Category Archives: Uncategorized

Target Players Based on the Day They First Launch Your Game!

One of the best features PlayHaven supports is User Segmentation. User Segmentation gives you the ability to intelligently customize and display PlayHaven content units like Interstitial Ads, Virtual Good Promotions, Rewards, and Announcements within your game. You can fine tune your marketing efforts based on different player characteristics and then analyze and optimize those efforts to intelligently create the best player experience and maximize lifetime value. From purchase history to language to device usage, the choices by which you can segment your players is vast.

We’re super excited about an added functionality making User Segmentation even better!

You can now segment your players based on the day they first launch your game. The functionality is called first session segmentation and it allows you to show even more relevant messages and units to your players.

Here are a few examples of how to start using first session segmentation:

  • Target engaged players who have played your game for a specified length of time with Rewards or Announcements

  • Suppress Interstitial Ads for players who purchased your game before it was free

  • Target players on their first day in your game with Opt-Ins

Targeting second session players

To utilize this functionality, simply go to your PlayHaven Dashboard. In ‘game settings’, click ‘User Segments’ and then ‘add segment’. Under the ‘select dimension’ drop down menu, you’ll find ‘first session’. Select this dimension and define the dates and/or time period. You can add more dimensions if you wish. The new user segment will be saved and can be easily accessed for any of your PlayHaven marketing tools.

There are a myriad of smart ways to utilize first session segmentation. Contact our team of Account Managers for more ideas.

Mobile Deluxe Maximizes Revenue Across All Players

We’re excited to present a series of success stories from partners who are best utilizing our platform and seeing exceptional results. The first success story in this series highlights Mobile Deluxe.

Mobile Deluxe, a popular developer of casual games for iOS and Android, recently began using PlayHaven to increase revenue. Leveraging PlayHaven’s Virtual Goods Promotions, Interstitial Ads, and User Segmentation tools, they are able to experiment with different campaigns across diverse user groups to improve player monetization.

Download the full case study to learn more.

Mobile Deluxe

PlayHaven Off-Site: Scavenger Hunt

At PlayHaven we are always looking for new ways to be creative and innovative. We are typically found hammering away on our computers, building great products for mobile game developers, but every now and then we need to blow off some steam and have a little fun.

Last Friday, the PlayHaven team set out to compete in high-energy, stamina-testing scavenger hunts across the West Coast (San Francisco and Portland). While only one team in each city was crowned victor, each and every team engaged in stiff competition and went to extreme measures to beat out their opponents.

Here are a few photos from a fun-filled day of dominating outrageous tasks, wearing wacky face paint, and running around San Francisco’s Union Square and Portland’s Pearl District while bonding with our fellow colleagues.

Special thanks to Clash in San Francisco and Run Brain Run in Portland for coordinating these awesome events.

Kasey

Find the BIG HEART with GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE on it.
Take a pic of your whole team doing a hands & knees
human pyramid in front of it.

Mai

40 points if you find your team CROWD SURFING a teammate
above your heads IN AN ELEVATOR.

Pigeon

30 points if you find a teammate feeding a PIGEON.

Ready, set, go! PlayHaven’s CTO, Michiel Frishert, strategizes with his team on the game zone map.

Ready, set, go! PlayHaven’s CTO, Michiel Frishert, strategizes with his team on the game zone map.

The Portland team unwinds from the scavenger hunt over lunch at Brix Tavern.

The Portland team unwinds from the scavenger hunt over lunch at Brix Tavern.

Check out more of our wacky pics below :)
Marketing Manager
PlayHaven
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NEW iOS, Unity and Adobe Air SDKs (UDID deprecation and other cool stuff)

Hi all!  Is this thing on?

… just in case you haven’t received the memo: as of May 1, 2013, Apple will no longer accept newly submitted and updated apps that access UDID.  What’s that mean for you?  Well, it means that brand new PlayHaven SDKs are coming your way!

In anticipation of the announcement (and to help make sure your app complies with Apple policies for the use of device information) we’ve been working hard on updating our iOS, Unity and Adobe Air SDKs. The iOS and Unity SDKs are available now. Adobe Air extension is expected to be released tomorrow.  The new SDKs will:

* Disable UDID by default
* Send MAC, IFA/IDFA and ODIN by default
* Incorporate receipt verification***

***Fine print: Although we’re still working on server side support for receipt verification, we advise you to implement receipt verification as supported in the SDK. We’re a couple of weeks from fully supporting this. But once deployed, you won’t need to touch a thing to leverage in-app purchase tracking with receipt verification. (WIN)

If all that’s not convincing enough, well, we threw in a few bug fixes here and there as well.

