Gamers protect their castle against monsters and bosses in Rush Royale: Tower Defense TD. The developer of the app MY.GAMES increased impressions, acquisition, and revenue with Apple Search Ads campaigns across the Today tab, the Search tab, product pages, and search results.
11x increase in revenue over two years.
24% increase in impressions in brand campaigns after running Today tab ads.
30% increase in taps in brand campaigns after running Today tab ads.
To scale acquisition growth to new markets, the MY.GAMES team wanted to increase brand awareness with a range of audiences. They needed to scale app discovery and reach players on the App Store interested in both casual and strategic gameplay. MY.GAMES also focused on optimizing for efficiency and maximizing revenue during key seasonal and marketing moments with the help of campaign management partner SplitMetrics.
From the start, Apple Search Ads has been a valuable iOS acquisition channel that exceeded our expectations. Now, the unique combination of campaigns across the Today tab, the Search tab, product pages, and search results delivers scale, strong return on investment, and players with high lifetime value.
With a Today tab ad, the MY.GAMES team positioned their brand prominently on the front page of the App Store. This made their app some of the first content that people saw when they began their App Store visit. Developed from ad creative based on custom product pages, their Today tab ads featured gameplay and characters. To further increase app visibility with a broad audience before users narrowed in on a search, the team invested in ads on the Search tab, which are featured at the top of the suggested apps list.
Today tab ads were an extremely effective placement that drove strong awareness, influencing brand campaigns and boosting impressions on brand keywords.
To efficiently scale and automate optimization of their Today tab campaign, the MY.GAMES team used the SplitMetrics Acquire platform, finding that the week after their Today tab ads ran, brand impressions in the U.S. for search results campaigns increased 24 percent.
Right after the launch of the Today tab ads, the tap-through rate on search results campaigns started to grow from 30 percent initially and reached almost 50 percent. So the boost was significant and very impressive.
They further increased app visibility with a broad audience by investing in ad placements across the App Store, including ads on the Search tab and ads on product pages.
To better capture the attention of the right players, the team at MY.GAMES created ad variations for their search results campaigns based on tailored custom product pages set up in App Store Connect.
With these custom ads, they aligned high-performing ad groups with creative highlighting the game’s anniversary as well as the Christmas holidays. Gamers who tapped on these ads landed on a custom product page with relevant ad creative highlighting core gameplay and features — offering audiences a seamless experience. To have a full-funnel view of the ad variations using custom product pages, the MY.GAMES team used the SplitMetrics Acquire dashboard.
With ad variations, we were able to improve tap-through rates and how we evaluate performance on a country level, while better engaging audiences at the moment they are ready to download.
Anniversary custom product pages had a 3 percent higher tap-through rate than the default ad, and Christmas custom product pages had a 2 percent lift.
The MY.GAMES team separated search results campaigns by country or region to better understand market nuances, manage budgets, and optimize for performance. A discovery campaign with Search Match helped them quickly find new relevant search terms and automatically expand keyword coverage. With a brand campaign, the team at MY.GAMES captured strong intent from potential players searching for keywords related to their app or company name.
The ability to automatically find and add in new keywords as well as optimize bidding with Apple Search Ads using the SplitMetrics Acquire platform is incredibly helpful and drives improved efficiency.
