Stefano Melucci

THE BEST MOBILE ADS CHANNELS – RANKINGS 1st HALF 2017

By Stefano Melucci | November 9, 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

The latest “Performance index” recently published by Appsflyer provides a comprehensive snapshot of the mobile advertising market based on massive traffic data analysis on 6 B installs for 5,500 apps from 250 ad networks in the period January – June 2017.

Methodology

The main metrics that the report uses to rank the ad networks are:

Volume ranking – total number of clean (fraud free) installs they generated

Power ranking – number of clean (fraud free) installs normalized with a quality score that depends on retention and average sessions per user

ROI index – based on the Return of Investment for those networks reporting both cost and revenue. So, the data for this index is reduced to 40 M installs from 50+ networks from 800+ apps.

Takeaways

Not surprisingly for anyone working in the industry, Facebook and Google dominate both the Volume and Power rankings placing consistently at first and second place for both gaming and non-gaming categories.

In the gaming category, Unity Ads is a solid third on both indexes, thanks to the wide distribution of Unity platform among game developers, while Apple Search Ads grew considerably from the previous report, ranking now third and fourth in power ranking for universal non-gaming and gaming.

Source: Appsflyer Performance Index V Edition

Interestingly, Apple Search Ads ranked in first place in the ROI index for iOS. Overall, Apple Search Ads had a 30% higher ARPU and 40% lower price than other networks.

When it comes to delivering ROI, Facebook and Google also showed their consistent strength, with more than double the revenue and roughly the average cost (vs. other networks in the index), and thus ranking #1 and #2 spots in the Android ROI Index, respectively. With 50% more revenue generated and 20% lower than the average cost, Facebook reached the #2 spot in the iOS ROI Index, while Google came in 3rd.

The dominance of the social and search big players was far more pronounced in non-gaming than in gaming. In fact, their share of installs in non-gaming was 70% higher than their share in gaming. When looking at operating systems, their share on Android was almost 50% higher than on iOS.

Source: Appsflyer Performance Index V Edition

Another interesting signal is the growing importance of video ads networks, confirming the importance of the medium, especially in the gaming category, where three video-only network appear in the top 10 power ranking: Unity Ads at #3, Vungle at #7 and AdColony at #8. It should be noted that Chartboost (#6) and Applovin (#5) also serve rewarded video ads in their mix, although they are not exclusively video ad networks.

Finally, it is interesting to note that the number of networks chosen by non-gaming app marketers was almost double the number of gaming ones. When looking at the top networks (minimum 500k installs), the ratio further rises to nearly 2.5x. This can be explained by the fact that gaming is more global in nature, and therefore directs marketers toward networks with global inventory. Non-gaming, on the other hand, is more local in nature, as marketers have to differentiate the channels including both local and global media partners.

THE RISE OF THE SUBSCRIPTION MODEL IN THE APP ECONOMY

By Stefano Melucci | October 25, 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

If you have looked at the Top Grossing charts on the App Store (though that’s harder to do in iOS 11 than it used to be), you might have noticed an important change taking shape in the last few months. On October 1st, for the first time, the Top 5 grossing on the US App Store didn’t include any of the usual free-to-play games that have dominated for so long: Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, Candy Crush, Mobile Strike, Game of War or Pokemon Go.

Credit: Prioridata

The big winners in the free-to-play game market do not need to panic: they are still doing well (with 5 of them remaining in the top 10 on that date), but we can detect some interesting market trends from this new chart.

The first is that mobile consumer spend is diversifying from games into other popular content categories like dating, music streaming, and mobile video. Mobile video, in particular, is very hot, with a multi-billion dollar battle to turn the smartphone into a television as well as skyrocketing trends in mobile data traffic driven by video.

The other common denominator among the Top 5 grossing apps from the chart above is that they monetize their content with a subscription business model. It comes as no surprise that the subscription model can be very profitable for content providers and very convenient for regular consumers of a particular content portfolio. What is relatively new is the expansion of this business model inside the app stores, and consequently, the growth of its importance in the app ecosystem.

In fact, in June 2016, the App Store changed some of the rules around the subscription model for apps, mainly extending it to all categories of apps and reducing the fee from 30% to 15% for subscribers using the services for more than 12 months. Just last week Google announced it will follow the same rule for subscriptions on Google Play store starting from January 2018. This certainly can contribute to the growth occurring on both stores: Apple announced that 2016’s app subscription billings were up 74% year-over-year to $2.7 billion. Google announced that over the past three years, subscription spend has grown over 10 times on Google Play, while subscribers doubled in the last year.

