Monetization and User Acquisition foundations

1. Introduction to Monetization & User Acquisition (UA)

In this tutorial, you will explore the core concepts for monetization. When you understand these core concepts, you will be able to deep dive into monetization more practically.

In order to successfully operate your free-to-play mobile game, you may decide you will need a way to generate revenue and keep your players engaged to continue playing your game.

There are four main core concepts that you will explore in this tutorial:

• What monetization is

• What user acquisition is

• How the advertising ecosystem works

• The ethics of monetization

2. What is Monetization?

Monetization refers to a set of strategies and tactics which developers and publishers can use to generate revenue from their apps.

Historically, the game genre selected by the game developer used to dictate the type of monetization strategy. For example, the higher the level of skill or engagement required in the game, the more interactive the monetization approach.

Recently though, a trend on diversifying monetization strategies has been on the rise. Just like in business, it’s not good practice to risk placing all your resources in one single deal. Usually, the more diverse your source of income, the less risky your venture.

If you’re an indie developer just starting out, all these monetization possibilities may feel a bit overwhelming. It’s important to explore various approaches, to reflect and understand what is right for your game as soon as possible.

In this course, you will study strategies, tactics and approaches to help you monetize your game successfully if you decide this is the best approach for you.

3. What is User Acquisition?

Another key component of the health of your game business is to grow your player base or to learn how to acquire the right users and keep them engaged.

User acquisition (often shortened to UA) refers to gaining new users for an app, platform, or other service. On mobile, this is generally designed around generating installs, which is typically achieved through advertising or promotions.

It’s important to acquire users who are valuable and are going to stay engaged in your game. Then, in turn, there will be more opportunities to monetize those users with either ads or in-app purchases (IAP).

4. Reflect!

Now that you have been introduced to Monetization and User acquisition concepts, let’s reflect on two important questions:

1. Can you monetize your game without thinking about UA?

1. Is it possible to monetize your game without engaging your users?

If you answered NO to both questions, you will have realised that acquiring those valuable users is as important as engaging them so they may wish to continue playing your game for a lifetime!

And while you focus on increasing the lifetime value (LTV) of current users and ensuring you have the best monetization strategy, you may also want to continue adding more potential high value users through both paid and organic tactics. But how does it all work?

5. The advertising ecosystem - how it all works

The ad ecosystem is filled with many partners, acronyms, and methods of buying advertising and selling advertising (ad) space. In simple terms, this can be broken down into supply and demand.

Supply is the opportunity to sell the ads. In game advertising, these are either publishers or developers - the actual game where the ad unit or a single advert will show up.

Demand is the opportunity to buy that ad space and show your adverts, or advertisers.

For example, if you want to sell ads within your game, you would be the publisher/developer. If you want to buy ad space in order to show you game ads and hopefully get people to install your game, you would be the advertiser.

6. Traditional advertising and advertising networks

With traditional advertising, whether that was a newspaper, magazine or even website there might have been a one to one relationship with that specific newspaper (e.g. The New York Times) selling their ad space to potential advertisers. However, that can be hard to scale, especially without lots of individual people filling the role of sales people.

Ad networks enable supply sources to set up their inventory (available ad space) for many advertisers to be able to buy that space.

In this case, publishers can set up rules and guidelines of what kind of ads they are willing to accept, for instance, if you are a game that is mostly targeting children, you will want to block ads with certain content or from certain categories.

The ad technology (ad network, mediation providers, ad exchanges, etc.) will help determine what ad to serve so you won’t typically be deciding on an ad by ad basis which ad your player will see.

7. The roles you could play

Now you know how the basics of the ad ecosystem works, can you identify the different roles you could play?

You can be a publisher/developer and/or the advertiser. The choice is yours and depends on your goals!

Later in the course, you will investigate the ad technology utilized in more detail, and explore what you need to know to both serve ads in your game and buy ads to get users into your game.

However, before you get started there’s a more fundamental question to consider: is monetization right for you?

8. The ethics of Monetization

Monetization and advertising have long been scrutinized for intrusiveness to the core content being displayed. It has also been criticized for the collection and profiting of user-level data. However, monetization is also what funds “free content”.

With the vast majority of games being free to play, monetization strategies allow for this to continue. It is ultimately up to the developer to ensure that monetization activities or touchpoints are native to the user’s experience, keeping them engaged with relevant content both within ads and gameplay.

If you are not entirely sure about the ethics of monetization, reflect on some important questions:

Why is advertising necessary and ethical?

Advertising allows consumers to view and engage with content for free, giving all consumers equal access to this content. This also enables developers and content creators to build a sustainable business that scales as they provide greater value to their users.

How can advertising be used unethically?

While advertising in its broadest sense is necessary, it can be used unethically in a variety of ways. This may include:

• Middlemen attempting to circumvent user privacy laws by reselling user data without permission

• Advertisers misrepresenting their product or service in an ad

• Content owners implementing ads in a way that generates many accidental clicks or taps in order to artificially inflate revenue.

None of these practices should be condoned or followed. Regulators and technology platforms are continually improving and enforcing purity in ad ecosystems in order to reward the good players and eradicate the bad players.

Need more help to confirm if monetization is right for your game? Ask the experts how you can know if monetization is right for your game next!

9. Ask the experts!

Would you like to hear more from an expert?

In the video below, watch Cathal and Illya, both Unity monetization experts, discuss:

1. What are the core concepts of monetization?

1. How do you know if it is actually right for your game?

10. Summary

In this tutorial you:

• Described what the core concepts for Monetization are

• Identified the relationship between Monetization and User Acquisition

• Explained how the Ad Ecosystem works

• Reflected on the ethics of Monetization

• Confirmed if Monetization is right for you

Is monetization right for you and your game? If you answered yes, let’s deepdive into monetization and player experience in the Monetizing your game project.

In the Deeper Dive into Monetization you will:

• Deepdive into Monetization and player experience

• Identify types of monetization

• Explain the concepts of Monetization as game design

• Reflect on when to start adding monetization to your game