Once a developer creates a VR experience, then the real difficult phase begins in trying to market their experience. VR is a new communication medium, and so traditional photos or videos don’t always do the experience justice. At Casual Connect, I had a chance to talk to the Vice President of inbound marketing for yellowHEAD, which is a firm that specializes in App Store Optimization. They haven’t started trying to market VR apps yet, but I wanted to see if there could be any lessons learned from the existing practices for doing app store optimization, localization, conversion optimization, and user acquisition.
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[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. My name is Kent Bye, and welcome to The Voices of VR Podcast. So virtual reality is a completely new communication medium. And really, the only way that you can truly understand it is if you actually go in and have a virtual reality experience yourself. It's pretty much impossible to really describe the feeling until you've actually had the experience. So there's been a lot of different headset manufacturers who have taken the approach of grassroots evangelism, whether it's going to trade shows or stores to offer demos for people to actually try out VR. So the challenge of advertising your VR experience has the similar problems and challenges because nobody really has figured out how to market a VR experience yet. Perhaps we'll have 360 videos and we'll be able to get some idea by watching Twitch streams and there's ratings and rankings within the different stores. But ultimately, when it comes to getting your word out about your experience, there's a lot of open problems that have yet to be figured out. And so today I have a talk with Zayatan from Yellowhead Marketing. And this was at the Casual Connect conference, which has primarily been focusing traditionally on mobile gaming. And so there were a lot of different vendors there. And I went to booth to booth asking if anybody had started to think about how to work with VR in any way. And the answer was pretty universal. And yeah, we're interested, but we haven't started yet. I think everybody is kind of taking a step back and seeing how the ecosystem starts to develop. But I did have a chance to talk to Yellowhead Marketing about what we can potentially learn about what's happening with the over 3 million mobile applications that's in both the Apple Store as well as Google Play. So on today's episode, we'll be talking about some of the existing app store optimization and search engine optimization processes and approaches that the mobile world has been using and whether or not they'll be applicable to VR. So that's what we'll be covering on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. But first, a quick word from our sponsor. Today's episode is brought to you by Fishbowl VR. Fishbowl VR provides on-demand user testing for your VR experience. They have hundreds of VR playtesters who record their candid reactions with a turnaround time as fast as 24 hours. You can solve arguments, discover weaknesses, and get new gameplay ideas. User testing is a vital part of the development cycle, and Fishbowl VR takes care of all the logistics so you can just focus on the creative process. So start getting feedback today at fishbowlvr.com. So this interview with Seitan happened at the Casual Connect conference that was happening from July 18th to 20th in San Francisco. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:02:56.877] Yonatan Dotan: My name is Jonathan. I'm the VP of Inbound Marketing at Yellowhead. We're a digital marketing agency located in Israel. We focus on marketing services for apps, so we do app store optimization, and we also do user acquisition on Facebook and Google. App store optimization, that's kind of like the search engine optimization of the app world, so most people, when they Download an app. It's actually not from an ad or something like that They're actually searching in the App Store for racing games or car games or whatever else and so there's a whole methodology of optimizing for making sure that that your app is ranked highly in those searches. And also for making sure that once somebody finds your App Store page, they actually want to install it. Good icons, good screenshots, a video that tells the story the right way. And also on the paid side of things, in Facebook and Google and in the ad networks of the world, there are sort of very clear, established channels for how do we find users for our app. And then one of the things that we've started looking at, we've been coming to Casual Connect for a couple years. And every single time that we come to the conference, there's more and more VR companies and people starting all kinds of interesting things for VR. But for the most part, it seems like most companies still aren't really sure how to market themselves. So again, within the world of apps, it happened very quickly. A few years ago, it didn't exist. But now there's very, very clear marketing channels for those things. In the world of VR, people still don't really know. They don't know if they're doing a website and optimizing it in search, or if they're trying to do some kind of promotion in Steam, or if it's just not as clear yet. But it's something that I imagine will change very quickly. I was talking to Kolopil over there, and they said there's something like 70,000 people who now have VR sets, and there's obviously more that have the Gear VR. But still, they don't know exactly where to look to those things, so that's one of the things that we're starting to work on. Where is that all going to go? Is it going to be through Facebook? Are there going to be platforms to do that on? It's something that we'll be very interested to see, to see where it all goes.
