Players find victory.

Summoners War increases revenue.

To protect their globally recognized brand and capture interest in similar fantasy games, the team at Summoners War alongside their marketing agency Mobidays focused on brand keyword campaigns with Apple Search Ads. They also closely monitored impression share and bidding to stay competitive in an increasingly crowded category. Discovery campaigns with Search Match also helped reach wider audience and mine for popular search terms.  

Search Match was the most powerful tool to quickly gain valuable marketing insights in various countries regardless of language barrier, according to the Mobidays team. In fact, keyword insights from Search Match were also used to inform strategy across paid marketing channels, improving overall marketing performance globally.

In partnership with Mobidays, the team at Summoners War actively tracked keyword performance and impression share of Apple Search Ads campaigns. To maximize impressions and new user growth globally, they adjusted bidding on a weekly basis, moving high-performing keywords into exact match and increasing bids to optimize results. Broad match also helped ensure they didn’t miss out on relevant searches their exact match keyword list didn’t cover. 

“We saw such strong improvements in acquisition and costs with very simple optimization that we have increased investment in Apple Search Ads 15 percent month over month,” says Com2us Summoners War Performance Team Lead Suyeon Yu.

After nearly a decade on the App Store,  Summoners War had evolved as an app and updated many features including real-time gameplay. Focused on user retention and driving strong lifetime value, the team did not apply any audience refinements to their Apple Search Ads campaigns. By including all users, they were able to serve their ads to relevant searches made by the wisest base of engaged fantasy gamers on the App Store. 

“Apple Search Ads attracted players with high value, delivering the highest retention rate of any other platform. These gamers had 19 percent higher retention than players acquired through other channels,” says Suyeon Yu.