Panteon is a Turkish mobile games publisher with a portfolio of hyper-casual titles. Despite fierce competition in this category, they managed to get their latest two games, 100 Mystery Buttons and Trading Master, to number 1 in the US gaming charts.
100 Mystery Buttons eventually disappeared from the top charts, but 4 months later, after using ironSource LevelPlay mediation products, it returned, with installs and revenue increasing - a rare achievement in the hyper-casual genre, where hits tend to have short-lived flames.
Learn from Ahmet Emre Gürcan, Lead Growth Manager at Panteon how his team got their hyper-casual game 100 Mystery Buttons back on top using ironSource’s Day 1 ROAS optimizer and LevelPlay mediation to close the monetization and user acquisition loop.
Instant but fleeting success
“100 Mystery Buttons is based on a TikTok trend, and we thought once the concept loses relevance on social media, we’d struggle to unlock the scale needed to continue growing the game.
To some degree, we were right. We launched the game globally using ironSource’s UA platform, and in a very short period of time we found ourselves in the top 10 in the US gaming charts. With ironSource’s help, our game achieved the virality and scale we hoped for, but after a super successful few weeks after global launch, 100 Mystery Buttons began to disappear from the top charts. By November 2021, we were hardly spending on our UA campaigns for the game.
Back from the dead with ironSource’s ROAS Optimizer
In late November 2021, the ironSource team saw an opportunity to breathe new life into our game, and recommended using LevelPlay’s exclusive D1 ROAS optimizer to kickstart our UA.
By using machine learning to analyze real-time data, make constant adjustments to our bids, and optimize campaigns towards our KPI, the solution enabled us to bring in quality users at scale efficiently and easily. Not only that, but this all happened with minimal operational overheads - the tech did all the heavy lifting for us so we could focus on optimizing our creatives.
We focused on optimizing towards D1 ROAS, a best practice for hyper-casual games, and the results speak for themselves.
Using both playable ad creatives and video ads, we saw more than a 10x uplift in installs.
What’s more, the game returned to the top charts, reaching the top 20 in the US gaming charts on iPad in December 2021.
But scale is one thing - the tricky part is finding scale while maintaining a positive ROAS. Thankfully, because the optimizer was automatically driving installs from high quality users, we managed to achieve this winning combo - sustainable scale that provided return on investment.
Closing the loop with ironSource mediation
We were so impressed with the ironSource ROAS optimizer that we decided to test additional ironSource LevelPlay tools, to see if our monetization strategy could also be improved.
We tested the waters using ironSource’s AB testing tool, which is one of our favorite products in their platform - in fact it’s one of the best in the industry. It’s easy to use, and the performance analysis is straightforward.
Using a hybrid monetization approach, combining bidding and traditional waterfall instances, we increased our ARPDAU by 32% within 3 weeks. The strong user base we’d recently built up using the ROAS optimizer served as the foundation for this revenue increase - boosted by the premium advertiser demand we were leveraging through ironSource mediation.
Close relationship
ironSource has all the tools a game studio needs, and we can get help anytime, whatever the problem is. Throughout this journey, the ironSource team has been a pleasure to work with and given us end-to-end support - including SDK integration, waterfall setup, creative support, and user acquisition. We’re excited to use their suite of growth products on all our games, and continue taking our business forward”.
"The ironSource team has been a pleasure to work with and given us end-to-end support - including SDK integration, waterfall setup, creative support, and user acquisition."
- Ahmet Emre Gürcan, Lead Growth Manager at Panteon