[00:04:53.730] Kent Bye: Yeah, so here at Casual Connect, I'm here to help present on the virtual reality game design panel, moderating that. So I'm here, but it's really kind of like a mobile gaming conference. I've been walking around asking about half the exhibitors now if they're doing anything in VR. And for the most part, it's the same answer, that nobody is doing anything in VR, but they're looking at it. And it seems like a big open question in terms of how these marketing channels are going to work. Now, I can say from just knowing about the VR ecosystem that Google Play is going to be big with mobile, with Daydream VR, so I'm sure there's going to be some learnings from previous mobile app marketing. Oculus has Oculus Home, which is its own completely new self-contained wild garden and ecosystem that, at this point, has been a little bit hand-curated by the people at Oculus. The Gear VR also has the Oculus Home, but again, it's sort of curated exclusively by Oculus, one single company. Then you have Steam, which is Valve, HTC, as well as Oculus Games, and that's kind of like a normal Steam channels. And then the iOS store, there's nothing in AR and VR right now at all when it comes to anything that Apple has announced. I expect them to do that maybe within the next year or so. There's also the PlayStation VR, so the PS4 ecosystem is also going to be another channel. But for me, it seems like for the most part, it's the same channels, with the exception of perhaps some new walled gardens like with Oculus. So yeah, just some of your thoughts on that.
[00:06:18.967] Yonatan Dotan: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so first of all, Apple is kind of chronically behind on a lot of that stuff. You know, even with Google Play is quickly moving to ads as well, ads for apps, for mobile apps within the Google Play search. And Apple isn't even really there yet. There are not. ads in the Apple Store, it's still like the VR things are hand curated. And I think that it's interesting as a comparison, you know, Google Play had no sort of marketing channels besides the organic search, and then they started adding ads, and the organic grew in there. And so I imagine that that will happen similarly in the VR platforms. I think kind of the first thing that will happen is the organic side of things. You know, people are searching for all kinds of apps within that, and they're either finding the ones that are hand curated or they're finding it through search. So that's kind of usually the first to start. And then the second thing is it's in Steam's best interest and Oculus' best interest and all those companies' best interest to have some form of marketing channel because it's another revenue stream for them once they get people paying for featured spots, ads, all that kind of stuff. So I imagine that it's something that we'll start to see. I think, you know, it's not like a huge mystery what the channels are going to be, but they don't really exist quite as strongly yet. I'm sure we'll start to see it very quickly.
[00:07:30.783] Kent Bye: But is part of the difference with virtual reality that in a mobile game you may have an ad that you may be seeing while you're playing and kind of having ads within a VR experience give kind of an additional challenge than what existing platforms and mechanisms are available within a mobile game?
[00:07:45.302] Yonatan Dotan: Yeah, it's a really interesting question. I honestly don't know enough about the VR ecosystem to know if anything is happening there yet and how it's happening. I imagine it'd be a totally different experience to get an ad inside of a VR game than it would inside of a mobile app. But I'm sure that'll get there as well. And I think also now with app stores, we've seen the market is still dominated by Google Play and the iOS App Store. Then you have Amazon, and Roku, and all kinds of other ones that are starting to pop up and gain popularity. It seems like the VR marketplace is already more fragmented than that, just in the places that you have mentioned. So there's going to be some challenge for the world of ads, just in who you target, and where you target, and what you take them to, and that kind of thing. But it'll be interesting to see.
[00:08:29.878] Kent Bye: Yeah, right now, the only ad company that I've seen for immersive ads within VR experiences is called Immersive. And I think it's something that there's probably some other people that are working on it as well. But in terms of you and what you're telling your clients, there's App Store Optimization. What is that?
