5. Kids Category
Let’s review the Kids category.
So, where is the kids category?
Games, Entertainment, Books, Education.
What size is it?
Who is making kids apps?
What, specifically is a kid?
6.
7. App Saturation
iOS Apps Market Share
Games – 132,501 Games
18%
Education
Other Categories
Books – 55,004 46%
10%
Entertainment
9%
Education – 72,540 Books
8%
Lifestyle
9%
Sources: 148apps.biz, Distimo
8. Disney, Nickelodeon, Se Big
same Street, Hundreds of apps
Penguin, Bonnier (aka
Guys
Toca Boca)
Oceanhouse, Duck Duck Moose, Thousands of apps
Goodbeans, StoryToys.
Breakouts
Tens of
Marge & Mikey’s
Amazing App thousands
Company LLC.
Mom & Pop of apps
shops, Hobbyists, opportunists
and other poor misguided
souls.
11. Children’s audience micro-segmentation
Schooling Stage – PreK-3
Pre - Pre -
Pre-Verbal Kindergarten Grade 1 Grade 2 Grade 3
School Kindergarten
Child Age
<2 2-4 4-5 5-6 6-7 7-8 8-9
Content Selection
Parent Prescribed Parent / Child consensus Peer
12. Children’s audience micro-segmentation
Schooling Stage – PreK-3
Pre - Pre -
Pre-Verbal Kindergarten Grade 1 Grade 2 Grade 3
School Kindergarten
Child Age
<2 2-4 4-5 5-6 6-7 7-8 8-9
Content Selection
Parent Prescribed Parent / Child consensus Peer
13. Demo Time
Good, bad and truly terrible - Check out, in no particular order
(but I’m sure you can figure it out.)
Toca Tea Party
Disney Princess Sticker Book
Elmo Calls
Farm 123 (I’m biased here)
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
14. Discovery
Reach the Parents (and grandparents)
Engage Children
Momblogs
Featuring
App Promoters
Cross Promotion
17. Wrapping up
Kids have far higher quality expectations than
adults (and app designers) give them credit for.
Soft approach to monetization.
Make children laugh.
I can’t promise to deliver the whole truth.I will only be looking at content for children under 8s – the PK-3 market, others are well catered for in in the broader CC conference. (note highlights).We’ll be looking at the kids category as a whole, taking a look at some exemplary content, and looking at some of the issues surrounding discovery, design and monentisation.
So lets review the kids category. I have some screens from the app stores to give us a sense of the category scope and scale.
Here’s iTunes US Store. Dropdown list. I could have sworn it was there yesterday… Lets try google Play.
Well, this is embarrassing… I can’t seem to find it there either. So where is it?
It doesn’t exists. So if you’re a kid’s app developer this is the first thing you need to consider. You can be in Entertainment, Education, Books, Games. But there is no specific location for your content, so you have to consider this from the outset. Games? Cut-throat competitions. Entertainment? Then same.Books – EVEN more competitive! Education? The same. None of these are easy.
Here’s a screen of the app store books category.
So, in books, you’ve got 55,000 apps chasing 5% of app store revenues, vs games 132 apps chasing 70%. Arguably, it’s a more competitive sector. Books presents a similar picture.In these categories – what is the opportunity scale?A good rule of thumb – and this is a number I’ve arrived at a not very scientific method, is that approximately 5-10% of these categories the value od the children’s, at least the under 10s market size – probably will be worth somewhere in the 500M- 750m value this year.Why are there so many book and edu apps?Unlike games – people think its easy! Let’s look at the companies playing in this space.
At the top, there’s who you expect to see. Big brands like disney, Nickelodeon, Sesame Street, Random Penguin House, and subsidiaries of big brand such as Toca Boca.In the middle, you’ve got the startups and breakouts – Duck duck moose, Oceanhouse media, Good beans, and ourselves – StoryToys.Then down the bottom, you have the poor misguided souls, who having read about “angry birds” thinks – if I can only do a half of one percent of this angry birds thing??? How hard can that be???Let’s look at the audience.
This is what’s known as the PK-3 market in US ed-tech parlance, and it is a specific sub-segment of the K-12 system.But even within this area, think of the conversation you might have with a two year old. Rational, Reasonable, Coherent? Then think about the last conversation you had with an 8 year old? These two audiences are as different as a 30 year old and a 70 year old.So how do children get exposed to apps?These are not hard set lines, but you can be sure that if you want to market a title for the under 4s, target the parents (and grand parents). For 4-8, make sure your message reaches the parents, grandparets and the children. And beyond 8?? Well best of luck to you. Targetting this audience, especially boys is extremely difficult, and you may need the help of existing brands.Something I would note though – targetting parents – peer is important, but we’ll come to that in a moment.Parents – Peers.
But even within this area, think of the conversation you might have with a two year old. Rational, Reasonable, Coherent? Then think about the last conversation you had with an 8 year old? These two audiences are as different as a 30 year old and a 70 year old.So how do children get exposed to apps?These are not hard set lines, but you can be sure that if you want to market a title for the under 4s, target the parents (and grand parents). For 4-8, make sure your message reaches the parents, grandparents and the children. And beyond 8?? Well best of luck to you. Targetting this audience, especially boys is extremely difficult, and you may need the help of existing brands.Something I would note though – targetting parents – peer is important, but we’ll come to that in a moment.Parents – Peers.
