FunCraft Inc. specializes in creating casual mobile games, such as word puzzles and logic games, which are primarily monetized through advertising. In the mobile gaming sector, the marketing department plays a key role as the company's financial growth engine, constantly striving to expand its user base.
The company is headquartered in the United States, with its team spread across the United States, Argentina, Spain, and Israel.
Managing marketing budgets in this rapidly changing industry is an extremely complex challenge. One of the main problem is the long period after which the return on investment can be realistically assessed. Revenue generated through activities to acquire new users is directly related to their engagement and activity time in the application. In many cases, the full return on invested funds occurs only after many months, which means that marketers are unable to clearly determine for a long time which campaigns were actually profitable.
An additional complication is the dynamic nature of the market environment. The quality of users provided by marketing partners can vary in ways that are difficult to predict, and fluctuations in advertising rates often impact planning. Moreover, frequent app updates that aim to improve player experience can simultaneously impact both player engagement and the effectiveness of monetization models.
In the face of these challenges, traditional methods of budget management are becoming insufficient. Therefore, advanced analytical tools are necessary to precisely estimate the long-term profitability of marketing campaigns. Such solutions also enable forecasting results taking into account the variability of market factors, which gives companies a competitive advantage and allows them to make more informed investment decisions.
Scope of work
The cooperation included the creation of an advanced reporting system based on data from many sources, providing intuitive dashboards for marketing and management, replacing reporting available on the MMP Adjust platform. Key stages of the project:
- Data collection: Data from various sources (Adjust, Apple Store, Play Store, advertising networks, Applovin MAX, Firebase) has been integrated and consolidated in the BigQuery data warehouse. This process made it possible to build a single source of truth for assessing marketing activities.
- Data transformation and quality:
- We ensured the accuracy of the data by eliminating deviations in Adjust from the values in the source of truth for advertising revenue data, i.e. in the Applovin MAX mediation platform
- We've subtracted store commissions (Apple Store and Play Store) from our in-game purchase revenue data to reflect actual revenue.
- We have harmonized cost data from marketing partners with the form of data presentation in Adjust, enabling a granular assessment of marketing effectiveness, going down to the level of analysis at the creation level
- We modeled missing revenues resulting from incomplete availability of user attribution information
- Dashboards in Looker Studio:
- We have developed multiple report tabs with key KPIs, enabling detailed analysis and continuous monitoring of performance.
- We have created visualizations and exploration tools that simplify the analysis of the causes of campaign failures and support quick decision-making.
- We have prepared SKAD reports that allow you to better evaluate investments in iOS, despite the restrictions resulting from Apple's privacy policy.
- ROI predictions: We have developed ML models for predicting the long-term profitability of marketing campaigns, enabling risk reduction and identifying the most effective marketing activities for maximizing ROI.
- Customer support:
- We conducted team training, focusing on data interpretation and the use of analytical tools in practice.
- We prepared ready-made conclusions and recommendations that helped the marketing team optimize their activities and better manage the budget.
Results
Key results:
- creating a personalized, comprehensive reporting tool for the marketing department that goes far beyond generic reporting in Adjust, thanks to the ability
- eliminating errors in revenue and cost data, ensuring the reliability of marketing data.
- using additional data sources for information not available in Adjust, such as monetization metrics, costs of certain marketing activities or subscription revenue
- flexible definition of KPIs and arbitrary data transformation
- creating personalized and transparent visualizations that facilitate quick and convenient data consumption
- automation of the reporting process to save time and reduce the risk of manual errors.
- higher prediction accuracy
Business value:
- estimated increase in ROI from marketing activities, leading to enhanced financial performance and significant annual revenue growth.
- enabling you to make accurate decisions regarding budget allocation in conditions of high uncertainty.
- a deeper understanding of the causes of action results
- enabling decision makers to more quickly identify "winning" campaigns, games, markets and exit unprofitable activities.
- enabling proper optimization of marketing campaigns and adaptation of activities to changes in the environment
Customer review:
Dashboards provided by Alterdata have changed the way we manage marketing. We have full control over our data and can finally make decisions quickly and effectively.
Dashboards provided by Alterdata have changed the way we manage marketing. We have full control over our data and can finally make decisions quickly and effectively.
Summary
Design for FunCraft Inc. this is proof that a comprehensive approach to marketing data analysis can increase business profitability. Although the initial implementation had its challenges, the results turned out to be crucial for the company's growth. The Alterdata team confirmed its competences in the field of BI, data warehousing and prediction.
We are ready to help other companies achieve similar results by providing the highest quality data-driven solutions.
