Levi Matkinchairman
“Data-driven thinking‘ is written by members of the media community and offers fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.
Today’s column was written by Levi Matkins, CEO of LifeStreet.
It’s a new year and a new day in mobile programmatic.
Between 2020 and 2021, cellular boomed as consumers turned to their devices for entertainment, connection, and support during the pandemic. Heading into 2022, the industry predicted that mobile engagement would remain high. With the abolition of the IDFA, rising acquisition costs and inflation weighing on consumer spending, the global gaming market has evolved instead has shrunk by 4% over the past year.
As the economy falters and budgets tighten, 2023 will be a year of adjustment. LTV curves will be more difficult to predict. And the industry will continue to develop and test solutions to counter Apple’s removal of IDFA. Faced with these conditions, app marketers need new ways to scale their app promotion campaigns.
Here are five predictions for how they’ll grow their apps in 2023:
1. Improved transparency
After the demise of the IDFA and the loss of rich audience profiles based on user-level data, attracting quality users has become more complicated. This increased complexity has coincided with UA managers’ growing understanding and expectations of programmatic.
A black box relationship between DSPs and growth marketers is no longer standard. In 2023 there will be more control and transparency over how unique bidding models are built and advertising money is spent.
2. Focus on profitability
Fueled by capital investments, app developers have historically focused more on growth than profitability. This focus has evolved and will continue to shift in 2023.
Going forward, players will invest more in proven channels and strategies than speculative business initiatives. As such, the focus will be more on improving existing titles than on R&D for new titles and product launches.
Eventually, app developers will turn to well-known intellectual property (IP) to attract a large and existing audience already associated with a brand. Capture the rise of mobile games based on the Harry Potter IP coming in 2022 collectively generated $1 billion in player spending worldwide.
3. Generative AI for creative assets
When gaming, the sheer volume of assets required (2D art, 3D art, sound effects, music, dialogue, etc.) can be a massive barrier to scaling processes and unlocking efficiencies. But generative AI has the power to fundamentally disrupt the development of creative assets.
With Stable Diffusion, DALL-E 2 and Midjourney (text-to-image models) we have already seen strong early adoption of this technology to generate large scale art objects. These types of models will soon help creative teams scale in-game asset generation and drastically reduce content production costs. For example, the production time for a single image can be reduced from weeks to an hour.
After the deprecation of the IDFA and the emergence of creative as a key performance lever, generative AI could also be a powerful tool for scaling ad creation development.
4. Advertising standards that focus on the end user experience
To face an uncertain economy where LTV curves are harder to predict, advertisers will serve more ads and push the boundaries of the traditional ad experience. More aggressive advertising practices are already emerging, such as B. Introducing a delay before viewers can close the ad.
There is also an unmet need to standardize the advertising experience. Today, developers use five to ten different networks and exchanges to serve ads, each offering a different experience for users.
A more intrusive advertising experience combined with inaccurate targeting will result in the market being asked to implement advertising standards that prioritize consumers.
5. The increase in subscription levels
As advertisers run more ads to offset the shift in LTV curves, ad-free subscriptions are likely to increase. Nonetheless, advertisers should continue to offer ad-supported subscription tiers for users with budget constraints.
I’m looking forward to
From new privacy restrictions to a changing economy, there’s no question that mobile programmatic has grown in complexity in recent years. But like all things, business is cyclical. In 2023, the industry will refocus on what drives long-term value for app developers.
consequences LifeStreet on LinkedIn and AdExchanger (@Adexchanger) on twitter.
Comments are closed.