How did Car Crash Royale reach 1.5 million installations? Monetizing F2P games with effective CAS.AI mediation
The story of monetization of one F2P game
This article tells the story of a 21-year-old developer who founded the mini-game studio Fail Games with his cousins in 2021. With no prior experience, they learned game development by watching YouTube tutorials.
It all started in school when they learned programming from YouTube.
At first, they made simple websites and Android apps. The journey was hard, but two years ago, they decided to make their own games using Unity.
The beginning of cooperation with CAS.AI
Their first game was a modification of a popular TV show. For monetization, they used only Google AdMob. However, Google quickly blocked the game and the AdMob account for unknown reasons. After this, they decided to try CAS.AI mediation and later publishing.
The graph shows how after the beginning of cooperation with us, the number of installations per day has increased dramatically by almost 10 times.
Page optimization, ad placement, and effective game design — skilled collaboration in all areas. This led to impressive results in a short time — 1.5 million installs and a top 3 spot in the Google Play “Racing” category across 16 countries.
Our main work is in external advertising monetization. For example, within 2 days after contacting us, Ibrahim published a game with our SDK and the next day 12 networks participated in auctions for his playsets.
CAS.AI publishing
In an effective business model, timely payments without delays and highly professional technical support are crucial. These are key reasons why the mini-game studio “Fail Games” chose CAS.AI as their mediator. Besides using mediation, they decided to expand their format and smoothly transition to publishing. Cooperation in a publishing format involves different conditions:
- Your monthly earnings stay yours — 100% guaranteed;
- Any extra we make together, we split it 50–50;
- We take care of Google Play and Apple App Store, get more players, and make cool ads;
- Game scaling through publisher recommendations, such as improving game design for maximum monetization.
For a successful app boost, having a catchy icon and store page is key. With A/B testing, we try different looks to see what users like. We regularly add 3 new designs, check how many people view and download them, then pick the best-performing one to be the main look for the app. It’s all about regular testing and finding what works!
As a result of this testing series and selection of the top performing icons, videos and screenshots, the conversion rate to installs increased by 31%.
We highlighted the visual aspect of cars moving in the game, attracting more attention and significantly boosting the conversion rate.
Next step
A crucial step is smartly getting more players so that the cost to bring them in (CPI) is less than what they bring in over time (LTV), making the economics work out.
The most key element in reducing CPI is working with ad creatives. Ad creatives were chosen based on current statistics.
For example, creatives V010 and V015 showed the best results. Therefore, further campaigns are built using them. However, it does not mean that the experiments with finding and improving creatives are over. We continue to test and select the most effective ways to promote the app.
Contract and x80 profit in 4 months
At the beginning of 2023 we signed a contract and started working on promoting a new game from “Fail Games” studio — Car Crashing Simulator. The result was immediate — the income increased 3 times. The main project Car Crash Royale brought incredible results — top 3 by installs in Google Play rankings in the “Racing” category in 16 countries. The total ad income in January without buying traffic from 76€ increased from 76€ to 240€ in February (with a purchase of 51€). Already in March from 1540€ to April the profit amounted to 12,770€.
Thanks to the high quality of the game, ASO optimization, effective traffic acquisition, and a top 3 ranking, the number of new users increased to 820,000 in April. After four months of contract with the publisher, their profit grew by 80 times!
Today the results are impressive, have a look at the real-time screenshot
Through mediation and building hybrid models and micromanagement for top GEOs eCPM has grown 2.5x!
Results
You can compare the “path” the game app has come up to the current moment At the beginning of the promotion (December 2022), the income as well as the profit was €135.
In March 2023, income and profit increased significantly to €1,560, and in July, income increased 10 times more than it did in March, reaching €15,600, while profit amounted to €6,500.
Mediation allows you to maximize your profit in the shortest possible time. Publishing provides new opportunities for testing and creates a positive perception of the app, which increases the installation rate.
Success comes when you are ready for it, so dare to make changes!
