Licensing, ASO & Ad Monetization with David Cremades

coming up today's guest is the CMO at from the bench a company that has over 60 million downloads and hundreds of thousands of daily active users you're about to discover how to get licenses from the biggest sports leagues why midsize influencers are the most effective and lastly how to optimize your ads for maximum revenue all that and so much more gives you the truth you

need for end-to-end app analysis not just the macro level stuff but the micro details you can identify dissect and leverage data trends just go to a just calm slash app masters app radar helps you accelerate your mobile growth through their simple ASO platform and they set up optimized Apple search ads to help you scale up your user acquisition check them out at a parade are.com what is up app nation it is thief P Young founder of at masters calm this is the podcast YouTube channel and the agency that's gonna really help you growth hack your downloads because I talked some awesome people in the app space to really learn strategies from them and then hopefully we can all use it together to grow our businesses and today I've got a phenomenal guess all the way in Spain he stayed up early dinner just for us his name is David Crowe Mahdi's and he is the CMO at from the bench check them out up from the bench games.com they've

got licenses with the NFL they got millions upon millions of downloads and hundreds of thousands of daily active users so I can't wait to talk about influencer marketing licensing and is so and and monetization with David but without further ado David welcome to the show thank you very much for having me here in the show I have been learning for a lot time from your pod cuts Thanks it's to pleasure to to be here with you David this is what this is so amazing to me is that you know you don't know who's listening and then when I you know you and I exchange emails like heck yeah like come home like I can't believe you're in the audience you know like it's really cool so thank you for listening I I really appreciate it no no I it is absolutely true I have listened a lot of podcast from you oh that's great all right David so enough about me well I love talking about me as my wife let's talk about you like let's talk about the

company that you started before this can you tell me a little bit about that because I'm interested as somebody who runs an agency like how do you make that shift to more of a product company it was big because one of the founders of that agency we we used to code email ecommerce sites in that agency and one of the founders created a a manager game just for for him and his friends and that product it was without any kind of design it was a mess but the mechanics of the other game was really good and it started to grow a lot of people from a Spain started to to claim to to play that game and they decided to include that game in the agency and because we have a lot of developers designers and and so on so we created a big product maybe the product started to work very well we have thousands of players at that time it was 2005 so it was not mobile at that time and the the product grew so much that we decided to create a

different company just for gaming because it didn't have it even make make just sense to have ecommerce in the same company their game in that it there are totally different things so with that game we created from the vents in 2008 and yeah that's the story of from the vents I love it is it sort of like hey would this game in this other company from the games is making so much revenue that sort of you know like people who end up leaving their jobs right like oh I'm making this much money on my side income so now I'm gonna really focus on this new company like so I guess the question is David like how do you know when to actually focus on this brand new company and put all your energy there as you said the thing that makes us to do the new company to create a new company was because we were generating Remini with that game and it was the the it was not clear for the agency why the agency was successful

because of the games because of because of the e-commerce so we decided to sleep the the revenue and the easier the easiest waste way to do to do this was to create a new company that's awesome so let's talk about something that's working for you today I love starting off the podcast interviews with this topic now you said once your idea that's working for you today is ASO and then using the official license so sorry I was saying like well what's a strategy that's working for you today okay okay we started working with with official licenses because at that time we didn't have enough money to do to run marketing campaigns so we thought at that time that it was a good idea to go with official license because going with them means to have organic downloads and nowadays it's something that it still works so you release again with the NFL license and you have downloads that's that's true and in the end you are

paying for marketing but in a different way paying for the license so this is one thing that it still works and now we are quite focused on Appstore TV station as you say because a the CPI is our it's day more expensive so it's not easy to run profitable campaigns you use acquisition campaigns so it's very very important for us to grow our gun in downloads and we are it working very hard in the App Store to be set inside of the company these I want to talk about licensing definitely get into more the App Store optimization part so when you're talking about licensing it's like the NFL you know FC Barcelona Liverpool FC so you have some major major like brands that you've license it is it wasn't it scary first because I have to imagine these are very expensive licenses prints on the license and on the time because they are changing their strategy so for instance we have been working with Real Madrid for the it was

