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阐述不同渠道获得的玩家价值差异

发布时间:2013-04-25 12:29:21 Tags:,,,,,

作者:Elizabeth Priestman

如果你戴过“用户开发经理”的头衔,那么你应该已经相当清楚开发手机游戏玩家有多么困难和复杂。归根结底,获取玩家的渠道有三条:1)通过市场营销活动(付费);2)通过应用商店;3)口口相传(社交)。

然而,并非所有玩家都是相同的。为了制定有效的玩家开发策略,你必须知道玩家的来源和质量。玩家价值由三种元素决定:玩家在游戏中的沉浸感、玩家是否乐意邀请其他玩家加入游戏和赢利策略。

通常来说,价值最高的玩家通常来自社交渠道——现有玩家基础的朋友。使游戏产生病毒性传播力的关键是,具有鼓励玩家邀请其他玩家加入游戏的功能。当然,在扩充玩家基础以前,你必须已经建立了第一批忠实的玩家基础。

value(from allweneedisseo)

value(from allweneedisseo)

对于应用商店,使游戏排名靠前是建立第一批忠实玩家基础的最好办法。为了争取靠前的排名,你有两条路可走:一是组织市场营销活动,以便在集中的一段时间内获得大量玩家;二是你有一款流行到人人都想下载的游戏。后一种情况比较难把握。

无论你的策略是什么,你应该知道你的玩家价值是多少以及他们的来源是哪里,这样才能继续优化你的策略,最小化成本的同时最大化收益。

出于研究已获得玩家的价值的目的,本文将专注于评估通过市场营销活动、付费和非付费渠道获得的玩家。

手机游戏是最受表现影响的行业之一。玩家开发通常以“每获得成本”(游戏邦注:也就是游戏业更常指的“每安装成本”,或“CPI”)模式来定价。CPI率变化大,主要是因为不同来源的用户在质量和数量上有很大不同。影响成本的主要因素是,玩家是通过内部刺激网络,还是通过非内部刺激网络开发得来的。内部刺激网络指的是一种流量来源,即玩家下载你的游戏,你用其他游戏的虚拟货币或兑换虚拟礼品的点数的形式回馈他们。

无论你如何确保安装量,为了使游戏赢利,必须确定你执行的各个独立营销活动的CPI。当通过内部刺激和非内部刺激网络开发玩家时,这是很容易的,因为你是根据你熟悉的CPI展开营销活动的。你可以在活动开始以前设定CPI,或随时调整CPI。

无论是在CPV还是CPM活动中,计算有效CPI(eCPI)都是很重要的。为了算出这些玩家成本,只需要简单地计算通过这种渠道获得的玩家数量和活动总花费。

我经常听说开发商没有在营销游戏上花钱,他们只是大量利用点击-交换。尽管许多发行商认为点击-交换是一种免费的营销手段,但他们错了。玩家这么乐意交换的点击量有其固有的市场价值,并且因为点击-交换,实现的有效价值远远少于开放市场能产生的。游戏发行商必须根据他们放弃的收益来计算相对的CPI,因为他们本可以出售他们的点击量或安装量给能够优化其市场价值的广告网络。

我们接下来再分析一下赢得来源,你必须评估点击交换的赢利情况。点击交换正在成为一种不公平游戏的滋生地。某些更有经验的发行商对点击交换非常热衷,但为了保护他们的高价值玩家,只把你的广告给低价值的玩家看。这意味着你最终只能把那些合法的、高价值的玩家换成了对你可能没有多少价值的玩家。

当为任何“每日应用”式的促销应用做广告,必须把eCPI也计算出来。与这个领域的公司合作时,应该记住这么一条经验法则:要求玩家追踪。如果他们不能,或不想提供任何追踪,那就换一种渠道。因为他们可能不知道有多少玩家通过他们的促销活动进入你的游戏,或他们是否产生任何实际价值。

所以这就是棘手的部分,当你同时发起一系列营销活动时,成千上万的玩家下载你的游戏,你如何计算出哪一种网络或营销活动带动了下载量,以及各次下载产生的价值?答案是,“归因模型”。它使手机发行商得以通过市场营销来源确定CPI,这样你就可以迅速且容易地判定你的最低成本渠道是什么。确认哪一个网络以最低成本产生了最大流量是你的游戏赢利方案中的重要变量因素。

与按开发来源计算CPI更有关系的是,是否能够追踪和衡量留存率和赢利来源。发行商可以根据这些指标算出不同来源的玩家寿命价值。一旦你确认了最有价值玩家的最佳来源,你的游戏就有赢利保障了,你也能顺利地通过营销活动拉动游戏收益。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

All acquired players are not equal

by Elizabeth Priestman

If you’ve ever worn the hat of “user acquisition” manager, you’re already familiar with the challenges and complexities of acquiring players for mobile games. When it comes right down to it, there are only three ways to acquire players; 1) they respond to your marketing campaigns (paid), 2) they discover you in the store (organic) or 3) they hear about your game from their friends (social).

