Mobile game publisher Tilting Point has acquired in-game offer and video ad optimization platform Gondola, bolstering its capability to offer developers a shot at extending the time that gamers play a given title.
It’s a small deal, and the purchase price was not disclosed. But it could make a big difference in how game developers can monetize their games over the long term, said Tilting Point president Kevin Segalla in an interview with GamesBeat.
“Gondola’s technology is about effective pricing,” Segalla said. “One-size pricing does not work in mobile games. You right-size the pricing as you enter tier two and tier three countries. People in India will not pay the same amount as people in the U.S. You adjust the pricing for the hard and soft currency in a game. You then offer the currency to them at a price that works for them.”
Gondola founder and CTO André Cohen will join Tilting Point as its head of data science, while CEO Niklas Herriger will remain on board as an executive adviser. Gondola helps developers create better lifetime value (LTV), or the amount of time a user spends in games over time.
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“We are thrilled to be combining forces with Tilting Point. At Gondola, we have spent years building a robust tool set and the opportunity to put these tools to work for their partners is really exciting,” said Herriger in a statement. “For a long time, we have been impressed by Tilting Point’s increasingly powerful work in scaling games and it is fantastic to be joining the team.”
The acquisition comes on the heels of a slew of new publishing, co-development, and funding deals, including a $30 million marketing commitment for Cat Game, which has quickly pushed the game up the charts since its launch two months ago.
Tilting Point has focused on technology that helps mobile games reach higher audiences. TheTilting Point tech spans everything from machine learning to LTV.
Gondola’s technology, which leverages machine learning to optimize in-game offers at the user level, will augment Tilting Point’s LTV-enhancing tech while saving developers time and resources spent on live-ops. This will help developers with existing games grow better.
Tilting Point’s revenues are primarily derived from the uplift of new players that have resulted directly from the company’s user acquisition campaigns. If those campaigns make players come back to the game more often and keep them happier, they will play for a longer time and that increases the odds that they will spend more in the game over the lifetime of the title.
Above: Kevin Segalla is president of Tilting Point.
Tilting Point takes live games with the highest potential and scales them up (hopefully, to top rankings) by using its $132 million user acquisition fund, market leading UA/LTV technology, and expert teams who understand the market and the players.
Tilting Point has scaled over 65 games across the U.S., Europe and Asia and is currently scaling 26 games and partnering on four co-development projects. Tilting Point has more than 100 employees. And Tilting Point runs more than 2,000 creative campaigns a month. Each game gets about 11 new creative ads per week. More than 7,000 different ads are running right now.
“From the beginning of starting Tilting Point, we’ve worked under this basic tenet of succeeding by having the best-in-class technology and the best-in-class team,” Segalla said. “We have been following Gondola for a long time. This is a great fit because we are focusing more and more on LTV.”
The hard currency refers to money you get by paying real money for in-game items. Soft currency refers to virtual currency that players earn while playing.
“We have been analyzing Gondola for a long time, and we are in the midst of implementing them,” Segalla said.
Now that the deal is complete, Gondola will work only with Tilting Point.
