The Cloud City MMORPG launched in August 2024, quickly hitting over 100,000 downloads on both Google Play and RuStore. To maintain this strong player acquisition momentum, VK's buying team executed an ad campaign on the VK Ads platform.
Goals
The primary goal for promoting the mass-market mobile MMORPG Cloud City was to run an ad campaign adhering to the following benchmarks:
- Below USD 9Cost per install (CPI)
- Over 6%Day 1 return on ad spend (D1 ROAS) (KPI: 8%)
- More than 28%Day 7 return on ad spend (D7 ROAS)(KPI: 40%)
These benchmarks were based on the previous campaign’s performance figures.
The campaign duration was set at 11 weeks.
Setting up and optimizing campaign
The buying team utilized two types of target action oriented campaigns, optimizing for both installs (CPI model) and in-app purchases (CPA model). From initial tests to final results, a total of eight campaigns and 53 ad sets were launched.
Costs. The team employed the lowest cost bidding strategy with a daily budget. This approach simplified traffic optimization and allowed for more precise metric management.
Creatives. Throughout the campaign, 50 static and 30 video creatives were used. The team also leveraged the AI video generation tool available in VK Ads, which creates videos from static images. Ultimately, both custom-made and AI-generated creatives showed comparable performance when tested under identical conditions. To mitigate random auction effects, each creative was launched in triplicate. This suggests that when time and resources are limited, using platform-generated creatives can be an excellent solution without sacrificing performance. Furthermore, the AI generation tool proved highly effective for resizing creatives, enabling broader ad placement coverage.
Testing revealed that static formats performed most effectively, particularly within the RuStore environment. Consequently, the team shifted focus towards static creatives.
Optimal settings. Traffic quality was analyzed using the Appsflyer tracker. Key performance indicators such as CPI, CPM, CTR, and CR, along with budget utilization, were monitored via the VK Ads dashboard. Based on the statistics, placements, budget allocation, and audience settings (specifically age) were adjusted from time to time.
Through this optimization process, the following targeting settings proved most effective for promoting Cloud City:
- 24–58 years oldmen, custom segments – RuStore audiences, Russia, placements: VKontakte/OK;
- 18–75 years oldmen and women, custom segments, Russia, placements: OK/VKontakte – FEED / VK Project – Native/RuStore.
After identifying optimal campaign settings and the most effective creatives, the team created variations of the best-performing visuals and scaled the project.
Based on experience, selecting the right age and audience characteristics is crucial for promoting games in the MMORPG genre. These games are highly sensitive to in-app purchases and typically require relatively quick initial player spending. This is precisely why the D7 ROAS KPI was relatively high. For comparison, the typical D7 ROAS benchmark for strategy games is usually between 3% and 5%.
Results
Over the 3-month campaign period, the team significantly increased the game's downloads on RuStore and achieved the following results:
- 13,24%D1 ROAS (vs. target of 8%)
- 45,17%D7 ROAS (vs. target of 40%)
- $5,65Average CPI (a 1.59x reduction compared to the client's previous benchmark of around USD 9).
"Testing creatives and shifting our focus to static formats were turning points that helped us drive KPI improvements. Optimizing campaigns, refining audience segments, adjusting gender and age distribution, and making timely placement adjustments were key to achieving these positive results. The project's effectiveness is also reflected in the client's subsequent steps. Before the campaign kicked off, their traffic had nearly stopped. We significantly scaled the budget, and during the process, the client rolled out successful combinations and insights to further increase their own promotion volume," notes Egor Erokhin, VK Buying Manager.