Gaming companies have been trying almost all channels to see which one works best for them. No matter which category they are in, they all focus on the ones bringing the highest download without any doubt. According to Apple, %70 of users use the search on App Store, and %65 of the downloads coming from iOS occurs after users’ research.
Gaming companies would need a well-structured campaign management platform to achieve both periodic and long term goals by smoothing the process. Especially, the ones requiring in-app purchases would need more, as they want to track the whole funnel from the first tap to any in-app events to adjust their strategy wisely.
This may create some difficulties in some ad channels while it is so simple on Apple Search Ads with the help of SearchAds.com. In this article, we are going to be covering how in-app purchase-related gaming companies utilize SearchAds.com.
1- To Protect Your Brand
As a gaming company, you spend tons of money on other UA channels. You use videos and probably other ad creatives to attract potential users so that you can get downloads. However, there are also some users seeing the video but not downloading by clicking it. They write down your brand keyword that you used in your ad creative on the App Store, and then they download your app. All you need to do is not to miss out on these users. To gain them, you should do brand protection which means bidding on your brand keywords in your brand campaigns.
Brand Protection
At the same time, you should bid on your competitors’ brand keywords which are in the same genre as you’re to get their potential users. In that way, you will be able to maximize your ROAS.
2- To Gain LAT On Users
LAT (Limit Ad Tracking) On users are always a pain in the neck for UA Managers as they cannot be targeted. To know the age, demographic, and gender of the users, they need to turn off the LAT. For example, in Facebook Ads, you can target 25-year-old-women users in the US as long as they are the LAT Off ones.
What about the rest? According to industry peers and SearchAds.com’s portfolio, LAT On users in the game category can rise to 50% of your users depending on the genre of your game. Even though 50% of the users have the LAT on, they search for keywords related to you so that you will be gaining LAT On users. Why are you ignoring them if it is half of your users? 🙂
Lat on Factor
You will not ignore them with the help of SearchAds.com’s LAT On Coefficient feature. It is possible to estimate LAT On users based on your LAT Off data, so you will be minimizing the data discrepancies, normalizing the in-app related data while having a larger pool of users.
3- To have your MMP and your Apple Search Ads account in one single dashboard
Analyzing two different reports coming from your Apple account and MMP separately takes a lot of time. And it must be overwhelming from time to time. You don’t need to worry about that anymore. Because at SearchAds.com, we merge your MMP with your Apple Search Ads account on behalf of you so that you will be able to see all data from MMP and Apple Search Ads account in one single dashboard. It helps you save hours and eliminates the clutter as well.
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4- To save time on daily tasks
Under normal conditions, you are adjusting your daily cap, budget, and bid amount after a long analyzing process, then you can apply your strategy manually for every single campaign, ad group, and keywords. However, with the help of SearchAds.com’s automation rules, you can automate every metric you care about.
Let’s say you are also suffering from scaling as many gaming companies are. You are using a lot of keywords but not getting satisfying impressions. Assume that you have 150 keywords as an exact match in your campaigns, and you can only spend money on 50 of them.
The solution is simple, you need to increase your bid to get more impressions and see whether it works or not. The automation rule could be: If an impression of the keyword “slot casino” is lower than 1, increase my bid %10. When you set this rule the action will be taken automatically on behalf of you and once it exceeds 1, it stops increasing.
Increase bid
Or suppose that you are bidding on 100 keywords and getting downloads from all. If your goal is to get downloads with 50 cents, you don’t want to spend money on the keywords having 70-80 cents CPA as it is not profitable. 2nd automation rule could be: Once your CPA is greater than 50 cents, pause the keyword because it will not be profitable for you. For this rule, the action will be taken for the keywords you selected in any specific campaign or ad group.
Pause Keyword(s)
Key Takeaways
If you are a gaming company running Apple Search Ads, it would be the most cost-effective paid channel for you once you support it with well-structured campaign management and insight platform.
- Once you integrate your MMP and Apple Search Ads account to our platform, you will be able to see 2 reports as merged in one place which helps you save time as you will not need to cross from the ASA account to MMP.
- Automation Rules at SearchAds.com will act as your personal Apple Search Ads assistant and perform the manual tasks based on your rules on your behalf. Not only will you be able to prevent any human errors but also will you save lots of time.
- You will be protecting your brand name by bidding on your brand keywords so that your competitors cannot get any users of yours.
- You will be getting more users than you got in other UA channels as you will be adding the LAT On users to your user pool. By doing this you will be targeting a larger audience which is the necessary step while maintaining the growth.
We have been working with many gaming companies and got some amazing results. Caret Games, one of our distinguished partners, doubled the install volume while reducing its CPI by 22% in 2 months with the help of SearchAds.com. To find out how we can do the same for your gaming company schedule a demo with us!
