The Last Essential Points and the Summary.

2016/10/28

Daisuke Maeda
Mobile Unit Manager, Global Business Division, Adways

This is the last article about Japanese mobile market lasted from first article (“Top grossing apps in the Galapagos Island- Japan.”) till third article (“Optimal Creatives for Japan Mobile Market”). I will discuss the last important point for non-Japanese companies to expand in Japanese market and also summarize the previous articles.

1.Timing of promotion consulting　
Some of the top selling apps introduced in the first blog post climbed up the grossing ranking after release by making many adjustments, however many were before the pre-register promotion became prevalent. Recently, as pre-registration promotion is more cost-effective, it has become a trend to aim for 100,000 pre-registrants or more.

Image 1. Comparative examples of paid user rate results in different campaigns.

Source: Adways

It is recommended to start consulting about promotion when there is some time to make changes on the SS or the App size. As the pre-registration promotion will start one month before the app release, it is better to start consulting 3 months before the release or at least 2 months.

2.The minimum requirements for promotion in Japan.
I have summarized the minimum requirements for promotions in Japanese market for pre-registration phase and after the app release.

Pre-registration Promotions
・Teaser sites
Teaser sites are crucial to maximize the number of pre-registrations.
In Japan, it is popular to register with email address in teaser sites. As for the pre-registration bonus, it is common to upgrade the contents depending on the number of pre-registrations, rather than giving away a serial code for each user.

Image 2. Example of the reward for pre-registration: 6waves “Soul Chronicle”

Source: “Yoyaku Top 10”

Image 3.　Example of reward for pre-registration：Rekoo Interactive Networks Limited
Battle of Three Kingdoms ~draw and thud to battle~

Source: “Yoyaku Top 10”

The average percentage of app downloads from pre-registered users is 30%. For those who pre-registered but did not download the app, retargeting campaign can be performed to switch them to actual users. In order to perform retargeting campaign, it is required to implement the retargeting tags in teaser site and obtain marks.

I will recommend using “One Tag”, if you are not able to implement tags issued from every advertisement menu of retargeting campaign. Once you settled the “One Tag”, it enables to add tags from management screens. Therefore, it is not necessary to edit html, and thus can be done by person in charge of marketing.

Image 4. A mechanism of “One Tag”

Promotion after app release
・Implementation of tracking tools (SDK)
Tracking tools are essential for promoting apps. Measuring advertising effectiveness is the purpose of using tracking tools. Furthermore, it is possible to link the advertising effectiveness and media systematically, therefore, it will enable to optimize the advertisement performance.

When implementing tracking tools, app launch timing is automatically measured, though if you want to measure in-app purchaser any other particular events, then you need to have additional settings at implementation of SDK. I recommend implementing following timings as minimum requirement.
・Completion of additional file download. (Initial app boot)
・Completion of the tutorial.
・Timing when the user joins the first Guild (for games).

If you can find out the timing of active users becomes paying users, it is better to set this point additionally when you are updating apps. Needless to say, measuring In-app purchase rate is obviously necessary for measuring cost effectiveness. There are many medias using events measurement results as decision making factors when optimizing advertisement performance.

To conclude, I will summarize essential points for expanding business into Japanese market from two sides, development and marketing.

Image 5. Summary of essential points of expanding business in Japanese market.

I hope this article will help your business to expand in Japanese market. Please contact Adways anytime you need further advices. (jp_campaign@adways.net)

Optimal Creatives for Japan Mobile Market.

2016/10/24

Daisuke Maeda
Mobile Unit Manager, Global Business Division, Adways

The types of creative can be classified into the following three types, creative in the game, creative for advertisement, and creative of screenshot (“SS”). This time I will talk about creative of SS in app stores.

SS has the most influence on CVR (Conversion rate for install) in app stores. There are 3 elements that should be well considered when making the most effective creatives- font, appeal content and image.

1. Font
How you choose font conveys an image of game contents. The following fonts are some examples that are often used in Japanese games.

image１．Sans-serif (MORISAWA)

Fonts that are often used in many games. Often seen in SS and official web site.

Image 2．New Gothic（MORISAWA）

Orthodox thick Gothic.

Image 3．Ryumin（MORISAWA）

Typical Mincho.

