View our on-demand webinar on boosting the discovery and user acquisition for your mobile app.
We've partnered with Tapjoy to provide you a complete guide to building a great app that users will find and install. Our expert panel will dig deep into the challenges and opportunities mobile developers and marketers face, including:
- Reaching larger mobile audiences
- Determining the mobile ad campaigns that are producing the most high-quality users
- Application and app design tips to boost user acquisition
And much more!
2. AGENDA
Introductions
Before you launch: What’s your strategy?
Framework for mobile ad marketing
Case study: Hitmaker
• Testing
• Experimentation
• Optimization
• Monetization
Walk-through
Q&A
3. WHO IS
KONTAGENT?
We are the leading
enterprise user analytics
platform for social and
mobile applications.
User-Centric Data Accessibility Domain Expertise
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4. Who is Tapjoy?
Tapjoy is the leading mobile
app distribution and monetization
platform. We’re embedded into
more than 80% of the leading free-
to-play mobile gaming applications
• Founded: 2007
• Headquarters: San Francisco
• Offices: US, Europe, and Asia
• Reach: 500+ million mobile
consumers on
Android, iOS, Windows Phone 7
& HTML5
• Funding: $70.5 million from JP
Morgan Asset Management, Rho
Ventures, North Bridge Venture
Partners, InterWest Partners and
D.E. Shaw Ventures.
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5. SPEAKERS
SHALIN MANTRI @shamantri
Mobile Entrepreneur / Product Manager
ROB CARROLL
Director of Publishing
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6. BEFORE YOU EXECUTE
A MARKETING PLAN…
• Focus on building a great app
• Know your audience
• Define “success” at each stage
of your app’s lifecycle
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7. FRAMEWORK FOR MOBILE APP MARKETING…
• When should you start thinking
about marketing?
• Playable state
• Usually 4-6 weeks before launch
• When should you integrate a
distribution network?
• Should be integrated before launch
• Basic SDKs for the platform can be
set-up early, easily tweaked and
updated
• What are the different ad units
available to developers?
• Incentivized vs non-incentivized ads,
i.e., virtual currency
• Effect on user experience
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8. MOBILE DISTRIBUTION: AD TYPES
DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS FEATURED AD
• Featured • Game trailers
platform placement
• Rewarded installs
• Banner ads
• Cross promotion
• Featured ads
CROSS-
OFFERWALL PROMOTION
BANNER AD
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9. success stories 5,000,000+
engagements in 2011
Groupon
1,000,000+
engagements in 2011
Gamefly
500,000+
engagements since
eHarmony
june 2011
75,000+
new users since july
Netflix
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10. CASE STUDY
: Testing
HITMAKER
• Social game for music fans
• Designed, built, and released
within four weeks
• Launched at TechCrunch
Disrupt
SOCIAL MUSIC GAME | iOS | June 2010
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11. CASE STUDY
: Testing
GOALS DURING THIS PHASE
• Don’t worry too much about
user adoption
• Obtain qualitative feedback
from users
• Understand retention and
engagement
SOCIAL MUSIC GAME | iOS | June 2010
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12. CASE STUDY
: Experimentation
MORE USERS = BETTER ANALYTICS
• Performance metrics:
• Adoption
• Engagement
• Retention
• Experiment with your
marketing channels!
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13. INTEGRATING TAPJOY IS QUICK
1 3
2
Choose what ads you
Sign up at want to use
Tapjoy.com
Download the SDK at
knowledge.tapjoy.com
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14. CASE STUDY
: Optimization
TUNING THE APP
• App name
• Icon
• Keywords
• Category
• Landing page
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15. CASE STUDY
: Optimization
Facebook Users
Anonymous Users
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
1 Session Only 10+ Sessions
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16. CASE STUDY
: Monetization
UNDERSTAND YOUR USER
ECONOMICS
• Apply the right monetization
levers
• Compare ARPU to CAC
• Scale the user base
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17. ITERATION AND METRICS
• For a game to succeed in the mobile space,
it needs to be updated and tested
• Make changes based on metrics findings,
product pipeline and user feedback
• Launch test versions to closed geographic areas
• Review data on the changes, make updates and repeat testing
• Push updates to your entire user base when you’re ready
• Keep updating your app with new content
Games are SERVICES, not products.