So, if it makes sense for your app, you should definitely look into implementing a subscription model and taking advantage of the recent changes in the app stores. Although the fees are still higher than alternative web payment methods, the low friction in the purchase flow shows conversion rates that are 100%-400% better than usual account and credit card flows.

However, not all apps work well with this business model: you need a great product with a clear value proposition that continues over time. Examples are:

– Premium features (e.g., “Likes you” in Tinder Gold)

– Great and updated content (e.g., HBO NOW)

– Exclusive and personalized service (e.g., health and fitness apps like Runtastic)

– Utility apps (e.g., Dropbox etc.)

Recent research by Google Play outlines the details of what users are willing to pay for, how much they are willing to pay (by category of content), as well as useful insights on how to price your product and keep your users engaged. The Google Play dashboard has also recently added some useful reports to keep track of retention and churn for subscription services.

What about mobile games? Can games benefit from this rise in subscription business model in the app ecosystem? While subscription is definitely not a new model in the PC game space with many MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) games like World of Warcraft, Elder Scrolls Online, etc., traditionally offering premium subscribers “unlimited access”. This model definitely presents challenges on mobile, with the predominance of casual gaming and its free-to-play model.

The coveted “Netflix for Games” approach that is pursued on the console market by Xbox Game Pass and Playstation Pass requires the bundling of a large number of popular premium games into a catalog. During the subscription, the catalog can be accessed (without limits) with ongoing additions and updates to the content. This is pretty hard to achieve in the mobile free-to-play space, although there has been some success in emerging markets with initiatives like Bemobi (now part of Opera) which bundles a number of premium titles along with full access to free-to-play games using a subscription model.

Another interesting approach exists for free-to-play games with very long player lifetimes and high user spending: offering subscription services either for exclusive features, an advantage in the game, or simply a discount on repeated purchases.

A great example of this is Supercell’s Boom Beach that recently started offering two different subscriptions: “Endless Reserves” which removes the time constraints related to training troops for $9.99/mo and “Extra Builder” which allows a player to build two buildings at the same time for $2.99/mo.

This model has yet to be replicated on Supercell’s most popular and lucrative titles (Clash of Clan and Clash Royale), so we can assume that they are currently testing the appeal of this model in the free-to-play realm to see its effect on the game economy. So far, judging from t he community’s reaction, it seems to resonate well with heavy users of the game. This approach could also be applied to their other titles: wouldn’t you consider paying a monthly subscription for the ability to open Chests instantly on Clash Royale?

Another successful example in the gaming space is Song Pop 2 by Fresh Planet, that offers a “VIP subscription” giving access to a bundle of features and eliminating ads from the game for $4.99/month.

It is too early to know if the subscription model will make headway in the free-to-play mobile games market, but it is certain that potential candidates need to meet the same criteria we listed above for other types of apps: high engagement and clear continued value proposition that can be proven to their users with a free trial period.

If your title satisfies the above characteristics it would definitely be worth exploring the possibility of venturing into a subscription business model, that notably offers developers a more reliable stream of revenues than IAPs and consequently simplifies your User Acquisition efforts.

As usual, do not hesitate to comment or contact us!

ENGAGE YOUR USERS WITH PUSH NOTIFICATIONS

By Stefano Melucci | October 12, 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

Push notifications are a very powerful tool because they allow communication with your app’s users when they are not actively engaging with your app or game. However, they have to be executed carefully! Otherwise, there is a risk that they will be ineffective, or even hurt your game’s retention and increase churn. Indeed, their perceived overuse has sparked extreme reactions – as the recent Wired article “Turn off your push notifications. All of them” illustrates. Although the author’s frustration is understandable, it is also undeniable that push notifications, when used wisely, can be very useful to users as well as being an effective channel to keep them engaged in your game.

Indeed, here at Thumbspire, we typically experience an increase of game launches around 12-15% on our weekly push campaigns days. The graph below illustrates Day 7 retention for one of our games where the weekly re-engagement push campaigns effect is very evident.

So, how do you effectively configure push notifications in your game?

