1. Unlocking the Secrets of Localization
How to build great apps for global users
Tuyen Nguyen
Mobile Publisher Advocate, Google
Google Confidential and Proprietary
1
2. UAE
Korea
Saudi Arabia
Singapore
Norway
Australia
Sweden
Hong Kong
UK
Denmark
Ireland
Israel
Canada
USA
Spain
Switzerland
New Zealand
Netherlands
Taiwan
Austria
China
Slovakia
Finland
France
Czech Republic
Italy
Germany
South Africa
Philippines
Mexico
Russia
Poland
Malaysia
Hungary
Belgium
Greece
Portugal
Thailand
Argentina
Turkey
Romania
Brazil
Japan
Vietnam
Ukraine
Indonesia
India
The smartphone opportunity is still growing
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Source: Our Mobile Planet
Google Confidential and Proprietary
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3. Many APAC countries outpacing worldwide smartphone growth
Smartphone User Growth 2013
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
India
Source: eMarketer, May2013
Indonesia
Japan
Australia
South Korea
China
Other
Worldwide
Google Confidential and Proprietary
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4. Smartphone users are highly engaged in apps
Minutes spent per month (billions)
Total mobile app and web duration on Android and iOS
Smartphone app
downloads worldwide,
by category, 2012
160
140
33%
120
Games
100
8%
80
Widgets
Apps
60
7%
40
20
Entertainment
Mobile web
0
Mar-11
Jul-11
Nov-11
Mar-12
Jul-12
5%
Social
Source: Nielsen Smartphone Analytics, Distimo, “2012 Year in Review,” Dec 21, 2012
Google Confidential and Proprietary
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5. Global mobile ad spend growth opportunity
100
90
80
70
NA
60
Middle East & Africa
50
Western Europe
40
Eastern Europe
LATAM
30
APAC
20
10
0
2013
Source: Mary Meeker, Internet Report, Dec 2012
2014
2015
2016
Google Confidential and Proprietary
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6. Think globally, not locally
$0.19 – $0.45
$0.20 – $0.65
$0.25 – $0.70
$0.15 – $0.30
Google AdMob internal data, revenue from 2013 to date
Google Confidential and Proprietary
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6
7. Five languages reach 70% of internet users
Rest of the
Languages
17%
Korean
2%
English
27%
Russian
3%
French
3%
Arabic
3%
German
4%
Portuguese
4%
Japanese
5%
Source: Internet World Stats, 2010
Spanish
8%
Chinese
24%
Google Confidential and Proprietary
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8. 68% of ID AdMob developer revenue is coming from global users
57%
higher
ID user
outside ID
68%
Local RPM
Google AdMob internal data, revenue from 2013 to date
INT RPM
Google Confidential and Proprietary
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8
9. Over 1/3 of all users experience poor app localization
Source: Consumer App Usage & Preferences, Park Associates and Google, November 2013
Google Confidential and Proprietary
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10. Internationalization and Localization Best Practices
Prioritize user experience
Build for market and device type
Plan distribution method
Maximize monetization channels
Google Confidential and Proprietary
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14. Gaming features are more important to
users
Quality of
graphics
Game
design &
aesthetic
Play with
gamers
you know
View
leader
boards
Source: Consumer App Usage & Preferences, Park Associates and Google, November 2013
Brand is not important when
considering new apps
Opens
quickly
Doesn‟t
drain
battery
excessively
Know and
trust
company
Not a free
app
Google Confidential and Proprietary
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15. Consider publishing with a known brand in China
Brand Importance for Smartphone Games, by Country (3Q13)
% Specifying Brand Type
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
U.S.
UK
South Korea
China
Japan
Percentage of users who play games most frequently from a familiar brand.
Source: Consumer App Usage & Preferences, Park Associates and Google, November 2013
Google Confidential and Proprietary
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16. Bite sized games are more popular on smartphones
Smartphone Gaming App Use, by Country (3Q13}
% Specifying Gaming App Type
80%
60%
U.S.
