VIDEO: Jack and Jack Know Content

While they were arguably the youngest people in the room, Viners Jack and Jack blew many seasoned marketing attendees away with their working knowledge about brands on social media.

They related a story about a branded deal they were working on that the company had decided was not a fit for them after all. Jack and Jack, still liking the content they had created for the branded deal decided to go ahead and post it anyway, knowing it was something their audience would enjoy. When posting it, they just eschewed mentioning anything about the brand. Right away, it got 300,000 views.

We caught the creative duo outside after their panel at [a]list summit: Mobile Marketing to talk more about their advice for upcoming creators and about marketers’ attitudes toward influencer marketing.

 

Bots Could Take A $6.3 Billion Chunk From Marketers In 2015

Meet the new scourge: bots. According to new research from the ANA, or the Association of National Advertisers, bot fraud could mean up to a $6.3 billion loss for marketers in 2015. Those are big numbers and a cause for concern.

As it turns out, almost a quarter of video ads are actually served to bots and not real human beings. Display ads, while much derided for being the victims of “banner blindness,” are not as affected with 11 percent of them being “bot-infected.”

Unsurprisingly, this issue is a big one for programmatic, especially as it grows to become the future of ad buying. Not exactly a vote of confidence for programmatic, which is predicted to expand 3x its current dominion by 2018.

“For 18 of the 36 study participants, three well-known programmatic ad exchanges supplied programmatic traffic with over 90 percent bots,” says the report.

The scope of the problem is quite big. The report shows that up to 50 percent of publisher activity could be coming from bots. As a result, some publishers are now setting up their own ad exchanges.

 

 

Newzoo/Overwolf Top 20 PC Games November 2014

On the surface the Top 20 Core PC Game Ranking looks deceptively calm in November, doubly so at the top. League of Legends, World of Tanks and Minecraft continue to dominate the top three spots, with World of Tanks maintaining its number 2 spot for the second month in a row. Further examination reveals the critical impact that upcoming releases and the eSports craze can have on unique game sessions.

It’s a Riot
It’s an interesting time for League of Legends, accounting for 18 percent of all the unique play time sessions in the time period, down from the 20 percent it achieved in the previous month. This small decline is to be expected as the game is now technically in “pre-season,” with zero ladder rank play for gamers, until the start of the new season in January 2015. With a lower incentive for competitive play, we’d expect LoL’s capture of session time to decline until rank play reopens next year. Riot Games recently shared the viewer statistics for this year’s League of Legends World Championship’s final in South Korea. Overall unique viewers totaled 27 million, marking a slight decline by last year’s 32 million. However concurrent viewer numbers peaked at 11.2 million, a fair increase over the 8.7 million achieved in 2013. These numbers are made doubly significant considering the finals were live broadcast between 4-8 a.m. in North America — a generally unfavorable timeslot.

Tank Sports
Wargaming’s World of Tanks continues to accelerate its commitment to eSports, starting with its Stronghold 9.2 update and its most recent 9.4 update that emphasizes clan wars and team work. More importantly the most serious problem with World of Tanks’ eSports ambitions have been addressed: 2015 matches will no longer end in draws with the creation of a new Attack and Defense format. It will be interesting to see how overall session times are affected once the new season begins with these long awaited changes finally in operation.

Expansion Highs
Moving down the rankings we see Blizzard’s World of Warcraft holding steady at rank 4, with Hearthstone moving up one place to Rank 11. The two titles have been the focus of significant interest in the past month with the Nov 13 release of the World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor expansion and the upcoming release of Hearthstone: Goblins vs. Gnomes on December 8. The WoW expansion saw the largest increase of subscriber numbers for the title in many a year, increasing by 3 million to just over 10 million subscribers, proving that for select titles the subscription model can still be viable.

However, Blizzard’s remaining title on the rankings Diablo III has been on a bit of a freefall. Falling two places to Rank 10 in October, the title has dropped an additional four places in November to land at Rank 14. Part of this decline could be attributed to the delay of the Ruins of Sescheron content patch that has been eagerly awaited by fans since its announcement at BlizzCon 2014. The title itself is in an interesting position considering it is currently the only Blizzard IP without a full expansion announced. This is in addition to the unveiling of the brand new Blizzard IP Overwatch, a title that seems directly aimed at the casual FPS competitive space.