First of all, it is important to understand the rules for opt-in on both Android and iOS. In iOS, the game needs to get permission from the user by displaying a system pop-up where the user can either grant or deny it, and… it can only be asked one time! For this reason, we recommend to explaining the benefits of the notifications for your game, and gauge the user’s intention before triggering the pop up with a flow similar to this:

Source: Localytics

On Android, permission is granted at install, so historically there has been a higher percentage of opt-in than on iOS (60% vs. 40%). It is important to notice some recent (and upcoming) changes on Android: Android N introduced a 2-click flow to disable notifications for an app, which makes it even more critical only to send timely and relevant information to users, so as to avoid your channel from being “shut down” by them. The upcoming Android O introduces the interesting concept of Push Notification channels, where notifications can be bundled by type, thus allowing better control from the perspective of the user and the publisher. For example, engagement, marketing promotion, and transactional notifications could be separated into different channels, thus offering the user more granularity in controlling what to opt-out from if desired.

Depending on your game you might want to set up transactional notifications for meaningful events, for example when a waiting time is over, when energy refills, or when a user action is required in a turn-based game. While these notifications are typically very useful to bring users back to the game, they need to be designed carefully so that they do not overwhelm the user, increasing the risk of being ignored or pushing the user to opt-out altogether. Keep your notifications “fresh” by mixing in new copy (including emojis), so the messages look more appealing and catch the user’s attention.

Another type of push notifications are the engagement notifications that are typically triggered from your marketing automation or analytics platform (e.g. Appboy, DeltaDNA, Swrve, etc.). You can define cohorts of users based on their characteristics (progress in the game, frequency of playing, time from last session, etc.) and target them with engagement campaigns to bring them back to the game. You should define a broad weekly re-engagement campaign with new copy every week and then smaller campaigns for specific cohorts of users (inactive players, players stuck on a level, etc.). Most tools also allow you to also cap policies to make sure users who fall in many different cohorts don’t get hit by too many messages.

To set your expectations, the typical open rate for push notification campaigns range between 2% and 3% with Android having a slightly higher open rate than iOS.

Here are some tips that you should keep in mind in order to maximize the effectiveness of your campaigns:

Work on the copy of your message so that it is both compelling and intriguing: curiosity can inspire users to open the notification to find out more.
Personalize the message as much as possible. Use specific characteristic of the cohorts you are addressing to connect with the users on a very specific need or situation (e.g. Stuck on a level? Low on cash? Etc.).
Nail the timing: you should always set the campaigns to be delivered in the user’s timezone at the times when most users engage with your app. A 2016 Tapjoy study(based on 4.4 million push notifications) found that open rates are highest on Mondays and right after lunch.
Make the message actionable: prompt the user to take an action, (with clear results) and, if possible, offer a reward for that action! We guide our developers to integrate mechanisms in the games so that a push notification can trigger a reward: a virtual currency gift, a free power-up, or a special sale promotion. These kind of targeted campaigns with clear rewards have shown much higher open rates and can be very effective to re-engage your users.

In summary, push notifications are a very important part of your game’s live operations (‘live ops’) after commercial launch. Do not hesitate to comment or get in touch if you need any guidance!

BUILDING A GREAT GAME: INTEGRATING REWARDED VIDEO ADS

By Stefano Melucci | October 5, 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

In case you’ve been living under a rock, or – understandably – just trying to screen out all news from the real world, there’s been a lot of buzz lately around rewarded video ads. According to a recent report released by Tapjoy, 79% of players prefer to have the option of rewarded ads in their games, and that number is broadly consistent with the user behavior we see in our titles. As you may recall, we briefly touched on rewarded ads in the most recent blog, so now let’s dig a little deeper and look at some of the best practices for implementing rewarded ads in your mobile game.

The format is increasingly popular in games and apps alike because it not only represents a non-intrusive form of advertising (the user ‘pulls’ the ad towards them rather than having it ‘pushed’ at them), but it also allows users to better enjoy the game, by progressing faster, collecting more virtual currency, or exploring new content.

Let’s first take a look at how the use of this kind of advertising in your game can actually improve your metrics (besides contributing to your bottom line). The graph below shows the daily retention for one of our games for three different cohorts of users: all users, payers, and users who never purchased anything but watched at least one rewarded video.

As you would expect, players who made at least one purchase have a much higher retention rate than the average (83% Day 1 retention vs. 54% in this case). Interestingly, rewarded video viewers also have much better retention than average (79% Day 1 retention in this example). This is also in line with empirical feedback from users who often ask for more opportunities to “earn” rewards in the game through ads.

