Episode 64: Introducing AppRefinery – A New Playbook for Consumer Apps

This episode of the Mobile Games Playbook explores Liftoff’s new AppRefinery platform. Building on the success of GameRefinery, AppRefinery offers deep insights into the strategies driving engagement across over 20 consumer app verticals.

Join Brendan Fraher, General Manager of Liftoff Intelligence, and Kalle Heikkinen, Chief Game Analyst, as they unpack how AppRefinery will revolutionise our understanding of what makes apps successful.

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Episode Transcript

Introduction

Intro: Welcome to the Mobile Games Playbook in association with Liftoff. Join us as we uncover the latest trends in user acquisition, monetization, and mobile game design.

Jon Jordan: Welcome to the Mobile Games Playbook. Thanks for tuning in for another episode. This is a podcast all about what makes a great mobile game, what is and isn’t working for mobile game designers, and all of the latest trends. I’m your host, Jon Jordan. Generally, we are talking all about mobile games, GameRefinery, and the great tools that it provides for analyzing what’s going on in the mobile game space…

But in today’s episode, there’s a brand-new platform in town, AppRefinery. So what do you think we’re going to talk about today? Thankfully, we have two experts who will tell us what is going on. One needs no introduction: Kalle Heikkinen, Senior Chief Market Analyst at Liftoff. How’s it going?

Kalle Heikkinen: I’m ok. How about you, Jon?

Jon Jordan: Yeah. Not bad. And, first time on. So, very pleased to have Brendan Fraher, the General Manager at Liftoff Intelligence. How’s it going, Brendan?

Brendan Fraher: Great to be here, Jon.

Vision behind AppRefinery

Jon Jordan: Okay, so we’re gonna start with Brendan. So what’s the vision for AppRefinery?

Brendan Fraher: It’s no secret that the app space is evolving quickly, right?

Because the mobile audience is more sophisticated and some could say trained to expect more, and even if you look at gaming where it was three to four years ago, if you look at a Match 3 games, then to one now, this is where apps are headed. But of course, the timeline is different because games have already evolved.

The audiences are the same, right? You can’t just say there’s a gaming or app audience. It’s just people who use their phones. Like you just spend your time doing different things. And of course, that’s the battlefield, right? The engagement battlefield.

You know, am I spending 10 minutes on Candy Crush, or am I like on Tinder, or am I on let’s say DoorDash or am I on this or on that? As you can imagine, it’s not like you know, you’re just picking something up to use. Well, there are 10 Tinders or 20 booking dot coms and stuff like that, right?

So, with that, the competition is very, very tough. Innovation, as always, is expensive. Developers want to give the market what it wants at this point in time. Which we know, let’s say, is very much a moving target. Fashion moves very, very, very, very quickly.

As leaders in the gaming space for many years, we’ve seen those growth stages, right? It’s easy for us to bring that value to developers, as they say. We know the space. It’s been natural to bring our expertise and our insights to the consumer app space because that’s where the need is now.

Apps vs. Games: Overlapping behaviours

Jon Jordan: No, it’s an interesting, off-the-menu sort of thing. So an opportunity or tech opportunity comes along. Games are always one of the first things that quite quickly got into monetization, but maybe they’re not so bothered about monetization as some other apps.

But it obviously, as you say, makes sense. So games rush ahead, and then apps, you know, learn something from it, and maybe they learn from some of the mistakes that games have made. And, as you say, there’s a similarity in terms of usage, but using a banking app is quite different from a game.

Ok, Kalle, you’re currently straddling both of these fields. So as an overview, what sort of things are you seeing here, what insightful things are you seeing that are similar to games or, on consumer apps? What’s different?

Kalle Heikkinen: Yeah, definitely. I would echo what Brendan said about games doing these things for a longer time. And this is now the time for apps, too. One thing that we are seeing is the emergence of social features in the app space.

It’s not only social media apps that want to engage users with social features; we are seeing social getting all over different app verticals. And just to give one interesting example that can obviously be found on the Refinery platform, the number one iGaming Platform is DraftKings.