EA’s Star Wars: The Old Republic increased by one place to Rank 10, driven by the imminent release of the Shadows of Revan expansion in December.

The New and Not So New
HiRez Studio’s Smite, having been conspicuously absent from the rankings in some time, has returned to take Rank 18. The likely reason is the increasing traction the title has received in the eSports arena, empowered by a recent large investment from Tencent and its forthcoming release on the Xbox platform. The title’s first World Championship will be taking place in Atlanta in January 2015, with a community sponsored prize poll that is already over 1.6 million dollars.

The other new entry is Freedom Games’ Robocraft, a PvP game where players design and build robots to competitively battle each other. Described as a sci-fi Minecraft with guns, the title is F2P, has overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam, and currently sits at number 4 on IndieDB. Despite the small development team and limited media coverage, the title is a perfect example of the effect community driven interest for new and exciting game types has on the overall PC market.

Find more information on the eSports market and audience here.

About Overwolf
Overwolf is a customizable in-game overlay platform that has been installed in over 8 million PCs. This community of hardcore PC gamers are consistently making their own apps within the Overwolf platform and sharing them. Why Because it’s super simple and it enhances the gameplay experience of anyone’s favorite title in a personal way. From in-game chat systems to customized controls, streaming or video capture, Overwolf allows users to implement their own visions into these games and do so in a timely manner.

About Newzoo
Newzoo is the leading global market research firm focused purely on the games market. The company provides its clients with a mix of primary consumer research, transactional data and financial analysis across all continents, screens and business models. It is also known for actively sharing a variety of insights by means of free trend reports, infographics, blogposts and monthly rankings. Newzoo’s clients include Tencent, SEGA, Logitech, Wizards of the Coast, Nvidia, Microsoft, EA, Coca-Cola and Visa/PlaySpan.

Coke Exec Matt Wolf Discusses New Twitch eSports Initiative

Coca-Cola has partnered with Twitch to host its first-ever, but likely first of many, eSports charity event. On December 15 at the Atlanta Coke headquarters, Twitch will livestream a variety show, called Game-a-Thon 1.0, featuring YouTube and eSports celebrities like Joedat “Voyboy” Esfahani, Jon Carnage, Twitch programming director, Rachel “Seltzer” Quirico, Justin Flynn and Joseph “Swiftor” Alminawi to raise money for several charities. It’s the latest marketing initiative from the soft drink maker that aims at unifying the eSports community.

Matt Wolf, head of global gaming at Coca-Cola, has worked closely with Riot Games to integrate Coke Zero into the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) over the past year. Now that the Challenger Series had a successful first season as a minor league for aspiring League pro gamers, Wolf hopes to build on the company’s @CokeEsports Twitter success by working with Twitch. He talks about the opportunities in eSports, and explains the similarities between the LCS Championship in Korea and the World Cup in this exclusive interview.

What was it like experiencing the LCS Championship in Seoul, Korea this year?

I’d never seen anything like it and I’ve been in gaming for over two decades. It was amazing to see the power of the broadcast and the size of the attendance — two things we really didn’t have five years ago at this scale. There were over 35,000 people in the World Cup stadium and the broadcast reached 10s of millions of people. The concurrent views were off the chart and the excitement was palpable. Korea is the birth of eSports, but people came in from all over the world to attend. It felt historical with the sold out stadium and Imagine Dragons opening up the event. It was really special.

How did Coke take part in this event?

We activated there similarly to the FIFA World Cup experience, except we did it around League of Legends. We got great results through social media on the League Twitter account. We gave away collectible Coca Cola character cups and people showed up at 5 a.m. and waited in a one kilometer long line to go through the booth experience. We had custom Share a Coke bottles and other prizing activations. Fans got to take pictures with some of the characters form the game, they got the cup and all this other stuff. For Riot it’s just a big win. It shows the power of League and of eSports in all these different facets.

How have you used Twitter to connect with eSports fans?

Our Twitter (@CokeESports) account grew 13,000 percent in 2014. We went from zero to over 203,000 over a year. We’re looking at Twitter as a great tool to have an always-on platform with fans and consumers. It’s more about doing iterative marketing, and we’ll continue to grow it and speak to other gaming activations in the future.

“Our Twitter account grew 13,000 percent in 2014. We went from zero to over 203,000 over a year. We’re looking at Twitter as a great tool to have an always-on platform with fans and consumers.”

