PikPok is a successful New Zealand based publisher that’s released over 50 games across mobile, PC, and console - having started developing video games in 1997 and mobile games in 2009. Their hit titles include Rival Stars Horse Racing, Into the Dead, Agent Intercept, Shatter, and more.
Bjorn Videkull, Director of UA & Ad Monetization at PikPok, shares how PikPok used LevelPlay, together with Facebook Audience Network, to successfully boost ARPDAU 14% and save valuable time.
Not enough time for imperfect data
Before moving to LevelPlay in-app bidding, our team at PikPok had three main challenges with the traditional waterfall:
Our reliance on historical data
The amount of time it took to manually manage and optimize
Missing out on potential revenue
Using the traditional waterfall, we’d provide each network with a CPM based on historical performance and then test price floors based on that network’s recommendations. This process made our jobs a lot harder, and was more tedious with each ad network we worked with. While we value the need to cater to each ad network, the specificity each ad network required made it challenging to keep up across so many waterfalls. It was clear we weren’t generating as much revenue from our monetization strategy as we could.
We knew in-app bidding would save us time in the long run, and also make sure our monetization stack was always automatically optimized and generating as much revenue as possible. Our mediation partner ironSource recommended we switch to LevelPlay, so that we’d have fewer networks to manually manage - which included a top network of ours, Facebook Audience Network.
Optimizing with LevelPlay’s A/B testing
Once we chose to try out LevelPlay, ironSource stepped in quickly to offer recommendations on which of our titles should be tested first.
To make sure LevelPlay was a good fit for our monetization strategy, we used ironSource’s bidding A/B testing tool on a few titles to compare the effectiveness of LevelPlay with Facebook Audience Network against our traditional waterfall. The team at ironSource was active throughout the testing phase, sending us results daily. The interface of the tool itself was also easy to work with - seeing all of our metrics in one place made the process simple, and it only required a few quick clicks to set up.
Increasing ARPDAU by 14% and saving time
After the initial testing on a few of our titles, we found that LevelPlay improved each of the areas we were struggling with - not only did we see a 14% increase in ARPDAU but we also saw at least 50% time saved on ad operations. In fact, by automating the waterfall and making sure that we were getting the highest possible eCPM for each ad impression, LevelPlay significantly increased PikPok’s overall revenue.
Going 100% to LevelPlay
After we proved LevelPlay was effective for our titles, we went 100% in on in-app bidding - transitioning the rest of our titles over as well. Now, we plan to launch our upcoming titles with LevelPlay from the get-go.