They do very interesting things when it comes to social media, and they’re really unique as well in that regard. For example, they have this social feed feature called Bet Feed, where users can see what other users are betting on. This definitely adds that visibility and social proof to betting.

Then, they also have betting groups. Users can join, create, and share their bigs in these betting groups, which really creates a community within the app.

The pools feature is all about these kinds of prediction pools, where users can join different types of contests and compete with friends or the broader community.

Because in the end, if you think about betting, it is like a solo experience by default. So you are, well, you can say that you’re competing against yourself, but still, it’s something you do often on your own.

Adding these different social layers just makes engaging with an iGaming platform that much more interesting.

Social features in non-gaming apps

Jon Jordan: And in terms of using apps, it’s a very broad term. I mean, obviously, I guess there’s this thing where you need them to be a tight enough category that it makes sense to analyze them as a category.

But you may want it wide enough as well, so you can have enough analysis. So, in a very broad sense, how many categories do you have? How do you look at the app space? Obviously, there are a lot of different sub-genres in the game space, and often, in the podcast, we get very locked down into different types of RPGs or something.

So even within games as a single category, there’s loads of differentiations. How do you handle that from the app point of view?

Kalle Heikkinen: Yeah, that’s a very good question. The app space has different kinds of genres or verticals; you have the finance apps, productivity apps, fitness apps, and so forth. But, in the app space, it’s not that rigid sense of what kind of features or experience you can expect in an app.
Generally speaking, the potential audience you can serve with apps in general is much broader than when it comes to game genres. If you think about certain core or midcore game genres, they’re definitely trying to, or most likely are, resonating with very specific player audiences. So it’s the app genres and verticals that we’re dealing with in the app space.

Jon Jordan: And I guess another way of looking at the whole app category here is not necessarily looking at the app, but looking at the motivation of how people use apps and the behavior of users in the app rather than what the app actually does.
Because that is another way of looking at these situations, is that a helpful way of looking at apps, or am I just coming up with something clever that is actually not very clever?

Kalle Heikkinen: Definitely, and that’s why we have developed our own motivations model for the non-gaming app space. Longtime GameRefinery fans remember that we do have motivational data for GameRefinery, so we wanted to bring that to AppRefinery as well. The goal is to help developers and marketers understand the why behind user behavior.

We break it down to several key motivations. I’m not gonna list all of them here, but they include things like achievement and sense of achievement, entertainment, social validation, and convenience.

With that, our clients, no matter if you are product-focused or marketing-focused, get to know what really motivates users. So, if you are on the product side of things, you get to build features that meet those specific needs.

If you’re doing a fitness app, it might be that our motivation data says that focusing on achievement and self-improvement can be something that could potentially work out for you.

It helps you create better features that are more aligned with your audience. On the marketing and UA side, you get to target the right users, which is, of course, very important. Understanding what motivations your ideal users are driven by is also very important.

We can help with that. So you get to target them with ads that speak to their needs. Let’s say again, like I mentioned, the fitness app might be that achievement showing content related to achievement could work, for example, or if you have a crypto app, it might be that competitive features could be something that could really resonate with your user base.

Brendan Fraher: And what’s really interesting about this is that all of these trends change. For example, as Kalle said, you’ve got the achievements, in fitness, because of course, you have those goals and stuff like that.

But then, if you marry it with a social system, you can’t just say social system. It has to be, well, how does it work? How do you interface? How are you doing? How are your tasks communicated? And stuff like that.

That can also provide a secondary or third motivator. We’ve heard it from some of the developers who say that one of our competitors has the same app, but the reviews weren’t strong. Why is it so good now?

Right. And they don’t understand. It’s because how they’re interfacing with that main motivator is what’s mainly interesting for the audience at this particular time. As we know, 12 months ago could have been different. 12 months in the future can be, and it’s definitely going to be different.

Jon Jordan: It’s interesting. You mentioned the social aspects a few times already, and it doesn’t work for every app, but, you know, actual searchability is more interesting than it seems to be. Coming from all sorts of fitness apps, it makes sense, and Strava, that sort of thing. And you say sort of gambling stuff, but also in banking now, where people are sending money and splitting bills.