So how do children get exposed to apps?These are not hard set lines, but you can be sure that if you want to market a title for the under 4s, target the parents (and grand parents). For 4-8, make sure your message reaches the parents, grandparets and the children. And beyond 8?? Well best of luck to you. Targetting this audience, especially boys is extremely difficult, and you may need the help of existing brands.Something I would note though – targetting parents – peer is important, but we’ll come to that in a moment.Parents – Peers.
So how do children get exposed to apps?These are not hard set lines, but you can be sure that if you want to market a title for the under 4s, target the parents (and grand parents). For 4-8, make sure your message reaches the parents, grandparets and the children. And beyond 8?? Well best of luck to you. Targetting this audience, especially boys is extremely difficult, and you may need the help of existing brands.Something I would note though – targetting parents – peer is important, but we’ll come to that in a moment.Parents – Peers.
Demo time. I promised I’d demonstrate some good, bad and misunderstood apps for the target market. And I would be doing my company a disservice if I didn’t also demo one of mine.So here goes.Here’s an app from one of the big guys. Toca Tea Party. What can we learn from this App? It is very carefully targeted – I would estimate for children from 3-6. it encourages creative, collaborative play and imagiation. The UI is minimal. It is endless. There are no objectives you have to follow. This is a great example of an app that gets it right.And another. Elmo calls. This one isn’t a “digital babysitter” as the last, but I love this app, and it is also a great example of how simplicity trumps complexity in the kids market, and how the magic of a character engagement can be extended to create a highly personal, intimate experience. This app is also a great example of how to monetize in the kids market. More on this later. Note the developer on this one. Ideo. If you haven’t heard of them before, the designed the worlds first production mouse, for apple.Missed opportunities – Bad apps. Lets look at the pre-school space. Anyone here with children know a book called the very hungry caterpillar? This is an book with so much creative potential. Let’s see what they did. What a disappointment.Here is something from a company that should know better – Disney princess dress up app. To be fair to disney, they produce a lot of great apps, but this one is an insult to (monarchy). Not to mention the little princesses out there excited about the prospect of “being a princess.I would like to show a bunch of apps I think deserve to do better – if you come to me after I can demo some. Many more favorites – but for every great one there’s 99 have been badly executed or designed.Everyone thinks this is easy – but 99% of app releases in this category are poor.And many of that 1% are undiscoverable.
Parents seek validation. Every parent, well at least that I know, is driven by fear of being a bad parent. Generally irrational fear, but parents seek external validation and guidance for the choices they make about their child. This has given rise to the “momblog” and many other parental advice sites. Mommyblogging has become such a phenomenon, it now has its own congefernec.Momblogs are a great way to communicate apps to a user base. Generate word of mouth.Community Management – Facebook, twitter. Also very strong channels.Featuring.Do not build your app and then hope for featuring. As Rudy Guliani said “Hope is Not a strategy” What will get you featured. Differentiation. Be it technology, brand or feature, in apples case especially – ensure your app shows the hardware in the best light possible – ensure that it can “sell” hardware, or reassure consumers that they have made the right ecosystem choice.And I can hear the social games guys in the audience thinking… Just buy your installs! Fiksu, etc etc. Well, it doesn’t work. There is a fundamental issue that parents have with F2P that is specifically targetting children. There are fundamental issues that the App Stores have with f2p for content targeting the under 8s we’ll get on to that in a moment.So this has to be done the old fashioned way. Make a good app, tell people about it, ask them to tell others.Featuring.Do not build your app and then hope for featuring. As Rudy Guliani said “Hope is Not a strategy” What will get you featured. Differentiation. Be it technology, brand or feature, in apples case especially – ensure your app shows the hardware in the best light possible – ensure that it can “sell” hardware, or reassure consumers that they have made the right ecosystem choice.Is there anything you can buy? Chart promotion. Free-app-a-day.
That’s not to say you can’t leverage an audience once you have it – StoryToys – 42% of our sales every month are derived from internal cross promotion. But is a gentle sell, non-incentivised, and upselling to a full priced product.Higher with kids than game.
Demo Elmo calling again.Paid apps – target about a $250-500K in sales.
The first key piece of advice is to give them GREAT content. App designers, and adults.They are brutal critics… (Mommy, I’m Bored) But if you get it right, they are loyal consumers (can we do that one again, and again, and again.) Kids will play over and over.Bad apps only serve to patronize and alienate. You have a duty to parents, children and this industry to create great apps.The second piece of advice is to be careful who you are selling to. Take a twin track approacj. This goes for everything from your app screenshots (design for kids) to your app description write for adults.And of course, re monetization – avoid the f2p temptation. Remember Smurf Village.The last piece of advice is, I suppose, the same as the first. Make Children and parents laugh together. Nothing makes a parent happier than a happy child, and nothing than brings a parent and a child closer together than a shared moment of laughter. That, will deliver you a pair of happy, loyal customers.
