Actions
Reach better quality with AC for Actions
I have a lot of installs
and users but how do I
turn this into proﬁts?
AC for Actions
tCPA
Drive more in-app action
(revenue / retention) at set
cost per action

AC Value
Maximise user spend / LTV with AC for Value
AC for Value
Beta
tROAS
Actions are ok, but I need to
ensure I get quality user
and maximise my ad spend
return...
Find new users, who complete a
selected in-app event while
aiming for a certain return on ad
spend

AC Re-Engagement
Win the post-launch-phase with AC for Engagement
My retention rate is
lowering, how should I
boost ROAS now?
Inactive &
non-payers
Active &
non-payers
Active & payersInactive & previous
payers
Payers about to
lapse
Get users back into the
app
Engage users before
they are “lost”
Increase activity
& prevent churn
Get users back into the app Increase pay rate from active users
Segment your existing audience and maximise ROAS by
re-engaging them

Engagement
(beta)
Value (Beta)Installs
tCPI Bidding
Purpose: maximize #
of installs at certain
tCPI
Installs
Advanced
Actions
AC Campaign Types
Use the campaign the best ﬁts your goal
tCPI Bidding
Purpose: Drive
installs that have a
higher likelihood of
completing a
particular in-app
action
tCPA Bidding
Purpose: Acquire
users who will
complete your
selected in-app event
ROAS Bidding
Purpose: Target
users who will fulfill a
determined return on
ad spend over a
certain period of time
tCPA Bidding
Purpose: Driving
users back into the
app to complete a
specific
action/conversion
tCPI Bidding
Purpose: Increase
interest to your game
before launch time by
getting
pre-registrations
Pre-registration
(alpha)

Google Machine Learning
How does the machine learn? Example from
With time, the system ﬁnds an optimal strategy to
maximize the end goal

Google Machine Learning
Machine learning is already improving many of our
products
Search
Search ranking
Speech recognition
Android
Keyboard & speech input
Play
App recommendations
Game developer experience
Gmail
Smart reply
Spam classiﬁcation
Drive
Intelligence in Apps
Chrome
Search by image
Assistant
Smart connections
across products
YouTube
Video recommendations
Better thumbnails
Maps
Parsing local search
Translate
Text, graphic and speech
translation
Cardboard
Smart stitching
Photos
Photos search

Google App campaign + Machine Learning
How many signals is App campaign
optimising up?
300+ million signal
combinations

App campaign uses ML to combine a lot of various
signals...
Outside
the App
Google Data
Inside
the App
Advertiser Data
Queries
Placements
Demo
Targeting
Device
Targeting
Granular
Location
User signals
and intent
App Usage
Value
Engagement /
session durations
Web usage
App Settings
Retention
Referrals
User
interactions
and value

To ﬁnd the right users, on the right channel, at scale
on Play on Google.com with Apps the Web on YouTube

But to make it work you should consider these four
components
Objective &
Understanding your
metrics
Trust in the machineData Reporting

AC Overview
App Campaigns have 4 key optimization levers
Creatives BidsEvents Budget

AC Overview
Tell the system what is your goal

A real-life analogy
Remember this?
Photo by Rob Maxwell on Unsplash

A real-life analogy
Depending on where you are right NOW, your goal varies
Installs Action Value
Pre-
registration
Engagement
-50%
Homework:
Early
adopters
on board
Game of Scale:
get feedback,
debug, tweak
gameplay
Quality leads:
Invest in those
who will love your
game
Money counts:
Ensure
profitability at all
times
Relationship:
Make your top
players feel
special!

Event selection
Event selection at different app lifecycle stage
PRE-LAUNCH LAUNCH & GROWTH MATURITY
AC Pre-Registrations
AC Installs
AC Action
AC Value
AC Action
AC Installs
Advanced
AC Re-engagement
Installs
1st Open
Registration
Retention Revenue Advanced
● # active days
● # level achieved
● # session duration
● In-app purchase
● Subscription
● # ads seen
● LTV/ pLTV
● Predicted Payer

Event selection
What is good event?
DELAY
No later than 7 days post
install
Ideally D2/3
The shorter the better
RELEVANCY
Has to be deterministic
and correlated with the
business objective
CONVERSION VOLUME
Min. 20 unique user
converted per day
Ideally 50+
The higher the better

