Josh Vowles: Hey Rita. Tell us a bit about yourself. 

Rita Borges: All right, so my name is Rita Borges, I'm from Portugal. I've been working at Miniclip for five and a half years now. I mean, time is just flying. I'm living in Lisbon even though I wasn't born here.  

I come from, you know, the countryside, so to speak, and I came here to study for university because I knew, of course, Lisbon is where everything is happening, and, and I was right, I ended up here at Miniclip.  

I have two cats, which can be a pain, but I really, really love them because they’re my favorite animals. I live alone and I really enjoy it. I consider myself an introvert, even though I'm not shy.  

I speak to everyone. I love people, but I also really need my alone time and my independence and autonomy. 

I love sushi and Italian food. I love horror movies, thrillers, anything that, you know, gives you the, the goose bumps.  I'm always listening to music, whether I'm working, doing some, some chores here in my house, and yeah, I consider myself, you know, to be a relatively good person. I think at least that's what my mom would definitely say! 

But most of all, I think I'm an ambitious professional. I give a lot of importance to my career. It's one of the things that makes me feel the most accomplished and it makes me want to participate in challenges getting out of my comfort zone, you know, such as what is happening right now, speaking at Gamesforum Hamburg -It's going to be my very first time. 

 

Josh Vowles: Can you share us a bit more about your work with Miniclip? 

Rita Borges: So I started in 2017, which, you know, sounds like decades ago. I actually applied for an entry level position, so I started as a junior. I knew almost nothing about this you know, advertising monetization, in that I kind of ended up here by chance.  But I'm, you know, I'm super grateful for it because I really enjoy what I do. I work with a fantastic team.  

Miniclip is a great company to work at. I know this is a bit cliche, but every day I can say I look forward to doing my job. And it's mostly because of the people, the motivation that I have to work for Miniclip. All the responsibility and accountability that I was given because I went from junior to advertising monetization manager. 

So, I went through this career path of growing a lot, been given a lot of opportunities to show what I'm capable of and that's something I'm really proud of and I have to thank people for giving me that chanc. 

My day-to-day and my work consists mostly of managing the advertising monetization of games. In my case, it's 8 Ball Pool which is one of our biggest titles. 

The best thing that I like about this role is the combination of different things that I do. So, there's some operational work working with mediation platforms, waterfall optimizations, but also there's a strategic creative part of the job which allows me to collaborate with the product managers, game designers, even data analysts, because we do have to test almost everything as you can imagine. This mix of areas, this combination of different people that I get to, to work with is what makes my job so interesting.  

And of course, I have to talk about the Miniclip office in Lisbon. It's amazing. It's really, really awesome. I'm not sure if you guys have seen pictures of it, but please do. It's really worth it. 

 

Josh Vowles: When you’re not running Ad Mon strategy for 8 Ball Pool, what can people find you doing? What are your hobbies? 

Rita Borges: All right. So when I'm not running Ads monetization strategies for 8 Ball Pool, you will probably find me playing the Sims. I have to admit, I'm a huge fan of the Sims. I've been playing it since it came out in 2000. So yes, I have been playing a game for 23 years. You know, fans of the Sims will understand this, passion, but also, as I said, I will probably be watching some horror movies or a psychological thriller, reading or watching a video about psychology and philosophy, which are two topics that interest me a lot, even though I'm no expert, I just find them really interesting. You can also look for me at the movies, going for a walk if it's sunny, which here in Lisbon, I'm fortunate enough to have a lot of sun, playing with my two cats. Um, or just talking to them! Because yeah, my cats are very talkative, believe me. Or, you know, eating, drinking beers with friends at some booth restaurant here in Lisbon.  

But also, you know, one of my hobbies, and it was something that also made me get out of that comfort zone is that I have a, a podcast with some friends. It's an amateur podcast and I'm sorry, but it's in Portuguese. So, the people that are listening to me, if you don't know Portuguese, then unfortunately you won't, understand. But I can say it's about movies and, you know, not just any kind of movies, but movies with some X factor in them. It's a little bit difficult to explain, but it's mostly conversation between friends about these movies and what we think about them. It's a very cool project. And I love the way it made me get out a little bit of my shell because even though I know I'm not speaking directly to the audience; I know someone probably will be listening to me. So, yeah, it's a, it's a great hobby that I've been enjoying for the past two years or less. 