They need to be SUPPORTED.
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18. ITERATION AND METRICS
Key Metrics to Collect Small Changes can Make a Huge Difference
• Install conversions
• Total installs
• Total revenue (direct
and alt)
• ARPDAU
• Install funnel
• Downloads
• Installs
• Tutorial completion
• Tutorial completion
percentage
• Re-engagement
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19. Role and importance of:
• Defining success
• Marketing channels
• User analytics
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22. QUESTIONS?
@ Ko n tag ent
KAL EID O SC OPE
BL O G :
k s c op e.kontag ent.co
m
@ Ta pjo y
TAPJ O Y BL O G :
b l o g .ta pjo y.com
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Editor's Notes
DAN:Introduction Purpose of this webinar.
DAN:Introduction Purpose of this webinar.
DAN:Brief history of Kontagent.
DAN:Brief history of Tapjoy.
DAN:Shalin: Shalin is a product manager at Kontagent. Prior to joining us, he founded NoiseToys, where he led the conceptualization, design, server engineering, and launch of award-winning social apps for the iPhone. Raised seed money from top Silicon Valley investors. Built end-to-end server infrastructure, including application logic and scalable AWS backend. Defined user flows, mocked user interfaces, and generated mobile UI graphics elements. Engineered a custom server-side analytics system. Before that, he founded BollyApps, which built Twitter mobile and Web apps for some of the world’s largest portals. Shalin also has corporate experience at Microsoft and Intuit. He graduated from Stanford with multiple engineering degrees in computer science, economics and management science. Rob: Rob Carroll is the Director of Publishing for Tapjoy, where he runs their Android development fund and manages the publishing activities for the company. In his role with Tapjoy, Rob advises game developers of all sizes in the best practices of monetization, game mechanics and viral distribution for their mobile and social games.
SHALIN:Focus on building a great app, not exploiting “viral” channels. One of the speakers at Inside Social Apps made an incredibly astute point. He said, “The reality is, mobile is the most viral channel out there. People carry their devices with them everywhere.” So, create an app that your users will want to talk about with their friends. And that will be your cheapest, most effective form of marketing. So how you do get people to talk about your app? Offer utility that mobile users cannot live without. Or bring fun and entertainment to their lives. It’s difficult to do both. To create a great app:If you’re a utility, identify a problem you’d like to solve. And choose the audience you’d like to address.If you’re a game, you have a few options:Implement new game play on an existing platform/genre. Tap Tap Revenge is an example of this.Implement known game play, with a twist. E.g. Farms with zombies, Words with Friends.Try to combine new game play with a new genre/platform. I wouldn’t recommend this, unless you have Steve Jobs on your team.Define success for your app/game, especially in the initial stages. This will impact your app design, marketing plan, and decision on whether or not to invest more time/resources.User growth?Engagement?Retention?Monetization?
ROB:When should you start thinking about marketing?Once the game is in a publicly playable state, you should be thinking about how your going to get distribution for it4-6 weeks before launch When should you integrate a distribution network such as Tapjoy?Any service provider such as Tapjoy or Kontagent needs to be integrated before the app is launchedTrying to retrofit a monetization or metrics systems into the game after launch can be more difficult and time consuming then if you had done it during development The basic SDKs for the platform can be set-up very early on and then easily tweaked and updated to fit the needs of the final product What are the different ad unitsavailable to developers?How do they affect user experience within your app?What do users get from these (incentivized vs non-incentivized) ads, i.e., virtual currency?How does the app develop benefit?Early in your app development lifecycle, especially if getting featured by Apple or Google is a key component of your marketing plan. In this latter case, try to take advantage of the device’s native capabilities, e.g. GPS, accelerometer, camera, touch-based interface, address book (which is basically a built-in social network), media playing, networks like Gamecenter. Apple/Google really like developers that drive user adoption of these new features.
ROB: Discuss the types of mobile ads available, and when/how to use them.
ROB: Discuss the types of mobile ads available, and when/how to use them—here are some of the numbers behind some successful big brand campaigns. Why were they so successful?
