As the mobile gaming industry faces a pivotal moment, Vincent brings over a decade of experience to the table—shaped by his journey from a Paris startup in mobile advertising to leading ad operations at TapNation, a global player with over 1 billion downloads. He’s seen it all, from the rise of hyper-casual to the dawn of hybrid monetization. Now, with TapNation’s ongoing partnerships and acquisitions, especially in the Vietnamese market, Vincent is at the forefront of innovation in mobile gaming. Ahead of his panel at Gamesforum Vietnam, he shares his insights on the industry's challenges, the shift to hybrid models, and what the future holds for global game publishers and studios.

Hi Vincent, can you tell us about yourself and your background in mobile gaming?

It's now been 12 years that I've been working in mobile advertising and mobile gaming. My career started in Paris in a small mobile advertising agency in 2013. I then worked in London for InMobi and MoPub, and finally came back to Paris 3-5 years ago to lead the mobile ad operations at TapNation. Aside from my job, I invest and advise ad tech startups and gaming studios.

Being originally from Nantes, I enjoy a lot of outdoor and nature activities, like cycling, mountain climbing, diving, and freediving.

TapNation has achieved over 1 billion downloads – can you give us a brief overview of the TapNation story?

TapNation was founded in 2019 in Paris, by Hervé Montoute, a French serial entrepreneur and investor. The idea came to him from the Ketchapp brothers. TapNation started as a hypercasual publisher with hit titles like Ice Cream. Since 2022, we have grown through different publishing partnerships as well as direct acquisition of games. The team now counts 80 employees globally for a revenue of $60M. Last year, we raised our first round of $15M to continue our accelerated growth.

TapNation has had great success pivoting from a hypercasual model to a hybrid monetization model. Was it difficult to make the pivot, and what tips can you share with our audience?

I think we are still working hard to call it a success, but we are on the way to get there, yes! Indeed, as every top gaming publisher is doing, we need to pivot to more hybrid-casual titles with higher IAP revenue share and higher quality/retention. For this, we have gone through several acquisitions to train our team on it. Our main hybrid and casual titles are: Hero Making Tycoon (RPG with 60% IAP), Hero Adventure (RPG), and Wordling (Word game with long retention and 18 months LTV). It wasn't easy at first as we were missing the product people to continue developing the roadmap, and the UA/data people for long-term projection models. So, we had to recruit new, complementary talents (ex-Miniclip on the UA side and ex-Rovio/Scopely on the product side). We are now all into developing from scratch internally casual titles by growing our product team (puzzle, evergreen, etc.).

You've always embraced innovation in ad tech, what trends most excite you?

It's true that coming from the ad tech side and having been able to test all things at TapNation was fun. It allowed us to be an early adopter of several products like audio ads, in-game ads, offline SDK ads, cracking the incentivized offerwall channels at scale for hyper-casual. We also acquired UA Hero in 2023, a full automation and prediction tool platform, to better help us run UA in one central place and predict long-term users' LTV and margins. Today, we look forward to continuing testing those under-used monetization and UA networks, as well as digging the non-IDFA solutions, studying first party data methods, or how AI can help produce better creatives. UGC, new social trends combined with AI is also a hot trend for us. Lastly, keeping control of the ad quality via ad template tools is also a way to keep our users engaged.

What stands out to you as unique about the Vietnamese mobile games industry?

I have been impressed how a lot of new Vietnamese studios were launched in the last 2-3 years, and skyrocketed to the global top charts in terms of downloads. We can see that they are very creative and determined teams, producing quality games that work globally. Their hard-working and visionary teams are surely common values we are sharing as a mobile game publisher from the West.

TapNation continues to partner with global studios as both a publisher partner and via acquisitions. Can you give us some examples of success stories that TapNation has created with Vietnamese partners?

Vietnam has been a key market for us in the last two years where we had several strategic partnerships and acquisitions. The first one being with Bravestars publisher, from whom we acquired and scaled Doll Dress Up. The second one being the acquisition of Thief Puzzle from Weegoon studio. Both have been successful acquisitions for each side in terms of revenue, growth, and knowledge sharing. It allowed us to create trust with the rest of the ecosystem as we are still on the lookout for new publishing, direct acquisition, or hybrid publishing-to-acquisition deals in Vietnam!

You've created a publishing-to-acquisition option at TapNation – what is the benefit for studios?

Indeed, sometimes instead of running a direct acquisition of a game and a one-time upfront payment, we prefer that the original studio stays onboard for 1 or 2 years and continues the development of the game. They will benefit from TapNation's advice and support on the product side, while TapNation runs the full User Acquisition, ASO, Monetization. The benefits here for the studio are to receive a first upfront payment, but also be able to receive higher earnout in time, via payouts based on the future performances of the game (in the form of revenue share until a final price is reached). It's a way for us to balance the risk, and share the future success of the game in a win-win manner. Ultimately, the studio will cash in a much higher final amount via this hybrid acquisition-publishing model.

What advice would you give to those looking for a publishing partner?

I think first of all, it's a question of trust and values fit. You create this trust by meeting your partner in person and understanding each other's long-term strategy and objectives (that's why TapNation's publishing/acquisition & UA/Monet team is present in person at GF Hanoi - reach out for a meeting!). Secondly, getting an understanding of your publisher's best practices in terms of user acquisition, monetization, and product - how many games have they successfully published to date and their relations with existing local developers. Finally, the financial strength and stability of the company - how much cash are they able to invest on the UA side, how much have they raised, which can be useful when you start scaling games with breakeven at 6, 9 or 12 months. And, finally, the fun - we are all on a gaming journey and want to learn, have fun, and make new friends along the way.

You'll be speaking at Gamesforum Vietnam on November 27th on our ‘State of the Industry’ panel. It's certainly been a turbulent period in the industry, but how optimistic are you for 2025?

2024 has definitely been a difficult year for many publishers and studios, including the bigger ones where we saw layoffs or restructurations. So, logically, 2025 can only be better! I think the macro-environment conditions will look better too, which should uplift eCPMs on the ad revenue side and see improvements on the IAP power side too.

Interest rates will allow more cash to flow in the industry, in the forms of loans, fundraising, or M&A. We already see a recovery on the M&A front since Q3 of 2024. Apple is allowing some more precise signals on the ATT front and Google and Facebook are releasing their solution for improved iOS user acquisition & monetization soon. If Google Android doesn't mess up with Sandbox (which seems to be pushed to 2026), then I believe we should see studios come back in a better shape, and some new-comer studios emerge as we see now in Vietnam!

What most excites you about your trip to Hanoi with Gamesforum?

I first visited Vietnam in 2015, 9 years ago, to visit Hanoi, Halong Bay, and also motorbike through the perilous roads of north Vietnam up to Ha-Giang city, in the mountains! I'm excited to reconnect with their vibrant culture and people, visit local gaming publishers' offices and make new connections, and of course, ride a motorbike again through beautiful valley roads! 😊