How have you seen non-gaming executives come around to eSports as a viable marketing opportunity for Coke?

The conversations have always been pretty thought-provoking and warmly received at Coke because they had enough vision to seek out a guy like me. They gave me the freedom to apply my vision to CP (consumer packaged goods) and they really supported it. There were moments where it might have been challenging to explain eSports — even people from gaming sometimes have a hard time wrapping their head around Millennials watching others play games for hours a day. Coke trusted me that this is the right direction. There were some, moments where I had to wave my hands a lot before the LCS events at Staples Center last year and in Korea this year. Other eSports games have done powerful numbers, as well. Now Coke looks at this as a viable MarCom strategy.

“There were moments where it might have been challenging to explain eSports — even people from gaming sometimes have a hard time wrapping their head around Millennials watching others play games for hours a day.”

How do you see eSports compare to real sports Coke activation?

Experience is key on that. Coke celebrated the FIFA World Cup with a trophy tour to the four corners of the planet. We’ve taken some of that shorthand as a company and applied that toward an eSports play. You saw a lot of parallel in Korea. The FIFA World Cup showed up in Seoul, Korea at the same stadium LCS was at. The World Cup is one of the big activation plays for Coke. And we did something similar with League with an experiential destination that we dressed authentically with League and Coke Zero. We gave people a chance to interact with the moment. We played the ally to the League protagonists. The heroes are the characters and the game and the players, and we support that just like we support the World Cup athletes. If we go back to May at the League All-Star Game in Paris, it was a similar kind of thing. It’s a new way to experience League of Legends through fans and pros complete with cheer boards. It’s been an evolution this year, but it parallels how we do things like FIFA World Cup.

How are you partnering with Twitch for charity?

Matt Wolf, head of global gaming at Coca-ColaMatt Wolf, Head of Global Gaming at Coca-Cola

We’ve been talking to Twitch for awhile on how to work together in an authentic way to bring value back to community. I’ve been talking to Kevin Lin (co-founder and COO of Twitch) about this for awhile and we decided to come together around the idea of playing for charity. We decided to work on a live production from our Atlanta headquarters with a set and fly talent out and shoot a show where four contestants (popular Twitch blasters) and Voyboy, an ex League pro, would compete for charity. Next Monday starting at 3 p.m., we’ll have four players hosted by popular eSports caster Seltzer and it’ll be a great day of play for charity. Coke and Twitch can talk about what they have going on in each camp. We explore other parts of our company. We’ll have surprise interviews and slide shows around a gaming for good variety show. It’s a fun way for gaming and brands to come together.

What charities are involved?

We’ll have a mix of four charities. We’re putting the finishing touches on things now.

How are you using Twitter for this charity event?

We’ve used our account to let people know about this program. We ran a teaser campaign and revealed a new contestant each day through Tweets last week. Now we’ll continue that discussion and move it over to Twitch.

Will Coke launch a Twitch channel?

We’re interested in growing our relationship with Twitch over time. They’re a powerhouse and it’s a great opportunity for us to partner with Twitch and from that grow a communications platform that we can add to what we’ve started with Twitter. We hope to have a dedicated channel, but we’re working out some moving parts. I’d like to have our own channel on Twitch, but the challenge that goes with that is having content over time. They become hungry babies. When you hatch a chickling like that, it’s sweet, but you have to provide content like we do with Twitter. It needs to be fresh and authentic. We have to be careful about that because we want to grow these things into something special and something big. Twitter has done well because we’ve focused on just that over the past year.

South Korean Gaming Market Sees Change

While many think that the gaming scene is quite big in America, it’s also making a huge impact in South Korea – and it could get even bigger, according to an article from Tech In Asia.

The article explains that, last year, South Korea saw an annual revenue of $2.5 billion, the highest total for the market following a decade of growth. It got to the point where many avid gamers played massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG’s) as their main free time activity, spending thousands of dollars to have all the latest items. In fact, it got to the point that console and smartphone gaming was even eclipsed – a huge fact considering their impact in other parts of the world.

However, this year, things are different. “Local companies no longer cater to local tastes,” the article reads. “They have turned to China to find growth. The South Korean government’s decision to cap a person’s spending in online games provided some of the impetus for this change.” However, it also notes that a variety of competition – including games from the U.S. and other developers – played a part in changing the domestic market as it originally was. A recent event, G-Star, also highlighted titles that weren’t made solely in that country.

