Mobile games publishers need a transformation before it’s too late

Why an overreliance on attribution has impeded progress in gaming [View this email in your browser]( You have been sent a sponsored message via GamesIndustry.biz, in association with MetaMobile games publishers need a transformation before it’s too late Why an overreliance on attribution has impeded progress in gaming By Kate Minogue, Head of Marketing Science, Facebook Gaming, EMEA at Meta Over two years ago, in a bid to focus on consumer privacy, Apple announced their plans to introduce App Tracking Transparency (ATT). Its arrival, among other changes, would give cookies and id-based attribution a shelf life --changing the way mobile advertising ids are used and, as a result, causing mammoth disruption to usual marketing practices. Long-rumored, when the announcement was officially made, advertising and adjacent engineering teams scrambled to unpack and understand the SKAdnetwork and Conversion Schema components of ATT. They invested into being “ready” for their arrival, but for a lot of companies, this is where they [stopped.]( We can rationalize why more exorbitant action didn’t take place before the announcement or the rollout of iOS14 itself; there was likely a reasonable business trade-off versus the investment required for longer-term resilience. However, what the industry is experiencing is a data revolution. We’ve entered a privacy-first reality that has significant implications for the technologies and infrastructure on which gaming companies were built. These changes require a real assessment of core competencies and operating models if companies are to continue to compete and be profitable. The actions taken to date have been localized to marketing teams and have relied on existing expertise to solve new problems. As such -- with the response being disproportionate to the magnitude of disruption -- the necessary move away from attribution has not happened. It hasn’t been considered as a company-wide imperative, despite needing to be. As of yet, the industry continues to stall the [full organizational transformation]( needed to increase the accuracy of investment decisions. It’s been stuck in a cycle of maintaining Android campaigns, retaining a focus on attributed results ([despite the gaps]( and laboring to get performance back to pre-ATT levels. Many companies have yet to embed new measurement approaches into the core of their business operations and to meet a changed landscape with open arms, but it’s now time to do just that. Kotter’s 8-step process for leading change Looking at business thought-leader [John Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model]( we can analyze and unearth key actions gaming companies can take to thrive in a privacy-first landscape. 1. Increase urgencyThe first, and most vital, step is also the most lacking today. The continued trust in attribution as a single source-of-truth has prevented companies from acting with the required urgency to initiate more significant change. Whether Google’s privacy sandbox arrives in 2023 or 2024, it’s coming. Further, (albeit not yet enforced),[fingerprinting, a widely touted industry solution, is in violation of Apple’s terms.]( Even if attribution gaps are not equal across all channels, they do exist. This means that investment decisions being made using legacy approaches are not the most accurate, and money is being lost. Human nature is such that people will not change until the alternative has been taken away or the pain of not changing is worse than the effort to change. The urgency needs to be made clear at an industry level but leaders also need to land it with their teams. 2. Build the guiding team/coalitionOf course, a move from attribution-based decision making to multiple sources of truth, will mean significant operational changes for marketing teams; the rhythm of business, budget distribution, the required skills and more. To put steps in place for change, a leadership team for this effort needs all stakeholders to unite and have a willingness to disrupt how things are done. Analytics resources may need to be redeployed (or purposefully hired) to support new marketing use-cases and central marketing analytics teams may be required to own the new stack. Additionally, finance teams may need to familiarize themselves with why data sources and KPIs have changed. The right functions, but also the right attitudes, are key for this leadership team. A fixation with ‘the way things were’ is not going to serve the next phase of evolution. 3. Get the strategic vision rightTeams must know where they’re going and why. This involves outlining how things will be different and what the end goal looks like. In this case, the end goal is accurate and resilient measurement of marketing impact. The best-in-class version of this is a triangulation (or as some call it [“Unified Marketing Measurement”]( between: - Attribution—for day-to-day optimization. - Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM)—for strategic budget decisions across channels. - Experimentation—to ensure that all decisions are [grounded in true incrementality and a test-and-learn mindset.]( Each company has a different starting point in this journey and different principles that might serve as barriers to where they’re going. Operationally, certain parts may be more difficult than others but defining the direction is key. [To read full article, click here]( [Facebook icon]( [Twitter icon]( [LinkedIn icon]( Copyright (C) 2022 ReedPop. All rights reserved. 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