App Monetization

The Pollen VC subscription app forecaster calculates an application’s expected ROAS, LTV and cash flow to help studios make decisions about when to invest in paid user acquisition. It also forecasts cash flow scenarios helping studios plan their finances more effectively.

VC funding for hot mobile gaming studios is very competitive and a big-money game. Let’s look at the implications of this trend from both perspectives - VCs (and that of their LPs) and also studio founders.

Influencers have massive reach and could be the future marketing force that helps us build authentic connections with enthusiastic brand advocates. So how do you harness that power to maximize reach and profit for your game? With micro-influencers.

In this interview with Joel Julkunen, Co-Founder and Head of Analytics at GameRefinery, you will discover the hottest monetization trends in mobile gaming, game features that deliver maximum results, why guilds and other social features are absolute musts and tips on how to get featured on the App Store.

Mirela Cialai is the Director of Mobile Marketing at Zinio, one of the largest and the first-ever digital newsstands in the world. Zinio has a collection of over 6,000 magazines that can be readily accessed right at your fingertips. Zinio is partnered with the most influential media publishers like National Geographic, GQ, Vogue, and Time magazine.

Chuka Ikokwu is the Head of Analytics of the sensational board game turned mobile app, Exploding Kittens. Chuka is also the Founder of DIVERCITY, a job platform that consists of a huge network of minority professionals. It is focused on diversifying work teams and provides a channel for the underrepresented to find work.

Here at Pollen VC we are publishing a series of articles on how to manage different aspects of your UA. We put the benefit to our readers above all else, so in this article series you will find concrete actionable items that will allow you to start or improve your UA practice.

Read the excerpt from our interview with Offer Yehudai, President of Fyber, in which he shares the challenges he faced during the acquisition, his input on programmatic advertising, useful tips on how to monetize mobile games and what is in-app true header bidding.

Much like death and taxes, one thing you can be assured of is that UA metrics will change and evolve over time, and not remain static and predictable. Specifically, two things will start to happen as a business starts to scale through paid acquisition - acquisition costs will increase and lifetime values will decrease.

Hyper-casual games have become hugely popular among mobile device users of all age groups. However, while many game developers have generated considerable success, their ability to grow their user acquisition often experiences bottlenecks due to a lack of funding and having to wait on advertising networks to pay out.

Lifetime Value is prized as a predictive metric, one that yields the value of future cash flows based on calculations tied to the actions and affinities of your users. But users are different and provide a different level of value depending on the category of app you offer and the user journey it enables.

By now you’ve had the chance to read into our thoughts on Lifetime Value (LTV) and why it’s important, as well as how to use LTV to plan your company’s marketing campaigns for your apps.