"Ball Sort - Color Puzzle Game"
As the flagship product of a leading Vietnamese casual game developer, "Ball Sort - Color Puzzle Game" (hereinafter referred to as Ball Sort) has faced significant growth challenges in a competitive market.
How does Ball Sort stay ahead in the crowded casual puzzle game space and avoid the pitfalls of homogeneous competition? Below is a case study on how NetMarvel helped Ball Sort expand internationally, providing replicable strategies for user growth and monetization in mobile game marketing.
I. Impasse and Challenges
Ball Sort is a long-standing, popular game from a top Vietnamese casual game developer. As a leading product in the casual puzzle genre, it has an established gameplay style and a solid user base. However, homogeneity, plagiarism, and counterfeiting in the casual game market have intensified, creating bottlenecks for Ball Sort’s user acquisition efforts. Currently, Ball Sort is seeking new, effective strategies to acquire high-value users.
As a long-term partner of NetMarvel, Ball Sort trusts the effectiveness of NetMarvel's programmatic advertising platform. They turned to NetMarvel for a solution to overcome their user growth limitations. The following outlines the strategy NetMarvel provided.
II. Solution
1. Stepping away from homogeneous major media channels and exploring suitable traffic sources from in-house products to attract differentiated users
In response to the abundance of counterfeit competitors, Ball Sort needs to step away from major homogeneous media channels and explore suitable niche media channels from their in-house products to ensure the acquisition of high-quality Ball Sort users and achieve the ROAS goal.
NetMarvel's in-house IN-App traffic resources cover multiple mobile app categories, including casual games, tools, money making apps, and entertainment apps, etc. They can easily provide over 1 billion monthly active users to Ball Sort for on-demand advertising, thereby ensuring that the ads reach the high-quality target audience first with 100% real users.
By leveraging algorithmic learning advantages, NetMarvel can optimize for multiple goals to meet the diversified advertising needs of Ball Sort, enabling more efficient advertising campaigns to attract more high-quality users and achieve differentiation.
2. Continuously optimize advertising materials to increase ECPM
After selecting the channels, the key aspect for a successful advertising campaign is the creative materials. NetMarvel's expert team believes that conducting CPI tests and diversifying materials are crucial when advertising for casual games.
If the materials are not performing well, they should be changed immediately instead of persisting with ineffective ones. It is better to introduce new materials on a weekly basis. By reviewing the user data and deeply understanding the characteristics of Ball Sort, the experts at NetMarvel provided multiple creative directions and templates that easily allow Ball Sort to create playable materials that match the user's aesthetic and acceptance.
Utilizing the DSP platform, as well as first-hand data and environmental data from their IN-APP resources, NetMarvel can accurately analyze user profiles to tailor highly relevant advertisement content for Ball Sort. This ensures that Ball Sort's ads reach the target users accurately at the best prices, increases the click-through rate of ads, and ultimately improves the game's ad revenue, speeding up the return on investment cycle for international marketing.
3. Gradually expand coverage to regions such as Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia after stable testing in Europe and America
We always encourage advertisers to actively expand their market coverage, but in reality, it is a gradual and reliable process that needs to be carried out in phases and in different regions. After stable testing in Europe and America, the coverage should slowly expand to regions like Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia.
Based on a deep analysis of Ball Sort, NetMarvel formulated a phased and regional testing strategy. The initial promotion of the product started in Europe and America, and with the analysis of feedback data from installs, it allowed for the development of the most valuable advertising strategies. Then, it will gradually expand to regions like Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia.
III. Results
Through a series of strategic deployments and full-funnel marketing services, NetMarvel empowered Ball Sort with machine learning technology to continuously optimize acquisition data and advertising effectiveness. This approach helped Ball Sort achieve over 5,000 daily installs, reduce the return on investment cycle by 10%, and increase long-term retention rates by 20%, resulting in double the growth compared to previous metrics—an impressive achievement and one of the standout mobile marketing examples in casual gaming.
With nine years of expertise, NetMarvel has efficiently met acquisition goals for over 100,000 global apps. Committed to driving revenue growth for businesses of all sizes, they provide programmatic advertising platforms and integrated marketing services, enabling global advertisers to acquire customers at scale. NetMarvel’s machine learning models support mobile developers worldwide by maximizing user lifetime value, enhancing advertising monetization, and promoting sustained growth.
