About Tomer Bar-zeev
In a January 2022 interview, Tomer Bar-zeev stated that the gaming ecosystem within the app economy is "growing super fast" and is "bigger than the film industry and music industry combined." He attributed recent consolidation in the industry, including acquisitions by Zynga and Take-Two, to companies "gearing up to make sure they have everything they need to continue growing." Bar-zeev said that following Apple's iOS privacy changes, success depends on "what you do with data," noting that his company obtains first-party data through an SDK and partnerships with telcos. He added that the gaming economy grew "so fast in 2021" and predicted it would continue growing, with different players becoming stronger or weaker based on their ability to analyze data. Bar-zeev also cited his company's data showing that time spent in games increased by about 10% during the COVID-19 pandemic and remained at that level after economies reopened, calling it "the new norm."
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Tomer Bar-zeev's recent appearances.
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Transcript (6 segments)
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Interviewer0:10
Particularly because I think investors might need to make a choice: do they believe that scale in game library is the way to go, or is it scale in relevant platform software, or is it both, which I guess AppLovin is pursuing? How do you view it strategically?
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Tomer Bar-zeev0:28
Yeah, so hi, thank you. Good morning, thanks for having me again. Look, the gaming ecosystem within the app economy is growing super fast. Gaming is the biggest part of the app economy, growing the fastest. It's bigger than the film industry and music industry combined. So it makes perfect sense to me that it will grow all around. It will continue leading the app economy. I think it makes a ton of sense. They have everything they need to continue growing in this very exciting, very fast-growing gaming economy, and I think it will grow all over, but we will see.
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Interviewer1:21
But I have some questions about whether it really will grow all over at equal rates. I mean, isn't what we saw with Apple's iOS changes and the focus on first-party data, doesn't that have an impact on the advertising marketplace within games more than, say, games that you pay for, or game ecosystems where you control the flow of how consumers and gamers get introduced to new games? I mean, aren't there implications there?
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Tomer Bar-zeev1:53
Yeah, look, I think it's quite clear post the IDFA changes led by first-party data. We, for example, get first-party data SDK, device-level data through our solution with the telcos. It's mostly what you do with that data. The fact of the matter is that the gaming economy and the app economy have grown so fast in 2021, and I believe it will continue growing in recent years. It breaks down to what you really do with data. While the economy is growing, it's true that you see different players becoming stronger and some players becoming a bit less so. It really goes back to how you build the infrastructure to enable you to analyze together a tremendous amount of data to better serve the users and the app developers. I think it's the year.
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Interviewer3:11
Of course, a lot of people believe that gaming may be pulled forward because mobility took a hit during the pandemic. As we move forward and economies reopen, does growth take a hit, or has mobile become even more important?
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Tomer Bar-zeev3:26
So what we've seen in our data is when COVID really started, we saw an uptake of around 10%, maybe a bit more than 10%, in the time that users spent within games. And as the world reopened and we had different ways to test it multiple times, it pretty much stayed the same. So we think it's the new norm. People are spending more time on their phones, doing more stuff on their phones. Mobility is growing, and we think based on the data that we see that it will continue.
