With top games, like Hero Wars and Island Questaway: Mystery Farm, Nexters has over 100 million installs worldwide and is one of the top 5 independent mobile game companies in Europe. The Nexters team wanted to maximize profits from their ad placement strategy for their hit, Hero Wars, so they decided to consult with the Unity team.
Anton Kvashnevskiy, Head of Business Development at Nexters, explains how Unity’s ad strategy consultancy helped them optimize their rewarded video placement strategy, boosting their engagement rate 73% and DEU 59%.
Room to grow for their rewarded video strategy
Rewarded video plays a major part in our monetization strategy, but Hero Wars’ main rewarded video ad placements weren’t driving enough profit. After watching a rewarded video, users would have to go through multiple clicks to actually reach the reward - limiting their engagement and user experience.
With room to grow with our rewarded video strategy, we needed an expert team to help boost engagement and revenue. Since we were using Unity LevelPlay mediation, we partnered with Unity’s ad strategy consultancy team.
Implementing new placements with the Unity LevelPlay platform
To understand why Hero Wars had low rewarded video engagement, the ad strategy consultancy team carefully examined each rewarded video placement to evaluate if they were easy to find and if their rewards were clear and valuable to players.
“We were amazed by the amount of effort and time Unity put into understanding our game and our users, and their recommendations proved how devoted they are to their partners.”
- Anton Kvashnevskiy, Head of Business Development at Nexters
After carefully studying Hero Wars and its players’ motivations, the consultancy team suggested new placements that would be more accessible, clear, and exciting for players. For example, the team suggested adding a rewarded video placement immediately after a player loses all of their coins - this way, players would be naturally motivated to engage with the placement to gain back the coins they just lost. This placement seemed like a natural fit for our users, so we decided to give it a try.
Soon after implementing this placement, we saw Hero Wars’ KPIs jump - engagement rate increased by 73% and daily engaged users (DEU) increased by 59%. Not only did we boost our engagement, but by giving users exactly what they needed to continue playing, we improved our users’ experience.
By partnering with Unity and their ad strategy consultancy team, we not only managed to boost our KPIs, but also supported our players’ needs. We look forward to seeing how we can continue to optimize our monetization strategy together.
