Moloco Helps Animoca Brands Drive Quality App Installs, Providing Low CPIs and High ROAS

Animoca Brands is one of the leading players in the burgeoning Web3, blockchain, and crypto space. When looking to acquire new users for Crazy Defense Heroes, their popular blockchain gaming app in Japan, Animoca Brands partnered with Moloco. The partnership has been hugely successful, helping them see day-seven retention rate on iOS that is 5x better than what other user acquisition (UA) partners provided, along with a cost per install (CPI) that is 2x lower than what others offer.

About Animoca Brands 

Animoca Brands and its various subsidiaries develop and publish a broad portfolio of blockchain games, traditional games, and other products. One of their leading properties is Crazy Defense Heroes, a leading free-to-play mobile game launched in 2018 that allows users to earn and use blockchain-based tokens and NFTs. For its advertising campaigns promoting Crazy Defense Heroes, Animoca Brands works with the digital marketing experts at Shanghai Zucks China, inc. 

About The Campaign

While Japan has long been a major market for Crazy Defense Heroes, it has been increasingly difficult for them to acquire high-quality users in the country cost effectively. As an iOS-heavy market, UA in Japan was heavily impacted by the introduction of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) in 2021.

Return on ad spend (ROAS) was calculated in part by looking at the retention rate of acquired app users and their proclivity to make in-app purchases. On top of that, they also wanted to keep CPIs low.

Moloco was an ideal partner for Animoca Brands and Zucks China, inc. in Japan, in no small part thanks to Moloco’s machine learning (ML) models and industry acumen. In 2021, they began working with Moloco to acquire users for Crazy Defense Heroes in Japan on both Android and iOS.

To further help drive results, the campaign utilized high-impact creatives, including videos and GIFs. Zucks China, inc. worked with Animoca Brands to ensure that all ads met their brand guidelines, and with Moloco to ensure that the ads were being rendered correctly and shown to users with the highest propensity for engagement.

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Results

Overall, Moloco has been able to provide high-quality results to Animoca Brands. In particular, on both Android and iOS, CPIs from Moloco were 2x lower than on other channels on both Android and iOS. The ROAS provided by Moloco was on par with or better than what Animoca Brands and Zucks China, inc. saw from other UA partners. 

But, the results were particularly pronounced on iOS, highlighting how Moloco’s ML models can provide quality results even with ATT privacy restrictions in place. In Japan, their conversion rate from install to purchase is 3x higher on iOS. And, their day-seven retention rate was 5x higher on iOS.

“We were very impressed by the performance of Moloco in Japan, especially by the quality of the iOS users we acquired,” said Lucie Acquaviva, Marketing Manager at Animoca Brands. “Zucks China is a very valuable agency partner to us; they know the Japanese market very well and are able to provide user insights to enhance the performance of our campaigns in Japan.”

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Agency name: Zucks China, Inc.

Key contact: Zhao Cheng, Business Produce Div., Account Manager
https://zucks.co.jp/cn/ 

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