[00:08:46.241] Yonatan Dotan: So App Store Optimization is the search engine optimization of the App Store world. It splits the way we look at it into a few different functions. The first one is search optimization. So that's making sure that people find your app when they're looking for it. a pretty interesting field, especially because there are a lot of people that aren't capitalizing on it yet. So we see really huge gains for the people who are. Basically, what we do there is we do research for the keywords that people are looking for to find certain apps and then optimize titles, keywords, descriptions, all of that sort of thing. When somebody searches for a racing game, they find our client's racing game. The second thing that we do, which is interesting in those spaces, is we do what's called localization. So we do that same process in 25 different languages. It is a very interesting process because translation doesn't work. Translation ends up either sounding funny or not being what people are actually searching for. So we work with a network of local natives in 25 different countries whom we have taught to do that keyword research to understand what people are searching for in each of those countries. And then we do that same optimization in all those languages to make sure that the apps we're working with really have a global base. And then the final thing is the conversion optimization. So once people find an app in the store, making sure that they actually install it. So that's a world that's been developing quite a bit as well. Basically, we're talking about icons, screenshots, feature graphics, users today, blah, blah, blah, internet age, blah, blah, blah. very quick to make decisions, they have very short attention spans. So even in something like Steam and whatever else now, you have to make sure that when somebody sees your page, they instantly understand what it's about and they know that, you know, they want to try it. So that's another area that's been developing. It used to just be kind of best guesses, but then all kinds of tools have been added to check conversion rates, A-B testing, all of that kind of stuff. And it's another area where we see big gains for relatively little work.
[00:10:32.752] Kent Bye: Yeah, my impression with people who have created games in my own personal experience is that they kind of have like this mental concept of they're going to start and finish the game and then they're done. But really it's kind of like once you finish the game then you're maybe perhaps halfway done and then the next phase happens where you actually have to promote and get people to learn about it and to play it. And when I talk to different VCs and I ask them what kind of metrics they look at, they say that the customer acquisition cost is one of the things that they're really concerned about, like how are you actually going to get new users into your platform, and how much is it going to cost for you to do that? And so part of that cost, I imagine, is advertising. And so do you look at customer acquisition cost, and do you help app developers kind of sift through and get some metrics to get some awareness for where they're at?
[00:11:19.175] Yonatan Dotan: Yeah, absolutely. So touching on the first thing you're saying, that's if we build it, they will come. And that's unfortunately just not the way in the world of apps. I think there's something like 3 million unique apps on iOS and Google Play now. I think something, I'm trying to remember the statistic, but something like 83% of those apps are virtually invisible in search. So unless you actually type in the app's name, you'll never see the application. And so there is a huge amount of work to be done to make sure that you can be found. As far as user acquisition, it's also an interesting place. I mean, basically, a few years ago, costs weren't that high. But as the whole world has woken up to it, costs are increasing significantly. And that's one area where the build of the game really, really does matter. Basically, the apps that can monetize better are the winners here because they can afford to spend more on the user acquisition. And again, as the market gets more and more competitive, the costs are really soaring, you know, to the point where there are verticals in which people are paying tens of dollars per user to bring in users and makes it a tough place to be in. And it's also another thing that makes VR exciting because it's not there, you know, it's still kind of the waiting to explode with low cost acquisition and all of that until that inevitably also gets more competitive.
[00:12:32.943] Kent Bye: Can you talk about the efficacy of something like Facebook and Google Ads, as well as social media ad placements?