Part of this Western impact comes from the likes of Blizzard and Valve, whose titles (like World of Warcraft and DOTA 2, respectively) have gained an immense following overseas – even in a short time frame. Riot Games’ League of Legends has also played a huge part, where it continues to be a tremendous draw with tournaments worldwide.

Part of the impact from lost revenue comes from pricing competition through these developers. “While Nexon pioneered the virtual goods business in the early 2000’s with a free-to-play model, other Korean MMORPG makers stuck to subscriptions,” explains the article. “When League of Legends offered a free-to-play model to compete against the subscription fees offered by similar games, it blew open the market. It took NCSoft, the developer of Lineage and Aion, years to launch a free-to-play version, and NCSoft still has not regained the audience it lost.

“Today, four of the top five games in Korea are from overseas developers – and League of Legends, the largest online game in the world, claims 40 percent of the South Korean market.”

Meanwhile, the smartphone market has picked up immensely in the country, with 70 percent of Korean people having access to some form of device – all within an 18-month period. The messaging app KakaoTalk also boosted attention to mobile, with its various social features.

Still, Tech In Asia believes the government provided the biggest blow to the market, setting a curfew at game cafes across the country and capping the amount a person can spend on a game, to the tune of $300 a month. This hurt several developers in the process, to the point where some even saw layoffs, like Neowhiz. However, the $13 billion Chinese game market continues to keep most afloat, despite the limitations. Crossfire is easily one of the most popular titles, clearing $1 billion last year for China alone.

It’ll be interesting to see if any changes come to the market in 2015 – or if the government possibly loosens its grip on spending. One thing’s for sure – Western developers are certainly making a bigger impact in Korea than anyone expected.

Why Technology Will Change Content Marketing

by Robert Rose

Editor’s note: This piece was originally published on PublishThis and appears in [a]listdaily as a sponsored post. PublishThis will be holding a webinar on Dec. 10 about this subject which you can register for here.

Albert Einstein (yeah, doesn’t every post start with an Einstein quote these days) once said “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity”. And, I think if you ask most marketers these days, you’d get some vigorous head nodding that “um, yeah, we’d agree!!

Certainly two of the biggest trends disrupting business are “big data” and “content”. For the technology-minded (i.e., our technology teams) this means an enormous amount of pressure to get business software to work much more seamlessly across all the channels we have to manage and simultaneously make use of all that wonderful data being produced.

Likewise, marketing’s mandate has expanded, now covering the creation of optimal content-driven experiences across every appropriate channel and the entirety of the customer relationship.

These are new imperatives for both groups that can, in many cases, be simply overwhelming.

So, when it comes to technology to help facilitate all this disruption, you’d think the marketing and technology teams would be best friends at this point; kindred spirits working together to bring these concepts together. You’d like to think they’d be just like two kids riding in the back seat to Disneyland; working together to make the car go faster.

Yes, you’d like to think that.

But the reality is (as every parent knows) quite different. These days the CMO and the CIO are both screaming “are we there yet ” from the back seat. The CMO is holding his finger in the CIO’s face saying, “not touching, not touching”. And the CIO is saying “mine, mine, mine” to every single thing the CMO picks up.

So – let’s look at a method we at the Content Marketing Institute have started to see where technology and marketing are working together to solve some of these challenges.

A new marketing technology model: Built to Adapt

In “Systems Of Engagement and The Future of Enterprise IT, author Geoffrey Moore explains that we are in a “new era of IT.” What he calls “systems of record” (the large backbone IT systems) are now being supplemented and extended by “systems of engagement,” solutions that are built to facilitate communication and collaboration. In describing the importance of this sea change, Moore says:

Amidst the texting and Twittering and Facebooking of a generation of digital natives, the fundamentals of next-generation communication and collaboration are being worked out. For them it is clear, there is no going back. So, at a minimum, if you expect these folks to be your customers, your employees, and your citizens . . . then you need to apply THEIR expectations to the next generation of enterprise IT systems.

Moore specifically analyzes content management and business intelligence applications and points out that the focus must be “on empowering the middle of the enterprise to communicate and collaborate across business boundaries, global time zones and language and cultural barriers, using next-generation IT applications and infrastructure adapted from the consumer space.

Moore is certainly right about the needed changes. But, he takes a long-term view of the transformation. Today, the requirement for marketing to adapt immediately means that this new technology adoption model must be adjusted quickly for the new and evolving realities.

