Lisa Marino on RockYou’s Publishing Partners, Ad Platform Growth in Gourmet Ranch And Zoo World July 20th, 2011
The last time we spoke with RockYou’s Lisa Marino, she’d just been made CEO after a wild ride from chief revenue officer to chief operating officer in a two-year period. Now that some of the dust has settled and RockYou is releasing games again after an empty 2010, Marino is ready to reveal the developer’s new role as a social games publisher and ad platform.
前回、RockYouのLisa Marino女史と話した時、彼女は最高売上責任者から最高執行責任者へと実に2年の間に騒然とした異動を経てちょうどCEOの職務についたばかりであった。現在ではそれらの塵払いは済ませており、RockYouは空虚な2010年を超え、またゲームのリリースを目論んでいる。Marino女史は、開発者のソーシャルゲームの広告会社として、そして広告プラットフォームとしての新たな役割を明らかにする準備はできているようだ。
In a way, neither role is “new” to RockYou. In 2011, the company announced a publishing deal with John Romero and Brenda Brathwaite’s Loot Drop studio for its new game, Cloudforest Expedition. The company’s also been selling ad inventory as far back as 2008 when RockYou didn’t really have a games portfolio. Now, however, the company’s different components have gelled in a way that allows RockYou to formalize a publishing partners program that leverages its ad platform and social games experience gleaned from Zoo World, Zoo World 2, Gourmet Ranch, and now Cloudforest Expedition.
Inside Social Games: So how’s that CEO position working out for you?
Lisa Marino: Well RockYou is never short of surprises, but things in general are going quite well. We’ve got four game launches in about four and a half months, so we’re busy little bees. In addition, we’re in the process of launching our ad platform and working on case studies with Gourmet Ranch. Those will be done in the next six weeks or so. At that point, not only will it be integrated in all of our games, but we’ll be able to work with third-party developers to help them monetize better through brand advertising.
Lisa Marino女史：そうですね、RockYouとサプライズは切っても切れない仲だけれども、全体的にはすごく順調にいっていると言えます。4ヵ月半のうちに4つものゲームを発売するものだから本当に働き蜂のように忙しいです。加えて、広告プラットフォームのリリースもあればGourmet Ranchとの事例調査にも取り掛かっていますし。これらは今後6週間ほどで完了させたいと思っています。完了時には、全てのゲームに融合するだけではなく、第3者開発企業と協力支援し、ブランド広告を通してより良くマネタイズ化していくことも可能と考えています。
ISG: Gourmet Ranch has been going through a lot of changes lately. We’ve seen it spike on our growth charts against after falling off sometime after the royal wedding campaign ended. Can you talk about what’s going on there?
Marino: We were marketing it pretty aggressively through June, took a bit of a break to work on a couple of key new feature launches that we had — one of them will be out on Thursday; it’s exotic animals. We tested a variety of new features and functionality in the last 30 days and what came out of that was some really interesting user engagement and a really stable player base. So now we’re actively marketing the game again as of about three weeks ago.
ISG: And the ad platform you mentioned? How has that evolved into something you plan to integrate with Gourmet Ranch?
Marino: [Brand sales] have been core to our DNA for a very long time. Previously we were selling inventory on our reach apps — but it wasn’t until we started getting game inventory with Zoo World and now Gourmet Ranch and Zoo World 2 that the ad platform was able to make its full migration from reach apps to core gaming executions.
platform and we’re integrating them into our games. We definitely still have Deal of the Day — Facebook is rolling that out with TrialPay, it did such a good job on tests we’re doing with them. So we’ve got that unit, we’ve got standard display… But the difference between [then] and now is, when you think about display in-game, it’s not just an ad for Toyota, it’s not just an ad for psychic reader network. It’s very much a strategy around how we cross-sell, how we promote and merchandise in our game.
So we’re just finishing up a lot of new products for that
Let’s say Gourmet Ranch was running their Beach Party [campaign] — which ended last week — we could do a lot of merchandising through the display units with the ad platform in addition to serving brand impressions, in addition to doing cross-sell. [There are] all sorts of things we can build channels around and communicate to our user base. What we’re testing right now is how to optimize those experiences. So, is there a difference between paying users and non-paying users?
Do certain types of placements respond better than others? Like, if I show an impression for merchandising through virtual goods five times and they don’t click on it, maybe I shouldn’t show it again, maybe I should show a Toyota ad, maybe I should show them a cross-sell opportunity? We’re going through all that optimization right now, but it’s going to be a really powerful ad platform. We’ve seen in Zoo World, in each space, an [average revenue per user] of 25%. When you’re talking about the [lifetime value] of a user that’s very substantial.
We haven’t put the platform in Zoo World 2 yet. That’ll definitely be by the end of August. Right now, Gourmet Ranch is going to be the guinea pig, for lack of a better term. We’re going to go through the pain with them to get it right.
ISG: Will the platform also be in Cloudforest Expedition when it launches this summer? How did you work that in as part of the publishing deal with Loot Drop?
