MAU [Talk]
MAU [Talk]
Ep. 001 Bryan Buskas: Acquisition in Mobile Apps
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In this episode, Bryan Buskas, of Rogue Games Inc. joins us to talk about acquisition within the mobile app market and dives into media mixed modeling. To connect with Bryan directly, catch him on LinkedIn @BryanBuskas or on the MAU Vegas website, MAUVegas.com.
Hey guys, welcome to MAU [Talk] a new podcast from MAU Vegas, the premier mobile acquisition and retention summit. On today's episode, Brian Buskas from Rogue Games Incorporated, is going to be talking to us about acquisition, the mobile app market. Take it away Adam.
Adam Lovallo:Thanks, everybody for joining Brian. Thank you. So I'm excited about this episode. I've known Brian probably since I started in MAU maybe six years ago or something. He's got really interesting background, having been on the publisher side, on kind of the vendor or sales side. And then now again, on the publisher side as a CEO at row games. So really interesting background. We're gonna talk about mostly acquisition, I imagine. But yeah, Brian, thanks for thanks for doing this. Appreciate it.
Bryan Buskas:Thanks, Adam. Yeah, great to be here and excited to support the new show?
Adam Lovallo:Yeah, let's see if we could keep it going. Um, okay. So, uh, first of all, could you remind me in the end, in your time at ad colony, what was your What was your title of it in your last days there?
Bryan Buskas:Yeah. So I was part of the founding team of ad colony almost 10 years ago. And we were about 15 people. And we were actually a game developer. So really built 15 of the first 200 games that the launch of the App Store back in 2008 2009. So
Adam Lovallo:was the company formed in response to the App Store world? Or were you doing?
Bryan Buskas:Yeah, yeah, the company was founded as a, one of the first mobile developers actually had a key to publish games on the launch of the App Store and launch to the app store was actually building some of the very first and only games that were optimized for the Safari browser on the first iPhone, was it wasn't there was no App Store. There were no games. So yeah, fast forward. You know, the ad colony had this great cross promotion tech, we created this thing, you know, rewarded video, we really kind of pioneered that rewarded video format, used to across star, you know, 12-15, ultimately came 200 mobile games and ultimately launched that technology, you know, to the world to every developer out there. So I started out, really running marketing and acquisition for actually our own games, I think, you know, when I started as an economist called Jirbo, J-i-r-b-o. And if you look in glues, financials, still today, you'll still see the name Jirbo Inc, I think. Ad Colony just the DBA still, but we came at it from the developer lens and the acquisition lens. And, you know, one day the CEO sat me down and said, Look, Brian, we want you to start a whole new organization at the company, you know, working with game developers on acquisition, so you know, tour towards San Francisco tour the world, you know, built the business up very, very fast as we were getting supply and all the biggest games from glue, and all the early tinyco pocket gems, all the kind of early movers green DNA, mobile, mobile first gaming companies, mostly out of the Bay Area, to you know, fast forward, we sold the company in our software in 2014, Summer 2014. And from there, I stayed on for two and a half, three years as chief customer officer, we were publicly traded in Norway, and oversaw the whole developer business, which ultimately was, you know, close to a billion dollars in mobile acquisition dollars from mobile developers that flow through add, call me over those years. And, you know, a very kind of skilled team of tools and technology, you know, all around video, we you know, at that point, I think we are the largest supply of you know, mobile video and recorded video in 2014/15. Before before Facebook, and fan and other platforms really entered the rewarded video space. So
Adam Lovallo:Let's talk about let's talk about that. Because now now you're on the publisher side. Um, so, you know, obviously ad colony a huge player on if you look at it at the space today, specifically rewarded video as like inventory. Um, yeah, I mean, how big is Facebook's audience network? Like, like, where do you see it today? I mean, do you buy this stuff for you're in support of your own? Your own games?