The “content-driven-experiences” stack – a backbone with room to stretch and flex

A new model to facilitate content-driven experiences that provide powerful data-driven insight is starting to emerge within forward-leaning brands that have integrated marketing and technology successfully. Whether driven by marketing technologists (to borrow from Scott Brinker) or actually a hybrid of IT and Marketing strategy – this new model accommodates the need of large enterprises to scale and provide consistent experiences across a large employee base by adapting to the conversational, flexible, and agile nature of today’s marketing organization.

The stack is comprised of three discrete layers that are made up of systems of record at the lower end and become systems of engagement as they move closer to the consumer on the front end. In every case, as they near the surface, they must be more flexible and interchangeable.

This is not a physical architecture of a specific technology solution, but rather a model that marketers can use to begin developing their business requirements for the technology solutions they require.

  • Core Data Management. This is the lowest layer and is the foundation and storage of consumer, content, and transactional data and it serves the global enterprise. It is supported by large databases and closely adheres to standards so that data can be easily extracted and used. Whether cloud-based or closely held within the organization, it should enable information-as-a-service.
  • Engagement Management. This middle layer of technology should be able to interface with anything above and below it. It provides the interface into, and out of, the Core Data Management layer and provides optimization based on business rules that can be applied to display content contextually.
  • Content Channel and Experience Management. This top layer should be as flexible, portable, and/or disposable as any media strategy used to be. Content channels such as YouTube, Facebook, or blogs are the marketer’s new “media buy.” They are important only so long as they are useful. This layer will be constantly changing and morphing so, it should aim for zero-friction in order to add or dispose elements easily.

Content marketing technology – the power to adapt

One of the biggest dangers for enterprise marketing groups today is the temptation to repeat the mistakes made during “Web 1.0.” Just as the ”e-business team” was often separated from the core business in the late 1990’s, so too are social and web experience teams often isolated from both corporate marketing and IT today.

Content marketing and the function of delivering rich digital experiences across any channel require that these teams collaborate on one cohesive strategy. As a result, the experience management technologies facilitating those processes can converge effectively to integrate and manage all three layers: Core Data Management, Engagement Management, and Content Channel and Experience Management.

This new adaptive system will be staffed by flexible teams that will also be challenged to change and rearrange as new strategies are deployed by the enterprise. These de-siloed teams should ultimately work together in the marketing department to generate a phenomenon that scientists call “emergence,” where relatively simple and separate interactions will develop into productive patterns. Then, the whole ultimately becomes much greater than the sum of its parts.

Tomorrow’s marketing and communications teams succeed by learning to adapt – and by deploying systems of engagement that facilitate adaption. By building to change, the marketing department builds to succeed.

Sponsored posts have been written by a company that either has a business relationship with [a]listdaily or is paying for the post. If you are interested in a sponsored post on [a]listdaily, please contact pr@ayzenberg.com.

TechNavio Sees Into The Future of Programmatic

“In 2013, more than 65 percent of mobile display ads were traded programmatically and this figure is expected to skyrocket in the coming years,” said TechNavio, a technology and research advisory company in a report predicting what the global advertising market might look like from 2014 and 2018.

The quick growth of in-app advertising is predicted to grow over 24 percent between now and 2018 according to TechNavio. Another driver Mobile video.

“Consumers are spending more time watching videos, browsing the internet, and using other applications on their mobiles, which is persuading advertisers to invest in mobile video advertising.”

Real-time bidding is also predicted to see more growth as well and may increase 3x in the 2014-2018 timespan. While these figures may surprise few, it is interesting to contemplate just how quickly programmatic will take over ad buying as advertisers catch up to consumers on mobile.

 

Netflix Will Be ‘Everywhere’ In Five Years, Plus Other Thoughts From Ted Sarandos

by Sahil Patel

Netflix hopes to be available “everywhere in the world” within the the next five years, according to the company’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos.

During an on-stage interview at the 42nd annual Global Media and Communications Conference from investment bank UBS, Sarandos spoke at length about Netflix’s international expansion, as well as how the company’s original programming and content acquisitions strategy will evolve amid all of that growth.

Notably, Netflix recently expanded in Europe, launching in six major countries including France and Germany. Based on the initial data in those markets, as well as others Netflix already operates in, the company has come to realize that demand continues to be high for high-profile US shows.

