Players revisit a childhood classic.
Metal Slug: Awakening boosts ROAS.

Before the game’s release, the VNG team boosted visibility on the App Store with an Apple Search Ads pre-order campaign. When a customer downloads a pre-order app, it’s automatically installed on their device once the app becomes available. The team closely monitored reports showing the number of install requests as well as App Store analytics data to better understand how to optimize their keyword strategy and maximize potential downloads for the game.

“The pre-order campaign helped support our branding and awareness efforts, capturing early interest on the App Store,” says VNG Corporation User Acquisition Manager at Game Studio 9 Hung Anh Nguyen. “During the pre-order phase of our launch strategy, we were able to deliver 25 percent of total iOS install volume upfront with a very high conversion rate from preregistration to download.” 

To drive discovery with the broadest audiences possible, the team at VNG invested in search results campaigns. They separated campaigns by country and localized keywords to address different market and language nuances. With brand campaigns, they captured strong intent from players searching for the game’s name on the App Store, while also protecting their brand terms from competitive challenges.

“For our search results campaigns, we monitored budgets closely and bid competitively to ensure the highest share of voice, which led to strong install volume,” says Hung Anh. “This bidding strategy was particularly important with brand campaigns, as we typically see the highest return on ad spend from these keywords.”

To expand exposure to new audiences and drive installs, the VNG team complemented search results campaigns with multiple ad placements across the App Store. With Today tab ads, the team placed their game prominently on the front page of the App Store, reaching millions of people at the beginning of their app discovery journey. Ads on the Search tab influenced intent before players narrowed in on a search. Finally, the team stayed competitive and top of mind with ads on product pages.

“The majority of our impressions — 94 percent — came from our ads on the Today tab, the Search tab, and product pages,” says Hung Anh. “These three display placements, together with search results ads, also helped us to achieve 154 percent growth in installs across nine markets compared to running search results campaigns alone.” Apple Search Ads also played an important role in driving organic install growth, particularly when running the Today tab placement.

To better engage different audiences and improve efficiency, the team at VNG optimized creative relevancy with ad variations based on custom product pages set up in App Store Connect. They created several variations for testing in both the pre-order and launch phases. When potential customers tapped any of these ad variations, they landed on a custom product page that matched the ad creative — creating a seamless experience.

“One custom product page featured a collaboration with another famous VNG game called Arena of Valor and highlighted Violet, a popular character from that game,” says Hung Anh. “We combined keywords related to the name of the character and the game to help Metal Slug’s campaign scale up and increase conversion rate.” With this ad variation, the team improved their tap-to-install conversion rate by 10 percent.