our first customer our first partner it's not a customer we released the Real Madrid fantasy minor in 2009 so we have been working with them for 10 years and we are working with them with a revenue share so the share is quite high because if 50 percent yeah but at least you don't have to pay a license it is just it depends on the revenues you are getting from the game working with licenses such as NFL or MBA is more expensive but the revenues is lower and you have to do your market research before signing the agreement because sometimes they are asking for more than it deserves and sometimes sometimes it is first so it needs to to spend some time doing a market research yeah I see are like for the beginner out there who is kind of like hey I want to sort of figure out this licensing agreement to Israel you know like a website that you would point into as a good resource or where to find people to get a license it

was quite easy to do so because as I have told you we started working with Real Madrid so it was like a very easy to get contents through linking because if you are working with Real Madrid it's like okay if de la Madrid is doing so we trust you and we think that we can work together and at first we work with many many different football clubs we got up to 30 or 40 don't remember the figure a official licences before going to the NBA and going to the NBA having so many Fissel licenses from from the soccer world but in the end there they were very important it was it was not easy but it was possible because at that time NBA was working only with 2k EA Sports and and asked so it's not easy for a company from Spain from Alicante that it is a small city in the southeast parts of Spain to work with the NBA and it it happens the same with the NFL NFL has only two games madam an NFL manager so it's it's it's not easy but it is

possible having a background full of experience with licenses so let me ask you this you said it David and obviously I don't want you to give away too many trade secrets but like at the same time you said hey it's it's harder for somebody in Spain to try to get an NFL license so how are you able to manage to do that to be honest we have the license of the NFL because they got in contact with us that's ugly yeah and they say to us okay we want a game like NBA manager but with our license so in this case it was really really easy what about the ingredient that you're in the NBA we don't have the license of the NBA right now we have been working with them for five years but I don't know if you are familiar of how they sport associations working in the US but the most of them have have two different associations and one is the that the one that manages the rights of the teams for for instance

with in FL with American football is the NFL manatees manages the rights of the teams and the NFLPA it is player association right money is the rights of the players and to develop to release a game like our game you need to agree with both of them so did you will spend it twice of the time and probably the choice of the of the money and the NBA was the only one that with only one license he had all the rights until last season that they they split the Association to two and they they they now have their NBA PA and with the MBA was easy to renew the agreement but with the anyway NBA PA that it was a new Association with low resources it was not possible they they told us that they wanted to spend one year without any kind of Licensing they they need time they needed some time to do everything so we are we're planning to get in contact with them for the visa promise ISM okay now with the Real

Madrid you said hey LinkedIn works great you can just look up people so I literally put on LinkedIn Real Madrid and I found somebody Rafael from head of digital are those was that we should be looking for if we're trying to get licensing agreement I did try to put licensing to the search result research result was it so good yeah yeah yeah the problem is that government we this is not a common case I mean the the most of the football clubs they have very very few people working the detail department so you want find every time a people a person that it is for the eat a licensing or something like that so sometimes it's not so easy to find the right people to approach because maybe there are only three or four people in the whole marketing department so and you don't know who is in charge of the mobile use face and the most of the times none of them is is in charge of that part it's not easy that I do know that you

know you obviously there's a better way to just filter with the current company maybe do some like you know where their location at so there's where ease that you can gak linkedin to sort of try to find the right person and that's the best way of doing it the the hack that I got David from somebody else was if you're trying to connect with somebody on LinkedIn and try to do some you know BD the the wait that somebody else did it was if we're a third connection I try to find somebody that's connected to you that I might be a good like second connection and then connect with that person first and then so that you and I become second connections before that not to you so this little LinkedIn tip that I got there it's a good strategy in my case it's I don't usually mean that because when you are in connection with a lot of claps and in the end do join in connection with the people that you do want to so your big time David