[00:12:40.307] Yonatan Dotan: Sure. So the way I see the ecosystem, there's ad networks. Ad networks drive a huge amount of volume. They're kind of, by the nature of it, less targeted, and then also generally cheaper. When you start looking at things like social media, like Facebook user acquisition, they're significantly more expensive. But they're also where you find higher quality users. So while the costs may be higher, you tend to see higher ROI there just by the nature of, you know, the kind of targeting that you can do in something like Facebook, you know, really down to the person's interests, down to lookalikes that look like your other users and that kind of thing. Whereas in things that aren't within social media, it's obviously targeting is getting more sophisticated, but relatively speaking, it's a lot more shot in the dark. You know, we want this kind of user and we think that they're over there rather than in something like social media or something like Google where you're really targeting the specific person or the specific intention.
[00:13:33.787] Kent Bye: What other kind of options are out there in terms of advertising either on podcasts or Twitch streaming or getting more into the, you know, maybe influencer model of kind of the social buzz of a game? You know, getting something that's a little bit more grassroots, but maybe some other options of advertising that go beyond some of the normal channels.
[00:13:52.248] Yonatan Dotan: Well, one of the things that kind of creates the explosive apps is the whole virality factor. So it's not exactly advertising, but we've talked to, you know, a few apps here at iCasual Connect that have really built in virality as part of their loops. And that's another huge thing, especially when you then couple it with advertising. So there are a lot of app builders now that kind of take that in as one of their core tenets when they're creating their app is, you know, how are people sharing this? Why are people sharing this? How do I build that into things? Besides that, in the advertising space and the social space, I mean, there are some other places that are picking up, you know, YouTube and Twitter and that kind of stuff. Twitch, truthfully, I'm not as familiar with in terms of an advertising ecosystem, but I'm sure there's lots to be done.
[00:14:35.318] Kent Bye: What does it mean, precisely, adding virality to loops? Is that as you're doing the game design loop, there are certain moments within that that have a moment that's worth sharing to social media?
[00:14:45.310] Yonatan Dotan: Sure, so there's a variety there as well. There are certain apps where virality is almost, you know, part of the concept. For example, we just talked to Sketch Nation, which they've developed a mobile game in which you build your own mobile game. So you kind of take a picture of your face and then your face is the character and you build the levels on your own and kind of, you know, the In the end, it's a cool app in and of itself, but half the fun there is then showing your friends the game that you've created of them or of yourself or whatever else. So those are apps that, in some sense, are built on sharing. Within other ones, it's things like leaderboards and the basic things that make an app that would be a more solitary experience, something that you want to share, something that you want to get other people involved with. And if you can kind of crack it, if you can find the right way to do it where it's not annoying to people, it's not it wants to post on my Facebook again or something like that, but something that they want to share, then it's incredibly valuable.
[00:15:40.765] Kent Bye: Yeah, one example that I've seen within Pokemon is that people are out and about and they find a rare Pokemon and it may be next to them with the augmented reality filter where they're able to show other people in the context under which they're in and so it's kind of sharing their location and their context but also whether or not they have some sort of specific emotional connection to whatever Pokemon they were able to hunt down. So from your perspective, I'm curious to hear if you have any thoughts about looking at Pokemon as a cultural phenomenon to see what can be learned from smaller scale indies that may not have the resources for that type of IP or creating such a huge cultural phenomenon.
[00:16:17.788] Yonatan Dotan: I think it's the million dollar question, and it's a tough one to answer. I personally, despite not having played Pokemon Go very much, I think it's genius. It's just such a good idea. It's also kind of the first augmented reality app that I think has succeeded on a really massive scale. They are by far not the first augmented reality app, but they're the first one that's kind of just exploded everywhere. And they've done it well. They've incorporated with a lot of mainstream things. They've incorporated with Google Maps, which everybody is sort of inherently familiar with. And I mean, the truth is, when you look at it, the augmented reality function of it isn't even very good. It's not like it's interacting with its surroundings. It's kind of just like your camera's picture, and then they stuck a Pokemon in it. minutes kind of hopping around or something. But just the fact that they've gotten people up and moving around and that kind of thing, it's super, super interesting. And I think it's definitely, maybe it will be a little bit of something that's kind of paving the way for that to be something that users are familiar with, something users have less resistance to getting up and walking around with a game. So it may have started opening that path. I don't know as far as specific recommendations.
