We continue to summarize the results of 2022 together with top managers and experts of the gaming industry (and related ones). Next up is an interview with Dmitry Kravtsov, CEO and founder of devtodev.
What was the year for you personally, where are you now, were there any things that you finally managed to realize and are proud of?
The year 2022 was very difficult. Many of my loved ones are in Ukraine and, of course, I can’t help but worry about them. Since the end of February, we, as a company, have also tried to help in any way we could and have made free access to the use of devtodev for all Ukrainian developers.
Nevertheless, there were joyful moments. One of the most important events that has taken place in recent months is the separation of the analytical platform and the educational content of devtodev. Together with DevGAMM, we launched Edvice, a new platform for sharing experiences in the gaming industry, where all our courses and articles have moved. In addition to useful materials, Edvice can appoint consultations with top experts in the game development industry.
What was the year like for the company? What have you done, implemented, and what in general would I like to highlight in terms of achievements?
The year has been difficult for many of us. Despite this, devtodev continues to develop and expand the functionality of the analytical platform.
Speaking in more detail, the number of our customers this year has become more than 600, and the audience coverage has increased by 30%. This means that even more companies trust devtodev with their data and apply a data-driven approach to working on games and applications.
In 2022, we entered the list of the best analytical platforms for game developers according to Newzoo. We were also glad to be in the final of the App Growth Awards, which took place recently.
This year we have continued to improve the platform, taking into account the feedback from our customers and the latest trends in data analysis. As for the functionality, first of all I will highlight the development of our own service for conducting A/B testing. Now devtodev clients can test their hypotheses without using third-party tools.
We also continued to implement our plans to implement Machine Learning algorithms for predicting metrics. Now it is possible to predict LTV for a period of up to a year, using any sources of income (IAP monetization, advertising revenue, subscriptions, or all three sources together). In addition, ML now allows us to predict the payment behavior for each user.
There are even more opportunities for effective teamwork, including new types of widgets and different levels of access to dashboards for each team member.
As for the existing reports, this year we continued to improve them based on the needs of our customers. Now you can create audience segments from different reports for advertising cabinets. We have also added new graph types for better data visualization.
How has the mobile analytics market changed over the year?
Analytics has become a must have for game and application developers, which is why there is a great need in the market for specialists working with data. Profile courses have become even more popular. By the way, there is a trend in data science in the field of education, as medium and large companies are increasingly using machine learning.
More and more companies are starting to monetize their products with subscriptions and analyze them. Developers increasingly want to use remote configs and change the game for different segments of users under different circumstances.
Has the practice of working with gaming companies changed? In what and how exactly?
During the pandemic, we had to rebuild our sales and completely move them online. Fortunately, conferences have returned to our lives this year, and we were glad to meet our friends and clients live, to make new acquaintances and contacts.
What are the main trends in analytics would you highlight at the moment?
Compared to last year, trends have not changed in general, rather, they continued to strengthen. More and more analytical platforms are focusing on improving usability, automating routine tasks, and tools are becoming more user-friendly. When developing new functionality, special attention is paid to opportunities for teamwork.
What are the company’s plans for next year?
In 2023, we also plan to enter the US market, which was postponed for several years due to covid.
If we talk about functionality, next year we will focus on simplifying and speeding up work with data, which is so important for our customers. Most of this is predictive automation of tasks that the platform can perform independently, without the participation of analysts. Also, devtodev will become even more convenient for collaboration. There are also plans to update existing reports and simplify their work. We will continue to expand data collection capabilities through integration with advertising networks, traffic buying platforms, etc.