Image 4．Hiragino Mincho（MORISAWA）

Typical Mincho.

Image 5．Kurokane（Fontworks）

Top sales game app, “Puzzle & Dragons” is using this font. Many other games have adopted this Kurokane too.

They are all same Japanese characters, but they give completely different impression. Japanese people are very familiar with those fonts and when we feel weird about design of non-Japanese games, it is often the font that is making unfamiliar look. Also, in order to buy those commercial fonts, there is a case where a business needs to be a registered company in Japan.

2. Appeal content
Appeal content in SS should be developed based on high CVR creatives used for pre-registration promotion. The A/B test of creatives is normally done on adnetwork, rather than SNS, for equal delivery frequency of each creative. In order to examine a real performance of each creative, we do not normally do optimization of CPR during the test. Considering a minimum payment that adnetwork would accept for ad delivery, it is recommended preparing another $3,000 budget in addition to normal promotion budget.

I get asked this question sometimes. “Whether it is possible to optimize SS after app release?” The answer is (unfortunately) “No”. There are two reasons for this. First, to change SS in app store, it is necessary to re-apply from developer’s management dashboard. As a result, it is difficult to change SS multiple times in a short period of time. Second, SS size needs to be adjusted to each device that would take many production man-power. Therefore, SS optimization before app release (when you start pre-registration promotion) is essential.

In addition, Japanese have a tendency to like those that are popular. As indicators of app popularity, there are app store ranking and app download number.

When using a download number, it should be at least more than 1 million. If less than 1 million, it is better not showing in SS because many people would not think it is a large number. Just a reminder- when applying to app store, they usually ask for an evidence of the number. So it cannot be possible to use a false download number but if that happens, it would be considered as an “extravagant advertisement” and will be punished by Japanese law.

Here are some examples of SS from app stores. Only a few titles show total download number in SS because it will be necessary to replace the number every time it grows.

Image 6: Monster Strike

(Source: Google Play)

“Dragon Quest Monsters Super Light” and “Puzzles and Dragon” put total download number in app description, not in SS.

Dragon Quest Monsters Super Light
--------------------------------
Congratulations 17 million download breakthrough!
From "Dragon Quest Monsters" series, smartphones RPG is free of charge!
--------------------------------
(Source:Google Play)

Puzzles and Dragon
--------------------------------
Thanks to you, 4th anniversary and 42 million total download breakthrough!
Cooperative play dungeon comes on “Puzzles and Dragon”.
Let’s challenge various dungeon by cooperating with friends!
--------------------------------
(Source:Google Play)

Users would recognize the popularity of app by looking at app store ranking and download number but credibility of the information still need to be proved. In order to give credence, it is preferable to introduce media related campaign.

Typical media example is TV. If you appeal to users about TV commercials, there is a tendency that it would easily boost credibility. Also, advertising effect will increase by putting a sentence such as "TV Commercial On Air" not only in SS or app description, but also in banner creatives.

3. Image
Images depend on SS content. Let me compare two different images: “Game of War” from Machine Zone and “Clash of Kings” from Elex Wireless. They have the same strategy in game system.

Game of War has more Japanese-taste illustrations, and it is likely to have higher CVR. On the other hand, “Clash of Kings” uses actual character of the game in SS.

At a glance, “Game of War” seems more effective.
However, this character is quite different from actual world view of the game. Although SS is important, if you mislead users by this kind of creative that is not matching with the real game content, there is a possibility that retention rate would become extremely poor. Furthermore, it would make users over expected and how they look at game contents would become more severe. As a result, it would detract the effectiveness of advertisement rather than SS using the actual character. In this case, “Clash of Kings” had more effectiveness than “Game of War” as shown in sales ranking (However, in fact, effectiveness would be determined by several other factors such as budget and content of the game). In addition, in terms of ROAS, “Clash of Kings” had a greater ROAS than “Game of War”.

Image 7. SSs of Game of War

(Source: Google Play)

Image 8. SSs of Clash of Kings

(Source: Google Play)

To optimize SS, we recommend having A/B test done before app release by using a platform such as our Yoyaku Top10 From our past performance data, CVR does increase by twice by optimizing SS. This directly makes an impact on promotion cost and so does total advertising effect. If the SS is not optimized, this will become a fatal problem. Performing A/B test of SS is highly recommended before app release.

https://yoyaku-top10.jp

Road to Success in the Galapagos Island- Japan.　