your big time hey so next I want to talk about is so what you as somebody who's got millions upon millions of downloads and hundreds of thousands of daily active users what do you focus on is it keywords is it screenshots the app icon I want to know all about how you focus on ASO but before I do I do on the topic of a so I've got a great tool for you guys it is a parade are calm I know a few of you in the audience have told me you've signed up for a parade are so let me know how that's going I use it all the time to track the keyword rankings to look at the traffic data to look at the difficulty to spy on my competitors as well and so with what app radar well you can get unlike other tools out there is they're giving away everything for free so just a caveat you do have to connect unlike the other tools as well you do have to connect your iTunes or Google Play account but once you do that

then you can add your apps in there and then get all the data that you need in terms of keyword volume the giraffe ik difficulty what are your rankings and then it's sort of like a penny - I have a daily email from my apps and some of my clients apps where I see a daily email on the rankings and how well how well we're doing with downloads one of my clients when 10x downloads I'm super excited about that so like we're doing thousands a day now which is really cool but they've had a free plan up to 200 keywords so if you're ready to get started in your indeed app developer or you're just a big developer like David is from the games from the bench go check them out free plan get started for free and then if you need to upgrade you can do that as well but it's a parade are calm let them know you heard on this podcast so I get a little bit of love - not anything monetary I just want the credit they've already paid me but once

again it is a trade are calm I David so on top on the topic of a so like what do you focused on which way to to be focused on everything because the problem with subsidy musicians is that you never know what is going to work and in in good way so we are running experiments on only delhi-based teas i mean we try to have experience in all of our games sometimes is with the icon but the problem with those experiments that you need are designed you need some creatives so if we if we cannot get them at least we are running experiments with descriptions of the Christian so we think that spirits are really important because it's an easy way to increase the number of downloads although it takes time a you don't get the results that you are waiting for but it's it's it's some games always after yeah yeah yeah yeah we are also working in in keywords for sure and for that we try to run our countries are interesting for us and on

iOS with oh especially in Google Play we try to use all the languages for instance this is something that we we try to to do it now in in our games and on on iOS at least four or five languages in all of our games and yes keywords is the the thing that we try to to be focused and we we have some small games in which we drums and experiments strange experiments using some keywords that maybe does not make sense but sometimes you do see surprises you need a results I guess I did you know more than me no I wouldn't say that but yeah I mean I just literally had a call with a client this morning he's like I'm not sure about these keywords I'm like look at the data man let's try it and I think it is the core audience that would want this app so let's let's give a shot you just never know is there a way that you like to experiment with keywords or is it just like you know one of my friend said or

one of my clients actually I was like hey what about this keyword I know it's like not the perfect match but like I think it would be a good one and then he just ran some Apple search ads with an exact match on that keyword and just saw like is it converting and he saw like hey see if it's actually converting well let's let's use it in our organic do you have a way of testing - yes we would run a lot of different tests with with keywords and sometimes as you say you receive more downloads but the the retention of the quality of the users decreases so that it is something that we have achieved sometimes that for instance our games are monitored games they are not simulators like FIFA for instance so but obviously you use some keywords or some screenshots in which the game looks like simulators they are more appealing for users mm-hmm and them the most of the times you get more downloads but

they will be disappointed with the game because in this manner game so you have to be careful what with your strategy because receiving more downloads is not always a bit the best option yeah that's interesting I'm glad you said that because I'm dealing with this with client mine to where we 10x those downloads it's like Steve the retention has gone down I'm like oh I think that's just natural because that's what I thought David so you tell me if I'm wrong because we're ranking really well for some like really great keywords if I'm like I think we have to sell them with the screenshots to let them know what they're getting into and maybe the onboarding to let them know that this is what this app does right like they're probably expecting one thing but then the app isn't fulfilling them so like I feel like with the optimizer screenshots optimizing the description optimizing onboarding so that they know what they're actually

getting into yeah yeah you're totally right but in the end you have to be careful because if you get a lower potential you know that Google place taking that into account when when ranking the apps or of if you are getting worse ratings because in our case for instance we have a lot of people saying that the this app is not a simulator so yeah we know that it is not a simulator but they were right because the screenshots looked like the the game was a simulator so it's gets her to to to say so so from all the experiments that you're running what's been one that really worked really well in our case when would you use a you are able to use football players or NBA players it makes the difference I really make one experiment that we run with Real Madrid because they have a style guide very not not very flexible because we couldn't have a use to the players in the icon and we post a lot to at least to run experiment and we do

