How to grow your games in diverse markets

Many Western publishers focus their efforts on English-speaking countries because they are most familiar with these markets, which tend to command a higher average revenue per paying user. While focusing initially on these markets is a sound strategy, failing to enter new, diverse markets over time can pose risks and set a cap on a game’s potential. 

As games progress through their lifecycle, it becomes difficult to maintain the same level of acquisition costs they experienced post-launch. In addition, if the game is not evolving or developing quickly enough for players, live operations to keep up with content demands could require further investments. Ultimately, many games experience increased costs and stalls in growth over time, and a good way to unlock growth is to find new pockets of players outside of English-centric countries. 

But what’s the optimal way to find these markets? How do you decide whether to make that investment decision? How much should you localize versus culturalize? What is the potential of these emerging markets?

To answer these questions and more, Nancy Huang and Ludovic Thevelin joined us for an informative discussion. Nancy is the Head of User Acquisition and Growth Strategy at East Side Games, a publisher known for IP-driven hit games such as “The Office,” “Trailer Park Boys,” and “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” Ludovic is an International Growth Consultant at Google who advises mobile gaming clients on their international expansion strategies. 

Please enjoy the shortened transcribed version of our conversation below. If you want to make sure you get all the details, I suggest listening to the full podcast.

Ethan:

Most Western publishers have the majority of their revenue coming from English-speaking countries. Is there a risk to being so hyper-focused on these markets?

Ludo:

An obvious risk is that after a certain amount of time, those markets get saturated. When we talk about the US and the UK in some of the more popular gaming categories, CPIs start to creep up. It becomes difficult to maintain the same level of acquisition costs you had during the earliest success of the game, and as the game becomes more mature, it might not be evolving or developing as fast as the audience wants it to. In this scenario, overall costs creep up, which is the first obvious limitation. There are a lot of markets outside of the classic set where you can get more market share and diversify your risks. 

Another thing is that you have all of your eggs in one basket. It has been a volatile past couple of quarters and economic conditions in a global context can all affect what happens on the market. That in turn can impact download costs. Having a diversified set of markets that you’re addressing can help overcome some of those short-and long-term volatilities that can happen. From a competitive standpoint, we see larger advertisers coming in and shaking up the auction. You can be somewhat immune to that if you have a more diversified approach in the markets you’re focused on. 

Lastly, when it comes to developing your game, I think it’s important to have a diverse set of audience groups to get different and various signals that allow you to develop the future of the game. You can optimize campaigns based on different regions and really get a healthy set of global signals versus continuing to optimize only towards English-speaking users. 

Nancy:

English-speaking markets are typically very valuable in terms of a players’ lifetime value, but also expensive. So it’s all about finding a balance between these high costs and high ROAS. But some of the risks of just focusing on those markets is that you miss out on a lot of opportunities outside of English-speaking markets. By going into more diverse geos, you’re able to look further beyond just regular in-app purchase monetization and think about a more holistic monetization strategy. For example, users in those geos may not convert as well on purchases, but they’re likely to watch more ads. 

Looking outside your primary target markets offer an opportunity to reach new markets and audiences where you might not have expected them to be. As you saturate your primary audience, your costs tend to increase, so by reaching this new audience that hasn’t seen your ad or your game before, you can also unlock lower costs. 

Ethan:

East Side Games is known for games with entertainment IPs from various fan-favorite shows like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Office, RuPaul’s Drag Race, and many others. What kind of special effort do you need to enter new markets with games like these?

Nancy:

We have a wonderful portfolio of fun IPs that we work with and knowing them is key to combining both qualitative and quantitative data to understand these audiences and how these IPs are going to resonate in these different markets. When we’re looking at new markets, we utilize market research tools provided by Google and other ad networks to understand how they’re going to perform in these different geos and networks. This information helps us tailor our strategy and prioritize different geos that we want to venture into.

When working with Google, we were able to use a prioritization model that considered different KPIs and weighted them differently based on what is more valuable. In those KPIs, we looked at the potential audience size based on search volume and how popular the searches in those geos have been. For example, with RuPaul, we looked at how searches for the show have trended year over year to help us determine if it’s an IP that’s growing in popularity or decreasing. 