For sure, you are wondering: do rewarded video ads cannibalize In-App Purchase Revenue? In our experience, if implemented correctly, that is not the case. Based on our findings, you should expect a 10% to 40% uplift in ARPDAU with no negative effect on your conversion rate to in-app purchase. The fact that this ad revenue is incremental to the in-app purchase revenue is illustrated by the graph below in which you can see the average number of video ads seen by viewers divided into two cohorts: all users and payers. It shows that payers also like to take advantage of this additional opportunity to progress in the game and have similar watching patterns as the average user.

So, what are the best practices for effectively integrating rewarded video ads in your game?

The first suggestion is to embed rewarded ads in the core loop of your game so that they become a natural part of the gameplay. Typical examples of reward mechanisms are: revive at Game Over (for casual games), additional life (for platformers or puzzle games), shorter timers (for building games), virtual currency, energy, boosters, etc.

Example of Rewarded Video in Get 13

The best reward mechanism for your game depends on the genre of your game as well as its resources and economy. It is important to be creative in the way the rewards are designed within the game in order to keep players motivated without disrupting the overall game economy. Rewards can also be a way to let users explore new content that they may later be interested in obtaining via an in-app purchase. For example, in our title Weed Firm: 2 Back to College, one of the customers that comes to the door brings a gift in exchange for watching an ad. This allows the player to get a sneak peek of content that would otherwise be available to them only much later in the game.

Another important aspect in the implementation of rewarded video ads is to find a balance between theprominence of the ad’s placement while simultaneously creating a sense of rarity around the offer. The goal is to create a sense of urgency amongst players to motivate them to seize the opportunity when it is presented in the game. The example above illustrates a creative solution to finding that balance; the customer who offers the rewarded video “gift” appears sporadically in the game.

As with any other feature of your game, it is important to track rewarded ad views and measure some important KPIs. In our analytics, we typically track every completed ad view as an event, together with some relevant properties (e.g. user level, the balance of virtual currencies, the ad network that served the ad, reward obtained, and so on). This way, it is possible to do an in-depth behavioral analysis about what kind of reward is most appealing to users, what the effect is on the overall economy of the game, etc.

At a high level, the main KPIs that you will want to track for your game are:

% of DAU engaging with Rewarded Video ads

Average views per player, per day

These KPIs can vary widely depending on your implementation: we have seen between 25% and 50% of DAUs engaging in rewarded video ads and between 2 and 8 rewarded video ad views per player. As a rule of thumb, you should target at least a 30% engagement rate and around 4 ads per day, per viewer. At Thumbspire, we work with our partners to establish specific targets based on their game’s genre and implementation.

In summary, rewarded video ads can be an important component of your game’s monetization strategy and they can also increase usage metrics in your game, provided you stick to some basic guidelines for the successful implementation of this feature:

Embed rewarded ads in the core game.
Give rewarded ads prominence while maintaining a sense of rarity around the offer.
Be creative in the definition of the rewards to prevent disruption of your game’s economy.
Track rewarded ads properly so that you can improve their effectiveness with the usual iterative process and A/B testing.

Hopefully these guidelines will be helpful in increasing the success of your game, but as usual, feel free to comment or get in touch!

BUILDING A GREAT GAME: AD MONETIZATION BEST PRACTICES

By Stefano Melucci | September 27, 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

In the first article of our Building a Great Game series we focused our attention on engagement and in-app monetization metrics: now it’s the time to look at the equally important component, ad monetization. In fact, as we already mentioned, the average overall conversion rate for IAP (In-App Purchases) is ~2% of the base over a 30 day period, so it is crucial to find ways to get some value from the other 98% of your players.

Many game developers are wary of integrating ads into their game. They fear that ads would annoy their players and negatively impact retention and engagement, but if done in the right way, ads can raise the ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) by 10% to 80%, even for games that are successfully monetizing with IAPs. To get started, let’s first take a look at the main ad formats, their characteristics, and the pros and cons of each type.

AD FORMATS

The oldest format is the Banner Ad, inherited directly from the web. Static banners are typically displayed on the top or the bottom of your game, either in menu pages or in the gameplay view itself. As you can imagine, this format can be pretty invasive, and it can also lower the perception of your game’s quality. It is not used much nowadays, but can still be an important component of your ad monetization strategy for very casual games.