Bryan Buskas:Yeah. Now if I if I compare and contrast, let's say, you know, 7-8 years ag, the top grossing mobile d veloper, you know, used to buy d rect probably from 70-80 di ferent partners like Intel, r ght? Yep. And hand by hand, yo know, before programm tic and before you know, a ot of these. That's what you needed to drive, you know, bi lions of users and billions of impressions a day for, you know, some of the most people p ofitable games in the world. F st forward to today have wro e we're on the opposite end of t e spectrum, right? Where we are a, you know, smaller ndie publisher, we are, you know one of the largest publishe s on new game services like App e arcade and Google Play pas. But in the free to play wor d, you know, we take fewer sh ts, we take, you know, fewer ti les, and you know, as you're j st getting the game off the grou d, you know, really Facebook and Google is enough to, you now, get you off the ground u til you're spending, you know six figures a month. So I thi k it's a little bit differen today, where you think of the m x, I think, at college just put out, I think the kind of state of the media mix recently which was a survey that I s arted six, seven years ago,
Adam Lovallo:I remember, I remember,
Bryan Buskas:I think we used to present it like at MAU
Adam Lovallo:Absolutely.
Bryan Buskas:It was a packed house, because it was some o the only data that showed you know, how video how play d ubles? display, how incent vize was declining, how just h w the market was changi g. But I think to your questi n, yeah, today until you get to you know, six figures a month, you know, Facebook, Google you know, maybe a few other ajor, you know, social platfo ms are enough. And then you ca layer in that next batch of, yo know, rewarded video partne s or playable partners or, yo know, programmatic partne s, right. And most teams, you kn w, kind of grow as such with, ou know, kind of leader hip or owners of each of those ifferent, you know, whethe it's formats or channel partne s, you know, programmatic playab e video, but I think, you know, oday, as I look back last 10 yea s, 10 years ago, the bigges mobile developers didn't even h ve video ads for their mobile games. Yep, we had to build lot of these in house and, y u know, put the creative people on these games and build the fi st purely mobile video ads. o the demand side, you didn't even have creative today, you kn w, you've got probably the bi gest guys running, you know, housands of mobile video creati es every single month per produc, right? So, like, creati e at mass scale. On the other and, you got, you know, very c mplex new ads, like placea les that used to take an engine r and 100 hours to build one in html5 to today, you'd have t ols, and you can build, you kn w, hundreds of them in a month. And we see him every day we see him, you know, in our apps a d games, and even on the app st res with things like Instan Apps on Google Play. Yep. I think it's really intere ting, you know, app Eclips and iOS 14, what Apple announ ed to these kind of mini apps t at you will have, and you'll have access to native experi nces without downloading the fu l the full app on your phone, right? So this whole world s you know, getting, everyt ing's kind of coming togeth r. It's always changing, especi lly from the gaming side. You kn w, today, we're pretty much e clusive rewarded video across all our games on the moneti ation side, we don't really asked yet. More videos more t an enough and, you know, probab y about eight players is all th t's in our mediation stack o maximize, you know, Phil a d, and revenue there.
Adam Lovallo:Is there specifically rewarded video demand from Facebook? I mean, not that's a significant part of their audience.
Bryan Buskas:All right. So yo know, at the top of the media ion stack, right, depen ing on the game, and the genre and the Java, right, that' the usual suspects. That', you know, Facebook and Googl and, you know, you see Unity up there a lot today as well, too. Yep. You know, more of th bigger platforms and have a lot of data, have a lot of autom tion, have a lot of tools. And t en, you know, all the rest of th other kind of specialist playe s, right. The Bungles the Ad co ony's, Iron Sources? Yep. The A p Lovins you know, whoever whoev r that is, you know, depen ing on the region, depen ing on the game, depending on th genre, you know, may outpe form. But you do kind of I'd s y, you know, have that solid fied kind of top two, top three you know, and kind of where where the world is at today in terms of mobile video monet zation? And expect the oppos te side of the coin of the acqui ition side, right?
Adam Lovallo:Yeah, well, but then it also tells you where the demand is, as well. In your time, well, in the current role, or maybe even going back to the ad colony days, did you see much penetration, have either rewarded like just regular rewarded video, or even quote unquote placeables, which are somewhat ill defined for non gaming apps? Because even today, and I say this as an end user, I personally, I don't see much, but I'm not I don't know that I'm using Facebook and Instagram, but like, I've got a submission of a consumer to be a good gauge, like, did you see that sort of demand on a performance basis? I've no doubt people with brand dollar spending. And do you like what do you think that is today? Or is that still not really a thing?
