The data-driven nature of the freemium model changes the way certain functional groups interact with each other during the product design and development process. Because analytics is a revenue driver and not a cost center in freemium, it isn’t implemented after a product launch as a means to reduce losses. Rather, the initialization of analytics [...]
Last week I participated in a panel at Casual Connect called “Emerging Strategies to User Acquisition”. I was honored to share the stage with Jussi Laakkonen from Applifier, Stefan Bielau, Erlend Christoffersen from Supercell, Gilad Rotem from InGaming, and Billy Shipp from Iddiction. Below you’ll find a video of the entire panel, which clocks in at [...]
(Dashboard template can be found here; source code on GitHub here) In freemium mobile, my experience has been that the principles of the Minimum Viable Product as a product strategy are respected but sometimes necessarily abandoned because the concept isn’t perfectly transferable to mobile platforms. The MVP approach was designed for a platform (the web) that allows [...]
That app discovery is broken isn’t in dispute within the mobile industry. The lack of adequate alternatives to native app store search has catalyzed the existence of a vast secondary market for mobile users; that market has become so competitive that studios without sizable balance sheets are precluded from participating in it. Industry giants are [...]
In a past professional life, I wrote algorithms on a commodity trading desk for an institutional investment fund. And over the past year, I’ve come to recognize the market for mobile users (which I call the secondary market for mobile users, or SMMU) as being fundamentally similar to that of other commodity spot markets, on [...]
It’s interesting to see the debate around mobile vs. web first erupt again for the consumer web (see here and here), as this topic was mostly put to bed in gaming about a year ago when the largest developers transitioned from Facebook to mobile. Zynga appears to be the last holdout on that front, as even Wooga is [...]
Part One As I mentioned in the first post on this topic, a marketing manager knows only a few things about a user acquired from a mobile user acquisition network; one of those things is that the user was put up for sale.
Part Two When a marketing manager buys a user from a mobile ad network, he knows exactly three things about his purchase: The purchased user has a mobile phone and has installed at least one app; The user’s mobile phone model and geographic location; The developer of the app from which that user came was willing [...]
Given the consistently upward pressure exerted on CPI (cost-per-install) prices over the past six months — which, in my opinion, will not likely change any time soon — many mobile app developers are increasingly focusing on virality as a means of user acquisition. The benefits of high virality (k-factor) in a mobile app are obvious: not only [...]
Lifetime Customer Value (abbreviated as LCV or LTV, depending on the organization) is defined simply as the present value of future revenues attributed to a user — basically, the present value of everything that a user will ever spend on a product or service. LCV is easy to calculate for some organizations — for instance, [...]
