At the recent Casual Connect USA 2015 conference, the Managing Director at Bee7 Limited, John Rankin put user behavior under a microscope, revealing vital insights for developers to help boost retention, re-engagement and monetization in F2P games. Drawing on insight from Bee7’s global network of 250 million MAU, John explored user-led discovery, rewarding game behaviour and interaction as a more effective approaches to monetization, engagement and retention.
John Rankin, Managing Director at Bee7, is committed to helping developers engage and retain loyal users through Bee7’s native rewarded re-engagement solution. Bee7 is part of the Outfit7 group, the company behind the Talking Tom and Friends franchise. John recognizes the critical importance of motivating players to interact with games and encouraging them in the right in-game behavior.
He spends much of his time talking with developers and publishers, assisting them in improving retention and levels of engagement with players and ultimately helping them to monetize their titles.
Why Bee7? John wanted to join a large publisher and content producer in order to use his skills to grow their adtech toolkits. So, he relates, “When the opportunity came to start Bee7 alongside the amazing brand and success story that is Outfit7, I jumped at the chance.”
Passion for Games and Digital Monetization
John has been involved with tech and adtech for fifteen years with a career that has included everything from home shopping, to telecoms to advertising, to games and entertainment. This background has helped him adapt and contribute to almost any industry with a tech element. Although he didn’t originally plan to be involved with games and entertainment, he says, “The fate and the clear leadership of this industry drew me in organically.” He elaborates that he has been closely aligned with advertising and mobile for so long that he can’t see himself ever leaving an industry that he is still passionate about.
John discovered the digital monetization business when working on Vizzazi, a joint venture between Vodafone and Vivendi and one of the first mobile game companies. While there, he helped to introduce new products and features into the UK gaming market. Ever since then, John has been interested in the wider digital content business, with mobile as his focus because he believes it is clearly the future of how we communicate. John has worked with a large number of mobile driven companies from carriers and manufacturers to mobile ad networks, making his progression to Bee7 a natural one.
Innovation and More Innovation
Working as a part of Outfit7 means John is exposed to mobile games, advertising, TV and the media business that surrounds it. He particularly enjoys working in the games industry because it’s one filled with innovators. As an example, he cites the level of analytics and data utilization in marketing and monetizing games, far ahead of other sectors of the mobile economy. “The games industry,” he insists, “is truly driving the growth of the mobile sector.”
And, of course, he has the opportunity to see hundreds of games each day; the only difficulty is decided which ones to become involved with.
John has had many moments he considers highlights in his career. These include being involved in the launch of Blackberry and the data networks that gave us 3G or M-pay right through to his work with one of the first mobile payment products which we still see whenever we pay for gas or use an ATM.
He also believes there is nothing quite like the excitement and trepidation of launching a new company and brand, saying “My work setting up Adeye and Adsmobi was an incredible ride and brought great success.” He is also very excited about the opportunities Bee7 is bringing with their user-led and retention focus for games; as it is unique and strongly resonates within the games industry.
Keeping Up
The only way to keep up in the games industry, he insists, is research, innovation and product development. At Bee7, the tech team is constantly researching, thinking of new ideas, as well as attending conferences to be sure they are on the forefront of what’s happening. Currently, Bee7 is in the process of innovating exciting new product, although they are not quite ready to announce them yet.
John predicts that mobile gamers will become savvier and even more discerning about their gaming experiences.
The user experience is front of mind at Bee7’s approach. John has seen “some really interesting results that show when users are given complete control to discover and choose when they interact with a game’s engagement tools – whether monetization or retention tools – it’s actually far more effective.”
What’s Next
He considers future developments in the industry no more than two to three years in advance; the industry simply shifts too quickly to see farther ahead. John does expect changes to come to hardware with technology like VR and wearables playing a significant role - but mobile is here to stay for a while longer.
Retention and re-engagement will be the significant focus for their audience. With fewer flash-in-the-pan hits, rising user acquisition costs and many downloads disappearing within a week or two, more developers will view retention as the key to their success. John notes that this trend has already started.
Rewarded video for monetization and retention is already showing success. Developers will see the value in video advertising mechanic which will convince brand advertisers to come on board with advertising in mobile games. When coupled with Bee7’s rewarded gameplay and video engagement system, John is certain that publishers will be attracted to its ability to drive cross promotion of their own games. And developers will be thinking of video purely for advertising of third party games.
John also believes more service providers will offer a suite of value added services built around a core competency, whether that is a cross promotion and retention platform, a game engine or an analytics tool. As developers concentrate on creating great content, they will receive more and more for free, with service providers offering a range of value added services in exchange for a share in the incoming revenues.
Comments
