“Something else that we see, and we’ve all just taken and accepted, is that we are only going to monetize a fraction of our users - 2 percent, 5 percent, maybe 10 percent if you are lucky,” Dan Laughlin said to his audience at Casual Connect USA 2014. “What I think people are starting to do more, and more people should be doing, is thinking about that 95 percent as a segment. They’re not just throwaway users; it’s a type of user.”
Dan Laughlin is the vice president of business development at HyprMX, a multi-screen monetization platform delivering premium brand advertising. When Laughlin interviewed with HyprMX, his view of business development on mobile changed as he realized there are now mobile ad networks 100 percent focused on bringing Fortune 500 video ads to mobile apps. Most ads today on mobile are for other games, driving users away from the publisher to the app store. He maintains, “This is not a sign of a mature media.” But HyprMX is helping to usher in a new era for mobile in which games are treated as first-rate media properties worthy of large Fortune 500 brand budgets. Games will then be able to deliver a more premium experience and generate substantially more revenue per ad view. The HyprMX team, based in New York, has been for years immersed in the brand and agency world of Madison Avenue. Laughlin believes this gives them a significant advantage over newer, West Coast ad networks that were founded with a focus on app install ads.
Helping Developers
Laughlin’s goal with HyperMX is to help game developers thrive. He has been a producer and a part of the passion and creativity that makes the games industry special. Now his role is to bring developers meaningful incremental revenues that can help fund new games, employ more great people, or take chances on innovative titles. He says, “I am working hard to spread the word to developers that they can finally leverage ad technology to bring high-payout ads from premium brands into their games.”
He feels his experience publishing games on social and mobile platforms has given him a real knowledge of how developers work and how he can best be of service to them. He understands development cycles, monetization metrics, platform limitations, and user experience tradeoffs and how those impact their partnerships.
Aside From Work
A few years ago, Laughlin started running and has found it strangely addicting. He has competed in two marathons and hopes, at some point, to qualify for the Boston Marathon. He also enjoys traveling internationally for games business development. Meetings and conferences have taken him to China, Japan, Russia, Ukraine, Hong Kong, Germany, and the UK. He combines these two interests by seeing as much of an area as possible by running early in the morning, and claims, “There’s nothing like running through Red Square at 5 AM in January and getting yelled at by Moscow policemen!”
When gaming, his focus on mobile has him spending most of his time on his iPhone, preferring runners and quick social turn-based games. But in his five years working in game development at Microsoft, he developed a lasting loyalty to Xbox. He insists, “You can’t beat the immersive experience of a console game.”
He reveals that he and his three brothers are insanely competitive over an obscure advergame called Big Bumpin’, put out by Burger King. Every Thanksgiving, they play that game for hours, seriously annoying the ladies of the family. He owns an Xbox 360, and is currently debating whether to get Xbox One.
He does love F2P because it allows players to easily discover a game and take it out for a spin. However, as a player, he hates to discover games with the experience so obviously about monetization rather than delighting the user. But he is happy to watch ads or make a purchase to advance if the game experience is innovative, artistic, or social. He insists, “You can tell when a developer has really put their heart into an experience.”
The Amazon and Apple Opportunities
Despite his love for consoles, he believes, “Fire TV and potentially an Apple equivalent are sitting on a huge opportunity. Taking the mobile/tablet-like experiences to the TV with intuitive controls could help create a significant market that sits between the current tablet and console.” He expects that many of the previous generation of console players would be happy to play on the TV, and skip the $500 purchase this time around. And for ad networks like HyprMX, this would also be a great opportunity; as “mobile” development partners extend to TV, HyprMX will also, and help generate even more revenue for their operations.
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