Bryan Buskas:No, I think, you know, from the platform side, we always thought things were probably you know, 70% games and 30% non game from the mobile developer side. Let's call it Yeah. From the mobile first mobile only type companies and there were there were definitely you know, standouts, and there, I think, you know, transportation apps, the Ubers, the lifts, and, and all these guys were were very kind of forward thinking, you know, food delivery services, you know, there was a period where, you know, fantasy sports, the draft and fanduel, you know, these type of companies were really kind of pioneering and, you know, taking a lot of what worked for games, and applying that to, you know, something that was kind of in the middle, right, it wasn't, you know, you could call those games you could call it, you know, whatever, you wanted fantasy sports, but, you know, they were all kind of living together. And then we even did see brands, I think, you know, we stopped forward thinking like digital brands, you know, that would, you know, wanted to do something new, they had to do something different on mobile. Right.
Adam Lovallo:Were those were those performance campaigns? Or were they sort of Yeah, no, they weren't really,
Bryan Buskas:I think it's more I mean, they tend to be more than these are companies that work with specialist agencies, they're more of the, you know, publicly traded, you know, highly digital type companies, right? Yeah. probably less the CPG. And,
Adam Lovallo:yeah, the Airbnb of the world or something.
Bryan Buskas:Yeah, no, we saw a lot, you know, they could be, you know, ads that I see personally, right. You know, it could be TurboTax. And into it, it could be, you know, things that are more interactive, you know, experiences that you can, it's funny, like 15 years ago, people talk about gamification, right, and gamification was this big thing that, you know, the probably the CEO of Coca Cola was talking about saying, hey, how do I gamify parts of my brand and make it fun to you know, new consumers? Right. And, you know, that's essentially what playable ads are and have become, right they've gamified advertising to kind of pull you in, and it doesn't really matter if you're, I think a game today, I see it a lot I play golf, I get targeted with golf ads, you know, thousand percent, that's pretty much all I see in any, and any social network all the time. So, you know, I don't I don't see a lot. But if you look at tools, like Annie or others that pull all the creative, yeah, you see creative from from everything from sweepstakes, apps, from, you know, forward thinking digital brands, you know, food delivery services, any kind of app based company on a performance basis.
Adam Lovallo:Interesting. So if I, if I were to go to into an App, Annie, can you distinguish did they? Did they go to the level to distinguish between rewarded or playable or whatever? Like, is that
Bryan Buskas:Not really on the creative side? But you can you can, you can get it out? Yeah, everyone's gonna crack and all this creative. Now, there's so much creative out there, if if the top guys are, you know, have 1000 pieces of creative for one game, you know, and 10 channels, right? There's now millions, you know, if not hundreds of millions of pieces of creative out there. So you know, there's all services that just track that we use that Danny app, and he does a great job to, you know, to look and see. And I think that's part of the challenge with things like hyper casual, which is, at one end of the spectrum, where there's just so much iteration, and these companies are able to put out games, literally, it seems like daily, if not hourly, right, these Yeah. And and the playable ads that support that right are the same thing. They're, you know, they're turning those things out faster than ever before, to really let you try the game, you know, before you download it. And that was actually the whole, like, pieces of app on board. We call them demos, we didn't call them playable. And I think, as an advertiser, you know, the game company play, I love labels, you know, I call them labels, but to a brand, you know, the word gaming and play doubles, you know, still has that
Adam Lovallo:Negative conotation for sure.
Bryan Buskas:But, you know, we call them demos, these are product demos, right? They are, you know, in their best form, we're placeables work, I would say they are true to the experience. They're not the they're not the clickbait and the fake playable. That's good.
Adam Lovallo:You see that a lot
Bryan Buskas:We see it every day and everywhere. And people have built the apps just based on those clickbait type of ads. You know, I've I've seen better performance on the other end, right, I'd rather have a much lower kind of click through up front, but a much higher conversion rate, right, and a much higher conversion rate into into purchasers and things like that, to me, that's a more longer term, you know, as you're kind of building the business and getting real players and real payers to your games, versus I think it's fueled a lot by just hyper casual, where it's, you got to get a lot of users in a short period of time and it really doesn't matter. Right. You know, you're monetizing mostly by ads.
Adam Lovallo:Yeah, user value is a constant, pretty much. Those are roughly the same verses.
