1.17.13

Google’s Nexus 7 Out Monetizes Competitors

Posted by Andrew Green, Director of Business Development.
For questions or additional inquiries, tweet @Tinyco.

When it comes to mobile games, it’s no secret that tablets are the best-monetizing devices out there. With bigger screens and more powerful hardware than smartphones, tablets offer richer gaming experiences, which in turn can lead more players to opt for in-app purchases. The tablet user base also self-selects for higher ARPU (Average Revenue Per User), as developers reach an audience that has the disposable income to spend on a tablet.

Not all tablets are created equal, however. When it comes to Google Play, there is one clear winner: Google’s own Nexus 7.

After just 6 months on the market, the Nexus 7 has established itself as our highest performing Google Play tablet by a longshot. Looking at data from Tiny Monsters, the Nexus 7 generates 50% higher ARPU than the average Android tablet.

Nexus 7 players are also 50% more likely to make in-app purchases, which contributes to the sizeable chunk of revenue they generate compared to players using other standard Android tablets.

Despite representing just 15% of TinyCo’s total tablet user base, the Nexus 7 generates more than 30% of total tablet revenue.

Nexus 7 users tend to have the highest levels of engagement and retention as well, meaning they play more and play longer. Compared to other standard Android tablets, Nexus 7 users show roughly 20% higher 7- and 30-day retention rates.

We have some thoughts as to why. First and foremost, the Nexus 7 brings top notch hardware and Google’s newest Jellybean OS to play, resulting in a smooth, fun game experience that encourages players to monetize. There also may be an “early adopter” effect, in which users who buy new devices soon after they become available tend to spend more often.

Whatever the reasons for the Nexus 7’s high levels of monetization, it’s clear that Google has delivered a spectacular device for consumers and mobile game developers alike.

Tiny Castle, which just soft launched on Google Play, is already showing even more encouraging results. We’re excited to see what happens when you treat Android as a first class citizen!

See additional coverage of our Nexus 7 findings at InsideMobileApps.

10.15.2012

Earn 50% or More of our Revenue by Becoming a Tiny Partner

Posted by Andrew Green, Director of Business Development.
For questions or additional inquiries, tweet @Tinyco.

For mobile developers, user acquisition costs are on the rise. Users are tuning out most ad banner formats on mobile devices, just as they did with web advertising in the past. Over time, web advertising evolved to incorporate rich media and branded content to better catch users' interest.

We want mobile to evolve faster.

We're proud to announce Tiny Partners, a new revenue sharing program between TinyCo and mobile developers. Through revenue sharing and brand integration, app developers can now drive better revenue results - without cannibalizing their ad revenue.

How Tiny Partners Works

Mobile app developers integrating Tiny Partners into their apps create branded promotional spots for TinyCo games. When a user clicks on a Tiny Partners spot and subsequently installs a TinyCo game, the developer earns at least 50% of the lifetime net revenue that user generates for TinyCo.

Through Tiny Partners, we can provide our partners with the ability to create better performing promotions for our games, and then share in the success.

Complement the User Experience

Tiny Partners promotions are designed to complement the app's user experience rather than detract from it. In the sample integration below, the developer has included free TinyCo-branded items in the game's virtual goods store, as well as a link to download the game Tiny Monsters.

Developers will also have the opportunity to earn a greater percentage of revenue based on the extensiveness on their brand integration.

Let's Get Started

It's free, and it's easy. Tiny Partners is cross platform, available on iOS, Android OS, Google Play and Amazon. To learn more, visit www.tinyco.com/tinypartners.

6.26.2012

TinyCo Quarterly Insights Vol. 1 - Facebook Users Monetize, Android Retains, iOS Market Growth Details

Posted by Andrew Green, Director of Business Development.
For questions or additional inquiries, tweet @Tinyco.

Back in April we posted about the market’s perception of the Android platform and how it “does not monetize.” Our data concluded that with the right infrastructure and care, not only does it monetize, it can outperform iOS. We received an extremely positive response to that post from the developer community letting us know that the data was helpful, and asking us to send more. So, that’s what we’re gonna do!