That may not have predominantly come from gaming, but gaming has certainly shown a lot about it. I guess gaming had to go through a bit of its own phase of everything being a single-player game, and then realise that suddenly, your retention suddenly gets really good when it’s engaged and social.

And then, you know, when you’re doing that in a banking app, that’s even more powerful because you are not just moving points around; you’re doing real-world money things. So I guess those sorts of insights are also something that you’re looking to bring to the surface for people.

Kalle Heikkinen: Yeah. In the non-gaming app space, I would add that this applies to many other feature categories, but also to social, in that it can be something surprisingly small that can be the first step. Take, for example, Airbnb. I don’t know if you’ve checked out the app recently, but nowadays, they have collaborative planning tools for your trips, which you can use to share the trip with your family members or friends and then make notes. You can like each other’s picks for the location to go to and stuff like that.

Jon Jordan: And maybe I’m going too far. I generally do, but you can see some aspects of lots of things not becoming everything apps, but there’s a sort of, I think we’re at the stage now, but lots of apps sort of wanna try more things.

As you say, like Airbnb sort of makes total sense for some of those aspects. You can sort of see how there’s, you know, there is interesting hooks for all these different apps and obviously not use all of them, but there is a sort of a movement to sort of have as much activity and as much sort of social aspects in your app as as possible.

Kalle Heikkinen: Yeah. And it’s like you can nowadays find engagement features and even very game-like features in very surprising places. So if you think about the AliExpress app?

They have like complete mini game ecosystems built into the app so that people have just that much more things to interact with and engage with, in the app, in order to make that even more relevant for the users of the app. So yeah, certain apps are definitely expanding their kind of, engagement scope.

Gamification, engagement, and retention systems

Jon Jordan: I mean, obviously a key engagement thing we talk about is stuff like daily rewards and logins and streaks—that has some use, too. Although you probably don’t necessarily want streaks in a banking app. That doesn’t really make sense…

Kalle Heikkinen: I’m actually gonna disagree with that.

If we think about the very traditional banking apps that are very much utility-based, that you just use to pay your bills and stuff like that—you can make that argument that people just want to pay the bills there.

But, especially when it comes to this more like FinTech side and crypto apps, we see a lot of interesting engagement layers being put into place.

So just to throw in one example, Crypto.com, which is obviously one of the leading exchanges and platforms in this space. They have very elaborate engagement systems in place, including different kinds of task systems for daily tasks, for feature exploration, for onboarding.

The goal is to get people to log in daily to the crypto app, because many users are not going to make transactions every day.

So you have that another layer to incentivize you to come in and you have badges and achievements and yes, those streak systems that you mentioned as well actually nowadays.

So every day you log in, you get this in-game currency, diamonds, and then there is a specific store where you can use that currency to exchange it for various in-app rewards.

Brendan Fraher: But we have seen there are good ways and there are bad ways of doing it, right? I mean, it’s very easy to over-egg.

So I would say, Jon, you’re maybe showing your age now with the daily login bonus.

Like, maybe that’s like—we’re even thinking that’s maybe like a little bit in the past, right? Now there’s eight different engagement systems, right?

But there’s also, is there too much? And again, this is the reason, if we go back to AppRefinery, this is what good looks like, right?

And when we say, if there are top-performing apps, or if they’re coming up, the question is, why are they doing it right? Like, why are they engaging more? Are they—you know, it is like retention. And it’s like, what are they doing? So you can see what does good look like, which I think is the important thing here.

So I would say most people—the question is like, after “should we do it,” then it’s “how should we do it?” And then kind of understanding, because I know that Kalle and his team, when they’ve been analyzing things, they’ve seen some pretty bad ways of doing it, but then maybe other ways, which kind of like—you lose kind of the core, like in the soup and stuff.

Jon Jordan: So I guess you’re looking at your competitors and seeing what they’re doing or why is this app suddenly doing really well, and AppRefinery gives you those tools to see what’s going on—some of the features that an app may have added recently—and then it’s a case of drilling down and seeing why is it working?

Brendan Fraher: And then another way of looking at it, and this is what we would always advise people, is that just don’t look in, let’s say, that lane—just don’t look in, let’s say, that category and so on.