Interstitial Ads are full screen (or almost full screen) images or videos that pop up at a certain point in your game. They are typically placed at “intermission points” like after seeing the “Game Over” screen or at a “Level Up” moment in the game. This format constitutes the bulk of ad revenue in most casual games, but as we will discuss below, it must be integrated carefully in order not to impact user experience.

Rewarded Videos require the user to opt-in to watch a full (15-30 sec) video ad in exchange for a reward in the game. They are becoming very popular in mobile games because they provide high CPM (Revenue per thousand impressions) and they fit well with the Free-to-Play model: giving non-spenders a way to progress faster in the game in exchange for some value they provide by voluntarily engaging with the ads.

Another format that has been getting some traction in recent times is rich media or “Playable Ads” which require users to interact with the ad, typically in a short game demo, which showcases the core gameplay inside the ad. This format can be displayed either as an interstitial or as a rewarded ad. They have the potential to achieve high CPMs but need to be utilized carefully because depending on the quality of the creative, the experience can be confusing and negatively impact your user retention.

From Left to Right: Banner Ad, Interstitial Ad, and Rewarded Video Ad

BEST PRACTICES

An easy yet valuable piece of advice is to integrate ads into your game, or you will be leaving money on the table! However, it is important to implement ads in the right way, and at Thumbspire we guide our developer partners to follow the best practices for games found in the same genre.

The most important rule is to prepare your game in a way that allows you to measure and dynamically control the ads in your game. Considering that for each format you will most likely integrate a few ad networks, it is important to control the order in which these networks will be invoked at every ad impression to maximize the average CPM of your traffic. This is the role of the mediation system – an intermediate layer that your game will invoke at every ad placement, deferring to it the choice of which ad network to forward the request to. There are a number of mediation systems on the market, and all of them have some automatic algorithm aimed at maximizing the CPM for every impression based on various parameters like device, location, etc. With mediation, you can also manually override the algorithm and force a pre-defined priority of ad-networks for a specific format in a specific geographic location (known as a “waterfall”). This can be useful if you want to take advantage of special guaranteed CPMs you might be offered by the ad networks in exchange for a guaranteed call order in the waterfall. From our experience, introducing mediation to optimize the return for your inventory can lead to an increase of 80-110% compared to your average CPM from a single network.

In addition to mediation, it is also important to put a system in place that allows you to measure and dynamically control the ads being served in your game. For example, if you decided to have banner ads in your game you might want to have a server flag that enables or disables them for specific cohorts of users, such as disabling them for any user who makes an IAP. You might also want to be able to control the frequency of your interstitial ads (for example, every 5 “Game Over” screens) and dynamically tweak it depending on the average game session length or even apply different frequencies to different cohorts of users. For rewarded videos, you might want to make the amount of the reward configurable dynamically so that you can tweak the economy of your game once you have a sense of the CPMs you can obtain. Hopefully, you get the idea: the level of control depends on how granular you want to be in your actions, but it is important to have the possibility to control and modify the ad implementation without the need of a new release for every change you want to test.

Finally, it is important to measure and track every ad impression at a user level in your analytics, so that by applying an average CPM per geographic area you can estimate the advertising contribution to the LTV (Lifetime Value) with the same granularity that you have for IAPs.

Stay tuned, as we’ll dive into more details on what to measure as well as target benchmarks for ad KPIs in our next blog post in this series. In the meanwhile, feel free to reach out if you have questions or comments!

BUILDING A GREAT GAME: 5 METRICS EVERY GAME DEVELOPER SHOULD KNOW

By Stefano Melucci | September 26, 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

In this series of posts, we’ll be examining the best practices from successful FTP (free-to-play) games so that they can be applied to your titles, from design to soft launch and beyond. To begin, let’s go over some basic metrics, their definitions, and typical benchmark targets for successful games.

ENGAGEMENT

The first thing to measure during soft launch is the level of engagement of your users. This is typically measured by focusing on retention, session length, and frequency.

Most analytics and marketing attribution tools will provide you with a measure of the retention by taking cohorts of users who installed and launched your app on a given day, and looking at the percentage of those users that launch your app again after a given amount of time, commonly in days (Dx). You will typically look at D1, D7 and D30 retention rates, which respectively measure the percentage of users who came back to your game 1 day, 7 days, and 30 days after installing it.

