Acquiring high quality mobile gamers with AppsFlyer and Liftoff

Background

Founded in 2009, ZiMAD is a mobile gaming studio based in San Francisco. ZiMAD’s unique approach brings revolutionary concepts and ideas to life while redefining conventional mobile gaming.

Challenge

Acquiring high-quality users at scale is not easy or simple. ZiMAD wanted to drive new installs with a strong 90-day retention rate for their Magic Jigsaw Puzzles iOS app.

Solution

ZiMAD was already using AppsFlyer for their mobile attribution and marketing analytics, which made partnering with Liftoff a breeze. Using pre-configured integrations, ZiMAD synced their AppsFlyer user-engagement data with the Liftoff team. Liftoff then used this customer engagement data to build initial lookalike profiles of ZiMAD’s most active Magic Jigsaw Puzzles players on iOS.

This multi-dimensional profile used an array of identifying key characteristics such as user behavior trends and related apps installed.

Liftoff then A/B tested several creatives across native, banner, interstitial and playable ads. They optimized each campaign to improve retention rates, lower the CPI and increase user engagement (total puzzles completed per user). Thanks to their AppsFlyer integrations, Liftoff received automated real-time postbacks as users engaged with this campaign and the app.

In turn, Liftoff’s machine learning system used this data to optimize user targeting and ad impression bidding in real-time, acquiring players with high retention rates at ZiMAD’s target CPI.

Results

Within 6 months of launching the campaign, Liftoff delivered over 21 million highly targeted ad impressions, 82 ad creative A/B tests, a significant volume of game plays and increased 90-day user retention. The results were phenomenal.

Liftoff’s impression-to-install rate improved by 590% a result of extensive creative A/B testing and careful optimization. At the same time, average monthly installs increased by 315%. To top it all off, more than 15% of puzzle solvers acquired by Liftoff remained active after 90 days.

Because Liftoff-driven users had such high retention rates, ZiMAD increased their ad spend on Liftoff campaigns by 5x. By continuously syncing their user engagement data via AppsFlyer, ZiMAD provided Liftoff with fresh, real-time data for ongoing campaign optimization. This allowed Liftoff to scale these campaigns. At one point, 50% of Magic Jigsaw Puzzles’ monthly app opens came from Liftoff-acquired users.

Liftoff’s success with Magic Jigsaw Puzzles on iOS led ZiMAD to expand their user acquisition efforts to Android, as well as new Liftoff campaigns for four additional game titles.

“Liftoff is one of our premium partners, consistently meeting or exceeding our quality and scale performance goals. Furthermore, Liftoff’s deep integration with AppsFlyer has made our user acquisition more efficient and more scalable, with very little effort needed.” – Olga Ivanova. Mobile Marketing Manager

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