Game Theory shutting down temporarily (25)
So I just received word that GT will be shutting down completely starting Monday while they "get prepared to relaunch under AT&T's new Pin Consent Management Platform". Have to say this really blows, I was just now getting started with coreg. Been seeing decent results with SP and was hoping for even better with GT. In fact I just got my account setup minutes before this announcement. Guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens in the coming weeks.
Does anyone have any further insights into this? I'm sure it can't be a good thing (well, for users it might be, haha).
I wonder what will SP do after GT...
We all may need to move to non-pin submit paths, there is one wonderful thread in this category about this.
Originally Posted by meln
While it will be a good thing in the sense of increasing compliance and hopefully calming AT&T down, it will decrease RPUs.
In May AT&T released an announcement saying they wanted to change how PIN submits were handled. Instead of letting the short code owners manage opt-ins, AT&T wants the Aggregators to do so. This required the aggregators setting up APIs where they can manage all the optins and the mobile campaign owners can just call it. Any AT&T campaign that is NOT using this new method will not be able to receive new AT&T optins after August 7th or so.
I don't know why GT is taking everything down for a full month; they really just need to change up their APIs. What I suspect is that since their platform may be large and it may require a bit of coding, they would rather just take it all down and have it done well and quickly, instead of taking AT&T down while the paths are live and users seeing huge RPU drops, and potentially having the new changes cause bugs and mess things up even more.
One big issue for RPUs is that the new regulations have specific text that *must* be sent to the user when they request a PIN, which converts poorly. Usually mobile campaigns "optimize" the text that's sent to the user to make it more confusing and less obvious they're being charged. Now that they can't do this, less people will submit their PINs for verification and RPUs will go down. I remember when I messed around with this we got our PIN submit rate up 50-100%. The optin rate alone won't just change though; the "enhanced" message sets also reduced churn (less people even knew they were subscribed), so now the churn will increase too, which will further decrease a subscriptions LTV and therefore the paths RPUs.
However, for the past month or so paths couldn't get new AT&T codes because of the changes they were making, so that led to lower RPUs. Remember when they said all AT&T codes got "nuked"? They couldn't even get new ones to offset that. Now, however, they can start getting new ones again, so that should offset the impending RPU drop a bit.
Thankfully, though, the industry is progressing slowly towards real compliance. I've said this on this forum in the past and got SHAT on, but now all the things I said are coming to light. RPUs were inflated and users were being scammed and duped into subscribing, and things are inevitably stabilizing... but I'm sure there's more "stabliziation" on the way in the next few years too.
what, exactly, are the changes that are going to be made in order to comply with at&t?
i know that when the user submits phone #, the text they receive containing the pin # always says there will be charges made by entering that pin number and confirming.
so, even if they change the wording of that text message, it will still contain the disclaimer, maybe worded differently, but it still says basically the same thing, right? so even if things change slightly, i dont see how that change could be that drastic.. it would seem the only users to get fooled by this before either didnt read it or are just stupid. im sure those same users will fall for it under the new wording.
Any affiliate marketer knows that landing page changes can make HUGE differences in conversions. This is no different. They usually put the $9.99 directly next to the phone number so it blends in. Obviously people will still opt-in, but just not as many.
actually, i was talking about the wording of the actual text message the user receives on the phone.. that always had the disclaimer..
i wasnt aware that changes were also being made to the landing page requirements... which is why i asked.. so is there an "official" list of the changes that are now required to be made in order to comply?
Sorry, I think I worded that poorly - there are no LP changes at all, I was just drawing an analogy between LP pages and the wording changes in the text messages with the PIN. In these text messages, they usually take the support phone number and price point and combine them so the price is hard to see ("YOUR PIN IS 1842. For help call 18005845745$9.99/mo msg & data rates apply", as opposed to "Your PIN is 1842. $9.99/mo msg & data rates apply. For Help call....." which the standard carrier templates usually are like). Some aren't as scammy though. Since the campaigns are no able longer to edit the text on their own for AT&T but instead are forced to use a single AT&T-made message, they can't "tweak" the opt-in rate like they used to.
Overall I don't think the RPU drop will be that bad compared to what we've just seen in the recent past, but it definitely will effect it somewhat.
Originally Posted by meln
I would advise you to learn a lesson from this - Don't jump on board a sinking ship. Coreg is still alive, but not like this. GT are clutching at straws here.
Originally Posted by richardj
PIN submit coregistration will undoubtedly continue to go down, but it's still somewhat viable for the time being, and should be for hopefully a good while longer. Definitely not long-term though.
Hey Guys, Fluent is still up and going strong. If you are still looking for a competitive co-reg path or to talk strategy, hit up Carl Augustin at caugustin@fluentco.com.
we've made some big strides building up our non-mobile. SP isn't going anywhere and most of our guys are pretty happy with RPU's right now. If you are looking for a place for your traffic give it a try. IM me and I can get you set up right away and answer any questions you have.
If it's one thing I've learned over the years...anytime the sky starts falling in one area a huge opportunity has just been created in another. Compare it to "the real world". More wealth was created during the Great Depression than any other time in history.
Sorry guys, to clarify we still have mobile offers in the path, but obviously due to the recent changes it's becoming less of a dominant piece in the path. We're continuing to build up our non-mobile segment with more offers. Guys like Web Clients and the Useful with their email submits have been running successful coreg paths with no mobile in the path for over a decade, coreg isn't going away just an evolution.
Does anyone have updates from GT? according to what they said, they should be opening coreg by now.
My manager over there suspected a few more weeks to a over a month.
Jesus, a month? What RPUs are people getting on SP now?
I doubt Gametheory will even come back into the Co-Reg game.
has anyone heard anything lately about gametheory/mobileplus? all my attempts to contact anyone there in the last few weeks have gone unanswered.. emails are never responded to and IM's are ignored.. i guess they are permanently done, or else it would be pretty stupid to just ignore clients..
every time I talk to my AM just to keep updated at GT he always has no idea on what's happening, but the last time I messaged him I didn't receive a response either.
Sad to hear, GameTheory was always my favorite! I wonder why they are out of the race yet SP continues to run?
http://performinsider.com/2012/09/ga...own-by-nys-ag/
That happened a while ago, they are certainly in business with sms
Originally Posted by rollerkoaster
Originally Posted by grindhard
It seems a lot of there employee's left and headed for Playphone. It sure is a sad time for Mobile Plus.
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