Bryan Buskas:No, in a more kind of free to play game where there's a massive dispersity, right as a player economics and player value.
Adam Lovallo:So let me ask you, it's in my day to day I obviously I'm still talking to folks in the app install world all the time. But I'm also talking to direct to consumer, ecommerce and retail brands and so on. Like, you know, the ad units exists today. Do you think that the I'm not I'm not taking you outside of your day to day job, but just speculating, you think that the, I don't know Warby Parker's or whatever of the world will be thinking about, you know, html5 Interactive stuff, if they aren't already in the coming year? or two? Or do you think it is? Is it a mobile app thing?
Bryan Buskas:I think, I mean, with everything Apple's done to push AR- kid and AR, and we all live, you know, we're all living in our houses now. And not us, not as much in the real world. Like, I think, you know, AR is a big piece of driving that, like, you know, whether that's, you know, virtual shopping or virtual, you know, being able to experience, you know, what used to be physical goods, and even go somewhere, right, in a more digital setting, you know, could you do that in the ad today? I can, you know, probably say, Yeah, like, you'd have good, you could create good interactive experiences, you know, maybe at some point, right, even that ad could, you know, use some of the AR-kid and, you know, tools that platforms have so I mean, everything's changing, and I think we saw that ad calling, right, like, 10 years ago, nobody had mobile video creative for their apps or games, today, people have thousands and, you know, video is, you know, half, maybe less than half and the biggest companies are putting them into more interactive formats. Right. And that's why we started app on board, you know, four years ago to really kind of accelerate that. And today, I think, you know, you you always see the the forward thinking guys, and companies, you know, pushing the limits, and I think, you know, it'll be interesting to see with, you know, ar or using the camera, I think snap, and a lot of the tools that they've put out there, right, even for influencers and, you know, others to build the ads using the camera, you know, are super interesting. And, you know, I thinkI remember two, three years ago, working with the IEB and trying to define what is a playable ad, right?
Adam Lovallo:Oh, God,
Bryan Buskas:I took six months of meeting halls and you know, a bunch of, you know, input to, you know, really get to a very kind of vague, you know,
Adam Lovallo:Yeah, a PDF that was never downloaded. Yeah, sounds right
Bryan Buskas:Which was probably helpful to, you know, a ton of people in the world do expose them to this. But, you know, I think, you know, if you look in platforms, you know, creative partner lists today, there's like, 11, or 1200 players in there now that are like, you know, badged in in there. So, honestly, say, they're probably, you know, there's enough players enough tools to be able to do some of this, you know, for the Warby Parker's for the, you know, even, we used to do rich media ads for automotive companies, you know, five, six years ago, that, right,
Adam Lovallo:Zip submit stuff like that
Bryan Buskas:At the end of the video was a, you know, rich media with a gyroscope, and, you know, three 360 video, where you could literally, like, sit in the car and look around and touch hotspots, right? You know, I consider that a part of a playable interactive experience for a brand. It might not just be as fun as a game, right? Or, you know, hopefully, it'll never be it probably won't ever be as fake as some of these, you know, playable to see from hyper casual players. But, you know, I think you're seeing this all come together, you know, it's an exciting place giving you giving you have all the tools, but it's probably also a challenging place, I think, you know, for a lot of a lot of companies that don't come mobile first, that don't come mobile only, or app first for app centric. And, you know, I think that's kind of the world we live in now, where we're using apps more than we've ever used before, given the pandemic and the world that I think, you know, you're going to see advertisers really kind of adapt to that and push the limits, you know, even even faster than in the past.
