Interview

Kontagent: Our update will help devs track lifetime value and maintain ROI

There's more to success than acquisition

Kontagent: Our update will help devs track lifetime value and maintain ROI
During GDC this year, mobile consumer intelligence outfit Kontagent announced that it was adding two new features to its kSuite platform – Cohort Explore and Revenue Analysis.

The additions were billed by Kontagent as a way for developers to "interpret the characteristics and behaviour of their most valuable social and mobile customers."

To find out exactly what this means, and how developers will be able to put kSuite's new features to use, we spoke to Kontagent's chief science officer, Josh Williams.

Pocket Gamer: Could you introduce us to the features you've added to the kSuite platform, and explain how they will help mobile game devs/publishers?

Josh Williams: The first-time user experience is crucial for mobile game developers and publishers to understand engagement and retention.

Cohort analysis, as a methodology for uncovering behaviour patterns post-install, is the crux of how developers and publishers can understand those first-time user experiences.

So Kontagent has released two new features designed around cohort analysis to help uncover these behaviours.

Cohort Explorer provides a discovery engine to surface top performing cohorts of users based on revenue, engagement or other metrics.

Revenue Analysis, meanwhile, was designed around a single - and vitally important - use case for cohort analysis, which is understanding customer lifetime value.

Could you give an example of how the unique capabilities of these tools will enable devs/pubs to optimise their games?

Customer lifetime value is one of the most powerful tools for a developer or publisher.

Starting from the point of install, devs/pubs can track revenue, sessions and other engagement metrics cumulatively to understand their ROI.

If they spend $5 to acquire a customer who only generated $4 over their lifetime with a game, then they've lost money.

The new Revenue Analysis feature in Kontagent focuses on this exact use case to make it easy for devs and publishers to track LTV and immediately diagnose whether they’re successful in recouping costs, generating long-term revenue and maintaining their ROI.

Your press release for this announcement decried the "alarming trend in app marketing" in which companies prioritise user acquisition over LTV. Are you concerned that this practice is particularly widespread and harmful to the industry?

A lot of developers and publishers are purely focused on attracting customers to their games - acquisition is extremely important to the success of any business.

However, if companies are only focused on acquisition, therein lies the problem.

Once a customer is acquired, what is he or she doing? Are they staying engaged? What is the one-day, three-day or seven-day retention? Traditionally, it’s more expensive to acquire new customers than it is to keep the ones you already have.

Understanding those behaviours beyond the initial installation is crucial to the long term health of a business; hence, the value of the tools Kontagent has built around cohort analysis to make it easy for publishers/developers to track these post-install behaviours.

How does pricing work for the kSuite platform?

The kSuite platform is priced based on monthly active users or by the number of applications.

The platform is designed to scale with customers as they grow with unlimited data storage.
Thanks to Josh for his time.For more information on Kontagent and the kSuite platform, take a look at the company's website.

Staff Writer

PocketGamer.biz's news editor 2012-2013