Gardenscapes is a popular casual game by mobile development company, Playrix.
The gaming app was named Facebook’s Game of the Year and has been gaining ground in the free-to-play sector ever since.
The challenge
Playrix wanted to grow its user base with highly-targeted ad CPE campaigns that would steadily deliver high-value, engaged users for Gardenscapes. The company was in need of an acquisition partner who could offer long-term, cost-effective app promotion with scalable quality traffic and creative advertising models.
Goals:
- Source new, engaged users with high LTV potential
- Steadily expand user base
- Maximize campaign performance with advanced optimization tools
“ironSource already proved they could bring us large volumes of users in the past. Now, their CPE campaigns and constant optimization ensure we acquired high-quality users who stuck around in our games.”
- Alexander Tarasov, Director of Marketing at Playrix
The solution
ironSource suggested employing a CPE campaign on the ironSource offerwall, promoting Gardenscapes on premium direct traffic and on 40+ networks worldwide, to grow Gardenscapes’ user base with high-value, engaged users.
To receive their reward, players using the ironSource offerwall would have to install Gardenscapes and then finish the tutorial or reach a certain level. ironSource performed repeated A/B tests to determine the right engagement event to optimize user retention and campaign performance.
The results
Using offerwall, the ironSource team worked closely with Playrix, using granular targeting, as well as payout optimization for each traffic source, according to their respective value.
At the height of ironSource’s CPE campaign, Gardenscapes welcomed 11K new users every day, with all of these gamers engaging with the app as part of collecting their reward. Engagement-focused acquisition campaigns saw 15x more installs than cost per install (CPI) campaigns.
“It’s critically important to work with a partner who understands our larger business goals, and can work creatively to help us fulfill them. ironSource is exactly that kind of partner.”
- Alexander Tarasov, Director of Marketing at Playrix
The graph illustrates the results of a CPI and CPE campaign for Gardenscapes on a single Android app, with the CPE campaign scaling 8 times the amount of installs compared to its CPI counterpart, as well as acquiring users with significantly higher LTV in 9 out of 10 weeks.