Adam Lovallo:Yeah, I think you're right. I think I have I haven't seen that though. I have seen a single one. But I mean, you know, even my day job, I'm like, well, shoot, maybe I should figure out how to do this, like I hear it all day from people
Bryan Buskas:There's so much data, you know, for everyone who's been on mobile for the last 10 years, you know, from the beginning of apps and native mobile. There's so much data and so much profiles that you know, now on a No, I think that's the The only thing that the only challenge that could slow things down is now you know, privacy and GDPR and ccpa and all these things, which, you know, I think we got to find that happy medium, right? But today, there's so much data about all of us that exists in the last 10 years. You know, I always see golf ads like all the time, right, like yeah, pretty, pretty niche. Get to, you know, soak, soak off stuff when you can't even go outside and play golf these days. So, you know, everybody's been pretty profiled and you know, there's a lot of data that exists on everyone today about the platform. So,
Adam Lovallo:So that begs the question, since it's, of course, I'm not exactly sure what it will release this, but we just have this idfa announcement. And there's basically Eric Seufert. And, and others who are super well informed writing really in depth and good stuff, Allison, in Ad Exchanger says, good stuff. And then you've got pretty much every MMP, also very well informed and smart. And they of course, have their own message and their own, potentially existential threat or not. And so I've been trying to synthesize not exactly that there are two sides with these different perspectives. Of course, everybody has their own, from your perspective, and as a publisher, like does, of course, you might have to make some changes, right, you're gonna have to have some dialogues and stuff. And I mean, I know it has product ramifications, but industry wide. Do you see, you see all this stuff caught on the apple side, causing your spend to change or tactics to change, like, Eric's big thing is that media mix modeling will become more important, and TV will become more important, because by definition, the reporting will suck otherwise, like, where do you? Where do you see things?
Bryan Buskas:So yeah, no, it's funny. You mentioned media mix modeling. And that brings me back 15 years ago, being a big publisher like Activision, were, my team was in charge of the of the research at the company. And, you know, we had, you know, everything from consumers coming in and doing live focus groups, every single day of all our games at all stages of development, learning how to make them better and improve them. And then we had, you know, full, you know, six figure media mix modeling studies, you know, that helped us understand, you know, to the decimal point, what is the right spend, and the right mix of all media to, you know, drive the outcome you want? Right, which, for us back then was someone going into a retail store, and, you know, buying product off the shelf? Right, right, very different world today. But there's so much data out there, I think, you know, regardless of whether you track it at the individual user level, like user acquisition has really you know, been built upon over in mobile has been built upon over the last 10 years to you know, do that at a, you know, a slightly higher level, write a less anonymous or a more anonymous, you know, less detailed, I think you still can get to a lot of the insights that drive the business, you will still be able to get this group of cohort of say, hey, these are my high value customers, right? That I need to, you know, retain them and engage them and re engage them and make sure they stick around with my game and profit over time. And here's my lower value, you know, segments where, you know, I want them to connect to social and build friends, and, you know, hopefully, you know, stick around as long as they can and monetize with ads versus purchases. So I think you're going to do it, but you know, yes, it's going to be some short term pain, we've seen this, you know, every, I think three or four years, you know, we went from UDID to IDFA, we went from IDFA to, you know, we went to cookie somewhere there in between browser,
Adam Lovallo:Weird browser device redirect
Bryan Buskas:Now like, yeah, million character, long browser string, you know, had everything from your IP address to you know, everything. So I don't know what the right solution is, I think, you know, experts like Allison or Eric and others, you know, will have a better perspective on that, you know, I'm confident that these mobile, you know, first companies and platforms will find a solution. Yeah, that meets the needs of consumer privacy. And also, you know, performance marketing, right, and I think we had rode, we've been pioneers on new services, like Apple arcade, and these are subscription based gaming services. Think of it as like Spotify, or Netflix for games, right? run by the platforms. And I can say, those are some of the most privacy centric platforms in the world, right? There is no attribution, there is no data, like in the mobile performance world. So you know, maybe some of these things are a little glimpse into the future of where, you know, other data for music, everything moved in subscription. Yeah, TV and entertainment, move that same way into subscription, you know, free to play has been this huge model. And, you know, really gave rise to the growth of mobile, but we're starting to see now there's new gaming services. And you know, people have been trying to subscription for a long time, but it really is only been in the last nine months, you know, 12 months. That's the platform's they've really gotten into subscriptions. And I know subscription is a huge thing. For outside of games, right for the holidays, guys, so, you know, for us, we've kind of placed a bet on subscription. And we're starting to see, you know, a lot of success in subscription. Google's now rolled out Google Play pass, you know, for $4.99 a month, you can have unlimited, you know, games, no ads, no, in app purchases, a very kind of family friendly, you know, privacy centric type environment. Right.
Adam Lovallo:So how does that, um, without, without sharing anything secret? How does that work for you as a publisher? I mean, what are the economics for you? And also, I mean, what is user acquisition even mean, in that context? Like, do you have any leverage or not real?
