In mobile gaming, it’s probably no secret that the difference between a flash in the pan and worldwide acclaim is made not just by captivating gameplay but by a successful growth marketing strategy. Headlight stands at this confluence, bringing a rich legacy of gaming industry experience to the forefront of marketing innovation.
Headlight’s foundations were built in-house at industry leaders like Machine Zone and KIXEYE, where our team of co-founders led teams in user acquisition, marketing analytics, player LTV and game economics. The broader Headlight team brings over 30 years of combined experience from the heart of game studios. Our trajectory has been marked by partnerships with the industry’s best, from spearheading global launches with Supercell for titles like Brawl Stars, to marketing partnerships with Gamehouse and Genjoy, among others.
I’m thrilled to be attending GDC this week for the first time and to connect with leaders within the gaming space on what challenges and opportunities they face in 2024 and beyond.
At Headlight, like many operating within the gaming space, signal loss and complications with SKAD have been a headache to say the least. The introduction of Apple’s SKAD attribution framework has redrawn the boundaries of mobile marketing over recent years, and they continue to evolve with updates like SKAD 4.0. Headlight has been at the forefront of deciphering and mastering these changes for our clients. Headlight Co-Founder, Kevin Young, shared his best practices in “Demystifying SKAD 4.0 for Freemium Games” , outlining how we help gaming clients make the most of their SKAD configurations.
We know this is a common struggle for all who are leveraging SKAD, whether you be on the app or gaming side of things, so while at GDC and MAU we’re looking forward to to diving into this further and seeing how we can help guide your SKAD set ups – reach out to info@headlight.co to set up some time.
In an ever-evolving industry, we’re also staying close on what other leaders in the space are saying. Our MMP partners are instrumental in helping us deliver the best possible results for our gaming and app-based clients, so below hear from leaders from Adjust, Singular & Appsflyer on their top-of-mind thoughts as we head into GDC and Mobile Apps Unlocked over the next few weeks.
“In 2024, the gaming industry is undergoing transformative shifts and I’m excited to dive into them with our peers at GDC. As with so many other industries, AI is revolutionizing game development by enabling smaller studios to create expansive worlds and dynamic content at a fraction of the cost and time it previously took. From development and asset creation to player acquisition and marketing, we’ve seen this new technology used in such innovative ways by gaming studios to supercharge their growth.
One other area I’m hoping to explore more is the continued interconnectedness of gaming companies and ecommerce/retailers. There have been some huge partnerships and integrations of late, like Walmart-Unity that continue to push our industry forward and show its staying power in pop culture. Finally, what are gaming companies doing now to grapple with the macro changes in the industry with layoffs and consolidation? How are they tackling live operations, lifecycle management, and cross-platform integrations?”
—Brian Murphy, Head of Gaming, AppsFlyer
“You would think SKAN’s challenges would be old news by now, but in reality, iOS measurement and performance reporting are still lacking so many critical components.
Marketers don’t have cohorted data, organics are inflated, and they have no real way to reconcile their anonymized SKAN data with the user-level data they still get from their MMP – and that’s just scratching the surface. Essentially there are too many reports and not enough answers.
That’s why we are so excited about Singular’s Unified iOS Report. It tackles all the fragmented iOS reporting issues, corrects overreporting of organics and other network attributions, improves channel performance and accuracy, and most importantly provides marketers with one report and a single set of deduped metrics that they can trust. Our Beta testers have seen massive improvements in paid performance, channel accuracy, revenue, and eCPI.”
—Susan Kuo, Co-Founder & COO, Singular
“Two of the key ways to power sustained app growth amid the complex and continually developing mobile app industry is by onboarding next-generation measurement solutions and seeking out new channels that deliver high quality users. Success on SKAN, for example, is unlocked by working with solutions that leverage machine-learning to empower campaign optimization from aggregated data. Finding new audiences and revenue streams, on the other hand, means expanding to and experimenting with new channels like PC and console, where data shows that more and more gaming apps are finding highly engaged users seeking out engaging cross-platform experiences. Once again, it’s comprehensive measurement that makes it possible to understand the entire journey and optimize accordingly.”
—Ben Bowen, Partnerships Manager, Adjust
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