Creating games for kids is a complicated business. For one, the market is greatly influenced by kids TV. Dylan Collins gave his perspective on how the key developments across the industry covering content, monetization, technology, legal and audience behavior give games for kids a life of it’s own. “Advertising in the kids space is the most weirdly out of sync thing that you can ever see . . . Digital/mobile advertising in the kids sector is roughly 10 times lower than it should be. This is starting to change. So we are now seeing all of our advertising clients really bump up the ratio of their digital spend to TV spend”.
If Dylan Collins knows a thing or two, it’s definitely all about being super awesome. He first helped launch a company while he was still in college, after he and some others realized playing Counter Strike was far more entertaining than economics lectures. By doing so, he became one of Ireland’s pioneers in gaming, getting into the industry while it was still in its infant stages throughout the country.
This led to the technology that turned into DemonWare, which has since been acquired by Activision. He also founded Jolt Online — a website providing the latest news, interviews, and reviews on all things games — that just so happened to be bought by GameStop.
Company Building
In fact, Collins and his colleagues have built and invested in several successful companies over the years. Collins notes that “building is always the best and worst part. We’ve been fortunate enough to build some successful companies with some very talented teams so we know how to scale a global company pretty quickly.”
This experience definitely came in handy for Collins as his current role as CEO of SuperAwesome, the largest kids ad platform in the world. Two years ago, Collins and his team realized kids advertising was not being done safely on mobile devices and other digital platforms. “We decided to do something to fix it,” said Collins. “Everyone said we were nuts.”
Despite the criticism, the company quickly grew by delivering kid-safe, COPPA-compliant advertising to over 200 million kids every month from top family brands like LEGO, Mattel, and Hasbro. While game developers for kids made titles across mobile, web and video platforms, they use SuperAwesome to safely monetize their kids content.
Releasing the first version of SuperAwesome’s ad platform was one of the proudest moment’s of Collins career. “Seeing the reaction from game developers when they realized they could serve 100 percent kid-safe ads to their audience (was great),” Collins says, noting that it isn’t uncommon to hear “thank you for helping me continue my dream of making cool games for kids” from people. “It looks like we’re fixing it,” he says.
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Collins readily admits that the kids industry is a tough place to get a foothold in. He notes that it’s one of the most strategically valuable audiences in the world, but has significant restrictions and ever-increasing data privacy laws. Thanks to recent developments, technology specifically designed for the kids sector must be effective yet in compliance with new legislation that has been proposed.
While many may see such legislation and restrictions as a headache and nuisance, Collins appreciates the challenge it provides. “The new data privacy laws — such as COPPA and the forthcoming EU equivalent — have had a huge impact on the technology required for the kids space,” he says. “We call (the compliant technology specifically designed for the kids sector) ‘kidtech’ and it’s absolutely fascinating to see how the kids landscape is being completely reshaped by this requirement.”
With all of the changes, companies like SuperAwesome have to be quick on their feet and must continuously reinvent themselves from the ground up as they rethink content, advertising and communications. Because of Collins’ and his team’s prior experience with company building, and because SuperAwesome is an “unusually engineering-led company,” they’ve been able to tackle this challenge and scale it “far beyond anyone else.”
Collins also believes that these data privacy laws will eventually spiral out and affect the entire tech industry. He goes onto note that, “they’re starting in the kids space but their impact is going to require completely new platforms in ads, monetization, online marketing and other areas.”
Rest assured though, Collins and SuperAwesome will be on top of it no matter what, helping everyone else through the transition.
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