In the last year, the hyper-casual games became the most downloaded genre in mobile with 6.3 Billion installs, surpassing all other genres according to Sensor Tower’s Mobile Game Taxonomy Report 2021. Hence, the competition in this genre became more fierce, putting pressure on publishers such as Netmarble to avoid their profit margins from diminishing.
Challenge
Optimizing campaigns to increase profit margins
As a global publisher, Netmarble develops and publishes its hypercasual games out of their EMEA region. Due to their nature, hypercasual games are developed, released, and consumed by users very rapidly. The number one game of yesterday can quickly lose its spot when a new game comes along. The pace is so high, sometimes marketing videos are circulated before the game is even developed and feedback from the videos determines whether a game will be developed or not. The speed at which new games are released, popular games are copied and users get bored makes acquiring users in a profitable way for hypercasual games ever more challenging.
To stay ahead of the game, at any given time Netmarble is publishing multiple games, across different ad networks with a myriad of campaigns targeting different segments. Tracking all of these campaigns and ad networks across different platforms and MMPs was a challenge on its own. But then ensuring the most optimum bid and budget decisions are made for each of the campaigns and target segments was nearly impossible. Despite the team spending many hours collectively each week, they still believed there was room for further optimization.
Solution
Using UAhero for user acquisition
Netmarble chose Tarentum’s optimization and automation platform UAhero to scale its user acquisition efforts. Having been developed by an AI powerhouse, Tarentum, UAhero’s core strength lies in its AI-based prediction and optimization technologies. Easy to use interfaces, existing integrations with ad networks and mobile measurement partners (MMPs) coupled with visualization capabilities made it simple for Netmarble marketers to use.
Just when we thought a bunch of our campaigns were dying, recommendations made by UAhero brought them back to life and our install figures jumped significantly.
Betul Eser
Growth Lead, Netmarble
Benefits
After using UAhero, Netmarble saw benefits in three areas.
Capturing all data in one system
UAhero is integrated with the ad networks and the mobile measurement partner (MMP) Netmarble uses. Its compact yet powerful dashboard brings all of the data from these networks and the MMP together for easy review and analysis. With UAhero, Netmarble no longer needed to export Excel files and do manual handling of the data.
Improved and more granular LTV predictions and bids
Thanks to advanced AI algorithms underpinning UAhero, the LTV predictions were made at the highest level of granularity possible with higher accuracy. Due to a large number of campaigns and ad networks, in some cases, Netmarble made LTV predictions (and therefore bid changes) at the country level. With UAhero, predictions were made at ad-set or source app-level granularity. This enabled capturing the nuances among different ad sets within a country so that different bid strategies could be implemented for each one. For example, previously the LTV period was assumed to be 14 days for the entire country. However, with UAhero, it was realized some source apps reached users who brought in revenue for 17 days. Using this knowledge, UAhero algorithms recommended different bid amounts for each source app, thereby capturing additional value.
One-click automation
Once bid decisions are made, entering these values into the ad networks’ portals is a major task in itself. Not only is it time-consuming, but it is also error-prone and a low value adds chore. UAhero greatly simplified Netmarble’s life in this aspect, by providing a one-click solution. Netmarble marketers were able to review the bid and budget recommendations made by UAhero and apply them directly from UAhero, without having to visit the ad network’s dashboard.
Result
Higher profits, increased efficiency
Through the use of Tarentum’s UAhero platform, the number of installs for one of their more popular games was increased by more than 5 fold. This was achieved without hurting the ROAS (Return-on-ad-spend) figures. In fact, ROAS figures also increased by 3%.
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The use of UAhero also enabled Netmarble to modify its work habits. With its time-saving interfaces and automation UAhero now sits at the center of Netmarble’s user acquisition operations. In place of collective meetings that ate up many person-hours, now decisions are made within minutes daily.
If you’re interested in learning how UAhero can help you improve your UA metrics and your quality of life, drop us an email at hello@uahero.ai.
About Netmarble
Netmarble Corp. strives to entertain audiences of all ages around the world by providing great mobile gaming experiences.
Established in Korea in 2000, Netmarble is the fastest-growing mobile game company and consistently ranks as a top mobile developer and publisher worldwide. Netmarble has been producing and servicing some of the most successful mobile games including Lineage 2: Revolution, MARVEL Future Fight, Everybody’s Marble, and Seven Knights.
As a parent company to Kabam, a top mobile game developer in massively multiplayer free-to-play games, and the largest shareholder to Jam City, a leading casual social game developer, Netmarble has a strategic partnership with CJ E&M Corporation, Asia’s largest entertainment company, Tencent Holdings, Asia’s largest internet company, and NCsoft, a prominent MMORPG company. Netmarble develops and publishes hypercasual games out of their EMEA offices.
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