These data points can be used to model or estimate the lifetime of your users: the average number of days that your game will be played by each of them. Typical target benchmark values for retention are the well-known 40%/20%/10% for D1/D7/D30, but those should be taken with a grain of salt because the genre of your game will obviously impact your targets. More casual games will target much higher D1 retention (as high as 65%-70%, such as Crossy Road) but will most likely have a lower D30 number. Mid-core games can thrive with slightly lower D1 as once the users get onboard and like the game, they will likely stick around for longer. Still, the higher the better!

Session length and frequency are self-explanatory, and their targets will also vary a lot depending on the genre of the game. For successful casual games, it is typical to see short but more frequent sessions, in the order of 2 – 4 sessions per day per DAU (Daily Active User).

During soft launch, it is important to measure these engagement metrics and improve them iteration after iteration, by focusing first and foremost on first user experience (tutorial completion rate, etc.) and identifying any bottleneck in your funnels (level progression, churn points). At Thumbspire we work very closely with our partner studios by providing the analytic data and suggesting improvements for product iterations during soft launch and beyond.

MONETIZATION

Once the engagement metrics are aligned with your game genre targets, it is time to look into themonetization metrics. Most successful F2P games today monetize with a mix of IAP (In App Purchases) and Advertising. In this initial post, we will focus mostly on the IAP part, but it is important also to measure the ARPDAU (Average Revenue Per Daily Active User) contributed by the ads placed in your game. To reach an LTV (Lifetime Value) that can sustain User Acquisition, you should target a healthy mix of IAP and ad revenue (60/40 or 50/50 share). We will dive more into ad revenue in future posts.

For IAPs it is important to measure the conversion rate (CR%) both on a daily basis and over a longer time period. The daily CR% is the number of purchasers divided by DAU, while the overall CR% over a 90 day period will give an idea of the share of your user base that will ultimately make a purchase in the game. It is well known that for F2P games the overall conversion rate is ~2% of the base over a 30 day period while your target for daily CR% should be between 0.8% and 2%. Again, these are just average benchmarks, as the effectiveness of your game’s monetization will also depend on the ARPPU (Average Revenue per Paying User) that varies wildly depending on the game’s genre. When we work with our partner studios, we compare their monetization metrics to similar games in the same category, and we suggest improvements that can help the conversion rate. Special attention should be put into the first payment since more than half of the users who make an initial purchase will end up purchasing multiple times after that. Starter packs and well-timed Calls to Action in your game can help on the first payment conversion rate and bring up the CR%.

Ultimately the bottom line metric that you can easily measure during your game’s soft launch (and that is a function of all of the above) is the ARPDAU (Average Revenue Per Daily Active User). The ARPDAU may range between $0.02 for quick casual games (monetizing exclusively through ads) to over $0.50 for mid-casual/mid-core games. Here is a breakdown by game genre from SurveyMonkey, but please note that this is not definitive – different reports may show different results!

All the metrics described so far contribute to the calculation of the LTV (Lifetime Value) of your game which is the average revenue generated by every install over their lifetime. If you are able to measure or estimate Lifetime and ARPDAU, the LTV can be simply calculated as

ARPDAU X LIFETIME (IN DAYS)

More often you will have to estimate the LTV with available retention data points using different approaches and calculators, like the ones mentioned here.

The LTV (or its estimate during soft launch) is what will determine if your game can sustain the cost of user acquisition. It is important to notice that even if the overall LTV is not greater than the average CPI (cost per install), there is still hope for your game. We can often identify specific segments or niches where the combined action of user acquisition and the subsequent organic downloads uplift can have a positive margin and sustain the growth of your game.

There’s more to come on this subject in future blog posts, but in the meantime, do not hesitate to comment or reach out!

Apple TV: Opportunities and Best Practices for App Developers

By Stefano Melucci | January 27, 2016 | Comments 0 Comment

The new 4th generation Apple TV was released less than three months ago with the major addition of a TV App Store. Yesterday’s Apple TV Tech Talk event in NY was a great opportunity to meet with (many) hundreds of interested developers and publishers and also to hear an update from Apple reps about the platform and best practices.

The first thing to note is that it is still a very early market and not much data is publicly available about the size of the opportunity, download volumes, usage etc.