UK
40%
South Korea
20%
China
Japan
0%
Puzzle & Trivia
Card & Board
Source: Consumer App Usage & Preferences, Park Associates and Google, November 2013
Action/Adventure
Google Confidential and Proprietary
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17. Tablets are used for a different type of gaming experience
Tablet Gaming App Use, by Country (3Q13)
% Specifying Gaming App Type
80%
60%
U.S.
UK
40%
South Korea
20%
China
Japan
0%
Puzzle & Trivia
Card & Board
Source: Consumer App Usage & Preferences, Park Associates and Google, November 2013
Action/Adventure
Google Confidential and Proprietary
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18. Although Freemium can give you access to more users, IAP
can give you access to more revenue
None
Upgrade from a free version to
a monthly/annual subscription
in an app
Purchase an item or
premium feature within the
app to enhance your app
experience
Purchase an app that cost
money without first trying a
free version
Upgrade from a free to a
paid version of an app
% Engaging in Specified Activity
Source: Consumer App Usage & Preferences, Park Associates and Google, November 2013
Google Confidential and Proprietary
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19. China gamers report the highest frequency of making an in-app
purchase
Avg $ Spent In-App on Smartphone Games
Avg $ Spent In-App on Tablet Games
Average Amount Spent ($USD)
$40
$30
$20
$10
$0
U.S.
UK
Source: Consumer App Usage & Preferences, Park Associates and Google, November 2013
South Korea
China
Japan
Google Confidential and Proprietary
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20. Gamers in Asian markets prefer personalized characters
Source: Consumer App Usage & Preferences, Park Associates and Google, November 2013
Google Confidential and Proprietary
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21. The majority of users are not spending money on apps
% Not Engaging in App Monetization
60%
40%
20%
0%
US
Source: Consumer App Usage & Preferences, Park Associates and Google, November 2013
UK
South
Korea
China
Japan
Google Confidential and Proprietary
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22. Users don‟t mind ads, as long as they are in between game levels
Source: Consumer App Usage & Preferences, Park Associates and Google, November 2013
Google Confidential and Proprietary
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23. Asian users prefer personalized ads, while Western users prefer
contextual ads
Source: Consumer App Usage & Preferences, Park Associates and Google, November 2013
Google Confidential and Proprietary
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24. Understand the end-to-end value of your mobile app
Outcome
Acquisition
Engagement
Google Confidential and Proprietary
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25. SayHi Chat: “We checked Google Analytics for our
DAU and user growth numbers in each country, we
also looked at total Android and iOS users in those
markets before finalizing our next set of languages.”
Localization Results
•
•
•
120% growth in language installs for new languages added
~20% increase in revenue
~50% increase in user reviews in the new languages
Google Confidential and Proprietary
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26. Zombie Ragdoll "The value of localization is clear, it helps discoverability
and helps connect with the users in other countries. So when the localization
opportunity arose, we immediately jumped on it. Android is worldwide, and
we would be severely limiting ourselves if we focused on English as the only
language.”
Localization Results
•
•
Increased engagement in countries where
their app was not previously popular
80% of installs came from users of nonEnglish languages
Google Confidential and Proprietary
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2
27. The AdMob Student App Challenge
Build an app. Use AdMob. Win awesome prizes.
• Global challenge open to students.
• Runs from Nov „13 – May ‟14.
• Prizes include 7-night trip to SF.
• Winning app featured on Google Play.
Launching later this month!
Google Confidential and Proprietary
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Hi Everyone, My name is Tuyen Nguyen and I’m a mobile publisher advocate for Google AdMob. What this means is that I’m here to support developers like you in continuing to create good content and building a sustainable business through your work.
I’ve been in the tech industry for about 10 years now and I remember when everyone used to say next year is the year for mobile, this is the year for mobile, year after year. Well, it seems as if the year or years of mobile have peaked, but the truth is that there’s still a lot of opportunity out there. Of the 5B phones globally, only 20% are smartphones. Even in the US, we’ve just hit 50% smartphone penetration this year. Who knows what the smartphone penetration in ID is? Smartphone penetration in ID is only at 14%
And we see here that the countries with the lowest penetration to date are experiencing some the highest growths, outpacing the global average. This means that it’s only a matter of time before smartphone penetration in India and Indonesia caught up with other countries. If we consider the population in India and Indonesia, the 2nd and 4th largest countries in the world, we can should be able to look at China and the US to see the potential in these two markets alone.
