Global MMORPG Summoners War achieves success in UA by partnering up with Moloco and Mobidays to prepare for iOS 14.5+ and SKAN

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Summoners War is a South Korean mobile game with fans across 100 countries. It has a track record of having ranked #1 in the Apple Store in France and among the top 10 in Germany and South Asian markets.

Summoners War marketing team at Com2us partnered up with Moloco and Mobidays last year after the news on iOS 14.5+ was released. This was a move to ensure that Com2us’ legacy of global success continues after the changes announced by Apple transforms the iOS market.

Partners

• Moloco is an ad-tech company based in Silicon Valley and a global mobile-first DSP that ranks among the top 10 media sources.
• Mobidays is a leading mobile marketing agency based in South Korea that manages international/domestic campaigns with partners in over 20 countries.
• Com2us is South Korea’s leading mobile game developer listed in KOSDAQ with popular titles like Summoners War, Tiny Farm, and MLB 9 Innings 21.

Challenge

In fall 2020, Apple announced new policies to better protect users’ privacy and this fundamentally transformed mobile marketing in iOS environment. After iOS 14.5+, it became the new norm for all advertisers to get explicit consent from users to access their IDFA. Naturally, users that opt-out would not be providing their IDFA and a handful of behavior data.

Com2us with their robust experience of running global campaigns knew that they would need a reliable partner with a strong strategy to help them prepare for these important iOS updates. They reached out to Mobidays, a mobile marketing agency with a proven track record of helping apps grow globally. Mobidays in turn looked for a media source with tips and know-how's on adapting to the iOS 14.5+ environment, and this is where Moloco stepped in.

Moloco was able to analyze up-to-date information about the changes iOS updates accompanied, taking full advantage of its headquarters location in Silicon Valley and the exposure to relevant information. Since then, Moloco has been using its powerful machine learning technology to work with Mobidays and help Com2us navigate the iOS 14.5+ world.

Strategy

Com2us, Moloco, and Mobidays adopted the following strategies:

• Moloco reviewed and analyzed every piece of information about iOS updates the moment they were announced, working with Mobidays to fully equip Com2us for the changes 8 months in advance until iOS 14.5 was released in April 2021.
• Mobidays identified the potential risks associated with SKAN for Summoners War campaign, ran tests, and leveraged Moloco’s technical consultation on running campaigns on SKAN traffic to avoid these risks.
• Com2us was able to respond to iOS 14.5 in April and launch SKAN campaigns without any issues, due to all the preparatory work done in cooperation with Moloco and Mobidays. By the time iOS updates were released, Com2us already had a concrete understanding of the technical differences between traditional attribution methods and SKAN - this enabled them to see success in the U.S., Germany, France, and Japan among other regions.

Results

In particular, Com2us achieved the following outstanding results in the U.S. market:

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Metric in spotlight #1 = install (for user acquisition)

• Moloco advised that Com2us run a holistic campaign covering all iOS versions
• Com2us found that CPM/CPI fluctuated on other media platforms that advised running separate traffics for OS versions under vs. above iOS 14.5+

Metric in spotlight #2 = retention & purchase rate (users with a high LTV)

• Moloco and Mobidays succeeded in acquiring users with a high LTV with a low CPI
• Generally, lower CPI is associated with lower retention/purchase rates. However, Moloco and Mobidays were able to overcome this issue by training the machine learning model on SKAN + non-SKAN traffic combined, ensuring that the campaign sees both short/long term outcomes

Based on the learnings from the U.S. Com2us expanded Summoner’s War campaign to other global markets like Germany and France that had similar qualities as the U.S. market. Initially, Com2us was only bidding on LAT-off traffic in Germany and France, but after seeing success in the U.S. it ventured to expand the size of its campaign to cover LAT-on traffic and was able to acquire greater install volume while maintaining target CPI.

Contact us to discuss how to achieve growth for your app on SKAN traffic.

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