Brutally Honest #46 by Matej Lancaric

No 💩​ BS newsletter with useful stuff

Hello from the other side, in this case from substack.

🥃 Drink talk

I am in sunny cloudy/rainy Barcelona right now! Experimenting with substack and looking forward to Gamesforum conference. I am about to lose my virginity here! First time ever in Barcelona (yeah WTF?!) and my first time at Gamesforum. Wish me luck!

🕺🏻 Tip of the week

What will the UA in 2023 look like? This is the question I get a lot since the beginning of this year. Let’s unpack a few things:

Budgets

Gaming companies are targeting shorter payback periods in these uncertain times. If they aimed for D365 profitability, now it’s more like D180 or from D180 to D90. Depends on the cash flow of the company as well. You get the idea, right?

What kind of games will benefit the most?

I assume Ad monetized games because of the short payback periods and lower CPIs. AdROAS campaigns can bring very low CPIs, but also very good quality players that watch a shit ton of ads. Keep that in mind!

UA channels

Moving away from Facebook is still working well for me. Adding Applovin and Ironsource to the UA mix helped maintain (and even improve the quality). What does the UA mix look like for me now? Google, Unity, TikTok, Facebook + Applovin, Ironsource → a number of channels is connected to the previous point about payback period.

Creatives

We are moving from gameplay-focused concepts to altered gameplay concepts. What the fuck is that you might ask? You build custom levels in Unity or from scratch using game assets.

These custom levels are not shown in the game too often, but when you find a concept that works, you can easily integrate those into your game to improve conversion rates (and expectation flows)

When talking about altered gameplay thing Rush Royale or Gold & Goblins creatives!

Privacy, AI & other automation bullshit

SKAN 4.0 is coming + Privacy sandbox as well, nobody knows what to expect.

UA managers need to start leveraging AI (midjourney, ChatGPT, or whatever else) in their UA & creative workflows to get more efficient.

🎮 two & a half gamers #50

In this session, we are deconstructing and analyzing what happened with web3, what are the implications and what is the future of web3 games & companies. We invited a special guest - Nico Vereecke! Tune in:

🎧 Listen on Spotify

📺 Watch on Youtube

🦄​ Diary of a Dancing Unicorn

Today was a good day.

Hey! I saw your latest post in the newsletter. I feel like it’s about me.

Interesting. I was actually thinking about someone else from the past. Someone who I don’t work with at the moment. When I have something on my mind and we work together, you can be sure I would tell you right away.

Ah, okay. I was like WTF, why are you talking about me publicly?

Come on! I am always honest with everybody. Sometimes maybe too much.

Thanks, dude, really appreciate it.

Today was a good day.

🤺​ Quote of the week

“Is this guy really copying all your content?”, Jakub, DM

🧞 Level up yourself

I launched a YouTube Channel. I'm putting a ton of energy into creating heaps of valuable content that I think you'll like. Come check out the latest stuff, and give me a like and subscribe.

🥦​ Before you go

Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter!

Please do me a favor and share this with someone in your network who you think would benefit from the insights and brutal honesty. It would mean a lot to me!

Take care, everyone! See you next Monday!

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