[00:17:21.458] Kent Bye: What do you think some of the biggest mistakes that developers do when they're developing an app and trying to release it into these different app stores?
[00:17:30.743] Yonatan Dotan: I mean, from my perspective, again, so we're on the marketing side of things. We do ASO. We do user acquisition. And I think it's almost what you touched on before. Making a great app, unfortunately, is not the end of the path. It's crucial. If you don't make a great app, then it's not going to succeed no matter what you do. But it's really just the beginning of the path. There are, as far as sort of the indie levels go, there are a few things that we've seen. One critical mistake is not really properly soft launching. What a lot of the larger publishers will do is they'll create an app, they'll do all of their sort of internal testing, and then they'll soft launch it in. In another country, they'll soft launch. In the Philippines, India or something, they'll spend decent money on user acquisition marketing so that they really can get hundreds, thousands of users in those countries to really properly figure things out before they go and launch. I think one of the most catastrophic things that can happen for a new app is that it launches, gets a bunch of bad reviews, and then it's a hole that's almost impossible to climb out of. And then the other thing is, again, what you touched on, just that it's the beginning of the path. marketing strategy, whether it's a grassroots one, whether it's a paid one, whether it's on your own or with someone else, it's a critical thing to think about. Otherwise, just nobody's going to find it.
[00:18:42.710] Kent Bye: Now, I've come from a bit of background in working with web design and familiar with the different techniques of search engine optimization. Google Analytics does a great job of being able to search through all sorts of great user interfaces to research AdWords and kind of get a sense of the volume that you're really looking for for specific keywords. But it feels like with the app stores, it's a little bit more opaque. You don't have a lot of that same tools that are available. And so I'm just curious how you're able to actually extract some of these deeper insights into some of these walled garden silos.
[00:19:14.891] Yonatan Dotan: So it totally is more difficult. Again, like you said, AdWords, SEO, you can see more or less exactly how many people are searching for different keywords. Even with the top tools in the industry, if you're looking at The App Annie's and Sensor Towers and Mobile Devs of the World, most of their data comes from the Google Keyword Planner, which is a web tool. So you get a lot of funny things, like one of the tools we were looking. And one of the biggest keywords they have is, what time is it? Which clearly is not something that people are searching for in the App Store. So we do a number of things. First of all, one of the things we do is we do look at web searches to see what people are searching for on the web. But we take it all with a very large grain of salt and a lot of common sense to kind of figure out, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . And then the other thing where it's getting interesting is there are all sorts of avenues that are starting to potentially come up with actual search statistics. Mostly what that is is, for example, there might be a keyboard application that people use in Google Play. And that keyboard application will be able to track what people are searching for in the App Store and then kind of do extrapolated statistics based on that and try and figure out how much people are searching for it. It's stuff that's very, very beta. We haven't seen any fantastic solutions yet, but we're working closely with a couple to see when it does become interesting.
[00:20:43.874] Kent Bye: Great. And finally, what do you think is kind of the ultimate potential of virtual and augmented reality, and what it might be able to enable?
[00:20:51.938] Yonatan Dotan: Oh my god, what a difficult question. I don't know. The Pokemon Go thing got me thinking of Google Glasses again, and how Google Glasses kind of started happening, but then disappeared on us. And I wonder if the reason that it is is that it was just premature, if kind of the functions of augmented reality weren't where they will be, where they needed to be. And so, you know, virtual reality, obviously a super interesting world, but I think Pokemon Go has me and sort of everybody else thinking about how interesting augmented reality is, you know, where it's that mix. It's adding whatever game or other sort of information or thing is to the physical world. And I think that's a super interesting place to be looking.
