1. Hey CK, can you tell us a bit yourself! Who are you and what do you do?

Hi everyone! My name is CK and I am the co-founder and CEO of Kooapps. We make mobile games that are simple to learn and played by all audiences. We have over 400 million downloads and our largest title is Snake.io.

2. Talk us through your history with Kooapps?

I began my career at Microsoft Games Studios, working on Fable II for the Xbox 360. And then Kooapps was started as a hobby between me and my co-founders Jon, Solon, and Steph. In the company's early days, our goal was simply to build cool games and apps to show our friends and families. Our first big success was a word game Steph designed called Pictoword in 2013, which, even today, continues to have a solid number of players and revenue. Over the years, we have amassed over 400 million downloads and grown to a team of 150 passionate people who want to fulfil our company’s mission of connecting the world through amazing daily experiences.

3. Ad quality was ranked as one of our 100 surveyed ad mon managers top challenges. What steps do you take at Kooapps to ensure a positive user experience concerning ad quality?

We have a dedicated internal ad quality team that playtests our games across different devices, operating systems, and geographies to flag inappropriate and buggy ads.  We are also lucky to have amazing account managers at all our ad network partners who help us monitor and block poor quality ads.  It is still challenging to constantly uphold our high standards for ad quality.

4. In light of ongoing privacy changes at Google and Apple, what are your predictions for the future of F2P mobile monetization?

Privacy will continue to be a focal point for Google and Apple, understandably.  In addition to privacy changes, most ad networks are shifting to real-time bidding, so there is even less space for waterfall optimization.  As game developers, we choose to focus on what we can control.  We believe future innovation with ad monetization may come from a game design angle, where we can explore ways of increasing ad impressions without churning users.  In addition, this year we have focused on reducing ANRs caused by ads (typically, ad-monetized games have higher ANRs because loading and caching ads can be relatively expensive, taking up to 200MB of memory).

5. What can we expect to see from Kooapps in 2024?

Over the next three months, we will release significant updates to Snake.io. We have been working on these features for the past 1-2 years. And while we cannot share specifics yet, our entire team is excited to bring these updates to our users. We will let you know when these releases are live! Then for the rest of 2024, we are doubling down on these features and continuing to polish them!

6. As one of our expert speakers at Gamesforum North America, what can our attendees expect to hear from you?

Our panel this year will talk about the future of ad monetization.  As I alluded to earlier, I think the future of ad monetization will be focused on game design.  For example, if an RV implementation is suboptimal in a game, it may only generate 1/3 or 1/5 of interstitial ads ARPDAU; whereas a strong RV implementation can generate up to 2x interstitial ads ARPDAU. That is a huge range!

7. For Gamesforum attendees visiting from out of town what are some of your top places to eat and things to do in Seattle?

It’s getting cold here in Seattle, so I would highly recommend Haidilao, a Chinese hotpot restaurant.  I believe it is the only IPO-ed Chinese hotpot company in the world : )