2016/10/19

Daisuke Maeda
Mobile Unit Manager, Global Business Division, Adways

How many non-Japanese games have found success in Japanese market, really?
To answer this question, I checked a number of foreign companies in top 100 AppStore and GooglePlay sales as below (read my last article for more).

Japan has a massive opportunity for mobile games but is a very unique market of which Japanese companies account for almost 90% of the overall revenue. Foreign companies are still finding it hard to find the way to survive in Japanese market.
In today’s article, I would like to highlight the foreign companies which account for 10% of the market share and analyze how they have made a success.

Success factor 1. App Size

In Japan, we barely use wireless network except when at home. Even at work place (except at those internet companies like us), wireless network is not normally available.

Private use of free wireless network in public and tourist facilities.

(Source: 2014 Joho Tsushin Hakusho -White papers on Telecommunications-)

One of the biggest reasons why public wireless network is not so popular in Japan is the personal authentication systems that network providers are required to implement. According to the wireless network business guidelines provided by Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication of Japan, those network providers are subject to disclose identification information of the user upon occurrence of any cyber crimes using free public network. Thus, in order to prepare wireless network environment in Japan, providers would take money to adopt the authentication system, while the users would take time to authenticate themselves. This has made a slow growth of supply and demand in Japanese free wireless network environment.

Moreover, in Japan, most of smartphone users make a contract with mobile carriers and subscribe for 1 or 2-year plan. They will usually pay the fixed cost of the phone each month and then the amount of calling and using data for on top of that. The internet connection speed provided by mobile carrier is powerful enough for daily use, so wireless network will not be necessary unless they encounter a moment that would consume a large amount of mobile data such as downloading a big size app and watching 2-hours movie.

Mobile Data Subscription: Fixed vs Pay-as-you-go Model

(Source: 2014 Joho Tsushin Hakusho -White papers on Telecommunications-)

Then, how often people use wireless network at home? Even though usage frequency is different, the graph below shows about 70% of Japanese users answered yes for use of wireless network at home.

Use of free wireless network at home

Having considered this slow spread of free wireless network in public, it is a bit reckless to launch an over 100MB app. Now, let’s take a look at how much real loss would be generated in app promotion results.

Reward promotion results of 2 different apps on GooglePlay
(Title A: Less than 100MB, Title B: More than 100MB)

This is a comparison of reward promotion results of 2 different apps on GooglePlay. The size of title A is less than 100MB while that of B is more than 100MB. By the way, title B is the foreign game app ranked in Top 100 GooglePlay sales in July 2016 (Check my last article for more). In order to have a good ranking for your app, a certain amount of downloads and traffic in a short time are necessary but that is not all. The cycle of reward promotion, increase in ranking, increase in exposure, increase in organic users, and then increase in ranking is the best way to push your app ranking even higher. Especially number of organic users has an implication for ranking. To be exact, there is also another factor besides this cycle, but I will talk about it some other time.

Looking at the result table, organic per reward made a difference of 250% between 2 apps. This also resulted in ending up the CPI with 250% difference. The app size does matter and bring a difference in any type of promotion results, not only for reward promotion. This should be taken into consideration when you make an app promotion plan.

Suggesting a solution to this size problem, you can make an app smaller than 100MB in the first place and ask users to download an additional file as they make their way in game. In fact, title B put this strategy into practice and made it a success.

Timing of app update is also very important to consider. Those users who have became active users once would not give up updating the app even though a file size is somewhat big because they would not want to waste their time and money spent before this. However, if update requires a download of relatively big file, it is better to avoid the time when users are not at home. This is because, as mentioned earlier, public wireless network is not everywhere in Japan. If they are outside, they would only need to rely on mobile data and this sometimes cause a failure to download. For those Japanese workers living in Tokyo city, the average travel time to work is 60 minutes. Normally they start working at 8 or 9am so the best timing of app update would be around 7 in the morning before they leave for work or after 6pm when they go back home.

Next, I will give you tips for making creatives- the second success factor to win in Japanese market.