Considering the importance of UDID deprecation, we highly recommend that all of our partners update to the new SDKs prior to your next submission to the App store. You’ll definitely want to update if you’re using an SDK earlier than 1.8.2 as those versions did not support identifiers other than UDID. So, disabling UDID would cause the SDK to stop working. Why not go update right now?

Here are the links you’ll need:

* Download it!
* Read about it!
* Familiarize yourself with Apple’s requirements.

We hope we’ve made things easy for you. Just in case you have some questions, we have a great team here to help you along the way.  Trust me!  I ask them questions all the time.  :-)

More awesome products launching soon.

Director, Product Management
PlayHaven
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Addressing PyCon

It has come to our attention that a topic concerning a former PlayHaven employee has generated a passionate online debate.

There are a number of inaccuracies being reported and I would like to take this opportunity to provide some clarity.

PlayHaven had an employee who was identified as making inappropriate comments at PyCon, and as a company that is dedicated to gender equality and values honorable behavior, we conducted a thorough investigation. The result of this investigation led to the unfortunate outcome of having to let this employee go. We value and protect the privacy of our employees, both past and present, and we will not comment on all the factors that contributed to our parting ways.

This employee was not Alex Reid, who is still with the company and a valued employee.

We believe in the importance of discussing sensitive topics such as gender and conduct and we hope to move forward with a civil dialogue based on the facts.

In that spirit, I would personally like to hear your thoughts and concerns.

Email me at ceo@playhaven.com.  I will do my best to respond and encourage an active and civil dialogue.

PlayHaven Now Available for Adobe AIR Developers

We’re excited to introduce the PlayHaven AIR Native Extension (ANE) for Adobe AIR. If you’re using (or considered using) Adobe’s Gaming Tools to develop iOS or Android games, you can now use the PlayHaven extension to acquire, understand, and intelligently engage and monetize users.

The Adobe AIR runtime allows developers to package the same code into native iOS and Android apps, among other operating systems and create rich, interactive experiences for their players. Their library of AIR Native Extensions makes it easy for developers to quickly integrate tools such as PlayHaven into apps using Flash’s ActionScript.

With the PlayHaven ANE, Adobe AIR developers can start using PlayHaven to:

  • Acquire Users: with targeted cost-per-install advertising campaigns on PlayHaven’s mobile advertising network spanning 4,000 mobile games, 460 million unique users, 115 million monthly active users, and 2+ billion monthly sessions.
  • Understand Performance: with a wide variety of game usage, campaign, and revenue performance metrics available via our web dashboard.
  • Intelligent Engage & Monetize Users: by delivering targeted in-app marketing communications – like cross promotions, rewards and virtual good promotions – to customizable user segments that are designed to improve retention and revenue.

The new PlayHaven AIR Native Extension is available today – sign up on playhaven.com to download the native extension.

Learn more about the PlayHaven Air Native Extension and Adobe’s Gaming Tools here.

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You Can Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too – Maximize Ad Revenue and Maintain User Retention in Mobile Games

PlayHaven Data Insights:

  1. Developers can significantly increase mobile game revenue via ads without sacrificing user retention.
  2. Mobile game developers that allow ads for games of the same genre can increase ad revenue by up to 196%, without loss in retention.
  3. One PlayHaven partner increased net eCPMs on iPhone by 85% and iPad by 174% by allowing same genre ads, and maintained the same level of retention.
  4. Placing ads after users are engaged with a game can improve user retention by up to 57%.

So, you’ve built a great mobile game – in addition to in-app purchases, advertising revenue can make a significant contribution to your game monetization. But, in order to maximize potential ad revenue and keep players in your game, you must make informed decisions with regard to which games you advertise and when to display those ads.

Your goal in running in-game ads should be driving maximum revenue while maintaining retention among current users. We’ve taken an in-depth look at ad performance and retention between game genres to help our partners understand how to maximize their games’ advertising revenue while maintaining user retention.

Contrary to popular belief – ads for games within a similar genre do not cannibalize your user base
A common concern we hear from game developers is that by allowing similar games to advertise in their game, there is potential to lose users to competitors and consequently miss opportunities for in-game monetization via in-app purchases.

PlayHaven findings reveal that this is not the case and game developers can use ads for same genre games to generate revenue up to 196% more efficiently while seeing no loss in user retention compared to only running ads from games of different genres.

Ad Retention Graph 1

More after the jump »

Don’t Let your Game be a Ghost Town: Three Promotions to Get You Through the Holidays

Happy Holidays! By now you’re hosting parties, buying gifts, sending e-cards—but if you’re in the mobile gaming industry, you’re more likely to be getting ready to manage a hit mobile game while all of your developers are about to leave for holiday vacation. Having been a games Product Manager, I know how this feels. Bah!

