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BERI LEE: Hello.
Thanks for joining
me today as I talk
about supercharging
discoverability with Stadia.
My name is Beri Lee,
product manager on Stadia.
And I'll be co-presenting with
Shishir Birmiwal, engineer lead
at Stadia.
Supercharged discoverability.
So I want to start with a
quick definition of what
I think discoverability is.
Discoverability is
the degree to which
content can be found in
an information system
by people who would
get value from it.
So what happens when you
can't measure discoverability?
Let's take an example where you
have three users that you're
trying to reach.
And let's say the top
user, the red user,
is the one that would actually
get value from your content.
So let's say you
have two messages--
an airplane-based one,
a roadside-based one--
and you want to understand
which of these two messages
is actually the one that's going
to resonate with that red user.
You also don't even know if
either message is necessary.
Maybe that red user would have
found your content regardless.
So it quickly becomes apparent
that without the ability
to measure the efficacy of
your discoverability efforts,
it's really hard to
know what to do next.
And that's what
this talk is about.
It's about enabling
developers and publishers
to maximize discoverability.
This talk will be
split into two parts.
I'll give a quick overview
and background, the what
and whys of discoverability
and how Stadia helps.
And then the second
part, Shishir
will go over a deep-dive
into how this actually
looks working with Stadia.
So let's start with background.
Earlier, we said
that discoverability
is the degree to which content
can be found in an information
system by people who
would get value from it.
Some of those information
systems are listed here.
For example, search, or digital
print, digital conversations--
these are all places where
users can learn about content.
With all of these options to
get your message out there,
discoverability
should really be easy.
Turns out, there are
challenges, and the challenge
is in three parts.
The first is really
just knowing which
channels work to get to
the users that you want.
So where are those users?
Are they on YouTube?
Are they looking
things up on Search?
And the second is, once
you get the content
into your ecosystems,
how do you even
know how they arrive
there to start with?
How do you know which
channels contain the most
users that you actually want
to experience your content?
And then the last
challenge is, even
you could answer those
first two questions,
being able to do so
in a timely fashion
so that you can
optimize and figure out
which discoverabilities
really work
for your immediate efforts,
that's also really challenging.
So I'm going to switch over to
going over some quick research
as we're digging into this area.
We asked, where are gamers
going to learn about games,
and we also asked,
what specifically
are they looking for?
So I want to share
some of those results.
We found that 44% of gamers
are using video and reviews
to discover new AAA games.
We also found that
when researching games,
YouTube is the single-most
popular platform
with gamers spending 22%
of their time researching
for content.
As for where gamers go when they
want to learn about gameplay,
95% of gamers surveyed either
agreed or strongly agreed
that YouTube was a good place
to discover new content.
The goal, of course, isn't
to overindex on YouTube.
It just happens to
be the video channel
that we have the most access
to, in terms of research.
What we really want is for
publishers and developers
to find out which
channels are best
for discovery of their
content for themselves.
And it's not just
something we want.
In a separate study, we actually
asked a lot of our partners
what feature we should
be building to help them
with their
discoverability efforts,
and we heard-- really
clearly-- two things.
The first is they
all want the ability
to experiment with messages
and which messages work best.
And the second
thing is they really
want the ability to
understand, once users end up
engaging with their
content, how they got there.
So going back to the three-part
challenge, with Stadia,
we're really trying to deliver
a full cycle, tying discovery
to actions that matter, and to
do it in days instead of weeks.
So let's go through an
actual concrete scenario.
Let's say you built
a game and you
want to make sure
gamers who enjoy
it get a chance to engage.
So you have a hypothesis here.
And maybe it says people who
search "thriller," "rpg,"
and "game" are more
likely to be interested in
and engage with your
content than otherwise.
And so maybe you
have campaign A,
which is targeting users who've
searched for these terms.
And maybe you have
campaign B, which
is targeting users who are
on a social media site who
might be exposed to banner ads.
So you want to be able
to test your hypothesis.
As a developer or publisher on
Stadia, we think we can help.
There are three
key parts to this.
First, as Phil Harrison
promised earlier this year,
we're going to be
pulling down barriers
to accessing the platform, and
this is the first ingredient.
The second ingredient
is you'll want
a hypothesis and an ad
channel of your choice
to run your test on.
And the third is you'll need
Stadia's new attribution
reports, which are coming soon.
Once we have these
three ingredients,
first, gamers see your
campaign messaging anywhere
on the internet.
That message has a
special call to action.
This is a link that will land
the user to a tailored gamer
experience.
So let's say the gamer hasn't
purchased the game yet.
The tailored experience that
this gamer would experience
is that they'll get landed
onto a store page, where they
can actually purchase the game.
And then after purchasing,
the user can play anywhere.
Because the messaging
happens with Stadia links,
and because gamers always end
up on Stadia, the platform,
you'll always be able to fully
understand which messages work
and how gamers got to your game.
So in short, to maximize
discoverability,
Stadia will enable you to
experiment with your messages
and also really understand the
actions that users are taking
and improve your further
outreach methods.
With that, I will hand it
over to the Shishir to dive
into the actual
mechanics of how this
would work for you as a
Stadia developer or publisher.
SHISHIR BIRMIWAL:
Thank you, Beri.
