Ciaran O'Kane
CEO
Articles by Ciaran
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Mixed News on CPA Shifting 2019 Gaming Monetisation Strategy
A report released by Liftoff and Leanplum on the state of mobile app marketing suggests that app marketers are coming under increased pressure to improve ‘deep-funnel interactions’, specifically around usage and in-app purchases. While CPA has dropped around installations and usage, the cost of getting users to make in-app purchases has increased by 56% year-on-year. Compounding this increase in the CPA is the drop in the conversion rate to 2.8%. This is a huge concern for a lot of big gaming publishers, [...]
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Germany: A Tale of Two Ecosystems
ExchangeWire has been running events in Germany since 2013; and in that time I have had a firsthand look at the workings of the local digital advertising market. Like in most markets, Google, Facebook, and Amazon dominate in Germany. But there is an interesting split between the remaining 20 percenters. The German 20 percenter market can be described as a tale of two ecosystems: the ever-evolving in-app ad market, which is mostly based in Berlin; and the slow-moving, legacy web-based ad [...]
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Voodoo Gets Some Help from Goldman; Apple Back in the Ad Business
TheGamingEconomy rounds of some of the biggest stories in the business of gaming. In this week’s edition: Voodoo Gets Some Help from Goldman; Apple Back in the Ad Business; and Zynga Grabs Gram Games for USD$250m. Voodoo Gets Some Help from Goldman There is a huge amount of money still going into gaming. Goldman Sachs is investing USD$200 (£150m) into French gaming firm Voodoo, which has had a string of hits over the past twelve months, and is looking to use the money to build [...]
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Fortnite Perfects In-Game Purchases as Yearly Revenue Hits USD$3bn
Fortnite is the break-out gaming success of the year. It has currently got 45 million users playing the game (across platforms) and has a run rate of around USD$3bn (£2.3bn) per year. The game has barely touched the sides in terms of growth; and with its Android launch next month, a huge spike in user growth is expected. The freemium gaming model perfected Fortnite’s success has been built on a freemium model. Its ‘Battle Royale’ version is free-to-play across all platforms. Players [...]
TagsAPACChinaesportsGamingMonetisationMultiplayerStreamingTencentTwitch
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Why Gaming Apps Can Win with 6-Second Video Ads
When King launched its ad business nearly two years ago, you sensed a struggle within the company between the burgeoning ad business and its well-established in-app monetisation strategy. The company has nearly 400 million MAUs, and there was clearly an opportunity to monetise that user with an ad model. Video ads, with their high CPMs, was the logical option for King. The problem, as I saw it, was the length of the video ad on their mobile games. For any of [...]
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King: Testing New Reward Video Ad Format to Monetise 400+ Million Users
King is rumoured to be launching a media business later this year to help build revenue around its incredibly sticky global audience of 463 million monthly active users. The gaming giant has already made a number of key hires in the new part of the business – most notably Lucia Mastromauro, poached from Google, to be King’s UK MD. King needs to steer away from interruptive advertising, as it has been proven that this negatively affects in-app purchases. The game-playing experience is [...]
