Josh caught up with Director of Ad Monetization & Media at Mothership, Christoph Bonowsky to discuss possibilities of cross-platform ad monetization, challenges with CMP fallout and bidding changes as well as his love of Konami Series Pro Evolution Soccer.

Josh: Hi Christoph, thanks for joining us! Can you tell us more about who you are and what you do?

Christoph: Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to have this interview with you. I'm the Director of Ad Monetization and Media at Mothership Talents, which is the gaming branch of You First. You First is a global talent management, brand services and content marketing holding group of agencies in the Sports & Entertainment industries.

We do user acquisition and ad monetization for web and mobile games for gaming publishing partners as well as traditional other media services like programmatic media buying.

On a personal level I'm a Berliner with a passion for video games, tech, and sports, specifically football. I would say, I am a typical kid of the 80s. That is me in a nutshell.

Josh: What would you say is your favourite game of all time?

Christoph: Oh, that's a really tough question. Of all time? Really good question. The Konami Series Pro Evolution Soccer had a big impact on me. I was creating a concept for Konami 20 years ago for that game and ended up working in the gaming industry. However, the best game of all time is really a tough question. So many games, so many genres. But for me the most impact was definitely Pro Evolution Soccer. Or Half Life 2. It's really tricky.

Josh: Are you hopeful of a Half Life 3 down the line?

Christoph: Yeah, Half Life 3 will probably always be a mystery. Let us see.

Josh: How did you come to work in ad monetization?

Christoph: During my career I was always working with various SSPS and video ad servers for ad monetization. I basically got insights from every area of an ad network company like ad operations, publishing, and sales. Pre, mid and post - rolls played a big role in my work prior to Mothership. Also outstream video ads were my daily business. Basically monetizing publishers with video content on their site or their app.

After quite some time in that area, I decided I want to combine my experience in the ad tech area with my passion for gaming and that's why I joined Mothership 4 years ago to help them optimise their ad monetization and media buying activities.

What's exciting for me in ad monetization specifically for games is that ads in games offer a completely different bag of possibilities compared to classic web publishers or apps. This is exciting, because in games you have the option to create placements which basically have purely positive effects, which is a big contrast to the traditional media integrations where you mostly get ads in your face without choosing to actually interact with them. That's how I basically got into ad monetization in games. With a lot of work in video ad tech prior to that.

Josh: Tell us a bit more about Mothership. What is your MO?

Christoph: At Mothership we aim to have long lasting relationships to our partners by providing transparent services which provide a healthy uplift in revenue for ad monetization or an uplift in the player base for user acquisition.

We do audits, for instance, to find hidden potential in games. This is more directed to clients which are publishers and not really familiar with the whole topic of ad monetization. This is more related to older games, which might also be available on the web. Our main focus with ad monetization is especially rewarded video. This is connected to my experience prior to Mothership. This ad format is the only ad format with a positive impact for everyone involved. We usually consult and advise our clients towards rewarded video.

We are an external team, which you can integrate in your current setup, which is then responsible for ad monetization or user acquisition. Or ideally, we do both.

We also do traditional media services in the gaming area like programmatic campaigns targeted to YouTube or Twitch audiences.

We are experts in web monetization, specialised in rewarded video, helping to implement rewarded video into older games which are running for several years without any ad monetization. We see very interesting results there. E.g. our OFM case. Revenue wise it is a big uplift for our publishers but also for the player base. It's important to have the options now in the game to do certain things with rewarded video and not being pushed to a direct payment.

That’s our MO I would say! To show publishers hidden potential in their games.

Josh: Let’s talk about the state of mobile games ad monetization, what has changed in the last year?

Christoph: I think we have had 2 very big changes which affected everyone.

First, the privacy changes with the implementation of mobile consent management platforms, which was a very big challenge. This was definitely one of the biggest changes and every publisher had to work on that last year.

The second one was the Google Bidder that Google pushed everyone to use. This definitely had an impact on the whole industry. I would say, for everyone who was using or is using Google, AdMob in a waterfall hybrid setup. This was a big change and not necessarily a good change for most of the publishers.

