Q. Hey Patrick, thanks for joining! Can you introduce yourself?

A. Sure - I’m an American living in Finland. I’ve been there for about 5 years, and I’m from Chicago.

Q. Talk to us about your journey into mobile gaming.

A. About 10 years ago I started working as a product guy for monetization on rewards apps. For the last 5 years or so, my focus has been almost entirely mobile games.

Q. What are your go to mobile games?

A. I try to limit my game time & keep it related to stuff I’m working on, so the list changes a lot. That said, I will admit to getting hooked on a nameless MMORPG a few years ago…

Q. Talk to us about the importance of a flexible back-end setup to allow for continuous monetization optimisation without changing the fundamentals of the app?

A. I’d hope this is pretty self-evident, but that the more you can change server-side, the less times you’ll need to update the app. This enables much more rapid iteration & learning about what works how well for each of your various users/players.

Q. How important is protecting the user experience and app health when placing ads? And how can you best balance placement vs experience?

A. It’s extremely important. But the good news is that it isn’t that hard to figure this out - Your users/players will show you what they will tolerate. Run A/B tests around your Ads experience, measure their feedback. Then you just have to react to that feedback in timely and appropriate ways, and according to their various preferences. As always, rapid iteration of A/B tests is your friend.

Q. IAA has seen great changes and challenges in recent years, what do you think has been the greatest?

A. In a word - greed. Ad fraud and “junk apps” that take money from advertisers and return zero value to them in return have consistently made life harder for the rest of us over the years. It’s the same with shady ad quality/bad UX ads, but to a lesser degree.

Q. I wanted to shine a light on not just the Finnish gaming scene, but the Finnish mobile gaming scene. What do you think makes Finland such a hot-bed for successful mobile games companies?

A. Well, there’s an awful lot of engineers & software people here in Finland, and there’s also a lot of creativity and optimism. Combined with the Finnish concept of “Sisu”, which is a kind of collective “our determination will get it done” attitude, and it’s no surprise that there are a lot of big hits and innovative games being built here.

Q. As a speaker at Gamesforum Hamburg, what can our audience expect to hear from you?

A. First and foremost, that you shouldn’t be surprised if you don’t get much result, if you don’t put much effort into AdMon. At the same time, there’s good news - AdMon doesn’t need to be super complex and time consuming to produce good results.

Q. What are you most excited about while in Hamburg?

A. German food! There’s a far bit of pretty authentic German food available where I’m from in Chicago, and I have to say I’ve been craving that lately. I’m really looking forward to a few proper German meals, and of course a proper German lager!

You can hear more from Patrick at Gamesforum Hamburg on June 11th & 12th!