Firebase
Our vision: bring the power of Google Analytics to App
campaigns
Understand how users
behave in your app
Provide signals for
Google Ads campaigns
performance
Turn user insights into
marketing actions
Google
Analytics

Firebase
Better
Performance
Faster Campaign
Ramp Up
Automated Similar
Audiences
Simplified
audiences*
GA4F Audience Builder
GA4F Suggested
Audiences
Cross platform
insights*
App Deep Linking
Unified Web+App
Analytics
Deferred Deep Linking
* does not require bidding on GA4F events
More powerful
Optimization
App Campaigns
for tROAS
Audience Exclusion
Predictive Optimization
Firebase makes your acquisition activity more robust

AC Overview
Your creatives are your elevator pitch. At scale

Creatives best practices
5 headlines
5 descriptions
20
videos
20
images
A
Maximize asset coverage to extend Google inventory reach
Ad groups

20
images
A
20
videos
5+5
texts
Ensure you have key image formats

Texts and Videos
are the key.20
images
A
20
videos
5+5
texts
The most important part...

Intent-based Interest-based
Where do creatives serve?

Video best practices
You discover new games
through inspiration

Cinematic Influencer User GeneratedActual App Experience
Better for
Youtube
Better for
Admob
Cover different narratives

What’s your mood?
When playingWhen watching
Relaxed
Exploring
Calm
Energised
Low attention span
Want to skip ads

Make a video ad.
Multiply by 3

… and again x3
10 seconds 15 seconds 30 seconds
60 seconds
Start high
Subtle branding cues
Unexpected shifts
Multiple peaks
More story for
those who want it

5 seconds matter
X

Pro tips
Sound
Sound vs. no sound
Playing music underneath vs. no music
Different pace: upbeat music vs. slow music
Different musical genres
Beginning ad with attention-grabbing sound effect
If showing app/gameplay: sound effects for actions
vs. no sounds
Male voiceover vs. female voiceover
Different voice pitches: high vs. deep
Tone of voice: upbeat vs. neutral
Captions vs. no captions
Video
Length of video
vs.
Animation
Transition type
vs.
Speed
vs.
Voice
:15 :30
End cards: style and language
vs.
If showing gameplay: male/female/neutral ﬁnger
vs.
Showing product early vs. late
vs.
Animation vs. no animation
vs.
Location/path
vs.

AC Overview
Deﬁning ﬁnancials: budget and bids

AC BEST PRACTICES
Set realistic targets and give it enough space to learn
Daily budget should allow for minimum
50+ installs or 10+ in-app events per day
for the machine learning algorithm to
learn and optimise effectively.
minimum daily budget
At launch you can also refer to industry CPI
benchmarks.
achieved in the past

AC BEST PRACTICES
10 conversions / 50 installs
per day
is crucial!

AC BEST PRACTICES
You are an AI, and you’re asked to portray a Ukrainian
Valik
Male 25-35
Gamer
Lives in Ireland
Works at Google
Talks at DevGAMM
Nastya
Female 25-35*
Gamer
Lived in Ireland
Works at Google
Attends DevGAMM
EUREKA!
A typical Ukrainian is 25-35 years old, lives or lived in
Ireland, plays games all the time, for sure works at
Google and obviously attends DevGAMM
*in fact she is 24 but it ruins everything

AC BEST PRACTICES
Drive 400-500 installs or 300
in-app actions before making
preliminary optimizations
Wait to
evaluate first results
Time
tCPA
ActualCPA
Do not judge too early, give it some time

AC BEST PRACTICES
Only make adjustments after the campaign
has driven 100 new conversions.
adjust bids or budgets
by
Changing too many assets at once can force AC
back into learning mode and throttle spend.
optimize
at once
Do not make too many too much changes

AC BEST PRACTICES
Let’s sum up or “your 1-sheeter to print”
In-app events that occur
> 300 in 30 days and
>5% per install
Don’t adjust bids
by >20%/day
Campaign budget
should be min 50x tCPI
(10x if optimizing for actions)
Set your tCPI
20% higher
Wait 2-4 weeks
to evaluate ﬁrst results
Make sure to
leverage all creatives