Ad quality was also a topic. It was also discussed at Gamescom, and also at Gamesforum in Hamburg last year. I think in general, it's a big challenge. There are quite some differences in the user experience of ads, it can really get very annoying to actually close an ad. Especially on iOS we saw some big challenges with ad quality.

Josh: And to look to the future, as we quickly move into 2024, what are the top concerns for your mobile publishing partners?

Christoph: I think for us as an external agency, it's always a challenge to convince publishers about the positive effects they can expect from implementing certain ads like rewarded video.

For this year, we still have a lot of plans with our publishing partners to implement new placements. For one partner, we are trying to work on having the same game feeling on mobile and desktop by mirroring the mobile setup on our desktop ad tech.

One challenge is to talk to other internal teams for prioritising ad monetization updates and changes. This is definitely coming up most of the time. We always talk to product-teams and especially with older games the understanding of ads having a positive impact on the game is not always given. So I would say, if you talk to a publishing partner which is operating in the hyper casual genre, they know that ads are very important to increase LTV.

Josh: Can you share some top tips on how UA and Monetization teams can better work together to optimise revenue potential in mobile?

Christoph: In my opinion, both teams should have a really good understanding of what the other team is actually doing, because they are connected. They both can have an impact on each other quite heavily. I find it ideal to have both teams combined.

It's important for the ad monetization team that they know what type of user is using the app in order to monetize them efficiently. If you are highly focusing on paying users, you cannot expect those users to use ad placements in the same amount as other users. There should be a shared strategy for that. User acquisition teams should understand that a well implemented ad monetization helps them tremendously to reach their goals in terms of retention and also LTV.

Communication is extremely important so that both teams are always on the same page in terms of the strategy and the expected outcome.

Josh: So when it comes to cross-platform gaming how can mobile games companies really properly unlock ad monetization across devices and what does that look like?

Christoph: I think having a game on mobile and web leads definitely to different challenges when it comes to ad monetization. Because both platforms, I call them platforms, mobile and web work on different ad technology. Unfortunately you cannot use one mediation for everything for mobile and web, except you work with Google Admanager primarily.

On mobile, simply speaking, you have the mediation for the supply side. There are ad networks as well as programmatic demand sources for the demand side. It's quite a simple setup, as it does not require too much communication in terms of people talking to each other, sharing ad tags and negotiating prices. It is more straightforward, platform based than a web ad-monetization setup.

For web, there’s no sophisticated tech for rewarded video, which offers the same features or options as a mediation. We collaborate with a tech partner who provides a video player, an SDK for the publisher and a dashboard for us to basically set up a waterfall like in mobile, which is a mix of header bidding and vast-tag connections.

Header bidding is running via Prebid in a hybrid setup, just like in mobile with bidders and fixed price ad network instances. The biggest difference in the web is that as a publisher, you

cannot easily connect with demand because there's no rewarded video standard for games.

In contrast to mobile, the demand for web contains 100% branding ads. The advertiser´s main goal is that you actually watch the video until the end and get the branding message. This is a very positive thing for publishers, because people don't click on an ad and potentially leave your game. This is really a positive thing for the user too, and it might even be a very positive thing for certain brands when over time players create a positive connection to that situation when they get the reward after watching a certain brand video.

The access to that demand is a strong point of Mothership. We have 8 years worth of direct demand connections to the biggest German video ad networks, which are part of the biggest German TV channels. In addition to that we do monetize the inventory programmatically.

Essentially it is 2 things. You need the tech and the demand and this is a bit more complicated compared to mobile, but I highly recommend it to any publisher who has at least a decent audience to try.

Josh: Hypothetically every time you walk into a room a song plays. What song plays for you and why?

Christoph: Yeah, that must be Khruangbin, People Everywhere. Khruangbin is a band from Texas made of 3 people and People Everywhere is a song which creates extremely good vibes for me, and it has a somewhat motivating melody. So this would be the song, and they are also nice remixes for different rooms.

Josh: Thanks Christoph for your time and insight on Mothership and Mobile Ad Monetization! 

You can hear more about mobile games Ad Monetization at Gamesforum Hamburg!