[00:21:33.091] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Thank you very much. So that was Zion Atan. He is the VP of Inbound Marketing at Yellowhead. So, I have a number of different takeaways about this interview is that first of all, I do think that some of their processes of app store optimization and search optimization, localization, conversion optimization, all those principles will to some degree still apply to some of these new stores. I think right now it's so early within the VR ecosystem that the search algorithms within these stores haven't really fully been developed. I mean, you can almost literally go through and look at every single VR application that's out there. Which I think is not going to be true forever. I mean, if you just look at the mobile app ecosystem, Xeo 10 said that there's over 3 million iPhone and Android applications that are out there. And so it's not going to be feasible to be able to just browse all of the VR experiences that are available, just like it's pretty impossible to browse the entire internet today. But I think it's still true that nobody's really cracked the nut in terms of how to really market your VR experience really well. What I've seen out there that works well, I think, is perhaps leaderboards and people who take screenshots. I think AudioShield is a good example. I've seen a lot of people who have taking screenshots of either a perfect run or taking videos of themselves playing. And I think mixed reality is a great way of showing some simulcrum of what a VR experience is kind of like. But even at that, you still kind of have to experience it to really, truly get it. But at least you're blending what someone's actually physically looking like in the real world and how their actions are translating within the virtual world. So I think mixed reality trailers is going to be a huge part of how experiences are marketed. I think also in the future it's going to be a lot easier to do 360 degree immersive videos so you'll be able to perhaps capture a trailer of gameplay and be able to give people access to that. Streaming I think is going to be increasingly important as well as the YouTube video on demand market of people who are doing playthroughs of different experiences and giving their candid takes of whether or not they enjoy the experience or not. And so that's going to be an increasingly important role in terms of getting the word out there from these different influencers. And just like word of mouth is probably actually one of the most trusted ways of you trying out different experiences with people that you know and trust and if they're really raving about. some experience then you're more likely to check it out. But in terms of the logistics of all the App Store optimization, I think the big challenge is that there's all these new proprietary walled garden ecosystems that are developing with the Oculus Home is going to be kind of its own thing that's curated and controlled by Oculus so they could change the search algorithms or be able to determine what is going to be featured. So featured apps I think actually is going to be a huge part of whether or not you're going to be featured on the front page of these app stores. That right now I think is probably one of the most effective ways that if you get one of those coveted spots then you're going to get a lot of eyeballs looking at your experience. And I think probably eventually we'll be having more and more opportunities to be able to share 360 videos maybe perhaps within Oculus Home or within Steam or within PlayStation VR, which we didn't talk about much, but is kind of its own walled garden ecosystem. And finally, we didn't talk much about WebVR, but that kind of represents the open web where you don't have these more proprietary search algorithms. You get into more other search algorithms like the search engine optimization within Google, and I think it's still yet to be seen how you're going to add metadata or keywords or if there's going to be a similar kind of page rank algorithm where if people are linking to a specific URL that has an immersive WebVR experience, then is that going to somehow be tracked and accounted for when you're searching for different experiences? So experience discovery is going to be a huge thing. You know, right now there's no concept of a universal hypertext link. So for example, going from a website to a website, you can recommend people to go check something out to just sending a link to that website. And is a link in the metaverse, does that look more like a door or a portal? And, you know, if we're in an immersive environment, then connecting different worlds together, I think is what the ultimate potential of the metaverse is going to look like. That's something that's still yet to be seen, how the architecture of that is going to actually be implemented. That's something that I talked to Philip Rosedale back at Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference back in 2015. It's in episode 173, so if you want to go take a listen to that there, we talk about that a little bit in terms of what that might look like. So the big takeaway is that there's actually more open questions than answers right now. And this is something that if you created a VR experience and you kind of think that you're done, then I think it's a sobering realization for a lot of people that that's really actually just the beginning of the journey of trying to spread the word and get people to actually check out the experience and help get the word out about it. So that's all that I have for today. I just wanted to thank you for joining me on the Voices of VR podcast. And if you'd like to support the podcast, then spread the word, tell your friends, and become a donor at patreon.com slash Voices of VR.