Going to, let’s say what Kalle was saying earlier about the motivational drivers, right? If other categories share those similar ones, well what are they doing?

So even if we go back to gaming, it’s like even a couple of years ago, right, where you had Match 3 and then you had slot games, right?

But it’s the same audience, you know, it was like—what was it—35 and over women was the majority.

And then in Match 3, they love collections, right? Well, six months later, all of the main slot games had them because that’s what their audience wanted.

Two completely different, let’s say, gaming experiences, shared audience, and of course the ones that were giving the market what it is that they want.

And again, I would say when people say, “yeah, but that’s gaming,” it’s like, no—that’s giving the audience what it wants. Understand who the audience are first.

Kalle Heikkinen: Just to double down on that—we have, for example, one client, and we asked them that, okay, which competitor apps are you interested in us analyzing?

And none of the apps that they listed that they were interested in were in the vertical or the genre that they operated in. So they were very much interested in exploring ideas from other genres.

So I think that is a very anecdotal example of that.

Brendan Fraher: But it’s definitely some advice for, let’s say, for developers—especially in the consumer app space.

Don’t just look to your closest competitors. It’s like, best of breed is always best of breed.

AppRefinery for UA & targeting

Jon Jordan: I guess that’s sort of talking a little bit about the sort of product side and maybe adding features or maybe taking features out.

You sort of mentioned it a little bit in passing that, you know, another key reason why you might use this is user acquisition and stuff like that.

So, can you talk a little bit about how you think AppRefinery’s gonna help people deal with that key element of getting users?

Kalle Heikkinen: Yeah, I think the major component is motivations data and how you can leverage that to find the right kind of users by exploring what kind of app elements you could use in your ad creatives in order to resonate with the audience that you are targeting.

So the motivations data is very helpful in that regard. So that’s definitely the key aspect. And then that’s of course related to the product side as well.

So if you are noticing that your audience is motivated by certain aspects, then of course it begs the question of should we build more on the product side also, to answer this kind of demand for, let’s say that it’s social motivations. Should we have more social features or social content in our app for our users?

Brendan Fraher: And on the UA side—’cause of course, as you know, Liftoff Intelligence is part of Liftoff where we’ve got a pretty heavy user acquisition core.

And then I’m sure everyone’s heard the joke—you know, we waste 50% of our marketing budget, but we don’t know what 50%, right?

‘Cause we know it’s a lot of it. Like, if we just put money in, we get users. But if we have directionality on what motivates them, it’s not that we would say it, it’s like—just as Kalle was saying—we have motivational drivers based on what the features have, on the actual apps, and if this is what the audience says that they like, and then you build creatives that are informed by those major motivators already, you’re really narrowing it down to sort of less of the shotgun approach.

Jon Jordan: We’ve had a lot in games where people invented ads that would be nothing to do with the games, and then people liked that gameplay so much they ended up adding those mini games into their games and their games ended up becoming what the ads were in the first place.

You probably won’t deal with that in your banking app, but it’s sort of interesting, isn’t it? It goes back to what you’ve been saying about—there’s things like ads and features that maybe competitors are using, but that’s sort of giving you some behavioral guidance in what consumers want that maybe you didn’t think they wanted or maybe you didn’t wanna give it to them for some reason.

Brendan Fraher: Or that you didn’t realize that they were already exposed to this for many years. Or that, as Kalle was speaking about on crypto, they’ve already had this sort of interaction with it. It’s like, yeah, I know what it is to buy a currency pass.

I know what it is to do and so on, right? So you’re not inventing anything new because they’re already exposed to it.

Jon Jordan: That goes back to what you’re saying about looking wider than just your own single category. ‘Cause there may be some big, enormous sort of features dropped into a category that seems nothing at all to do with what you are up to, but that’s what everyone’s doing now.

And if you don’t have some awareness of what’s going on in the wider app space, then you are flying blind in terms of your own development.

Brendan Fraher: Yeah. And it goes back to, as I said, my first point, which is: innovation is expensive.