Starting today, every quarter TinyCo will post some fresh insights into the woes and wins of the mobile market. We will try to provide a unique perspective, as our data is not an aggregate of the market as a whole but a snapshot of what is perceived by one developer with years of experience testing, failing, succeeding, and learning. Without further ado:

Facebook Users Monetize and Retain Better

With the announcement of Facebook’s iOS 6 integration, constant new mobile feature updates, and improved developer relations, it’s fair to say that Facebook is on its way to arriving as a boon for the mobile development community. Our product team sees tons of new creative ways to integrate Facebook features into mobile apps, and the more we learn the more excited we are about putting more resources toward the platform.

With just some simple feature integration like gifting, invites, and few others we’ve found that the players utilizing Facebook features in TinyCo games are monetizing 138% higher than normal paying users and are more than 60% more likely to be a paying user than non-Facebook users. TinyCo is just in its infancy of integrating Facebook features into our games; we are going to be prioritizing Facebook feature integration in a big way for our future and current releases. We are not only excited about the higher monetization potential of Facebook users, but we are looking forward to learning more about how we can drive cost-effective user acquisition (note: we are currently in early stages of testing the new mobile ad platform), better retention, and stronger engagement through Facebook features in TinyCo games.

On Android, Conversion is the Final Frontier

As with our last post, most of the conversation about Android success has been around monetization, or lack thereof. We’ve shown that with the right infrastructure (like TinyCo’s Griffin engine), and with continued optimization of the gameplay experience, higher monetization is possible on Android, especially so on Amazon’s Kindle Fire. In our game TInyVillage, ARPPU (Average revenue per paying user) on iOS and Android are the same, and later in the product lifecycle we are seeing weeks where ARPPU can be between 25% - 40% higher on Android. This will shrink as more players become payers on Android (as platform experience improves) and hopefully the overall balance of ARPU (Average revenue per user) and ARPPU begin to look closer on each platform.

This brings us to retention which is as important to the success of a game or app as a user’s monetization potential (ARPPU). The longer you retain a customer, the more potential for their conversion to paying, as well as higher LTV if they are currently paying. In Tiny Village, we are now seeing on average over 7% higher day-7 retention on Android over iOS.

With constant optimization we’ve increased retention on Android to higher levels than iOS, and we are seeing higher ARPPU. Our next challenge will be to continue to optimize the user experience as best as possible to increase conversion. With user satisfaction continuing to evolve, and better store experiences on the way, we are very bullish about the future of the Android platform and Google Play.

Illustrating iOS App Store Growth

In the early days of the Apple App Store (all those years ago in 2010) there was a lot of room for individual developers and teams of all sizes to test their app creations in a new mobile marketplace where the opportunity seemed boundless. Over the past two years download growth on iOS has been staggering, with over 30 billion app downloads, and over $5 billion paid to developers. The market is starting to shake out, and looking back at our historical data on Tiny Zoo Friends we saw an interesting illustration of where we are now.

The Overall Top Grossing charts on the Apple App Store are updated hourly. The positions are based on daily revenue thresholds of individual apps through both up front payments on paid apps, and in-app purchases. While there are constant data fluctuations when viewing the ongoing activity day after day, we saw that while the overall revenue thresholds needed for apps to crack the top 15 in early 2011 were still relatively stable, if you just jump ahead 6 months to Q3 2011, Tiny Zoo Friend’s revenue needed to increase 85% in order to maintain the same chart position it had 6 months prior. Looking at Q1 2012, Tiny Zoo Friend’s revenue needed to increase an additional 48% to maintain that same ranking. There are several factors at play here including increased device distribution, new developer / publisher competition, the proliferation of freemium models which drive higher ARPU and customer LTVs over paid apps, as well as updated user acquisition tactics.

