Nekki, the studio behind the globally successful Shadow Fight franchise and Vector, has scaled past one billion downloads by combining disciplined monetization systems with deep player-centric design.
Its approach to monetization emphasizes player trust, data-driven experimentation, and a clear separation between IAA and IAPs.
In this conversation, Maksim Amosov, Head of Monetization at Nekki, explains why ads are never free, how thoughtful integration can strengthen, not cannibalize, purchases, and why deep segmentation, rather than scale alone, will define the next era of mobile game ad monetization.
- Could you briefly introduce yourself and share how you found your way into gaming and why you chose monetization as your area of focus?
Maksim: My name is Maksim, and I currently lead monetization at Nekki. I didn’t start my career in gaming. I spent about eight years working as a design engineer on gas stations and pipelines. Games were always meaningful to me, but it took time before I decided to completely reshape my career. I’ve never regretted that decision; I’m doing something I genuinely love. When I entered the gaming industry, monetization quickly became the most interesting discipline for me because it combines analytics, psychology, and game design. You are not just optimizing for numbers, you are shaping player experience.
- What does a typical day look like for you as a Head of Monetization at a studio of Nekki’s scale?
Maksim: Most of my time is spent analyzing metrics, synchronizing with different teams, and testing hypotheses. We run experiments constantly. Beyond day-to-day operations, a big part of my role is identifying growth opportunities and shaping the long-term monetization strategy for our projects, figuring out how they can scale, generate more revenue, and continue to grow sustainably. We try to build more valuable and enjoyable experiences for different audience segments, so that the products appeal to a wider range of players and can keep evolving over time. It’s not very glamorous, but it’s very systematic. Monetization is about process, not sudden inspiration.
- Nekki’s portfolio includes both hardcore games like Shadow Fight series and casual games like Vector & recently launched Ninja Play. How does player behavior differ and how does that affect ad monetization?
Maksim: Hardcore players are willing to invest more time and effort, but they’re extremely sensitive to pay-to-win mechanics and aggressive advertising. Casual players usually have shorter sessions, but a much higher tolerance for ads. In Shadow Fight series, monetization is built around meaningful progression and a very respectful ad experience. In Vector, it’s more about frequent rewards and faster loops. The monetization strategy always has to be in accordance with the audience.
- Many studios worry that ads reduce or kill in-app purchases. Has that been your experience?
Maksim: Ads can indeed compete with purchases but only if they are poorly integrated. If a game has enough progression capacity and ads are integrated harmoniously into the economy, they enhance progression without diminishing the value of purchases. I can tell you an interesting case. In our Vector game, we ran into a classic “ads kill purchases” problem. The meta-progression was too complex for the genre, and rewarded ads were directly competing with IAPs. So we asked ourselves a simple question: if ads kill purchases, what happens if we help them finish the job? We simplified the meta-progression and redesigned the monetization logic. Ads now fully cover baseline progression, while IAPs focus on removing ads and unlocking exclusive heroes and levels. In other words, we didn’t lose purchases, we rebuilt their value proposition from scratch. To summarize, we didn’t lose revenue. We rebuilt the value of purchases.
- How do you avoid creating pay-to-win scenarios while still monetizing effectively?
Maksim: We separate audiences. Paying players can remove ads completely and progress faster, while non-paying players can still reach the same content by investing time instead of money. If a player chooses to pay, they are fully separated from ads and get a smoother progression. Non-paying players can reach difficult levels as well, but it requires more time and effort. If players can’t eventually reach the same content without paying, the game becomes pay-to-win, which is bad for user experience. The key is that ads should never feel like punishment, and purchases should never feel mandatory.
- When revenue growth conflicts with user experience, how do you decide what to prioritize?
Maksim: Whenever there is tension between user experience and revenue, we don’t guess – we rely on A/B testing to guide our decisions. We test changes on real players, look at what actually works, and always focus on the long term. If players feel good in the game and genuinely enjoy playing, revenue tends to grow naturally. At the same time, we don’t work with data in isolation. We actively monitor player feedback as well and always compare these two sources to get the clearest picture. Pure data can sometimes contradict what players say they want, while feedback may come from a very vocal minority. Balancing quantitative data with qualitative feedback is key to making the right call. Of course, we have accumulated experience in understanding what players like and what frustrates them, and we treat user experience very carefully. If it’s damaged, it can undermine the entire monetization system, and no monetization strategy will be able to fix that.