How many of you build apps today, or aspire to build apps one day? How many of you are game developers?The good news is that the longer someone has a smartphone, the longer amount of time they actually spend on apps. At present, users spend 3x’s amount more time on apps than on the mobile web. And guess what is the most popular download vertical for smartphones?You don’t have to guess b/c it’s right here on the slide.
As users change their consumption habit, we also expect advertiser dollars to follow. You can see on this chart that almost all regions experienced >50% growth in mobile ad spend in 2013. This is expected to continue to grow over the next few years and I would bet that if we revisited this chart in 2014, the growth projectory would look different.
So the preceding slides gave us a glimpse of the future opportunities available. Let’s look at the immediate opportunity that will allow you to earn revenue today.If we compile this data with the first slide on smartphone penetration, we can see that not only does the North America and Europe have the highest smartphone users, they also have the highest monetization opportunity right now. So revenue maximization is top of mind for you, you better have a globalization plan.
Globalization doesn’t have to be a daunting task and it also doesn’t mean that you need to spend most of your development time on it. Instead, if you focus on reaching the most amount of users, you could launch your app in just 5 languages and reach 70% of users.In contrast to that, if you launched in only Bahasa, you will reach <20% of total internet users.
Let’s take a closer look at your potential performance. This is a typical Indonesian AdMob developer. As you can see, not only is 68% of revenue is coming from global users, the RPM is also 57% higher compare to RPM from local audience
Now knowing how important the global audience is, I’m shocked but not completely surprised at this stat.How many of you have downloaded an app and been frustrated over the localization of the app?We’ll you’re not alone, over 1/3 of all users experience poor app localization, which also leads to uninstalls. What’s interesting is that in the US, 18% of users will uninstall an app even if they thought it were a high quality app, versus an uninstall rate of 30% for poor quality apps.
So how do you build for a not one size fit all market?I’m going to share with you some localization best practices that we’ve discovered through a joint research study with Park Associates, measuring smartphone and tablet users in 5 key markets.
The first step to releasing your app in multiple languages is called internationalization(i18n) – making your app ready to handle other languages and region differences. Internationalization is useful even without translation, as it includes things like displaying dates and numbers in formats appropriate to the user’s region. If you’re a utility app, like a camera & filter, you may not have a lot of text, when you do, please make sure to always use the appropriate system calls to support translated strings. Once your app is internationalized, it’s time for localization (L10n) – actually translating & customizing the app for specific additional languages & locales. Choosing which languages to translate into is an important decision, and is very much dependent on your app and the markets you are targeting. In some cases it’s as simple as choosing the largest App Store markets first.The Android developer support site has some great articles on how to set up your strings for easy localization.
In general, I would always say that it is prudent to rely on your own analytics to figure out where your users are and if you’re app is providing them with the right support. If this is your first time launching an app, here are some general guidelines and metrics that you should consider in thinking about localization.
How many of you develop for the Android platform?Android makes it easy for developer to locate translation services in their price range. You can find this service right inside the Android Developer Console.
Let’s talk about the rules or focus of localization. First, above all else, users care about the quality and experience of the app.We’ll do a deep dive into the gaming vertical to highlight examples of tactics to consider.We all know that social is huge, and it seems that everyone is trying to build some sort of social component into their app, but what we’ve found is that gamers care more about the actual features and quality of a game than they do about the social aspects of a game like multi-player abilities or leaderboard sharing. In addition to that users in most countries want an app with high performance, rather than an app from a known brand.However, that doesn’t mean that you can ignore localization completely, 18% of US users will uninstall an app for poor localization even if they think it’s a quality app vs. 30% uninstall rate for a poor quality app.