with the numbers they decide together if it makes sense to use them or not and but the problem when you're working with licenses is that you you you have to use in for instance in in football it is five players so we we had to use five players in the icon so you can imagine the size of the players it was really small yeah that they experiment it was successfully just one day with the difference of 30% Wow so it was amazing we will run we we do the same change in all countries and the number of downloads increase a lot just for using the the players in the in the daikon and once you have you have done so well we did was to reduce different players depending on the country if you are having Real Madrid in Brazil you will use different country different players that in in France understory or Spain because the players the the fame of the players is not the same no interesting so it's the same team but then like

player swap because you know like depending on the country like this player may be more popular so the front guy because I see the icon the five the five players in the u.s. like you know there's one guy in the front so I guess are you interchanging the main guy a little bit and for making the decision of what players to use we we use Google friends will of course to see the the price of the of the beat so with that tools you can know a what players are more interesting to do to do the icon that's awesome hey baby let me ask you this like have you done any experiments between like portrait and landscape screenshots and which one converts better I'm looking at a bunch of your apps and I know some use portraits some use landscape you have a preference of what's really converts better hi not to be honest we have been using a portrait because we we have been working with an agency called up cave

here in Spain and they they say to us a big we're better but we have changed it recently and we didn't notice any change so I don't know even so we don't have any any data that I can show we do that we with that in mind what about with video has that made any difference for you guys yes and not using video is better you know what that's what people say all the freaking time like that's why I told my clients they can we should we do video I read that you should do video I'm like you know what I've heard both ways sometimes it improves it sometimes it doesn't improve it like I've heard both so I'm like is it really worth it yeah yeah in our cases we we have both case we have experiments that have been successful and other ones that have not be successful but they most of the times we don't video is is there is a winner there you go I love it this is why you know what this is why I love what I do cuz I have

questions for people I don't know the answers to I always talking to people I just ask you guys see this is how you do this you just surround yourself with awesome people alright David so the last thing I want to get into is influencer marketing I know you have this great presentation so I'm not gonna cover everything that you said in the presentation I'm a link it up into the show notes if you just look for influencer marketing and promotion summit you'll fee you'll see David's presentation there but talk to me about a strategy that work and what I really loved about the presentation is you broke down like which ones are the most controllable right like hey if you work with the agency it's a lot less work but it has disadvantage and you really broke down all the different segments of what requires a lot of work what's more effective so tell us from all you that experience like what works really well

with influence and marketing it depends on your strategy and your budget working with it with analysis is going to be quicker and but it's going to be much more expensive they usually work with big influencers so it depends on their budget but for for from our spins where do we meet a midsize influencers it's really worth because AG they are more involved with the with the campaign because they usually are trying to increase their audience they are trying to do many sponsorships so from it our spins the mid-size is the most the most cost-effective influences and for that we usually use platforms such as frame it for instance anything because I thought they looked like an agency like hey you know you give us a budget we're gonna find the mid-size influencers and then run the budget with you am I wrong in that save me this marketplace it's not anything you see it's not a place which you you

said I have this campaign to to run and looking for influencers from this country and this kind of topic of of the channel and you receive offers and afterwards you can negotiate with them and you have to negotiate always because you will get better a better price and better conditions and but working with with analysis always with it so it's also good we our best campaign was with an AUC was with a an influencer called delantero zero nine from from Spain or but they his audiences from Argentina Mexico Spain this old Spanish country's language countries and with the cost of the the campaign was around two thousand dollars and we were in ranking number two in Mexico number one in Argentina number ten in Spain just one one one video so if you calculate the CPI is really really low and we are getting downloads from that campaign that happened a more than a year ago is right now so because the it is one thing

