Case Study
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GOODROID is a popular Japanese gaming company with a large focus on hyper-casual games. Leveraging ironSource Luna to power their user acquisition, their new title, Snow Race, hit #1 on Android in US stores. Here, Shohei Nagaoka, Chief Marketing Officer at GOODROID, shares how working with Luna Create strengthened their playable ad performance and increased overall impressions. 

Control and efficiency

“Playable ads are important to our launch strategy but our process wasn’t as efficient as it could be. Sometimes, we’d work with an agency to produce the playable ads for us. However, working with an agency often made it difficult to match the timing of our app with the ad launch. Other times, we’d create interactive ads ourselves but it took up a lot of our time.  

That’s why we decided to use Luna, which gave us complete control. Now we’re in charge of the timing of any new launch - we can deliver new games and playable ad campaigns at the same time. In addition to giving us complete control over our playable production, Luna also made it easier and faster for us to produce in house. 

"The Luna team taught us that the main goal of playables is for users to have a basic understanding of the game’s main mechanics."

- Shohei Nagaoka, Chief Marketing Officer at GOODROID

Luna empowers

Now we wanted to make sure our playables were maximizing their potential. We already knew how to develop our own playables, but it always took too much time. 

With Luna, we could speed up the process. We used Luna Playable to develop top notch playables in two steps. First, we made the file on Unity and then we used Luna’s management tool to export the playable to all our channels.

Less is more

While we were building our playables, Luna gave us best practices and tips every step of the way. Originally, we thought we had to showcase different features of our game to be successful, but extra details added to the file’s weight. The Luna team taught us that the main goal of playables is for users to have a basic understanding of the game’s main mechanics. They helped us make our files lighter, and gave us feedback to make sure our playables would be approved by the networks. Essentially, our creatives didn’t need so many elements to be successful. Condensing playables also makes it easier to run on different campaigns and saves a lot of time because we’re not building new playables from scratch for every channel.

"Luna gave us insight into how users actually behave inside the ad - an added plus we couldn’t get with an agency."

-Shohei Nagaoka, Chief Marketing Officer at GOODROID

Deeper actionable insights with full user journey

Once we were ready to optimize performance, Luna’s mapping tool gave us deep insights into how users were progressing through the playable. Using in-ad data, we could see drop off rates, level completions, and more - and then optimize our campaigns based on what we saw. This is something that was completely new for us. Before, we could only optimize based on data like impressions and number of clicks, but Luna gave us insight into how users actually behave inside the ad - an added plus we couldn’t get with an agency. 

Reaching #1

IPM for our playable ads was much higher compared to our IPM for video - showing us just how important it is to focus on interactive creatives. IPM for the playable ads we built with Luna were way above benchmarks for the hyper-casual genre - an accomplishment we’re extremely proud of. 

Additionally, the playables we built with Luna played a big part in Snow Race hitting #1 on Android in the US. In fact, it was the first time any title of ours reached that high in the charts. Bottom line, working with Luna gave us the flexibility and results we were aiming for in our playable ad strategy.  

 

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