- Beyond eCPM and ARPDAU, which ad metrics matter most to you?
Maksim: One of the most important metrics for us is impressions per engaged user. We focus on how many players choose to watch ads and how often they do so. Revenue is important, of course, but engagement tells you whether your monetization system is truly healthy.
- Can you share an ad monetization strategy that recently delivered strong results?
Maksim: We’ve been working deeply on user segmentation and reward personalization, and this has delivered very visible results. The goal is to create conditions that feel comfortable for players, encourage engagement, and offer rewards that are relevant and valuable to them. I also got some kind of a case of this situation in one of our games. We moved Offerwall earnings into a separate in-game store, allowing players to access valuable items without overheating the core economy. At the same time, we rebalanced reward payouts based on the user’s region directly on the Offerwall side. This led to a sharp increase in both revenue and user engagement, with no negative impact on the LTV of paying players. We’re still experimenting in this direction, and the early results are very encouraging.
- Can you tell how deep you go with user segmentation?
Maksim: We start with our main countries, the ones that generate the highest number of impressions or conversions, and work with them directly. For other regions, we group countries into buckets based on similar metrics, payment behavior, or monetization patterns. In total, we currently work with around 10 to 15 audience segments. Honestly, it’s still not deep enough, and we plan to go further deep. Segmentation is the future of monetization, although privacy regulations will define how far we can take it.
- With your level of expertise and the scale you are managing, looking back at your journey, what’s a painful mistake or learning that really shaped the way you approach monetization today?
Maksim: It’s hard to point to one specific mistake or event. Our experience is built on a series of successful and unsuccessful hypothesis validations across different projects. Sometimes we get the expected outcome, sometimes we make mistakes, and sometimes those results become the starting point for a new hypothesis. For me, the key learning is that the process matters more than individual successes or failures. Being bold with experimentation and then trusting the data is what really shapes strong monetization decisions.
- What is the biggest misconception studios still have about ad monetization?
Maksim: The biggest misconception is that ad rewards are “free.” They are not. A reward is only truly free when a player presses a button and receives it instantly. When a player watches an ad or completes an action, they are making a payment, not with money, but with their time. Time is more valuable than money, and if you don’t respect it, players will leave.
- Can you share an example of a successful collaboration between the Monetization and UA teams that led to an improvement in overall LTV?
Maksim: Historically, our projects were more focused on in-app purchases, so most monetization initiatives revolved around payments. Recently, however, we’ve been going through a reorganization, with new people joining the team and a stronger focus on exploring new opportunities. It’s difficult to point to just one example, but one collaboration that stands out is how we worked with the UA team to run campaigns that are sustainable purely on ad revenue. These campaigns helped bring back engaged non-paying users, expose them to refreshed content, and monetize them through ads. So far, this approach is showing very promising results.
- Looking ahead, what do you think will define successful ad monetization over the next few years?
Maksim: Deeper segmentation and personalization will be the key. In-app ads need to become more interactive, relevant, and enjoyable. Ideally, ads should feel like content players want to engage with, not something they simply tolerate. At the same time, it would be great to gradually help users understand that personalization itself is not a bad thing. Data protection is extremely important, but thoughtful personalization allows us to show ads that are actually useful and relevant to the player. When done right, this creates a win-win situation for players, advertisers, and developers alike. In that sense, advertising should become art again. At the same time, privacy regulations will continue to shape what’s possible & what’s not, so we’ll have to see how the balance evolves.
- If you had unlimited resources, what monetization initiative would you launch tomorrow?
Maksim: I would go even deeper into segmentation and personalization. Every player is different, and the best monetization systems adapt to that reality instead of forcing everyone into the same model.
At Crackle, we couldn’t agree more with Maksim Amosov: Segmentation and personalization is the future of sustainable growth. While Nekki focuses on player-centric design, Crackle empowers publishers to execute this vision through AI-powered user-level pricing. Our technology seamlessly integrates into your existing setup to effectively uplift eCPMs and so, ad revenue by valuing every user/ player differently instead of segmenting them in cohorts. If you want to see how user-level pricing can transform your monetization stack, contact us by filling out the form at crackle.tech/contact-us.