In fact, until Netflix came on to the scene, most U.S. shows took forever to travel to international markets. “When we launched in the Nordics, they were two years behind on ‘The Walking Dead,’” said Sarandos. “There is a big access issue outside of the U.S. when it comes to TV,” as many buyers outside of the country would wait until a show was a bonafide success in the U.S. before bringing it to their market, he added.

Read more…

This article was originally posted on VideoInk and is reposted on [a]listdaily via a partnership with the news publication, which is the online video industry’s go-to source for breaking news, features, and industry analysis. Follow VideoInk on Twitter @VideoInkNews, or subscribe via thevideoink.com for the latest news and stories, delivered right to your inbox.

Unity Adds Analytics

At the Game Monetization conference last week in San Francisco, Unity’s vice persident of online services Todd Hooper took the stage to speak about Disruptors and Game Changers in the game industry. More specifically, Hooper addressed why thinking about mobile vs console is wrong-headed, and that it’s really one game industry — albeit with different screen sizes, UI and business models. Hooper’s talk sought to identify the real key disruptors and lessons to be learned in gaming today, and how best to take advantage of those.

The scope of Unity has become vast, and the revolution among indie developers and their increasing prominence owes a lot to the advance of the Unity engine and development environment. The business model Unity employs (free, with a premium version available) has helped spread the engine, as well as the relentless drive of Unity to support every possible platform. Now Unity is looking to provide a range of additional services to developers beyond its game engine, and that’s an important development for the game community.

Hooper started out by sharing some statistics revealing just how strong Unity has become, and that the number of Unity developers means that some very useful data is available to Unity. In 2011 Hooper noted that Unity had some 100,000 developers, and that’s not the number registered, but the number who actually would launch the software at least once a month and use it. That number is an impressive one, but in three years it’s grown to an astonishing 639,000 monthly active Unity users.

Hooper also noted that 45 percent of mobile games made with third party engines are made with Unity, and the company has seen 500 million desktop games installed that have been built with Unity. That’s an impressive number, but it pales compared to the number of mobile games made with Unity that have been installed: 8.7 billion mobile games worldwide so far. That’s not even all of them, as Hooper noted some big publishers don’t share their numbers with Unity, so the actual number is probably well above 10 billion games installed worldwide.

Hooper, knowing that the majority of Unity’s developers are small shops, mad an important analogy. He likened game development to mountain climbing, where game developers bring together talented people and put forth great effort to create a game. They reach the top of that mountain and feel triumph, but looking out ahead there’s another, even bigger mountain to climb: Connecting with an audience. Hooper noted that “Most developers don’t know how to tackle the second mountain” and Unity intends to help them with that task.

This is why, Hooper explained, Unity purchased game analytics firm Playnomics earlier this year. The company had created an effective set of analytics tools for developers, and Unity’s intent is to bring that to its large development community. “What’s the number one analytics tool used by mobile game developers ” Hooper asked the audience. “We surveyed our developers, and the answer was: No analytics. We mean to change that.”

Hooper shared with the audience some of the statistics gathered from Unity’s immense audience. Android is number one in most markets, of course, but the lead differs between countries. And while there are over 3000 different types of Android devices out there, the number that are asignificant part of the market are quite small. Hooper noted that some brands that may be unfamiliar to US marketers, like Huawei and Xiaomi in China, actually have quite large market shares in that country.

By contrast, the iOS market is much similar, with far fewer models and much less variation in the operating system version. The market is roughly split between iPads and iPhones, at least as far as Unity games are concerned. The big difference with Android users is that iOS users generally upgrade to the latest version of the operating system relatively swiftly. By contrast, less than 1% of the Android market has the very latest version of the operating system installed.

One of the key facts about mobile games is that less than 1 percent pay to play globally, Hooper pointed out. The median spend is $4.99 for men, but only $3.13 for women. The churn rate (the average time before a customer stops playing a game) is vast among mobile games, no doubt due to the free nature of most of the games. Looking at thirty days after download, 89 percent of iOS users fail to return, while 97 percent of Android users drop out. In U.S., Hooper said, seven to nine days is the average churn time, while in most other places in the world it’s two to three days. The total spend for iOS games (among those players who have paid) is $93.77, while Android is $75.27 — compared to web games at $19.13, that’s quite impressive.

