Papaya Gaming is one of the fastest growing studios based in Tel Aviv, making them one of the top developers in their genre with over 6 million downloads worldwide. They’ve made hit games like Solitaire Cash, which reached #2 in the Apple App Store’s Casino and Card genre in the US, using ironSource mediation to power their growth.
Recently, they launched an ironSource campaign with Bingo Cash, which also reached #2 in the casino genre and top 10 in the Board genre. Read on to learn how Uri Pearl, Head of Marketing at Papaya Gaming, and his team leveraged multiple products such as ironSource LevelPlay, ironSource Luna, ironSource Aura, as well as the guidance of the account management team, to boost ROAS by 40% and installs by 600% for their game Bingo Cash.
Discovering UA advantages of ironSource LevelPlay mediation
Four years ago, our team at Papaya Gaming was looking for a mediation partner that would support everything our app business needed to grow. ironSource’s LevelPlay was one of the biggest strategic SDK networks, offering the largest selection of bidders, which encouraged us to look into what they offered. Excited by their offering, we began working with them to control and optimize our growth strategy.
We found that LevelPlay was not only effective at scaling revenue, but also UA activity across multiple metrics. Considering we develop games that can face restrictions in terms of where and how they can be advertised, we were excited about the opportunity to collaborate with the ironSource team to find the best way to grow our user base and reach our KPIs across our portfolio.
Most recently, we have seen immense success working with LevelPlay to launch our Bingo Cash campaign.
Going live with the ROAS optimizer with ironSource’s guidance
Once the basics of our Bingo Cash campaign were set up on the platform, we met with the ironSource team for guidance on building our launch strategy. They offered in depth analysis for where they believed our campaign would perform best and recommendations for bid type and amount, which they continued to analyze and adjust.
Eventually, when we had enough data, they suggested we automate our campaign management with the ROAS optimizer, which automatically optimized and scaled our campaign with high-quality users. While the optimizer was working to maximize results and bid precisely, the ironSource team was monitoring our performance to come up with recommendations for increasing or decreasing our target ROAS goals for D1, D3, and D7. They also offered insights for expanding our supply sources into new geos and categories to reach the right, quality users for our app.
Increasing installs and ROAS with open discussions
"Due to the ongoing open discussions we had with ironSource about ways to optimize our Bingo Cash campaign and the advanced technology of the ROAS optimizer, we’ve seen incredible performance results and increased scale."
- Uri Pearl, Head of Marketing at Papaya Gaming
Our installs increased 76x and ROAS improved by 40% for Bingo Cash.
Today, we still collaborate on a weekly basis for how to continue scaling our campaign with ironSource while maintaining high-quality results.
Optimizing with Luna playables
For example, while the ROAS optimizer was optimizing our campaigns in the background, our account manager suggested we leverage Luna, ironSource’s creative solution, to find the best performing creative sets, to continue optimizing our campaigns.
Luna’s creative studio was well informed about our genre’s creative trends and offered detailed recommendations for which creatives we should test and when. Specifically, they suggested we run a high number of playable ads to scale our app further. Trusting their experience and knowledge, we opted to test creatives in the exact order the studio recommended.
Expanding UA reach with ironSource Aura
Recently, the ironSource team suggested we begin running on-device campaigns with their Aura product, in addition to the ironSource network, to scale even more across the platform. After all, we needed unique ways to reach Android users.
The ironSource team explained that Aura technology is embedded directly into millions of devices through partnerships with device manufacturers and mobile carriers, such as T-Mobile - and recommends our app at pivotal moments in the device journey. We began working with Aura for our game Solitaire Cash to reach users. Specifically, we are running mostly on a placement called the setup manager, which showcases Solitaire Cash to new device owners the moment they turn on their phones for the first time. Additionally, we’re running on the discovery manager, which is an app selection experience that occurs around contextual triggers, like operating system updates - so when there’s a new OS that supports our game, Aura will prompt users to install.
"Combining ironSource’s LevelPlay tools, like the ROAS optimizer, with ironSource Aura has been critical for scaling installs and reaching our KPIs across our portfolio."
- Uri Pearl, Head of Marketing at Papaya Gaming