Which leads us to the distribution problem. You’ve built a great app, how do you get it into the hands of users?When thinking about distribution, where and how you publish is very much country dependent. While most users download the majority of their apps from native app stores, like iTunes or Google Play, Chinese users download their apps from a greater variety of sources like mobile carrier, device manufacturer or third party app stores. If you want users, make sure they can find you where they are. Don’t make them go looking for your app!I mentioned in the earlier slide that brand is not important to most users. This is actually not true in China, where users are more likely to download apps from known brands. So, if you’re looking to break into that market, consider publisher your app with a known brand there.
Also consider the context of how your app is being used. I’ve met a ton of brilliant app developers over the years but the one differentiation between a successful and unsuccessful developer is who they build their apps for. Successful app devs build apps for users. Unsuccessful app devs build apps for themselves. No matter how great your app is, if people don’t want it, they won’t use it.I’m going to show a great case study later that highlights this point very well.We see here that bite sized games are more important on smartphones. This is highly visible in Puzzle & Trivia games which are usually engaged with on a per level basis.
Which is different than tablets, which are more often used in the home. So users prefer to engage in more complex and time consuming games like action/adventure games.While you’re at it, please don’t simply have one game for smart phones and tablets. Make sure you’re optimizing the experience and extra real estate you’re getting with the tablet screen.
So you have a great app, great distribution, and what about monetization? I almost want to bring this slide to the front of the deck to highlight the fact importance of monetization and the fact that it should NOT be an afterthought. You should think about monetization as you are designing your app…there’s nothing worse for me than seeing a beautifully designed app with an ad slapped onto it.Now let’s get back to monetization, as you can see in this chart, of the app monetization methods avail, not including ads, users engage with free to paid at a higher frequency than all other models.However, of the total gaming spend, average revenue spent on IAP in games is 85% across all countries measured. That means that 15% or less of the revenue is going towards F2P. What this tells me is that lifetime value of a customer
We can also see here that whileChinese gamers report they make in-app purchases with much higher frequency than gamers in other markets, they spend the least on in-game purchases, on average. This is important because it will affect your pricing strategy per market.This means that you will want to price your goods at lower prices in China and create higher priced bundles in Japan.
The type of IAP you offer will also affect your revenue. It should come as no surprise to you all here that users in Asia love to personalize characters in games and are willing to pay for it.
Now if you’re in a country that supports paid payments by the Google Play store, you have the option to choose the monetization methods we previously discussed. However, ID is not currently supported, so ads are one of the main ways that most developers can make money on a scalable manner.When working with developers, I receive a lot of pushback over concerns of unrelevant ads and the fact that devs think their users don’t like ads.
Well the truth is that users don’t mind seeing ads, as long as they’re not interrupting the app experience. This really ties back to the fact that as you’re designing your app, you really need to design how ads will work into your app UI.
In fact, users even have preferences on the types of ads they see…On average, 29% of Asian users prefer ads targeted using their personal information which 28% of Western users prefer contextually targeted ads
Before I go into some case studies of how different developers have localized successfully, I wanted to tie all these tips together and place emphasis on the fact that this is not a set it and forget it business. As with any other business, you should ensure that you’re tracking your app performance and user engagement via analytics, allow that to guide your decisions on what and where to develop and be where users can find you.
The SayHi Chat app started out only in Japanese, Chinese and English. It soon became one of the most popular apps in Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The SayHi team realized it was time to launch in more languages, as the language barrier was restricting how fast SayHi could grow globally.SayHi used the App Translation Service to launch in 13 additional languages in August 2013 and immediately saw 120% increase in install rates. In addition, they are seeing their app ranked in Top 10 apps in countries like Poland and Italy.Notably, they saw steady growth in Spain after replacing their previous non-professional Spanish translation with a professional one produced through the App Translation Service.
The 2013 Google I/O talks about Building Android Apps for a Global Audience and What’s New for Developers in Google Play inspired developers at RV AppStudios to go global from very beginning for their new game, Zombie Ragdoll. They launched Zombie Ragdoll in August 2013, localized into 20 languages.They quickly saw the impact of their decision to ship simultaneously in multiple languages through increased non-English installs and improved engagement with users worldwide. In addition, they started getting significant usage in countries where their apps had not been as popular before. They are seeing great traction in countries like Vietnam, Russia, Philippines and Thailand.