With the saturation of every other global gaming market and the continuing growth of mobile, the landscape is going to continue to quake and flow. Developers will have to continue to stay on their toes to ride the ever-changing wave of platform, marketing, and customer dynamics to stay on top of the charts.

4.18.2012

Treat Android as a first-class citizen... it'll pay off!

Posted by Jennifer Lu, Director of Business Development

We wanted to share some recent results that may surprise others in the mobile gaming industry and challenge the often-repeated theory that “Android does not monetize”.

In late 2011, we announced our proprietary "Griffin" game engine that enables us to write code once, then deploy and make content updates on iOS and Android simultaneously. Griffin runs natively so we get top-notch performance on both platforms and it automatically adjusts itself to unique screen aspect ratios and resolutions, ensuring the game looks great on phones and tablet devices.

This year, we launched our first Griffin game Tiny Village in three App Stores (iTunes, Google Play and Amazon), and it's currently a top grossing/top free game in all three stores. Having a successful title across multiple platforms has allowed us to make apples-to-apples comparisons of the two OS's and the three App Stores. This is what we learned:

Google Play monetization is better than you think.

Flurry recently published figures stating that Google Play's Average Revenue per Active User (ARPU) is only 23% of iTunes App Store's ARPU. However, we found that for Tiny Village this number is much higher. Google Play ARPU is 65% of iTunes ARPU, and if you only look at smartphones (removing iPads and tablets) that number increases to 82%.

We also see that Average Revenue Per Paying User (ARPPU) for Google Play and iTunes is about the same. The key differentiating factor between the two stores is the percentage of people who pay — but as more and more Android users begin entering their credit card information for the first time, this percentage difference is going to shrink.

Amazon is a gold mine.

Flurry reported that Amazon ARPU is 89% of iTunes ARPU. However, we found that Amazon ARPU is almost twice that of iTunes ARPU, and if you compare Kindle vs iPad, Kindle ARPU outperforms iPad ARPU by 43%. And now that Amazon allows developers to sell IAP packages above $20, we expect Amazon ARPU to increase even more.

Why do most see poor results on Android?

We were once in the same situation that most developers find themselves in: 80-90% of our time and resource was focused on iOS leaving little for Android, our games worked perfectly on iOS but crashed on Android, and our Android version lacked many of the features found on iOS. Furthermore, with the complexity of Android's device fragmentation, we needed to be spending even more time on our Android version than our iOS version in order to maintain the same game quality and performance, which we clearly were not doing.

As a result, we saw a huge revenue difference between the two platforms (similar to the numbers Flurry reported) and we realized that it would be almost impossible to give both platforms equal and adequate attention without a cross-platform engine. Finally about a year ago, we decided to take the Android pledge. We built Griffin and made Android a first-class citizen-- and now, it's starting to pay off.

*** Addendum, added 5/1/2012:

We’ve received comments stating that since Amazon’s App Store is currently only available to U.S. consumers and our iTunes and Google Play numbers include international markets with lower ARPU, our data must be skewed...

In response to this, we went back to our data and segmented ARPU by country. What happened when we looked at U.S.-only ARPU as opposed to worldwide ARPU across the three App Stores? Our overall results were the same. iTunes and Google Play ARPU did increase a bit, but they both still trail Amazon’s significantly.

Two reasons as to why our results didn’t change:

• There are international markets with higher ARPU than the U.S. which help to counteract lower ARPU markets
• A large percentage of our players are U.S.-based

It’s also important to note that Amazon’s ARPU should increase even more given that Amazon now allows developers to sell IAP over $20.

12.8.2011

iOS first or Android first? With Griffin, TinyCo no longer has to choose.

Posted by Jennifer Lu, Director of Business Development

Today we’re unveiling Griffin, our landmark development engine that allows us to develop simultaneously for iOS and Android! To see it in action, check out our first game developed on Griffin: Tiny Village, now available with both an Android version and an iOS version.