App store intelligence will become a little easier from now on since App Annie just announced support for Apple TV Apps, allowing developers and publishers to track their apps’ rankings as it’s done on iOS.

App Annie also released a snapshot of the top categories for Apple TV apps by the number of downloads. As expected, Games play an important part, but not as predominant as on iOS. In fact in the US, Entertainment is the leading category, along with News and Education. Combined, they account for roughly twice the amount of downloads than the Games category.

This information is not surprising since TV Apps open a new horizon in the typical living room entertainment patterns, enriching the on-demand consumption of media, news and educational content.

One interesting data point that was shared at Tech Talks is the split betweenbusiness models on the tvOS App Store compared to iOS App Store that is (as expected) heavily skewed towards premium (47% vs 18% of the catalog).

One of the reasons for this difference (besides the different expectations of “entertainment in the living room”) is that as of now there is no way to point ads to direct download on the tvOS App Store, although this feature is expected to be added in the future.

As a result of this, discovery on the tvOS App Store is heavily reliant upon featuring by Apple editorial team, since current marketing campaigns must explicitly instruct users to search for the app on the Apple TV, thus limiting their effectiveness. (see an example below)

When planning a tvOS app a few important considerations have to be taken into account:

– Business model between premium, free, freemium (free + IAP) and paymium (paid + IAP). It all depends on your business objectives: do you target reach, revenue or both? Is the tvOS App to be considered an extension of your iOS app, or is it such a separate experience that it deserves to be marketed differently?

– Universal purchase: this is a new concept introduced by tvOS and a very important one when planning the launch of an app. Universal purchase means that the tvOS and iOS bundles share the same App Store entry and the same IAPs, so that buying on one platform will also enable access on the other. Although this might be the best user experience for some apps/services, it adds limitations because it restricts both platforms to the same business model. My observation is that many apps and games are actually splitting the tvOS app as a different entry and often using different business models (premium on tv and freemium/ f2p on iOS).

Regarding publishing and featuring, the tvOS process is the same as for iOS: the store refreshes on Thursdays and the same guidelines for enhancing your chances of featuring apply.

The Tech Talks event featured some interesting sessions about UI that presents a completely different paradigm from mobile devices and how to better leverage the Siri Remote and the new tvOS kits. You can dig into the resources from Tech Talks sessions that are already available, but I will highlight some takeaways here. In a nutshell it is important to keep the usage consistent with the overall tvOS UI:

– Focus is the main navigation method (no cursors!) and it makes it very intuitive and immediate to navigate through menus and libraries of content.

– Menu button should always be used as a back button. It functions as a pausebutton only in continuous play games where it gives the back as an option in the pause menu.

– Play/pause button should be used as a shortcut to start media when in focus

A topic that I think deserves developers’ attention is the TVMLkit. It is a framework that allows one to easily build client-server native apps using an XML based description (TVML) and leverage predefined templates that mimic the experience of many media apps on the Apple TV. The App Store and other Apple applications are built using it. It is particularly suited to media libraries and can also be used only for a subset of another native application: for example to browse the media library of a travel app. It allows one to easily achieve a UI very consistent with the overall tvOS experience. A lot of documentation is available from past WWDC sessions and the Apple TV Tech Talk Resources. I suggest that you dig into it if you plan to develop an Entertainment or media library app.

Another concept that is new to the TV App Store is the Top Shelf.

Top Shelf is the first row of the main Apple TV home page where users can pin their most used apps. By default when an app on the top shelf is in focus the top banner will show the static image included in the bundle. See below an example with Thumbspire’s game “Song of Pan”.

However it is possible to also display dynamic content, which then directly deep-links inside the app. This is a powerful tool for apps that can showcase interesting content (that can also be personalized to the user) on the top carousel even before being opened. Check out apps like “iTunes Movies” Zova andNewsy (below) as examples of how to use this feature.

Apple TV is still a platform in its infancy, with all the challenges that go along with it, but also with all of the opportunities that a new market and ecosystem can present. The initial data about the split of downloads and usage show a potential not only for games (that need to leverage the living room experience) but also for entertainment and media apps that can package and sell specific categories of content. I would expect the adoption of the device to grow steadily in the coming months. Developers should keep an eye on specific opportunities for their content and follow the evolution of advertising features that when added will likely boost the reach of free and freemium apps by enabling discovery via marketing campaigns.

Interesting times ahead!