Artur Davydenko
Business Development
Manager

Y/Y growth
since 2017
+25.5%
Global mobile gaming
market
$70.3B
Source: Newzoo report, 2018.
Mobile gaming market is growing

Installs of games made in Belarus
>3.500.000.000
Source: Google Internal research
Belarus impact

Source: MarketingCharts.com

Grow engagement

Confidential + Proprietary
● Dashboard
● Android Vitals
● Review Analysis
Google Play Console

Confidential + ProprietaryConfidential + Proprietary
● Optimize app with
multivariate experiments
● Automatic winner
determination
● Integrated with Analytics,
Remote Config and FCM

Proprietary + ConfidentialProprietary + ConfidentialProprietary + Confidential
GET THE ANSWERS YOU NEED TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS
Use Remote
Config and A/B
testing to
experiment
Original Design New Design
Cleveni
ClevCalc

Earn more

Engagement & value go hand
in hand
Value
Engagement

2019
Number of games
using IAPs + Ads grew more than 34%
Source: Google internal data

2019
Admob offers four rich ad formats
Rewarded adsBanner adsInterstitial ads Native ads

With rewarded ads,
users now have more
choices.
Users can now choose to spend time
or money in exchange for value.

Start monetizing the moment a user
opens
or switches back to your app
*Smaato's Global Trends in Mobile Advertising H2 2018 report **June 2018 OpenX study
New:

Ad unit
Likely
purchasers
Mission Overview
No Ad
Unikely
purchasers
Mission Start

We've been looking for a way to
improve non-spender monetization.
Smart segmentation helped us
personalize ads monetization for non
paying players automatically. We loved
how convenient it was and the best
part was that it didn’t hurt IAP revenue.
Maria Tyutina,
“
”
Head of Monetization, Game Insight
Game Insight sees 30% increase in ads revenue

New: Smart segmentation for rewarded ads
Interstitial ads Rewarded ads

Proprietary + ConﬁdentialProprietary + Conﬁdential
Open Bidding
Earn even more with AdMob’s real time bidding solution, the
only place where demand from Google, Facebook, and third party
networks can compete for your ad inventory in real time.

MAXIMIZE SUSTAINABLE APP REVENUE
AdMob brings header bidding from web to apps
Auction, based on real-time
per-impression bidding*
Single reporting, single
payment
Fewer SDKs
* The only auction in the market that has an access to all of Google’s real-time demand
Uniﬁed Auction
Ads SDK
Ads SDK
Ads SDK
Ads SDK
Ads SDK
Ads SDK
Ads SDK
Ads SDK
Ads SDK
Ads SDK
Ads SDK
Ads SDK
Ads SDK
Ads SDK
Ads SDK
Ads SDK
Fewer SDKs

MAXIMIZE SUSTAINABLE APP REVENUE
A simpler path
forward
● Real-time auction with per
impression prices
● Simpler reporting and payments
● Fewer SDKs

“”
FPO
Open Bidding gives us the ability to test
advertising partners without going
through the effort of integrating an SDK
for each one. With Open Bidding, we
know that we’re always getting the best
possible CPM for each impression. As a
result, we’ve been able to shift our focus
to optimize ad engagement to grow our
business even further.
— Daniel Baxter, Ad Monetization Manager,
Halfbrick
Halfbrick has been creating games played and loved around world,
such as Fruit Ninja, Jetpack Joyride, and Dan the Man. They are one
of the most well-known indie developers globally.
The challenge
Halfbrick needed to ﬁnd a time-eﬃcient way to manage their mediation
groups, while ensuring they were optimizing their revenue.
The approach
Halfbrick implemented AdMob mediation to quickly manage their mediation
groups. After seeing great results, they then incorporated Open Bidding to
boost their CPM further.
The results
22%
Increase in CPM
17%
Overall revenue growth
CASE STUDY

Get User Metrics in
One Place
AdMob offers insights on ad
performance and user metrics all
in one place, without having to
integrate an additional SDK

New: AdMob
Insights
Get alerts when our system
detects unexpected changes in
your key metrics

Artur Davydenko
Google AdMob & Google Firebase

Find more of the right users with Google ads: best practices for Gaming

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Find more of the right users with Google ads: best practices for Gaming