Bryan Buskas:Really so, two questions, I think, on the on the business side of things, you know, it's, it's similar to any other subscription service, right? You know, I think every platform is going to be based on engagement and retention. Right? You know, if I'm, if I'm an artist on Spotify, right, I get paid for my my play times, and you know, how many people on the other hand, if you're a part of another service, right, it's not really your job to market the service? Yeah, just this week, like Apple took one of our games like Super impossible road, made a trailer for pushing out to social media, you know, on Twitter and others, right, they have to use the content to sell the service. And, you know, we have seen the, you know, Apple was using even retail, you could go into retail and see Apple arcade, on devices on the walls, and, you know, they are building these platforms are investing in the services, you know, in a meaningful way. I think for user acquisition, you know, this is something we're always trying to solve every day, right? We, when you come from the Free to Play world, where you can do it at a very granular level today, and maybe a less granular level tomorrow. In subscription, it's a blend, right, of, you know, your brand and, and, you know, awareness type things and your pure performance to find, like, what are those tools? And what are those channels that can work in the middle? And, you know, I can say, without getting into specifics, you know, it really is things that drive engagement and things that drive retention. So I do think, you know, you know, it's, you can't do as much as the paid performance advertising there. But you got to focus a lot more on the product, you got to focus a lot more on the the tools and things to really drive engagement and retention, those matters more than, say, acquisition.
Adam Lovallo:And permissioning is the same. I mean, if I'm an app user, you could ask me if I can, I could give you my email, I could say get push notifications from you all same rules of the game, pretty much
Bryan Buskas:Yeah every platform is different, you know, different stuff there. But yeah, push notifications, are there, you know, leaderboards? Are there social logins, you know, are there platform logins are there. So a lot of the core tools all exist there, you know, the same, the same kind of technology that comes over from free to play games. You know, I think we've even tested things you know, personally, we've run led down we have a soccer game called sociable soccer on our cave, that is, as you know, multiplayer PvP like real life realistic soccer game. On a great service like Apple arcade, we've tested led leaderboards in the Premiership games, right. So well, while you're at the game, you know, you see there, you could download this game you can you can play this new soccer game, it's great soccer game. But what we've seen, I think, overall is that games that have multiplayer and real time are much more successful. Driving, retention and engagement, right versus solo experiences. And there's always going to be, there's always going to be a good place for you know, that great story, that great solo adventure. But those are kind of, you know, one time playthrough you move on to the next game, right, versus you know, we tend to focus more on games that have a lot of books that bring you in, whether socially, you know, multiplayer, competitive aspects and things like that. Those are the pieces that matter, because I think the one thing that pandemic has taught me and reminded me is that, you know, games are the new social network, they are the place to congregate, gather, have fun, you know, they are the new you know, Facebook, right, the fortnight is the new Facebook. And you know, these games are, you know, not just, they're not just games, they're places people go to hang out, see concerts, right? And, like, you know, augmented reality and virtual reality, I think, you know, this is where you see these things get more immersive, you know, and ads are just the tip of the spear they're, they're getting more immersive, you know, as our as as the content getting more and more immersive as well, too.
