Product Madness is one of the world's largest mobile game studios, and they focus on giving users the most engaging gameplay experiences and ultra-realistic visuals. Founded in 2007, today they’re a top-grossing leader in social casino mobile games - a genre that traditionally generates revenue from in-app purchases (IAPs).
Here, Sinem Su, Ad Monetization Manager, discusses what it was like using LevelPlay to A/B test bidding on Vungle and optimize their entire portfolio’s ad-based monetization strategy. Adding the Vungle bidding network and using ironSource LevelPlay, they increased ad ARPDAU by 11% across their games and were able to dedicate more time and resources to optimizing other parts of their ad monetization strategy, like adding new placements and improving segmentation.
Product Madness starts bidding on Vungle with LevelPlay
Challenge
Their small monetization team was spending too much time and resources manually operating their ad-based monetization, taking attention away from other ways they could improve their strategy.
Solution
Using LevelPlay to start in-app bidding, they automated bid optimization and began bidding on the Vungle network. Doing so boosted ad revenue while reducing operational overhead so they could focus on improving their overall ad monetization strategy.
Lean, mean monetization team
When we launched our early games, the monetization team was only one person. This made it very difficult to optimize all parts of our ad strategy at the same time. In particular, manually adjusting bids and waterfall placements for each ad network took a lot of time and resources that could’ve been spent on other improvements, like trying new ad placements.
Now we’re more than a team of one since I joined, but we’re still a lean group that needs to work efficiently. For a small ad monetization team like ours, having a simple yet effective solution for our ad-based monetization is essential. Enter: LevelPlay and transitioning to in-app bidding.
Using the A/B testing tool for bidding networks
Getting set up on ironSource LevelPlay to start in-app bidding was fast and simple. Since our expertise lies in IAPs, it was important that our ad monetization platform was easy to understand and use. The ironSource team made the process even easier by being very supportive and helping us with technical questions during onboarding - and beyond.
We then started using their A/B testing tool which let us compare performance on new bidding networks before going live with a one-click test. As we began replacing our traditional waterfall setup with in-app bidding, we used this tool to confirm that introducing new bidding networks would make a positive impact on our ARPDAU.
"As we began replacing our traditional waterfall setup with in-app bidding, we used their A/B testing tool to confirm that introducing new bidding networks would make a positive impact on our ARPDAU."
- Sinem Su, Ad Monetization Manager
Vungle was an important network for us in driving our ad revenue, but we weren’t on their bidding-only network yet. Using the ironSource A/B test tool, we were able to confirm that the Vungle bidding network improved our ARPDAU before we went all-in. With LevelPlay, we were able to access new opportunities with bidding networks like Vungle to start maximizing ad revenue.
Increasing ad ARPDAU for Heart of Vegas by 45% with Vungle
In-app bidding automatically optimizes our waterfalls so we’re setting the right bid price to attract high-quality advertisers. The ironSource team was proactive in providing optimization suggestions for our waterfall and best practices for using the A/B testing tool. Using LevelPlay and integrating the ironSource team’s suggestions helped us achieve more revenue - for example, on the Vungle network alone we experienced an 11% increase in ARPDAU. And specifically for our game Heart of Vegas, ARPDAU increased on iOS on the network by 45%.
ironSource LevelPlay brought incremental value to our entire game portfolio while freeing up internal resources so we could focus on other ad monetization strategies, like improving UI/UX of our ad placements and A/B testing.
“Our waterfall optimization operations have decreased significantly after the integration of Vungle bidding in ironSource.”
- Sinem Su, Ad Monetization Manager
With an improved ad monetization strategy, we’re able to boost revenue and continue finding new opportunities for optimization. We’ve enjoyed working with the ironSource and Vungle teams - we’re looking forward to future collaborations and growing our next titles together.
