The Challenge
Jam City wanted to reactivate lapsed users of its top-grossing bubble-shooter game app, Panda Pop. Jam City knew this would require multiple ad formats, and creative personalization, at a global scale. They didn’t just want a DSP to execute the campaign; they wanted a partner that would demonstrate the uplift of each optimization strategy, so they could create proven approaches for future campaigns.
Jam City chose Aarki as their partner based on our expertise in measuring the incremental lift of our campaign strategies.
The Strategy
We analyzed audience data including spend level, number of days since the user last opened the app, and the highest game level reached. We used this to define the various audience segments which would define our bid strategies. These segments were defined as Targeting Groups.
We then began in-depth creative research to better understand Panda-Pop’s users. We explored what made the app unique, what features users found exciting, and various attributes that different audience segments found compelling.
This allowed us to design ad creatives specifically for each audience segment. We set up Creative Groups for each Targeting Group.
The focus of the design process was to give dominance to light, bright colors, and dynamic animation to attract attention. We drew on our creative research to remind users of what they loved about the game, and to evoke emotion and create compelling calls to action. We then ran a creative test to select the best performing creatives for each audience segment. In every Creative Group we compared the performance of multiple creatives to identify the Champion” creative and then increased its media and budget allocation for its most engaged audience segments. Once we selected the best creative, we moved on to our PSA test.
PSA Test
To demonstrate the uplift of our strategy and understand the impact of personalized ad creative, we ran a Public Service Announcement (PSA) test. We divided the audience into 2 groups: Control Group, who were shown PSA (placebo) creative, and Treatment Group, users outside the control group who were presented with personalized reactivation creative for higher engagement. CPM bids were computed using machine learning algorithms with the goal of profitable reactivation.
Initially, the majority of the audience was shown the personalized creative and the rest were shown the PSA creative. Over a three-week period we accumulated an equal audience size to compare the Control Group to the Treatment group.
The Results
The results of the re-engagement campaign were impressive and surpassed all expectations:
The incremental lift analysis proved the impact of our creative strategy, our media optimization approach, and our bidding algorithms. Jam City now have a playbook for a unified, compelling creative approach that works.
Aarki’s key success factor for driving app re-engagement is our ability to target users at different stages of the app user flow.
