If you are into puzzle games, building, decorating, and reconstructing a place from scratch, completing daily in-game tasks, and then recreating the game’s story with side characters, Tactile Games’ Lily’s Garden is the right choice for you! While the game had successful downloads worldwide, it also managed to reach a rating of 4.8 in both the Google Play Store and the App Store, proving to be a favorite of mobile gamers around the world.
To reach Lily’s Garden’s success, Tactile set elevated campaign objectives for their ROI (Return on Investment) and user acquisition. There’s no one magic spell for successful user acquisition and best ROI campaigns. The best practices of user acquisition always challenge account managers to reach the target audience precisely and effectively via a combination of outstanding creatives, innovative technology, and continuous campaign optimization. Tactile partnered with AdColony and utilized our technology and expertise to expand reach and to escalate the install rates of the popular mobile gaming application.
About the Campaign
Lily’s Garden is a casual / match-3 puzzle game that combines match-3 elements with garden decoration. With high install numbers and positive feedback and ratings, Lily’s Garden wanted to continue to deliver its exciting and unique gaming experience to more new users and chose AdColony for their ad campaign, allowing users to get hands-on with the storytelling and puzzle gaming technology. They wanted to expand its reach by increasing the number of new users, but also wanted to increase their ROI goals and follow the data simultaneously.
How did the campaign work?
In collaboration with AdColony, Tactile aimed to increase Lily’s Garden’s reach with an app install campaign to target potential gamers in different countries worldwide. The campaign was live in Germany, the U.S., France, the U.K., Spain, Canada, Russia, Australia, Austria, Brazil, New Zealand, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Japan on the Android side. It was live in France, the UK, Germany, the US, Canada, Australia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Japan, Brazil, Russia, Denmark, and Switzerland on the iOS side. In the U.S., the UK, Germany, and Canada on the Amazon side.
Simultaneously, Lily’s Garden wanted to see the effects of different creatives on the campaign results and allowed AdColony’s team of dedicated growth managers to optimize the campaign on-the-fly. AdColony built custom End Cards with different creative formats in accordance with supply types they were compatible with. Lily’s Garden’s creative strategy is based on the dramatic elements of the game’s narrative, which features the main character appearing to have lost a loved one. This aspect of the story led most of the video ads so that the user could be emotionally involved in the game’s story. This tactic is was set Tactile and Lily’s Garden apart in the mobile game industry!
Why did the campaign work?
To support Lily’s Garden creatively during the campaign, AdColony’s dedicated creative team built custom End Cards for the campaign. The goal was to explain how the game is played to users by supporting Tactile’s advertising videos. Different creative formats were used in accordance with the supply types they were compatible with.
Hidden-object, match-3 themed Guided-Install units or End Cards that highlight the decoration elements of the game and allow players to interact with one, two, or three times were very effective. Units released with Guided Install resulted in a higher install rate than regular videos. There was also an increase of 6% on the Android side and 7% on the Amazon side. At the same time, there was an increase in install rate with seasonal creative applications.
As the install rate increased, the CPM rates achieved also increased. As such, Tactile was able to reach more quality users with higher CPMs. AdColony was able to attain all these successes with our weekly comparison of creatives and CPMs and optimizations made according to these comparisons.
On the other hand, in order to improve the ROI of the campaign, AdColony conducted a genre analysis. Similar apps which include a story, decoration, and of course match-3 puzzle was our top priority and was a better fit. Female user-oriented apps also performed better.
After the testing period was over, AdColony made weekly optimizations both at the country level and app level. With granular pricing optimization, we bid differently to each app according to their ROI results. Month by month ROI kept increasing as more suitable apps were added to our targeting.
Finally, as AdColony, we know how sensitive data transparency is for mobile gaming advertising. For this reason, we always kept in touch with Tactile during the campaign period, in order to follow the data and make user-session, daily and monthly active users, install rate, and ROI optimizations together. Thus, campaign results were tracked instantly by both Tactile and AdColony.
About Lily’s Garden
Get your hands dirty in Lily’s Garden, Tactile’s new FREE puzzle game! Help Lily restore her great-aunt’s garden to its former glory and rediscover her roots. Dig into a story full of twists and turns as Lily interacts with a cast of colorful characters. Plant the seed of romance with her handsome neighbor Luke, and keep her rake of an ex-boyfriend Blaine off her turf. Match and collect flowers in hundreds of unique puzzle levels to earn stars and grow your garden!
About Tactile Games
Tactile Games is a Danish game developer located in the heart of Copenhagen. Tactile’s dedication to creating top-quality games with global appeal has entailed a series of highly successful titles such as Cookie Cats, Bee Brilliant, and Simon’s Cat. Tactile values an open and amicable work environment based on individual freedom and responsibility. They believe that creativity can only truly thrive if you enjoy yourself as well as the company of your colleagues. Therefore, they strive to nurture a cordial and social atmosphere in which each individual is encouraged to grow and develop. This is why they consider themselves not only a growing company but also a growing family.
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