Panteon is a Turkish game publisher responsible for many chart-topping hits, including 100 Mystery Buttons and Trading Master, and most recently Airport Master. As a major player in the hyper-casual space, Panteon is constantly testing hundreds of new game concepts a month. To help them confidently decide which games to invest in and launch, they tried the ironSource marketability testing tool - which was available to them as LevelPlay customers.
Ahmet Emre Gürcan, Lead Growth Manager at Panteon, shares how his team used the ironSource marketability testing tool to discover that their latest hit - Airport Master, had potential to scale and stay competitive in the market. In fact, Airport Master ended up reaching #7 in the charts and #1 in the UK.
Preparing the test
“At Panteon, we focus on making great hyper-casual games. Because the hyper-casual industry moves so fast and trends are always changing, we need to constantly be testing hundreds of new game ideas. It’s not worth it for us to invest in and publish a game until we know for certain that the idea can scale profitably.
Previously, we were only running marketability tests on social media networks, but it didn’t give us the full picture. We needed more confidence that our games would perform well across all of our major user acquisition sources, including video networks.
To help us get more clarity, the ironSource team recommended we try their marketability testing tool. The tool tests our game concepts on the most relevant audience and plots the results on a marketability curve, showing how we compare to relevant genre-based benchmarks. Because we are already LevelPlay clients, we had access to the tool and were eager to try it.
We tested a few games and the whole process using the tool was very smooth, quick, and didn’t require us to invest any manual effort.
"The whole process using the tool was very smooth, quick, and didn’t require us to invest any manual effort"
- Ahmet Emre Gürcan, Lead Growth Manager at Panteon
Testing our game’s potential
In just a few days, we got our results back, including the marketability score of 1-5, IPM, and minimum CPI to scale for each game concept. The tool neatly plotted everything on a graph, allowing us to easily understand and visualize our game’s potential.
Ultimately, Airport Master came back with the highest marketability score - so we decided to move forward with the game and begin the launch process. In fact, to improve the creatives and make sure we were ready for the launch, we tested Airport Master a few times, and found that Luna’s creatives got the highest score.
Once we launched Airport Master worldwide, it soared to the top of the charts. In just a few days, Airport Master hit #7 on the iOS top charts in the US, and soared to #1 in the UK, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Israel, and more.
Eliminating the guesswork
ironSource’s marketability testing tool made it significantly easier for us to confidently choose the most marketable game concept and set it up for success. In fact, after seeing two of the concepts we tested reach the top 10, we plan to use the tool to test more games. We’re thrilled that LevelPlay and the ironSource team support our goals across the entire game lifecycle - from concept to launch.”