I think an interesting discussion would be around where does early monetization x UA efficiency fit within a product roadmap. Often times game teams have to keep the lights on by catering to elder users, have limited resources, and usually sacrifice new user improvements since they dont really affect the bulk of the revenue generation.
As a marketer, often times I wish there were dedicated product managers who's sole goal is to help improve new user monetization and retention. From a marketing perspective, publishing teams are often very hands off in the creation of new user monetization and typically amplify existing new user monetization signals.
Beneficial for pLTV models, but a game can still be successful even if the monetization happens a bit later than 7-14 days (but not necessarily ideal).
I'd say most product managers don't realize the importance of improving cohorted D1-D7 ARPU on a sustainable basis and how it affects UA performance and algo training on an on-going basis. It's easy to (and semi-justifiable) to just cater to core elder game players to keep the monthly P&Ls clean since new users are generally a lower % of revenue post-golden cohort and take a long time for their revenue #s impact P&L.
UA channels keep records of which accounts/creatives/bid combinations are likely to win an impression placement and the more monetization signals you can pack in within D0, 1, 2 etc, the more likely you are to truly reduce your Cost Per Payer and increase ROAS on an ad channel. It can also reduce CAC, but CAC is really just a relative number to ad spend.
People talk about the impact of creative in UA campaigns and the truth of the matter is a creative can only be as effective as the broadness of early D0-D7 downfunnel signals a product team generates. If you think about it, every copies the same type of creative, but only some products take off from those creatives and others don't, even if they're in the same genre. When all things are equal, the main difference is in proc'ing early product (monetization) signals and the creative has to be appealing to an audience that matches that.
There's no such thing as "bad installs/bad users" per sae; it's all relative. An unprofitable user for a top 200 grossing game could be a profitable user for a top 10 grossing game from a new user acquisition perspective.
That's something that never gets called out at a KPI meeting.
I think an interesting discussion would be around where does early monetization x UA efficiency fit within a product roadmap. Often times game teams have to keep the lights on by catering to elder users, have limited resources, and usually sacrifice new user improvements since they dont really affect the bulk of the revenue generation.
As a marketer, often times I wish there were dedicated product managers who's sole goal is to help improve new user monetization and retention. From a marketing perspective, publishing teams are often very hands off in the creation of new user monetization and typically amplify existing new user monetization signals.
Early monetization is also beneficial for more accurate PLTV models.
I think this is a good topic, but I'm not sure if there's many folks who can talk or willing to speak on this topic.
Beneficial for pLTV models, but a game can still be successful even if the monetization happens a bit later than 7-14 days (but not necessarily ideal).
I'd say most product managers don't realize the importance of improving cohorted D1-D7 ARPU on a sustainable basis and how it affects UA performance and algo training on an on-going basis. It's easy to (and semi-justifiable) to just cater to core elder game players to keep the monthly P&Ls clean since new users are generally a lower % of revenue post-golden cohort and take a long time for their revenue #s impact P&L.
UA channels keep records of which accounts/creatives/bid combinations are likely to win an impression placement and the more monetization signals you can pack in within D0, 1, 2 etc, the more likely you are to truly reduce your Cost Per Payer and increase ROAS on an ad channel. It can also reduce CAC, but CAC is really just a relative number to ad spend.
People talk about the impact of creative in UA campaigns and the truth of the matter is a creative can only be as effective as the broadness of early D0-D7 downfunnel signals a product team generates. If you think about it, every copies the same type of creative, but only some products take off from those creatives and others don't, even if they're in the same genre. When all things are equal, the main difference is in proc'ing early product (monetization) signals and the creative has to be appealing to an audience that matches that.
There's no such thing as "bad installs/bad users" per sae; it's all relative. An unprofitable user for a top 200 grossing game could be a profitable user for a top 10 grossing game from a new user acquisition perspective.
That's something that never gets called out at a KPI meeting.
This seems like something you should talk about or write up in more depth!
I'll give it some thought. Might expose too many politics so I gotta word it carefully.