SHALIN:What is it? Social music game on the iPhone, launched in June 2010.Phase 1: App launched at TechCrunch Disrupt. Lessons learnt:Launch when you feel comfortable exposing yourself to the worldTechCrunch press is overratedUntil then, find creative ways to test your app => use TestFlight for alpha testing, try launching in another English-speaking country (Canada, Australia, New Zealand) for beta testingMake sure you have user analytics in place from Day #1 of testing
SHALIN:What is it? Social music game on the iPhone, launched in June 2010.Phase 1: App launched at TechCrunch Disrupt. Lessons learnt:Launch when you feel comfortable exposing yourself to the worldTechCrunch press is overratedUntil then, find creative ways to test your app => use TestFlight for alpha testing, try launching in another English-speaking country (Canada, Australia, New Zealand) for beta testingMake sure you have user analytics in place from Day #1 of testing
SHALIN:Phase 2: Evaluation - what’s happening to user adoption, engagement, and retention?Organic adoption was slowing down, so we tried experimenting with marketing channels, including Tapjoy campaignsDescribe process for setting up a Tapjoy campaign (demo to follow)
ROB: Integration is simple 1) Sign up for a developer account at Tapjoy.com 2) Download our SDK from Knowledge.Tapjoy.com 3) Add the code for the ad units you want to use 4) Get exposed to millions of users SHALIN:How we measured the campaign results -- it was all about cohort analysis, maximizing fx(no. of users, quality of users)What we learned
SHALIN:Phase 3: Optimization - fixing dropoff points and encouraging users to engage in their FIRST session!E.g. How we used Tapjoy to A/B test our landing page and improve average user quality by 50% as a result! What metrics were important? 1-, 7-day retention, etc?
SHALIN:The key here is understanding what users are doing in their FIRST session and get them to do something actionable.We noticed new users complaining that they had to login to Facebook.We decided to run an A/B test to see whether removing Facebook authentication would improve user conversion.We found thatFacebook-connected users were 3X more likely to come back to the app for 10 or more sessions.This insight was incredible!
SHALIN: Phase 4: Monetization - all about figuring out the user economics (ARPU, acquisition cost, LTV)Integrated Tapjoy’s virtual offersThe goal in this phase is to figure out the app’s user economics. We implemented Tapjoy’s virtual offers plugin. After that, we compared ARPU with Cost of Acquisition to understand if our app was positioned for long-term success. Now that you’ve got a good app, showing high retention/engagement and a working revenue model, the final phase is to scale the user base. This involves a combination of online and offline marketing channels that are specific to the type of application, industry, and competitive landscape. In other words, this is good ol’ marketing.ROB:Reinforce how developers using Tapjoy to scale use base, monetize their apps.
ROB:Here is a slide I’ve used to talk about iteration and optimization. Feel free to use and of this to talk about the optimization slide.For a game to succeed in the mobile space it needs to be updated and tested Make changes based on metrics findings, product pipeline and user feedbackLaunch test versions to closed geographic areas(Canada, New Zealand, Ireland)Review data on the changes, make updates and repeat testing Push updates to your entire user base when you’re readyKeep updating your app with new content
ROB:Here is a slide I’ve used to talk about iteration and optimization. Feel free to use and of this to talk about the optimization slide
DAN/ROB/SHALIN:Summarize the role and importance of marketing channels and user analytics in mobile. Shalin: How did Tapjoy help users discover/install Hitmaker?Rob: Briefly Tapjoy success stories and how app developers in audience can see same results.
AARON:Present walk-through
DAN:Let people know about our location at GDC. Also, briefly mention our parties. Kontagent: Tuesday, March 6 @ Vessel SF, 7:30-10:30pm | BlackMahal performing, open bar, iPad giveaways and more!Tapjoy has some speaking slot at GDC: Guidelines for Building Cross-Platform GamesMonday 10-11am | Room 134, North HallTAKEAWAY: Learn the do's & don'ts of developing mobile games on Android, iOS, WP7, etc. Understand the expected success metrics for a mobile game across multiple platforms and get an overview of the best tools to use when developing cross platform applications.
MITCH:Build credibility with roster of customers.
DAN:Conclude webinar. Tell viewers how they can reach us, sign up for white papers and additional content. We will be following up with a playbook… check your email for it about a week.Plug Twitter and kScope. Follow Tapjoy and check out their blog, too.