Apidays New York 2024 - The Good, the Bad and the Governed by David O'Neill, ...
J. Oberfest ngmoco @ Social Developers Summit
1. 2 Years on the iPhone platform:
Lessons learned building mobile social apps.
Friday, July 2, 2010
2. ngmoco:) Company History
Dec 08 June 09 Nov 09
June 08 March 09 Sept 09
Feb 10
Oct 08 May 09 Oct 09 March 10
Feb 09 July 09 Dec 09
Friday, July 2, 2010
5. Along the way...
• Our apps weren’t super social
• We charged the wrong price points
• We struggled to scale in high growth modes
Friday, July 2, 2010
8. Daily Active Users (DAUs) are
your fuel for success, enabling
you to monetize use not
downloads.
Friday, July 2, 2010
9. The more you grow DAUs, the
more ways you have to monetize
every single one of them.
Friday, July 2, 2010
10. Paid vs. Free to Play:
A story of 2 apps
2,000,000
1,500,000
1,000,000
500,000
0
Day 1 Day 30 Day 60
Topple (paid) MazeFinger (free)
10x the volume of free downloads gives you 10x the number of customer
relationships to grow around.
Friday, July 2, 2010
11. Eliminate and Touch Pets Dogs: What We Learned
Virtual Goods Work!
Friday, July 2, 2010
13. $’s / DAU by Plus+ Layer
95-98% give you indirect value
2-5% pay you directly
Conversion to Paid
Performance Advertising
Brand Advertising
Virtual Goods
Friday, July 2, 2010
14. What does free to play success look like?
Free to Play creates a much better monetization model with layered, diverse revenue streams and far greater dollars per
DAU.
Daily Revenue Curve: Top 25 Paid App Daily Revenue Curve: Free to Play App
Day 1 Day 35 Day 70 Day 1 Day 35 Day 70
Paid App Rev Conversion to Paid
CPI Advertising
Brand Advertising
Virtual Goods
Friday, July 2, 2010
15. Chart position is critical- how do you get there?
Friday, July 2, 2010
16. Current Landscape
• Good news: 3 million iPads sold in 80 days
• Bad news: 11k iPad apps now live, ~2k new apps
added each week.
• 225k iPhone apps now available
• Discovery in the app store remains a big challenge
Friday, July 2, 2010
17. Playing with friends is better than playing alone
Sessions / Day 20
15
10
5
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34
# of Friends
Friday, July 2, 2010
18. Virtual Goods and Free to Play Apps:
Key Success Criteria
• Success is about balancing and maximizing three often competing components
deep within game design:
Reach Retention
new user acquisition increasing repeat visits,
reducing churn
Revenue
dollars per DAU
Friday, July 2, 2010
19. Plus+ Features
Vibrant Social Graph User Reputation
• Facebook & Twitter System
Social Gaming Integration Developer Analytics
• Point Accrual
Features • iPhone Contact
Integration • Leaderboards • Dashboard for
• Push Notifications • Awards Developer Analytics
• Organic Friending
• User • Unified Across Apps • Real Time
Virtual Economy • Cross Game Offers Tuning
to User Ads
& Offer
Management Challenges Management
• Virtual Goods • Incented Cost Per
• Virtual Currency Install Offers
Management • 3rd Party Ad Network
• Storefronts Integration
Friday, July 2, 2010