Hooper explained that Unity’s plan is to offer analytics as part of its development suite for no cost, attempting to bring as many developers as possible into the world of using analytics to help create better games — and make more money. “Analytics will be turned on in every Unity game by default,” Hooper said, with the intent that this will create widespread knowledge of analytics and usage thereof. Although not every developer may want this, and “You’ll be able to opt out,” Hooper said. Hooper acknowledged that there are plenty of commercial analytics packages, and Unity’s intent is not to supplant those.

“It’s pretty tough to take that data back to a producer and get changes made,” Hooper acknowledged. In most cases, especially when you don’t know the right questions to ask, “The info is not specific enough for developers to take action on it,” Hooper said. Unity is working to provide some of the standard information that most analytics packages provide, but adding a special feature: benchmarking. “This lets you see where you are versus the average game,” Hooper said. “Here is exactly how you can improve your game” Hooper said, showing a screen displaying the difference between the revenue an average game makes after seven days with the results for one particular games.

This ability to direct a developer’s attention to the exact part of the game that needs attention is a critical feature that Hooper believes will be of great value. More than that, though, their tool will recommend which demographic segments to advertise to, ones that are unlikely to monetize.

We should see a bright future for analytics as Unity brings that to hundreds of thousands of developers who aren’t currently using analytics to improve their games. This should help analytics firms generate more business, too, as more developers understand exactly what analytics can do for them and how specific capabilities offered by a vendor can benefit the developer.

One thing is clear: Unity won’t stop looking for ways to help developers make money from games. This will be an interesting space to keep an eye on in the future.

#MustReads: Everything We Learned At [a]list summit: Mobile Marketing

If you missed Dec. 3 [a]list summit, never fear. We had full coverage of the event with our favorite takeaways.

‘If It Doesn’t Work On Mobile, It Doesn’t Work’ Says BuzzFeed’s Terry City: What’s the publisher perspective on the mobile shift and how is BuzzFeed gearing up native content What content is working for them

The State Of Entertainment Marketing: Industry leaders Kristian Segerstrale, COO of Super Evil Megacorp; Peter Levin, President of Interactive Ventures and Games at Lionsgate; Andrew Stalbow, CEO of Seriously; Andy Hess of Epic Games and T.J. Marchetti, CMO of Awesomeness TV gather around for a panel moderated by Jim Louderback. Seriously good insights ensue.

‘If You Make A Movie And There Aren’t Brands In It, It Doesn’t Look Real’ To Lorenzo Di Bonaventura: The veteran producer talks about working with brands and the challenge of scaling content for mobile.

The Mobile Marketing Mix: Where is mobile headed and how rapid are these changes coming How do branded apps fit into the mobile mix

‘Native Advertising Isn’t Going Away Anytime Soon’: Native advertising is here to stay, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t evolving. SpinMedia CEO Stephen Blackwell and Anthem Ventures’ Jon Bauch talk user experience and the future of mobile tech.

2015 Is The Year Of Content Creation: There probably isn’t a social platform that deals with more media content types than Tumblr. David Hayes, Head of Creative Strategy for the social blogging site talks about everything from video, to what brands are killing it on the platform, and how Tumblr will never adopt pay-to-reach monetization.

Monetizing Mobile: One of the biggest challenges around the mobile shift for marketers is of course monetization. Mike Vorhaus leads a panelists from Plantronics, mNectar, TextPlus and Ayzenberg.

The Future Of Mobile Marketing: If you haven’t heard, there’s a little change happening in the field of ad buying called programmatic.

Jack and Jack, Zach King and Brittani Louise Taylor Talk Creating Content for Brands: These seasoned content creators already have many campaigns under their belts but even for them, “that 6-second limit can be tough.”

Kristian Segerstrale on Targeting Core Gamers Through Mobile: Super Evil Megacorp’s marketing mastermind breaks the art of targeting core gamers through mobile down to a science.

Lorenzo Di Bonaventura on The Future of Hollywood: Transformers producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura gives his two cents on Hollywood’s future.

Rich Fineza on App Monetization: Veteran entertainment executive Rich Fineza wants Hollywood to get familiar with app monetization.

Jack and Jack on Content Creation: Vine superstars Jack and Jack share insight about putting your branded content game on lock.

2015 Is The Year Mobile Becomes The First Screen For Brands: Insight from [a]list summit on why mobile will occupy the mainstream for brands in the new year.