Hang in there, Scrooge. We know our developers deserve a break during the holidays. But what about our players? All of their grinding, leveling up, high scoring, and leaderboard topping allows for our businesses to thrive. And speaking of participation, Fast Company predicts 2 billion apps will be downloaded during the week of December 25. Not a time to leave them hanging.

As business managers of our games, we want to run holiday promotions and reward our players during the holiday season. However, faced with the iTunes app submission freeze (this year it’s 12/21), limited time to meet our end of year goals, and an empty office, what can we do? Add this to your list: Simple holiday promotions to engage our players.

Here are some ways to reward your players with more of what they love—playing your game.

1. Send in-game holiday cards to your players. Why not get creative and send a “Thank You” as an announcement to your players? If you already have an SDK like PlayHaven in place, this is just a matter of crafting an image and scheduling the announcement. Naturally, I don’t suggest using religious imagery but a simple “Happy Holidays, Thanks for Playing” goes a long way to put a real face of appreciation on your digital app. If you’re afraid of being spammy, only target your paying or most active players. Price tag: zero development with PlayHaven. More after the jump »

Girls in Gaming: Responding to Harassment

In my last article, I wrote about how the demographics of gamers are changing, and about how I can relate to what women gamers have been facing since I’m a woman in a very male-dominated industry myself.

However, there are some pretty standardized and effective ways of responding to sexual harassment in the workplace. If one of my coworkers were to make an offensive joke about me being a woman, I know that I could address the problem pretty easily, either by confronting the coworker directly or by turning to the leadership team for their help. I don’t have to worry about being sexually harassed because there’s a clear understanding that it’s unacceptable and could result in the perpetrator’s termination. At larger companies I’ve worked at in the past, I’ve even been able to take comfort in the fact that there’s a whole Human Resources department dedicated to handling things like that. At a startup like PlayHaven, it’s a little less formal and structured, but still just as effective. If something happens, I know exactly what to do.

For female gamers, though, dealing with harassment is not nearly as easy or transparent, and harassment itself is much more prevalent. A recent study found that 63% of the women who responded to their poll reported being verbally harassed or taunted. Blogs like Not in the Kitchen Anymore and Fat, Ugly or Slutty show frequent examples, ranging from uncomfortable attempts at pick-up lines to outright threats. Some of them are actually kind of amusing, reminiscent of a completely awkward guy at a bar, but others are pretty disturbing.

So what CAN a female gamer – or any gamer, really – do when faced with harassment, especially sexist or sexual? After talking to some of my gamer friends and reading various accounts online, I’ve come up with five pretty popular methods of dealing with harassment, and listed out some of their pros and cons. Of course, it’s by no means an exhaustive list, and most people usually employ a combination of several, so I’d love to hear in the comments what sorts of methods work for our readers.

I’m not listening!

Method 1: Ignore It

Perhaps one of the easiest methods of dealing with incoming harassment is to ignore it. Games like World of Warcraft have built-in functionality for ignoring other players, and many others have block features for denying contact from offensive users.

Pros: The offending users can’t contact you, so it’s pretty effective.

Cons: There are ways of getting around it – contacting you from a second account, for example, could be an issue in some games (if users are allowed to have multiple accounts). Additionally, some games limit the number of people you can ignore (in WoW, this appears to be limited to 50).

More after the jump »

Now announcing PlayHaven availability in the Unity Asset Store Online Services Program!

Unity introduced its new Asset Store: Online Services today at Unite 2012 and PlayHaven is thrilled to announce we are partnering with the game engine to offer our monetization and marketing solutions to all Unity developers through the store.

The Unity Asset Store will be the first one-stop marketplace solely driven to help game developers successfully publish games on the web or mobile via free or nominally paid third-party services.  The new Asset Store will deliver cutting-edge features for developers to plug into Unity’s APIs, fill in the blanks, and help make Unity the most comprehensive game development platform in the world.

PlayHaven in Unity Asset Store

So what does this mean for PlayHaven and for game developers? Well, glad you asked!  PlayHaven’s real-time LTV maximization platform will now be available and accessible to the more than one million developers in Unity’s ecosystem.  “With PlayHaven, developers now have the incredible opportunity to engage and monetize their players directly in the Unity environment.” (Said Andy Yang, PlayHaven CEO in Unity’s announcement this morning)

More details from the full release can be found here.

For all the latest news coming out of the conference in Amsterdam this week, follow #Unite2012 and @PlayHaven on Twitter!