The Success
The Appodeal Accelerator team developed a comprehensive Growth Plan for Join Blocks, focusing on enhancing User Acquisition (UA) campaigns by setting new goals, identifying top-performing ad creatives, expanding user reach, and exploring new markets.
A year after constant work, a dozen new markets tested, hundreds of ad creatives released, and several iterations in the whole growth strategy, we can proudly say that Join Blocks has increased substantially.
The Challenge – From Niche Markets to a Global Success
After a few months of its release, by the end of 2020, Join Blocks struggled to grow consistently. While most users were in the United States, they also had some scattered installs on the CIS markets, Brazil & Turkey.
During the Christmas holidays, Join Blocks experienced a slight peak in installs & income, but soon after that, all their metrics churned.
They contacted Appodeal to get help building a global growth strategy to maintain that upward trend in their metrics before they were long gone.
The Solution (Part 1) – Boosting the UA Campaigns
The Appodeal Accelerator team elaborated a Growth Plan that consisted of:
- Establishing new goals for the current UA Campaigns;
- Finding top-performing Ad Creatives;
- Increasing the reach of UA Campaigns;
- Open new markets.
Optimizing Join Blocks’ user acquisition campaigns was a first priority. The performance campaigns were focused on driving installs and disregarded user quality or retention rates.
Our growth experts focused their efforts on finding the top-performing ads on each UA campaign – always considering their individual goals and KPIs- to, later on, overhaul them.
The volume of targeted users had to increase, otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to maintain a positive eROAS (effective Return of Ad Spending).
Parallelly, we decided to strengthen the UA campaigns in those countries & markets that were already performing well and find new audiences with similar behavioral patterns.
Testing new Ad Networks & Platforms
Join Blocks already tested the waters in some well-known platforms, such as Facebook Ads, Google Ads & AppGrowth. The Appodeal team overhauled current efforts, by optimizing ads in major ad bidding platforms, and splitting current campaigns into more focused ones, with different goals.
To expand the reach of the current campaigns, we also broadened the reach of the current user acquisition campaigns to several top ad networks:
Setting up UA Campaign Goals
First, we optimized the UA Campaigns with in-game events.
For each campaign, new users had to achieve:
25 “game overs” before Day 8,
with Retention Rate Day 30 to-date >10%.
This way, we ensured that any new paid player had experienced all the new unlocked features after several game loops and maintained a stable Retention Rate.
To adjust the goals of the performance campaigns on Google Ads, we also established that the newly acquired paid users had to generate new IAP (in-app purchase) transactions.
Additionally, we also geo-targeted campaigns. In those markets where Join Blocks already had a strong presence, such as the USA, CIS markets, Brasil & Turkey, the Accelerator team & the localization team generated specific ad campaigns to increase the conversion rate.
Generating New Ad Creatives
We overhauled the localization for specific campaigns, and several ad campaigns were translated into different languages and adapted to their countries and cultures.
Those markets matched with the countries where Join Blocks had a strong presence:
For those ad creatives that had an outstanding performance, our team of Growth Experts in Appodeal decided to generate small variations and adaptations to each campaign goal, and increase the conversion rates.
Optimizing Ad Creatives
A series of small tweaks on the ad creatives highly boosted their performance, allowing a higher ROAS from Join Block's current campaigns.
In the previous example, we can observe the improved version of this ad creative, which has rocketed the performance by:
CTR (Click-Through-Rate) by 75%,
CPI (Cost per Install) reduced down to 10%.
The Solution (Part 2) – Optimizing the Ad Monetization Strategy
The Appodeal Accelerator team executed several tests and optimizations in the Ad Monetization Strategy of Join Blocks:
The Interval Between Interstitial & Video Ads
Our ad monetization experts tested the most optimal interval between the ad impressions in Join Blocks. The countries of Join Blocks are so disparate that players presented different behaviors.
The interval between ad impressions had to be defined separately for:
and Brazil and emerging markets.
This optimization resulted in an ARPU increase:
20% in the USA and mature markets,
Refresh Rate of Ad Units
To increase the fill rate and get higher eCPMs, from Appodeal, monetization managers determined the optimal time of pre-cached ads, for both types: banners and interstitials.
The ARPU, in this case, increased up to 30% in both CIS & USA markets.
Specific Ad Sources for Each Market
The disparity between markets targeted in Join Blocks generated a problematic situation in the monetization strategy. To fix it, the Appodeal team set up new ad networks & DSPs that have a solid presence in our targeted markets.
Thanks to that, the ARPU of Join Blocks increased up to 60% in general.
The Results – A Successful Collaboration
The Appodeal Accelerator team stabilized the churning users from Join Blocks with the well-developed and constantly tested UA Strategy. We set up new goals for each UA campaign, tried new ad networks and sources, and generated new ad creatives.
After a year of relentless effort, exploring numerous new markets, launching hundreds of advertising materials, and numerous revisions in our overall growth strategy, we're thrilled to announce that Join Blocks has achieved significant growth.
The Game: Join Blocks
Join Blocks has been designed out of love for casual games by NewPubCo. The studio already had a few other successful games, such as the million-making Spades game, or Top #3 Word Maker in the word games category.
Still, Join Blocks didn’t have to wait a whole year before their metrics started to rise. The results were noticeable only a few months after we began to implement all the previously mentioned optimizations.