Big Fish Games is a casual gaming company based in Seattle, Washington. They’re home to thousands of casual hits, including Gummy Drop!, Cooking Craze, and EverMerge: Match 3 Puzzle Game. They wanted to boost Evermerge’s revenue, so the Unity team recommended they diversify their monetization strategy with the Tapjoy offerwall.
Kelly Kang, Senior Director of Advertising at Pixel United, a Big Fish Games parent company, explains how opening up the Tapjoy offerwall to their paying players boosted their offerwall revenue 96%, all without affecting their in-app purchase revenue. In fact, their in-app purchase ARPDAU jumped 10%, and total ARPDAU 13%. Let’s dive in.
Implementing the Tapjoy offerwall
“We’ve been LevelPlay clients for years now, so when the Unity team suggested that offerwall would be a great fit for Evermerge players, we were happy to give it a try. Since the Evermerge economy includes hard currency, it’s an ideal environment to try implementing the offerwall.
We hesitated that offerwall might cannibalize revenue from in-app purchases (IAPs), so we decided to implement a roll-out strategy - instead of opening offerwall to all players at once, we’d start with just non-payers.
Before implementation, we optimized our offerwall setup by adding traffic drivers to the busiest locations in our game, like the main store. We also ensured that offerwall rewards would be just as valuable as rewards in the store by setting the same exchange rate for both.
To maximize offerwall engagement and revenue, we set up offerwall special promotions (also known as currency sales): time-limited promotions that offer extra offerwall rewards. The Unity team helped us with the logistics, messaging, and design for each sale.
After seeing consistently positive results, it was time to double down on our growth and open the offerwall to paying players.
Boosting revenue without cannibalizing in-app purchases
First, we opened the offerwall to non-payers, and not only did our revenue increase, but our in-app purchase revenue stayed consistent. A few months later, once paying players could access our offerwall, our KPIs jumped even higher - offerwall revenue grew 96% and ARPU 7%.
By expanding the channels in which players could earn rewards, the offerwall even boosted our in-app purchase revenue - ARPDAU from in-app purchases jumped 10%, and total ARPDAU jumped 13%.
Closing the monetization loop
Once our revenue increased, so did our UA budget. Since we saw that the offerwall attracts engaged players eager to complete multiple offers, we decided to allocate more of our UA spend to offerwall users. This way, we could advertise to users who are already familiar with offerwall - so if they decide to play Evermerge, they’ll be more likely to engage with its offerwall. Effectively, we’re closing the growth loop.
Thanks to the Unity team, the Tapjoy offerwall has been a game changer for our monetization strategy. Not only has it increased our KPIs across the board, but it’s helped us diversify both our monetization and UA strategies. We look forward to continuing our long-lasting partnership and finding new ways to optimize and grow.”
