SGN is a cross platform developer of mobile and social games. As the fastest growing mobile games studio in the west, SGN has produced hit titles such as Cookie Jam, Juice Jam, Book of Life: Sugar Smash and Panda Pop.

CrossInstall offers mobile ads at scale through its programmatic DSP (demand side platform). The company provides a unique approach to mobile game advertising as it combines both the playable mobile ads its creates with a programmatic, performance based bidder ensuring the ads hit the right audience.

Challenge

To date, well over 700 million SGN games have been installed on leading mobile and social platforms, making SGN one of the largest cross-platform gaming companies in the world. SGN is always seeking new ways to find and engage high quality users at scale and was looking for a partner to deliver performance and scale for their major titles. 

Solution

SGN was drawn to CrossInstall’s ability to create playable mobile ads as well as the power to serve them at scale programmatically. CrossInstall’s high quality, feature rich, and holistic approach to mobile ads were the perfect way to take the SGN-CrossInstall relationship to the next level. CrossInstall introduced playables to SGN as a way to expand reach and performance of its mobile titles. 

Process

CrossInstall started the campaign planning process with brainstorming sessions to plan and storyboard the playable ad creatives it would build for SGN’s campaigns. CrossInstall extensively played SGN’s mobile apps to understand the gameplay, unique features, and key app mechanics. Focusing in on the core mechanics and what makes an app unique and interesting was a key part of deciding the elements to put into the playable ad creatives.

SGN was able to provide art assets for some of their apps, while CrossInstall extracted a number of art assets directly from SGN’s mobile apps themselves in order to save SGN time and effort. CrossInstall’s designers worked with those assets to prepare everything it would need for building the playable ads.

Once the art was complete CrossInstall’s ad creative team developers worked on building the playable ad units to match SGN’s apps with the focus on what elements made sense for an ad experience. CrossInstall sent the completed playable ads to SGN for feedback and change requests. Once the playable ads were completed and approved CrossInstall was able to launch the campaigns.

At that point, CrossInstall’s programmatic bidding and modeling system took over in order to find the right target audience and begin driving meaningful installs for SGN. Within a week of launching the campaigns CrossInstall was able to enter into user quality optimisation with SGN by looking at the user post-install activity to gauge the return on ad spend. User retention and in-app purchases are at the core of the user quality focus. By taking advantage of return on ad spend data on publishers that had driven install traffic with enough data significance, CrossInstall was able to begin setting hundreds (and eventually thousands) of custom pricing targets for publisher/country combinations in order to dial in the exact return on ad spend SGN wished to achieve.

Results

With the addition of CrossInstall, SGN experienced double digit increases in both LTV (life time value) and revenue for Panda Pop. 

“With one of the highest ARPI, player/user percentage, day one retention rate, and LTVs we have seen to date, CrossInstall has proven to be a top, consistent install provider for Panda Pop and other key titles,” said Sumee Oh, director of marketing and user acquisition at SGN. 

Campaign highlights include:

  • Double digit increases in both LTVs and revenue.
  • ARPI was 158% higher than the average for other partners with significant install volumes.
  • Day one retention rate of 67% – one of the highest for SGN.

SGN and CrossInstall’s success with Panda Pop has allowed the partnership to grow to many titles including, Juice Jam, Cookie Jam and Genies & Gems. As the performance and scale continues to increase the two will develop new ways to make playables and CrossInstall’s programmatic bidding the premier platform for casual and non-casual games.