Hi Becca, thanks for taking the time to sit down with Gamesforum today.

Of course, and thank you I am very excited to speak with you today.

 

Can you tell the Gamesforum Online community about yourself and your role at Ad Attraction?

I am a Senior here at Ad Attraction, I have been with the company since it opened just over 6 years ago. My current title is Marketing Manager, but I was fortunate to start as an entry level position and learn everything on my way to my current position.

The biggest part of my role as the marketing manager is that I’m the contact liaison for all developers. I’m the lead, and with my team, we work together to service their accounts.

Unlike most sales reps or business development managers, I have a strong background in data. I allow for our data to speak for itself, rather than being an aggressive salesperson.

I prefer to explain and educate than be aggressive towards my partners. Building a rapport and listening to the client is much more important than any monetary value. It’s about making sure that our partners feel heard in their goals, and then executing the perfect plan for their campaigns. When I am not working I am spending time with my family.

 

For those in our community not familiar with Ad Attraction, who are you and what do you do?

We are a full-service mobile agency that specializes in affiliate marketing. We provide a service to gaming developers (and other kinds of developers) to assist in the promotion of their apps on the market. (Google Play & iTunes)

 

Affiliate marketing can be a powerful ally to games developers yet often the results of a campaign don’t always meet expectations. What are the common misconceptions developers have about affiliate marketing?

There are a few misconceptions, to be honest; quality, expectations, and fraud.

Just the word “quality” I think has come to a point in our industry where it’s being overused and oversold. It’s important to convey what that “quality” is when you openly tell someone that you have it.

For instance, our publishers, are almost 100% strictly gaming publishers. Their traffic can be a good fit for things outside of that, but it doesn’t always work. We make sure that this is conveyed in the very beginning when we are discussing new partnerships.

Gaming KPI’s that we know we can attain are Tutorial Completed, D1-D15 Retention, D7 - D30 ROAS, and ROI. This can all easily be backed up by data. This not only makes the client more comfortable but shows that there is merit to our claims of having great quality traffic.

That brings me into expectations, it is often thought that everything goes really fast in this industry and that traffic volumes will be abundant. Unfortunately, that is not the reality of things. We pride ourselves on our performance and with that performance comes patience. Every campaign starts slowly as we watch and analyze the data. We assess how it’s converting and maturing. Next, it’s “what steps need to be taken to improve performance.” Once it’s a well-oiled machine, then it’s about scaling on the right placements and getting more volume. Initial testing phases can take 30 days.

And lastly, fraud, the word itself seems to be a trigger in this industry. Honestly, if you work with the right companies, then fraud should be the least of their worries. It’s 2019, there are many different fraud detection integrations and services; it’s really easy to avoid.

 

How can marketers and developers work together to achieve better results?

Communication is the biggest area that I see is a struggle. Everyone is busy and has their day to day duties but in order to work together and get the results that are wanted it’s important that both sides are available to help. Transparency is another area that should be looked at a little more closely. Developers should be getting the best results from their traffic if you expect them to keep paying for it month to month. I believe it’s up to the developers to help guide the marketers in the right direction for success. It’s not on just one or the other to cultivate the results.

 

Sometimes there seems to be a gap between organic marketing and paid marketing teams. Why is it so important for marketing teams to work together on a campaign?

It’s important because they are very different ends of marketing. An organic user is there because they saw the app on their own and were interested and wanted to play. If they like the game their retention is going to be really high. A user that was driven there from paid marketing that installs is still interested, but now it’s all about this individual’s interests. Maybe they have seen the ad 40 different times and this time they decided ‘I’ll check it out’. There is no saying that once it's downloaded and they are playing that it’s going to be the right fit for them, making their retention lower. It’s up to both Organic and Paid marketing teams to know what normal behavior is on each end so that they are utilizing all the data they have to make the best decision instead of only thinking that one way is working.

 

How has Ad Attraction’s process developed over time to reach the effectiveness you have now?

One of the biggest changes is the internal operations. We work as a team, it’s not a competitive space and we all work toward the same goals. Within the last couple years, we have adopted our own way of evaluating traffic, part of it is specialized and then after that process, we also use a fraud system to give us a bit more perspective on if it’s the right fit for us. There is one thing that I really feel sets us apart from others is our ability to understand data and behavioral patterns with traffic, which makes us able to do our own optimizations.

We do this in part because it helps alleviate our partners in having to add more work to their plate but also because we want what’s best for our partners. They still have to do some of the work, especially if we aren’t able to track events in real time, but we like to make that part of our responsibility in the partnership.

 

What trends have you and team picked up on over the past 6 months from your partnerships with developers?

 

Great question! I would say conversion rates are being scrutinized more often. Developers are adding in a min/max for conversion rates. Sometimes this can be difficult especially if they only tested one traffic type to get their result for the min/max. For example, if their test only consisted of in-app placements, they would be looking for a CR of around 1-3 percent. Which is usually harder to get from a mobile web placement, it is possible to get this but it would take a lot of testing to find the exact placement. Another trend or just something that is more common now is transparency such as passing device id and app name. Yes, developers have been asking for these for the last few years but recently they are making these requirements mandatory rather than optional which used to be the case.

 

And finally, what are the biggest challenges facing games marketers over the next 12 months?

In my opinion, it would have to be innovation and competition. I read a lot of articles to try to stay current with industry changes and new technology. These days it seems that moving into AR as well as cross-platform play, is the thing. If this becomes a trend it could definitely become a challenge for some developers. The competition will be offering something that they aren’t, which will put them at a disadvantage.

Outside of that, it will be standard things, like revenue. Making sure that they are getting ROI on their marketing and making sure that ROAS is on par among their paid marketing avenues. As long as they are putting their marketing budget in the right places, I don’t see this being a huge challenge for them.

 

Becca, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you. Thanks for speaking to us.

Thank you so much for your time John, it’s been really great talking with you. I look forward to sponsoring and attending Gamesforum in October and getting my message out to everyone in person.

Ad Attraction are sponsors for Gamesforum Seattle 2019. If you'd like to find out more about working with Becca, please visit www.adattraction.com  or contact Becca Woolsey on [email protected]