Why we decided to build Griffin

iOS and Android are both exploding. Historically, iOS has been the primary mobile game market, but Android has also been growing rapidly and quickly catching up. Android now has over a billion downloads per month!. Like many other game developers, we initially developed on iOS, then ported our games to Android. This really wasn’t an efficient way of doing things since we needed twice as many engineers, twice the development time, and the Android version would always lag behind the iOS version. We realized there must be a better way. Last April, we began developing an engine that would allow us to write code once, and then deploy and make content updates on both platforms simultaneously. We’ve been working on Griffin for months, and we're excited to announce it today!

Awesome Griffin features

• It runs natively, so you can see native performance on both iOS and Android.
• It’s written in C++, so game developers from other platforms will know how to use it.
• It’s customized to develop mobile social games. It includes social gaming features like goals, isometric environment, etc.
• Fragmentation, shmagmentation! Games created in Griffin look beautiful on all Android and iOS phone and tablet devices. Griffin automatically adjusts itself to unique screen aspect ratios and resolutions.

Griffin also has...

• Analytics tracking built in to automatically push data to Vertica, allowing us to visualize in Tableau.
• Our "TinyContent" system to push new virtual items to users in real-time.
• Social features for players to add Facebook friends, visit their friends' games, and interact with each other.
• Urban Airship-like push notifications.
• An interface builder to auto scale to multiple screen sizes and aspect ratios automatically.
• Single path to feature development.
• Designed such that platform support is an abstract layer that the game engine interfaces with behind the scenes.
• This means game developers don’t need to think about file systems, network connectivity, platform features (email, SMS), etc. They just call a Griffin method, and it takes care of the dirty work.
• Tier 1 tool chain.
• Designers and artists work best when using their preferred tools. There is no need to use a clunky Interface Builder, where subtleties of design can be lost in translation or during the handoff from an artist to a UI engineer. We can go straight from Photoshop to the game.

5.24.2011

Calling All Mobile Game Developers-- Apply for our $5 Million TinyFund!

Posted by Jennifer Lu, Director of Business Development

Here at TinyCo, not only do we love making awesome games but we also love seeing other passionate and talented developers do the same. We’re thrilled to announce the launch of the TinyFund -- a $5 millon fund to help promising iOS and Android developers bring hits to market.

Selected candidates will receive:

• Up to $500K per title, as well as marketing, development and business support
• Access to TinyCo’s large and rapidly growing user base-- within a year, we’ve launched 5 top grossing games that have all reached the Top 10 Free Games on the App Store and accumulated +20 million downloads!

“There are over 600,000 iOS and Android apps. We see it as our mission to help quality games rocket to the top of the charts.” -- Suli Ali (CEO)

Excited? Apply here!

2.25.2011

TinyCo Gets a Not So Tiny Investment

Posted by Suli Ali, CEO/Founder

$18M Series A From Andreessen Horowitz

You may have noticed the new look we’re sporting at TinyCo.com -- the refresh coincides with a not so tiny investment.

We’ve just raised $18 million in Series A funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz and joined by Ron Conway, Keith Rabois, and a handful of other angels. Marc Andreessen will join our board of directors. With the backing of these Silicon Valley legends, we’re intent on building TinyCo into a mobile gaming force. What will we do with the money? Grow our team, grow our portfolio of games, and make them all more riveting to come back to again and again.

More Games, More Fun

Thanks to all of you, Tiny Chef and Tap Resort Party have been downloaded by over 10 million iPhone users to date and are consistently among the top-grossing games in the App Store. In addition to keeping these games fresh through feature updates and new daily in-game content, we’re in the midst of developing several cool new titles and we hope to share more with you soon. Stay tuned!

Hiring Great People With Big Dreams

TinyCo is building a world-class game development and engineering organization. Already 37 strong, our team includes industry veterans from Playdom, Electronic Arts, Amazon, Microsoft, and other technology powerhouses, and we’re always looking for motivated game hounds with big dreams to join the TinyCo adventure. We’re looking for awesome engineers, game designers, producers, QA testers, and more. Fit the bill? Visit our Jobs page for more information.