My name is Shishir Birmiwal,
and I'm an engineering lead
in the Stadia team.
So as Beri said,
this section is going
to do a deep-dive into how
this would work for you.
The most important
prerequisite right
now is that you have to be a
Stadia developer or publisher.
Once you become a Stadia
developer or publisher,
an organization is
created for you in Stadia.
You will be able to log
into the partner portal
and download the
Stadia SDK, which
will enable you to develop on
your local machine and test
on Stadia instances.
When you're ready
to publish, you
will want to think through
your discoverability strategy.
Since you will have
awesome discoverability,
you will have happy
and engaged users.
Let's take a deep dive into
the mechanics of supercharging
discoverability.
At a high level, you will want
to go through these steps.
Step one, it's
always a good idea
to ponder over and
plan out the question
before seeking answers.
Your questions
could be about what
you should be doing next,
what audiences work better,
what messaging to use, or
what call-to-action to take.
Step two, you need to set up
your ad campaigns accordingly.
You will need a link for each
campaign you're setting up.
Step three, set up
your ad campaign
with the corresponding
campaign links.
This system is not
necessarily for apps.
You could also just set up
links from different parts
of your website
or blog to Stadia
and see how they perform.
It's just a link.
You need to make it
visible somewhere.
People click on it and come
to your store on Stadia.
The internet's your store.
You get the picture.
Step four, run the campaign.
Make those links visible.
Let there be clicks.
Step five, analyze the results.
You're now getting
results in days.
Step six, optimize discovery.
We walk through an example to
illustrate these steps next.
So plan the question.
This example is a
bit more involved,
and it wants to show how
experimentation can impact both
what to message as
publishers and what
to design as developers.
Let's say you have a list of
users of your game, JumpGame,
and your goal is to
boost re-engagement.
You've done two things.
You've created a new event,
and a new set of armor.
You can ask two questions.
The first is, where is the
best place for existing users
to discover new content?
The second is, what
kind of content
is most effective at
getting users to re-engage?
We can set up a
two-by-two experiment,
like the one shown here,
varying the content type--
new armor versus new event--
and the messaging channel--
YouTube and game news sites--
at the same time.
Now that you have a plan for
what questions you want to ask
and how to answer them, let's
go to what the setup looks like.
You will want to get the
campaign links from the Stadia
Partner portal.
The Stadia Partner portal is a
website where Stadia developers
and publishers
manage the content
they're developing for Stadia.
You can create four links
and label them as needed.
In this example,
we can label them
as News Plus Armor, News Plus
Event, YouTube Plus Armor,
and YouTube Plus Event.
You go to your ad platform
and set up your ads.
When you set up
your ads, you will
use the corresponding link that
was generated on Stadia Partner
portal.
In this example, we're trying
to set up a campaign on YouTube
for new armor, so
we're using that link.
You'll go through similar setup
for each of the three campaigns
that you want to
run, and leverage
each of the remaining
three Stadia links.
Next, we want to run the
campaigns we have set up.
So you go to your ad
platform, run the campaign,
and wait for users to click
on the ads, go to Stadia,
and engage with your content.
So now comes the
interesting part.
We can start
analyzing the results.
So you go to Stadia and get
daily attribution reports
for the time range
you care about.
On the Stadia
Partner portal, you
can download different
types of reports.
One of these is an
attribution report.
The report will
tell you how many
purchases you have for each
of the four campaigns you ran.
In this example, we see
that the reports are
aggregated on a daily basis.
We see a count of purchases
and the campaign names
they're attributed to.
Next, you aggregate and
join with information
you get from other sources,
your ad site, in this case.
And seeing this example, you'd
get a count of impressions
from your ad platform.
You can use the buys and
impressions to figure out
the conversion rate.
You can now analyze
this, and get insights
into what you care about.
If you care more
about buys per dollar,
you can compute that too.
In this example,
we see that YouTube
is a more compelling channel
to re-engage your users.
New events are more
compelling to users.
We can also see that
users on YouTube
are markedly more
compelled to new events
than game news sites.
Now you can optimize.
You can use this information
to optimize what you do next
in your game development, as
well as your next messaging
strategy.
For starters, you
can use the findings
to generate new questions.
Maybe you want to run
a few more experiments
to confirm that events are
really much better at getting
re-engagements than armor.
If you find it's
actually a really strong,
repeatable signal,
maybe you will
end up shifting your development
strategy and do more of events
than armor.
Similarly, on the
messaging side,
maybe you confirm that
YouTube is actually
a more effective place to help
users to discover your content,
or maybe you'll
find the opposite.
The power is in your
hands to find out
and to change your
messaging accordingly.
To summarize, Stadia can
help you experiment anywhere
on the web and understand the
value of different discoverable
techniques.
Stadia will enable you to
explore a bunch of things
and track the source of traffic
to identify which ones bring
you more value
from your website,
your blog, your social
network pages, your ad
campaigns, [INAUDIBLE].
All of this is going to be on
Stadia in the coming quarter.
Do you want to take part in
shaping the future of Stadia?
Sign up to work with the product
team to develop a roadmap.
Follow the link in
the presentation.
Thank you so much for your time,
and I wish you all the best.
Happy gaming.
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