 

Josh Vowles: Can you talk us through some of the challenges you face protecting the user experience when it comes to Ad Mon on a legacy game like 8 Ball Pool. 

Rita Borges: I find that one of the most difficult things in this job is to balance the user experience with maximizing the profits with advertising, especially with such a big game as 8 Ball. 

We have a huge community. So, you know, the user interface of the game hasn't changed in the past 11 or 12 years. So, you can see there's a lot of legacy involved in 8 Ball Pool. 

What we do to try to overcome this is we test a lot, we do a lot of iteration on different hypothesis, and we always look at the data. I think data doesn't lie. If we can find a sweet spot where players are happy and we are happy as well, then we know we found something.  

However, um, I know how difficult this is. It's very complex when on one side you have retention in engagement metrics to protect, but also on the other hand you have a budget to achieve revenue to generate. 

I think it all comes down to really a joint effort between areas; us in advertising collaborating with the game designers to get to the best in game economy, balance, the analysts for, you know, what are the hypothesis that we should be testing and really listening to our players.  

As I said, it's a big community. They are very vocal, believe me. 

We had some issues with hackers. We will always have that kind of issue, but that's one of the things that really took a toll on our community because they really value a good experience. They value that we listen to them, that we provide a great gameplay experience. And of course, advertising is very much a part of it. I think the trick is, and really the secret is to test, is to look at the data, look at what we have, look at the opportunities, listen to your players and try to give them something that they will see value in.  

But of course, will be a value for us as well, because at the end of the day, this is a business, right? So, I think that's the balance we need to strive for. 

 

Josh Vowles: It’s something that's come up a lot in our Gamesforum Ad Monetization Challenges report, looking at that balance between obviously the business side and the user side, you're looking at protecting that user and that user experience while staying profitable.  

How are you guys experimenting with new ad formats, new ad placements? 

Rita Borges: Exactly. And, well of course we want to protect this legacy that 8 Ball Pall has and this kind of identity. But at the same time, we need to look at the, um, the rest of the industry, the rest of the market, what is happening and we need to innovate a little bit, right?  

So yeah, I think this ties in with protecting user experience as well because if we want to go for a new advertising format it needs to have great performance, but at the same time, our users have to enjoy it and again, see the value in it. I can give you an example of in-game advertising or, you know, intrinsic advertising. We, that's one of the things that we will probably most likely be investing on in the future because we know that it's, it's very immersive. 

It won't be disrupting the user's experience, which is one of the main things we want to protect but also it's growing right now. There's a lot of players in the market, there's a lot of hype around it, lots of new networks coming up with lots of demand for this kind of thing.  

So this is one of the examples bringing something new to the game. And again, we will be testing it a lot. We will be checking and analyzing all the, the results in the impact from this. But yeah, we want to always keep this brand of 8 Ball Pool as a product that really listens to its players, but we also, we also want to grow in the sense of trying these new things. 

 

Josh Vowles: For the final question, you know, um, Rita, what can our audience expect to hear from you at Gamesforum Hamburg? 

Rita Borges: Well, you can expect to hear a bit about my experience. I think since we will probably all be very different people, different individuals, so not only our different professional experience, even within the same field we will have different experiences and different opinions so that will bring a lot of diversity to the conversation.  

So I hope to bring some of that diversity but also, you know, explain a little bit how I ended up, um, in this industry that I enjoy a lot, talk a little bit more about what is it like to work for Miniclip and what is it like to manage game such as 8 Ball Pool.  

And overall, my opinion on all these hot topics that we know I've been circling around. But mostly I hope that your audience enjoys my participation in my input, and it makes people enjoy this field. 

 

Josh Vowles: Thanks very much Rita for talking today!