AdInMo's Adam Pattison & SuperScale's Ivan Trancik on building better monetisation experiences

Pocket Gamer Connects, the leading international conference series for the global games industry is coming back to London on January 20th and 21st, 2025. 

This must attend event will unite more than 2,750 industry professionals for two days of learning, pitching and networking. Attendees will dive into 20 expertly curated conference tracks exploring the latest trends in mobile, PC, console, web3, AI and beyond. 

Among the incredible line-up of speakers you can hear from AdInMo's Product & Market Development EVP Adam Pattison, alongside SuperScale's founder & CEO Ivan Trancik, who will be exploring monetisation, data and building better experiences for players.

We spoke with both to find out more about their plans for PGC.

PocketGamer.biz: Tell us a little about yourselves and your roles at AdInMo and SuperScale.

Adam Pattison: I head up Product & Market Strategy at AdInMo.  I've extensive experience in digital advertising across all ad formats and it is exciting to build player-first tools & solutions for hybrid monetisation and user acquisition in the games ecosystem to champion better free-to-play player experiences

Ivan Trancik: I founded SuperScale in 2016 to help game developers unlock their full potential through smarter, data-driven strategies. I’m a tech innovator and co-founder of Exponea (which was acquired by Bloomreach in 2021), I continue to drive innovation at SuperScale, empowering game businesses to thrive in an evolving industry.

Our vision for 2025 centers on empowering gaming studios to make faster, more confident decisions using real-time, trustworthy insights. By integrating AI into their analytics, studios can shift from reactive to proactive strategies, enabling more agility and alignment across their teams. Thanks to SuperScale’s unique Ecosystem capabilities we are able to augment.

Through SuperPlatform, we’re equipping game studios with tools to enhance collaboration across executives, growth managers, product owners, and other stakeholders. This is part of a larger ambition to position SuperScale as a comprehensive ecosystem for driving studio-wide innovation and sustainable growth.

What will you be covering at PGC London?

Adam Pattison: Our session focuses how understanding players creates better monetisation experiences for players, developers and advertisers.

Recognising the significant shift that's happened / happening towards hybrid monetisation we'll take a deep dive on topics such as IAP Conversion and Cross Promotion. We'll talk about how immersive in-game ad experiences are not just about ad monetisation and incremental revenue but contribute to improving key LTV metrics.

We'll cover things like capturing player attention effectively for both ads and IAPs and how to identify key moments in-game to optimize the blend of ads and IAPs within the game flow. We'll discuss why a data-driven approach is so important and to think about player joy when building in-game monetisation experiences.

The session includes speakers from developers NOX GAMES and Nimblebit (SuperScale) who are working with AdInMo and will be able to share some of the results they are seeing leveraging in-game placements as part of a hybrid strategy.

Ivan Trancik: In the panel discussion, I’ll be exploring how gaming companies can unlock new opportunities for growth and monetisation by leveraging AI-powered business insights and player data. The focus is on helping decision-makers recommend the most impactful action to drive more growth through both internal and external capabilities.

What’s the most common mistake you see being made in the games sector?

Adam Pattison: When it comes to free-to-play games then the risk is always putting $ before player experience.

Ivan Trancik: The most common mistake I see in the games sector is gaming executives making wrong decisions based on inconsistent data stored across multiple silos - such as product, marketing, and finance. These wrong decisions can range from misallocating marketing budgets and production resources to missing out on growth opportunities, such as adopting generative AI. Additionally, relying on fragmented data often leads to reactive decision-making, rather than adopting a proactive, strategic approach.

What’s the most important key performance indicator (KPI) for you - and why?

Adam Pattison: When we founded AdInMo developers would measure us in incremental revenue to Average Revenue Per Daily Average User (ARPDAU). As solutions evolve Lifetime Value (LTV) is the key KPI because there's value creation across retention, acquisition and monetisation.

If you could give other mobile games companies one piece of advice, what would it be?

Ivan Trancik: Focus on the core business is more essential than ever. Under the current market conditions, mobile game companies have no other choice but to focus on their core product (game) and not reinvent the wheel. It is impossible to manage a game company as a business without a sophisticated data lake, which costs millions of dollars and takes years to develop from scratch.

What is the single biggest challenge facing the mobile games industry today?

Adam Pattison: For free-to-play (F2P) developers, the biggest challenge continues to be an increasingly difficult monetisation environment and it's nor surprising that in a recent industry survey we found 72 percent of developers are implementing hybrid monetisation strategies to tackle this challenge and mitigates risk of team's thinking and designing in silos.

Ivan Trancik: The biggest challenge in the mobile games industry today is data inconsistencies. As generative AI becomes more common, having accurate and consistent data is very important. These inconsistencies make it harder for studios to find and fix business challenges or spot growth opportunities. Without reliable and unified data, it’s difficult to make good decisions, plan budgets, improve monetization, or give players a better experience. This problem is often ignored until it causes serious issues. Mobile gaming companies need to solve this early to grow successfully and stay competitive in a changing market.

What developments do you think have been undervalued by the mobile games industry?

Adam Pattison: Rewarded mechanics offers are both the most over-used and under-valued development in gaming. Once Rewarded Video (RV) was released the industry became addicted to it and now users are spammed with constant offers to watch a 30-60 second unstoppable video every few minutes of gameplay. But effectively using rewards as a mechanic - to influence and encourage desirable user behaviours - has only just begun. The reward can and should go beyond extra game time, and in a gaming environment the mechanism can be far less intrusive and non-intrusive.

What’s your favourite ever mobile game?

Adam Pattison: Boom Beach

Is hypercasual gaming here to stay?

Adam Pattison: Yes. Well hybrid casual!

When not making/selling/playing games, what do you do to relax?

Adam Pattison: On a daily basis cooking and walking my dog while listening to podcasts. My guilty pleasure for completely switching off is painting science fiction miniature figurines.

Ivan Trancik: I enjoy spending as much time as possible outside with my two daughters.

What do you enjoy most about working in the mobile games industry?

Adam Pattison: I'm relatively new to being 'inside' the mobile games industry and can definitely say the people are what makes it the most stand-out sector to work in. Everyone is a genuine expert and passionate about their games and business. Learning from knowledgeable people every day is highly enjoyable.

Ivan Trancik: An exceptional blend of talented and passionate people in the industry. It is an absolute pleasure to work with such individuals.

What was your first mobile phone?

Adam Pattison: Nokia 3310

Ivan Trancik: My first 'dumb' phone was the legendary Nokia 5110, and my first 'smart' phone was the HP iPaq Pocket PC H1910, where I could play some serious dungeon crawlers! :-)

Can people get in touch with you at the event? What sort of people would you like to connect with?

Adam Pattison: Yes - free-to-play publishers and developers.

Ivan Trancik: Yes, feel free to reach out to me at ivan@superscale.com, and let’s explore potential cooperation. If you're interested in a demo of SuperPlatform, please contact james.allinson@superscale.com. 

What is one way attendees can prepare for your discussion?

Adam Pattison: Come with an open mind about ad formats adding value to the player experience not just $.