what would think from YouTube because they the videos are live so you kind of still watch them and and download the game we didn't recommend YouTube out of all the different platforms yeah yeah for for gaming yeah for like longevity to like it's it's always out there like it's continually like you said it continues drive we're like an Instagram story or Instagram post is kind of like what's the next thing right nobody's really scrolling down but YouTube you have the like the SEO and that you know the awareness to especially for gamers I think that due to if you say is the source that feeds the the audience perfectly because do you have time to explain the game and maybe you do you're not going to spend more than the meaning talking about the game and you have the time on day and they it's it's pretty good for forgetting it David when you said midsize influencers like what range are you talking about in terms of

follower count I would say 100 K one integrate to like a million or one in Turkey to definitely yeah that's it from one to two a million two million okay yeah that's okay and with Fabian I know that I think they changed their model a little bit sad past clients use them but a few years ago I don't even know they walk bought out by YouTube is that Fame babe by YouTube but like it's sort of like up work but for influence or marketing where you post a proposal people like start bidding on it I am sending you proposals and then once you pick somebody if they take a 10% look like from what I can tell on the website yeah I think yeah it works like that yeah it's very cool David anything we miss that you wanna make sure we cover no I do we do you want to talk about ad monetization and thing oh yeah yeah yeah maybe with the ad monetization side of things what's working well I for us until we started

to be focusing on that part two years ago until that moment we we used AdMob or I don't remember the admin that mediation but it was like nobody in the company was optimizing that part so we get we got some revenue but we didn't know if it was good it was it was it was improvable but we've started to be focus on that and we have increased a lot that part so and the good thing is that now developers are engaged with this part and they are part of the because you know that the proper developers usually hate to include SDKs to show different ads so but now that they are aware that the revenue of the company is increasing just for changing the the UH network that we are using they are more involved in this part and they are happy to do those changes and what's working I think that all the companies are really focused on recorded videos we are using Napa deal for mediation there are a lot a bunch of companies out there it's of

its company will tell you that it's mediation is the best but you have to to try different companies to make your own decision and one tip that one that we usually I would say it's to grin AVT for everything we try to run a bee test for instance to to to know how many interstitials to show for for its user or the capping for interest for recorded videos daily cap in because it is good that the users use them but it is not if they are able to farm coins just for watching videos so this is the typical things that you have to test to to get the most of them what's a good balance with the video because you have a client a past client there in Spain too there in Seville but yeah her games yeah I love their game bricks blocks blast I'm by far David the furthest I know for a fact so I I've been talking to Kiki like the CEO I'm like yeah you know like I want to work with you guys because I love this

game but like I feel like there's so many mistakes as they're making from an ad monetization standpoint I know the game in and out right like I'm like this would be a great spot I'll watch a video for you guys but I feel like they're failing in that regard but you said something very interesting what the video is working really well but there's a cap so how often do you like to show for one user one session how often do you like to show a video ad we usually have videos in that's not depend on the number of videos battle on the placement so I see so we we use capping for pepper placement if you are for instance researching your energy energy using a video maybe it depends on the time but maybe you can do this twice a day but you can watch after we return your energy you you can watch another video to I don't know to get a few booster before you for your team and the capping for the booster is just one third

so you can watch a lot of videos but in different placements I see I see so you don't want to have reward video everywhere but nice subtle placements here and there that say like British bucks last day this and they finally do this David like when it first launches like why do you not have because they yeah five lies then what you run out I'm like why don't just let me watch a video for another life like come on no brainer come on please you know I mean so like it drives me nuts hey let me ask you this though all are on this topic there's a spot where you know a lot of games do this where you win something and then you get some coins right and then with bricks box blast I don't put it I don't I don't want to just put him on blast but essentially I win some coins like hey do you want to like triple or like ten times your coin yeah by pain $1.99 I always say no but if you're like let me double my coins and

by watching a video guess how many times I would say yes right David like hello like is that a good strategy or is that like hey you're doing too many reward videos like that it's a it is it with a strategy in the end you have to think that the most of the companies are having a commercial rate of let's say 2 or 3% or 4% so you have 95% of the of the users that are not paying and you have to you need to monetize them so yeah I feel that so monetizing them with with videos to see with the strategy and you have to to be sure that a if it is a it is a the perfect moment to do so for instance we we are having we're doing what you have mentioned in the daily price you can double the daily price and on a daily basis just watching a movie yeah I I did a video about video ad monetization optimization - and it was just about like all the different places one of the games I liked playing was fun run 3 then they had that same thing