So, why not look to what the market says that they like? That doesn’t mean you need to copy or anything like that, but you can—it’s okay to be heavily influenced and sort of say, okay, this is the foundation, this is what they want, and then this part, we’re going to innovate and be like, you know, what our main, let’s say, USP is.

Roadmap, AI, and future insights

Jon Jordan: I dunno if there’s any sort of anecdotal feedback you got when people started using AppRefinery. Is there anything obvious that a lot of people have been saying about what it gives them?

Brendan Fraher: Yeah, so I guess we go back to the same point, which was understanding what the wider space is actually doing.

Understanding that, yes, gamification—I know everyone was rolling their eyes—no, it’s not a game and stuff like that, right?

But I guess the other word would be, it’s like, you know, better user engagement. Right?

And understanding that actual fact that, you know, we have, let’s say like a fitness app. You know, we’ve got lots of 20 to 30 males on it. It’s like, well, when they’re on their phones, this is what they enjoy doing.

We like being part of a guild. And we like to be in battle with this guild, right? But in fact, it’s just online.

People are using their sports app, and this is what we’re doing and stuff. But all of those different systems—they’ve already been worked on by these billion-dollar companies.

They’ve really finessed them and so on, and then you can literally just take that.

Kalle Heikkinen: Yeah. And we’re really in a unique position in the sense that we have the GameRefinery platform and we have all the data and the content that we’ve been putting there for the last 10 years.

So there’s a lot of inspiration that can be drawn from the other platforms and vice versa, as well.

So we’ve already had cases where our gaming clients have been very interested in knowing more about the non-gaming app space as well.

Brendan Fraher: Yeah. And for good reason, because that’s their audience’s time.

So, for example, it’s like just you were saying Jon, it’s like, you know, I’m using my banking app, I just go there, right? Yeah.

But now maybe, okay, I’m gonna buy, I’m gonna, you know, like, you know, do some crypto or whatever. But as Kalle said, yeah, I’m now spending 25 minutes, let’s say, on my train journey, ’cause it’s so engaging.

You know, that can be revenue loss and time loss for those games.

Jon Jordan: It’s funny where you say gamification, which is a term that sort of everyone always apologizes for using or sort of grimaces when they say, but I guess sort of what you’re saying here is it’s not even worth using that term.

‘Cause everything has been gamified—you know, games are now so wide that it’s sort of like, it’s like everything’s been unified.

It’s just that’s how you interact with mobile apps. The fact it’s sort of come from games is somewhat irrelevant, I suppose.

Okay, so that all sounds good. Obviously the final question is always when you’ve explained something that’s new and fantastic and everyone should look at and then the question’s always: so, what else are you doing?

So I dunno if that’s a very sort of impolite question, having you explain what all these new tools are. But have you got anything you can talk about sort of the roadmap for AppRefinery going forward and things you have planned?

Brendan Fraher: Yeah. Well, there’s definitely one thing, and I guess it kind of joins everything that we’ve been talking about earlier, right?

Which is gonna be the mobile audience web. So yes, we have the gaming motivators, we have the consumer app motivators—you know, there’s the apps, there’s the features and so on, right?

But maybe towards the end of this year, start of next year, it’s like, well, what could that mobile user be? Doesn’t mean gaming, doesn’t mean apps, because of course, as we’re saying, that’s the competition.

It’s the competition for the audience’s time. So that’s something which insights we will have in the future.

And of course, surfacing insights easier. Right? You know, it’s like, I always find it amusing that the number one interface that people like now is a GPT-style text box, right? That’s what people want at the moment.

Kalle Heikkinen: Yeah, if Jon, you would’ve asked us what are the current non-gaming app trends, I think different kinds of AI-related features would’ve been quite on top of my list.

But yeah, to Brendan, I would only add one thing, which is that a lot of folks are very interested in getting retention analysis

So like analysis on the notification side and email—retention emails, re-engagement email side.

So we’re definitely looking into having something on that on the platform as well.

Jon Jordan: Good. Everyone should go and check out AppRefinery and add it to your GameRefinery skills and put the two together and see what cool stuff you come up with. Thanks very much to Kalle, and thanks so much to Brendan for their expertise. Thank you.

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