When game developer Habby released “Slidey: Block Puzzle” in 2018, it was unlike anything else gamers had seen, and a whole new genre of games called “hybrid-casual” began to skyrocket in popularity. The breakout title with hybrid IAA and IAP monetization generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue for the Singapore-based studio in the first year of the title’s release.
But as the company grew, it began experiencing ad-serving issues that were negatively affecting the user ad experience. Habby decided to tryGoogle AdMoband bidding mediation to manage ads for games “Penguin Isle” and “Slidey: Block Puzzle” in early 2022. After a two-month test, the studio saw an increase in revenue from in-app ads of more than 10% compared to their other mediation solution. AdMob delivered increased revenue, a more stable ad serving environment, and a higher-quality ad experience without affecting overall user retention.
Increase IAA revenue while keeping users happy
About 70% of Habby’s revenue is from in-app ads (IAA), and 30% is from in-app purchases (IAP). With IAA accounting for so much of the total income, it was important to ensure that users had a quality ad experience.
Habby’s goals were to increase revenue from IAA and deliver a quality user experience by creating a more stable ad serving environment in-game. As the majority of its revenue is from in-app ads, ad-serving issues were a concern for the team. They also wanted to reduce the time staff spent on managing daily waterfall mediation settings.
Switching to AdMob platform and rewarded ads
Yunhua Yan, Marketing Manager for the Habby team, said that AdMob had already been a top-performing demand source in their games for a number of years. When the studio researched other mediation solutions for its later titles, it decided to switch to the AdMob platformand bidding
“We’ve been working with AdMob since we launched our first game,” said Yunhua. “It’s very easy to integrate and use AdMob’s platform to manage monetization.”
Habby transitioned to AdMob rewarded ads, which rewards a player with extra lives or other bonuses for watching them.
Another AdMob feature the Habby team was excited about was ad inspector, which provided them with useful serving insights and third-party ad source testing in real time. This feature helped deliver ad serving stability they lacked in their other solutions. Because no coding is required for ad inspector, it did not require tech support.
“Ad inspector ended up making the lives of our tech team much easier,” said Yunhua.
IAA revenue jumped by more than 10% with AdMob and bidding
After setting up a two-month test period, Yunhua said that her team began to see results right away. For “Penguin Isle,” they saw an increase in revenue from in-app ads of more than 10% within days. After experimenting with different ad placements for different user segmentations, the team also saw an uplift in ad revenue of more than 10% for “Slidey: Block Puzzle” without any negative impact on user retention.
“AdMob allows us to set up various ad placements, which gives us the flexibility we need when designing our game,” said Yunhua. “It also helps us to analyze our players and enables us to give different cohorts different ad placements.”
Yunhua said that the AdMob platform delivered better performance compared to their other solutions in terms of revenue and ad serving stability. In addition, Yunhua said her team saved considerable time by moving from waterfall mediation to bidding. They spent much less time on manual waterfall optimization and setup.
"By using AdMob bidding, we were able to cut in half the time spent on managing ad mediation settings and optimization," said Yuhua.
After the two-month test, Habby concluded from the results that AdMob and bidding were the best solutions for “Penguin Isle” and “Slidey: Block Puzzle.” The studio is now planning to integrate the AdMob platform in two of their upcoming games.
“Switching to AdMob is definitely a win for us,” said Yunhua Yan. “It increased our in-app ad revenue while keeping our users happy.”