where it's a daily prize right people it rewards them to coming back daily and then gives me a little prize that's sort of random and then I'm able to double that just about watching a video and every single time David I watched that video it's like a no-brainer in bricks box glass has that same feature there's daily rewards but it's like hello just you know I feel like there's so many holes in this game that I'm like I wish I could just hold of this like I can make this game into a money-making machine because I love it so much everything the goal of the ad monetization team has to be to a to engage the the more juicers the better a at least to watch one video so for that reason did you do you need to use different placement because depending on the users you know that they it's its user used uses the gaming in different way so you you have to have different placements because it is better for for

the forgetting more revenue for having more users in gates that less users watching more videos so that's the reason why we are trying to to use a lot of different placements I loved a anything else you want to cover from anything else we have different things I love it such a great conversation thank you David I want to thank you for having dinner early and then secondly sharing all this great feedback as well all right guys before we hit the finish big finish I do want to thank my last sponsor a just calm look they are the all-in-one solution that's gonna help you track if your downloads are good David said it to look not all downloads are the same just getting more it's not always good and it's might hurt your future downloads because you're getting very bad retention and Google play's is starting to put that as one of the factors maybe not so much on iOS but definitely on Google Play and so what do

you what do where the users coming from what are they doing within the app that's what it just allows you to really see it allows you to give you all the data that you need to make smarter decisions whether it's influence or marketing whether it's YouTube what sir whether it's Instagram what's not it's not just about a Louis CPI it's about the best users from that campaign so really think about who's gonna be the best subscribers the best users the best customers from your campaign and that's what it just allows you to do see why so many big brands are using them just by going to a just calm now wait for it / app masters once again I just calm / app masters David this has been absolutely amazing let's go to the Big Finish give us one app we definitely have to check out okay this is good question I think that the app that I use the most is is like but this is just for for work and else besides that

maybe I love headspace I love you you know that if you know it hmm so I love it yeah III I I haven't I haven't made mid date but I tried and I loved it and I mean I love it I'm a big fan of meditation so any app that you use the meditate you should definitely try to meditate it's helped me in so many areas of my life David what's a lesson that took you the longest to learn I don't know I would say that when you are I don't know you are in the industry you receive a lot of and you see a lot of different opportunities in which you can take part and you need to think very well in which it is good to to take part and because it is not all it is not the goal of good I don't know that how do you say that but you have to think very well very carefully the opportunities that you receive big because when you're famous in the industry and you receive a lot of opportunities the females it takes time

and it is not easy and they're not successful the most of the time so you have to be focus on what it gets the revenue for there for the company and spend some time to try different things but before he's on the things that gets the most of the revenue saying you know is sometimes more important than saying yes it's always great up yeah yeah is there any way that you've decided like huh this is a good opportunity I could appertaining the more just like a gut an experience fewer have you figured out a formula to come up with a way to figure out yes or no oh I it is not a way but I don't know what to say but for instance we receive an interesting of him from China from a company from China to develop a manager game from for Ford a Chinese Super League and it looks it looked very very exciting the project we spent a lot of time working on that and they became a big didn't trip they didn't release the game so in the end we

spent a lot of time and it was a waste of time I see I see David thank you so much for those who are listening right now go check out from the bench Gamescom amazing amazing titles and just search for any of their games on the App Store NFL manager 2019 real madrid barcelona fantasy manager they are the kings and queens of fantasy manager teams david if the audience wants to follow up with you or anywhere else like you want to send the audience anywhere else now just try our games and give us your your feedback awesome and watch a lot of rewarded videos they've done amazing job at yeah yeah yeah they can do in app purchases as well David thank you so much for coming on to the show I thank you for listening I love it and let's talk some more man any time you want to talk shop I love this conversation so if we can do every quarter every six months just come on talk shop I love to have you back

anytime in okay perfect happy do the to do that thank you guys for listening and I'll see you on the next chat thanks for listening to the app masters podcast for show notes and amazing app marketing content check out app masters Co