Adam Lovallo:I love it. I can say, last night, I played video games with my 35 year old brother, my friend in Denver, you know, we're not otherwise gonna jump on a Facebook thread and comment back and forth right like
Bryan Buskas:There's game huge games for everyone, right? It's not about the first person shooter, it's, you know, there's Robloxs for younger audience where you can literally, I have a six year old and he, he loves playing Minecraft, and I call it digital Legos. Like, I just give him the open world. And I come back in 30 minutes, and he's built a skyscraper with windows and, you know, it's everyone uses those games in different ways, right? And they really are these new, you know, virtual worlds. And I tell you, we can even use these as you know, non game type experiences, they're more just social experiences, whether it's, you know, seeing a concert inside a fortnight, or, you know, just hanging out solo inside as a, you know, Minecraft or Roblox and just, you know, building something, and, you know, playing around. So I think games are kind of redefining, you know, what is a kind of social, virtual, you know, world, which there's been people trying to do this, you know, Second Life, I don't know, was it 20 years ago, or something, really, you know, I think we're kind of at the point now, and I think the pandemic has really accelerated this, that, hey, there are these digital worlds that, you know, people like to escape to connect with, to, you know, and have huge affinities to these, you know, brands. And, you know, you see that in the brands that want to get attached to games now, as well to put their products into these games, right, or music artists who want to put their, you know, run their concerts, you know, sell merchandise inside of a game these games are, they're not just games anymore. And I think that's, that's the exciting thing, just seeing games from, you know, just in my 15 years of being in the games industry. 15 years ago, your your demographics of a gamer was, you know, male 18 to 24, lived at home and you know, had relatively low kind of household income, maybe not any income, you know, personally, to today, where, you know, I argue that every single person in the world is a gamer. And I like to play this game and say, like, you play tic tac toe, you play tac, these are all games in my mind. And I think if I trace it back to human nature, that we're all, you know, a little competitive to a different degree, we all like to, you know, socially connecting games is what brings that all together. And, but I've seen, you know, being on the platform side, it's also what pushes advertising forward, it's also, you know, it's pushed performance marketing, absolutely. You know, I don't know what the numbers are lately, you know, but 40 billion plus dollars in like, app install acquisition every year, and, you know, half of that's in video, and, you know, quarter that's in play doubles, and, you know, some portion of that I guarantee is, is testing new things, right, new types of ads, new things, and, you know, we'll be talking about, you know, three, four years ago, and that's part that's what's exciting about, you know, being in performance is there's, there's always somebody test, there's always something new, there's always test to be run, there's always learnings, and I think, you know, even in a more privacy centric world, you know, that's kind of where we are today, right? media mix modeling, and figuring out TV plus mobile plus, out of home, what it all means. And you know, I think, unfortunately, out of home today, you know, it doesn't doesn't really mean that much, unfortunately, right, all your data, and, you know, takeovers of cities, you know, things we used to do with big products, like Call of Duty, you know, aren't going to have your impact today, but mobile absolutely is right. And I think we saw this on mobile, just CPMs, you know, across our inventory, that, you know, the second the pandemic kit, and you know, a bunch of these brands pull out all their demand, it wasn't even 24 or 48 hours that, you know, the mobile performance focused companies backed the course, double down, triple down, quadruple down. And that's all we see every day all day, right, you know, outside of TV, you know, brand messages about the pandemic and health. This is all we see are very performance, you know, based messages on our mobile devices, because it's got to be the number one screen, you know, for everyone's engagement in the world today.
Adam Lovallo:Absolutely. Absolutely. All right, Brian, I think we'll end on that. No, this was spectacular. Thank you. And if anybody wants to track you down, should they follow you on LinkedIn? Are you active on Twitter? What's your deal?
Bryan Buskas:LinkedIn is best. You know, we spend a lot of time there, you know, reach out through LinkedIn. I think, you know, thinking about building companies and my experience in building companies over the last kind of 10 years in startups. I from a performance perspective, LinkedIn is like the most valuable platform in the in the depth for b2b marketing and you guys see that and me you you know, I think it's, it's crazy to from the first time I knew there was 150 people and yeah, you know, you had to apply and be invited and you know, where you guys created to, you know, where it should be right now. We all should be you know, in Vegas and another life in another world, but it's been great to, you know, see the growth, it's been great to see the, the tools out there, but LinkedIn, you know, if you're building a business and connecting, you know, as that network is super valuable, I'd say even even more so now in the pandemic than others. So, you know, always happy to offer my services advice, you know, be a part of the community, a good steward of the performance community, as we, you know, I think navigate this new world, you know, which is a much more privacy centric world where, you know, even you know, again, not just games, right, it's it's all the e commerce companies that's all mobile first and mobile only, and a lot more companies I think, are going to become mobile first. True. Yeah. Yeah. As a result, where we are today,
Adam Lovallo:Mobile first and performance focus, I think we're gonna have to at this point, you can't you can't rationalize the investment in driving in store visits when there are no in store visits. So you got to start selling stuff. Fortune. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, awesome. Thank you. We'll link to your we're gonna include your LinkedIn in the in the notes and super appreciate it.
Bryan Buskas:Great. Thanks Adam
MAU[Talk]:Thanks for joining us. You can find Brian's LinkedIn information in this podcast description or at MAUVegas.com. Make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We'll catch you on the next episode of MAU[Talk].