In essence, we look at the IP power in that geo, how that geo monetizes, as well as their English proficiency. This information tells us whether we need to localize the game in order to succeed in the chosen geo. When we combine that with the costs and expected CPIs for the geos, it allows us to create an overall ranking of which geos to go into first, second, and third, and our level of investment in each one. 

There are also some cultural factors that we take into consideration. With RuPaul for example, LGBTQ+ friendliness is a major factor when ranking geos. Cultural factors dictate which geos we definitely shouldn’t be going into and which ones will accept this IP with open arms. From there, we create our strategy according to how we want to venture into these markets. 

You might think that games that have a heavy narrative focus, lots of humor, and an IP attached to them will only work in English. However, the optimal approach is to see how these games work without localization, with localization, and then check each step of the funnel to see how users are responding to ads in English and in the localized language. 

What types of games do you think are really primed for global expansion? Are there any that don’t translate as well?

Ludo:

I think that the localization and culturalization piece is probably the biggest blocker. By nature, games are global, so it’s much easier on the web than on any other platform to just go global from the jump. We see lots of advertisers launching global campaigns without thinking too much about it, and while this approach actually kind of works, in the beginning, the localization piece ends up being the biggest blocker. 

If you have a simple game that doesn’t contain much text, those games will obviously scale much easier. If we’re talking about heavy storylines and really in-depth experiences with a lot of text, you should really consider localizing your game beyond just translations. We suggest investing in culturalization and making sure that the text makes sense in a certain context as well. 

A common message from our team is to think about going international at the starting point of developing a game or at least think about a global marketing or business strategy. A lot of times, it’s like step two or three where the publishers think of new markets after they’ve gone domestic, but at that point, you’ve already skipped all of these steps that should have been considered initially. Ingraining that international piece from the get-go simply allows publishers to overcome some challenges that may come in the future.

What are some common mistakes you see companies make when they’re expanding their game into new markets?

Ludo:

I think localizing or culturalizing a game is a process. It’s not something you can just snap in and it’s done. It’s understanding the local audiences, how they interact with the game, how they interact with the potential IP, and adjusting for that. 

A lot of times the biggest pitfalls I see are when our teams go in and review advertisers’ copy in their ads and in their games. We find inconsistencies, we find grammatical errors, and we find issues with parts of the text not being translated and a lot of the time publishers weren’t aware of it. While these are seemingly small issues, it’s definitely something that should be looked at more closely because they can have a significant implication on the appeal of the ads and the perceived quality of the game. And then going a step further, it really makes sense to not just localize but also culturalize the content to local market preferences. This investment decision is naturally tied to the overall market potential of the geo. 

The second piece, in terms of running campaigns, is adapting bids and budgets to the markets that you’re targeting. There’s often a kind of copy-paste mentality to use what’s working in the US or whatever your domestic market is. In the end, market characteristics are very different. We have markets like Brazil and India that drive a lot of volumes. Markets in Europe on the other hand, tend to have a high income and drive a lot of revenue, but the volume is low. Figuring out how much you should be bidding initially and allowing room for the algorithms to optimize for that, especially when you’re starting out, is important.

Lastly, really think through what your ad campaigns might look like based on the markets that you’re targeting. The “rest of the world” bucket where you throw a bunch of countries into one campaign approach can work as a first step, but as you develop your game, think about localizing and potentially culturalizing it. For example, it might be worth breaking out one campaign per geo and language combination. This allows you to optimize towards local users in a native language in a local country but also gives you more control over the creatives. 

When you integrate the culturalization aspect by further thinking about language, people, and culture, and apply those learnings to your game’s creatives, storylines, and copy, that’s ultimately going to help you in the long term and drive more conversions. 

To get started with your own prioritization exercise to determine which international markets to enter, use Google’s Market Finder tool, read their country guides, or reach out to your Google Ads Account Manager. If you’re a new developer looking to get started with Google App Campaigns in international or domestic markets, please reach out to app-opportunity@google.com with your mobile app name/company name and target market to get started.

To learn more about Google’s full suite of products and solutions to help take your game to the next level, visit the Google for Games website.