Q&A with Krisztina Simon, Retargeting Lead @ Product Madness
We reached out to our partner, Product Madness to discuss how they’ve found their retargeting campaigns with us and what successes or pain points they’ve found throughout their journey with re-engagement.
Product Madness has been a leader in social casino gaming since 2007. With eye-catching designs and a distinct creative style, they’ve developed countless popular titles in the genre such as Heart of Vegas and Cashman Casino.
Adikteev has helped Product Madness retain their audiences and grow revenue since 2018. We reached out to Krisztina Simon, Retargeting Lead at Product Madness, to get some insights about how their re-engagement strategy is going, the unique nuances of retargeting for social casino games, and where they think our partnership is headed.
You’ve recently switched your primary focus from ROAS to incrementality when evaluating performance. Why did you make that change and how has it impacted your strategy?
We decided to shift our focus towards incrementality because while direct ROAS works perfectly as the main KPI for UA, it can be misleading and easily influenced by different strategies and targeting when running paid retargeting.
Naturally, when you retarget recently active paying users, your ROAS will look incredible because reengaging these users will be cheaper than those who churned. Besides, the likelihood of them paying is also greater. When you just simply look at the revenue from these users against cost, you likely see a very positive, but potentially misleading picture since you don’t know if those users would have come back without the ads.
What we are focusing on instead is to understand whether these users who are brought back via paid retargeting are giving us a positive incremental uplift in terms of revenue, activity etc. In order to do this, we apply control groups against each strategy and look at a combination of metrics.
What are some of the general requirements for social casino games when launching a retargeting strategy?
Technical, machine learning (ML) capabilities and inventory in our main markets is key for us! We know our users (until iOS14 of course :)), their behaviour and value.
When we decide to retarget them with paid ads, we work with partners who have significant, valuable inventories in our key markets where most users will be found. Besides, accuracy in targeting is also important. We want to make sure that only the users in our target audiences will see the ads and we pay for these, as we believe they are the ones who can be incremental for the business.
What were you looking for specifically when it came to a retargeting partner? What were your priorities?
Transparency is key for me. I need to be able to rely on my partners for data security as well as know that if I need data from their end to support internal analysis, I can get it and trust that data. Technical capabilities like real time black listing, inventory of course, features such as incrementality, optimisation options and creative support are also very important and are taken into consideration.
What are the next big challenges you have to tackle regarding marketing performance for your apps?
The biggest upcoming challenge is definitely iOS 14 and the roll out of ATT like for most marketers. We’ve been preparing for Apple’s changes in the past months internally and together with our partners, however there are many uncertainties, especially around retargeting which makes preparations very difficult.
We are also changing part of our strategy and campaign structures in order to have better visibility over cost for retargeted users in different segments. This is a challenge, because the more you segment, especially when it comes to your paying players, the smaller the audiences become, the more expensive retargeting can be.
What would be the next steps in our collaboration in a perfect world? For example, segmenting audiences even further, optimizing towards incrementality, etc.
Both of these are on top of my priority list for sure :).
I’d like us to find the pockets of users with the highest incremental uplift potential and bring them back to our games at a lowest possible CPR, combined with high retention. Simple, right?! :)
Learn more about Product Madness and their many social casino titles!
To sum up
Thanks Krisztina for taking the time to share some insights with us about re-engagement for social casino gaming! When choosing a re-engagement partner, it’s crucial to keep in mind their machine learning capabilities, technical expertise, and flexibility when it comes to accommodating a variety of goals and strategies. Trust and transparency is another important factor as marketers must be able to count on the data coming from their retargeting partner to be accurate, and know that security is of the utmost significance to them. As the #2 gaming retargeting platform according to the 2020 Appsflyer Performance Index, we’re equipped to handle the unique requirements of gaming companies such as Product Madness.
When it comes to IDFA depreciation, we’re working hard in preparation for the changes to iOS, and we look forward to releasing more news very soon. We’ve also covered the topic of ROAS vs. Incrementality, so have a read if you’d like to learn more about which strategy is right for your app.