All players, however, are not equal. To develop profitable acquisition strategies you need to know the source and quality of your players. Value of players is determined by their level of engagement, willingness to bring more players with them, and ultimately, monetization.

More often than not, the highest quality players will come from social acquisition – friends of your existing player base. Including features that encourage players to bring others into your game is key to generating virality. Of course you have to build an enthusiastic initial player base in your game before you can expand your audience.

The organic installs generated as a result of a high rank or feature in the store is the best way to establish an initial base of high quality players. In order to achieve a high rank you have to run marketing campaigns to acquire a high volume ‘burst’ of players in a concentrated period of time, or have an incredibly popular game everyone loves and wants to download. It’s difficult to predict the latter.

No matter what your strategy, it is critical to know what your players are worth, not just overall, but by source, so that you can continue to optimize your strategy and grow a quality audience as cost effectively and profitably as possible.

For the purposes of exploring the value of acquired players, this article will focus on the valuation of players secured through marketing campaigns, paid and unpaid.

Mobile gaming is one of many industries that leverage performance-based marketing. The acquisition of players is generally priced on a cost per acquisition model, most often referred to in the gaming industry as, “cost per install” or “CPI.” Cost per install rates vary greatly, largely because of the variance in quality and volume of users any given source provides. The primary factor in cost is whether players are being acquired through incentivized networks versus non-incentivized networks. Incentivized networks are traffic sources that compensate players for downloading your game, usually in the form of virtual currency for other games or points that are redeemed for digital gift cards, etc.

Regardless of how you secure installs, to model the profitability of your game, it’s critical to determine the cost per install for each individual marketing campaign you’re running. This is easy when buying CPI campaigns from incentivized and non-incentivized networks because you run the campaign based on a CPI you’re comfortable with. You can set the CPI in advance of the campaign start date, or adjust the CPI in real-time as you go.

It’s important to also calculate the effective cost per install (eCPI) on both CPC and CPM campaigns. To figure out what these players cost, simply calculate the total campaign spend by the number of players acquired in that channel.

I often hear publishers say they didn’t spend any money marketing their game, they just ran a ton of click-swaps. Although many publishers think click-swaps are a free marketing option, they couldn’t be more wrong. The clicks that publishers are so willing to swap have an inherent market value, and often with click swaps the effective value realized is far less than what an open market would generate. Game publishers need to work out a relative CPI for the revenue they’re giving up since they could have sold their clicks or installs to an advertising network that would optimize their market value.

We’ll get to analyzing monetization by source in another paragraph or two, but it’s essential to evaluate how well your click-swaps monetize. Click swaps are becoming a breeding ground for unfair play. Some of the more sophisticated publishers are keen to run click-swaps but only show your ads to low-value grinders in an effort to protect their high value players. This means you are essentially trading legitimate, valuable players for those that may have little or no value to you.

The eCPI must also be calculated when advertising with any of the “daily app” promotional apps. A good rule of thumb when working with companies in this space is to demand player tracking. If they can’t, or won’t, provide any tracking, move on to other channels. Chances are they don’t have a clue how many players their promo drives to your game or if they deliver any actual value.

So here’s the tricky part, when you launch a series of concurrent marketing campaigns and your game is being downloaded by thousands of players, how do you figure out which network or marketing initiative drove each install and what the value of each install is by source? The answer is… drumroll please… “Attribution Modeling.” Attribution modeling allows mobile publishers to identify the CPI by marketing source so you can quickly and easily identify your lowest cost channels. Identifying which networks delivered the most traffic at the lowest price is one of the essential variables in your profitable game formula.

Even more relevant to figuring out CPI by acquisition source is the ability to then track and measure retention and monetization by source. With this kind of transparency, publishers can figure out the Player Lifetime Value by source. Once you’ve identified the best sources for your most profitable players at the lowest cost you can hopefully secure a boatload more and be well on your way to a multi-million dollar game by running profitable marketing campaigns.(source:venturebeat)


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