How targeted messaging, currency sales and custom exchange rates helped Gear Games boost app revenue

Targeted Promotional Messaging Strategy

The Gear Games team used Tapjoy’s promotional message feature to pepper timely messages at key points in gameplay. The feature launched a targeted messaging campaign inviting users to earn on the offerwall. These messages would appear at key moments in the flow of the game and target particular user segments, such as those users that had not monetized in several months.

Currency Sale Strategy

During a currency sale, a developer temporarily multiplies offer rewards to boost conversions and revenue, typically by 1.5-3X. Gear Games chose to launch mini-sales on a five-day cycle. A sale would run for three days, followed by a two-day gap.

Offerwall Entry Point Optimizations

To complement these efforts, Gear Games added some compelling features to the offerwall entry point: There is now a per cent discount button that lights up when there is a sale, with a countdown timer through its duration.

“The UI optimizations helped integrate the offerwall more seamlessly into the game experience. Now new players understand the dynamics of currency sales, while established players know what to look for,” Artyom explained.

Tier 2 & 3 Country-Level Revenue Optimizations

Finally, working with the Tapjoy monetization team, Gear Games identified a number of tier 2 and 3 countries that typically have lower monetization rates due to advertisers bidding lower for these users. They leveraged the optimization tools in the Tapjoy Offerwall increasing the exchange rate to make the offers more appealing to the users. Gear Games saw a 22% increase in engagement after implementing this and in turn a similarly positive impact on revenue.

By Fall of 2019, Gear Games’ Offerwall revenue had not only bounced back as a result of the optimizations above — it had reached a new milestone. By Spring of 2020, a full year after the change, it had grown by roughly 170%. The publisher did note that there was a significant increase early in the year due to COVID-19 social distancing which led to more users to spending time on mobile devices.

The Impact Of Offerwall On IAP And Retention

Gear Games sees the Offerwall as a way to re-engage players who may have otherwise left the game. They also believe that at the heart of it all, the quality of gameplay matters most: “I believe that offers and rewarded advertising help players make the decision to stay in the game. But having a good game is always the key to retention, that comes first,” Artyom explains.

The Offerwall has also proven to coexist profitably alongside IAP. “Even if some users have switched from IAP to Offerwall, we think they would have left otherwise anyway and have made their revenue back through ad revenue,” he says. “It’s much lower friction to interact with a game than it is to hand over cash.” The data backs his conclusion — net revenue in Art of War 3 has increased, though the balance between its three monetization channels has shifted.

Today the Offerwall accounts for one-third of total income in Art of War 3, a greater portion of  revenue than video advertising. Gear Games sees considerable value in this diversified monetization approach and plans to continue the partnership with Tapjoy in the years to come.