In our service, most revenue comes from ad monetization. However, ad revenue is highly dependent on the market and therefore unstable. That is why we decided to grow in-app monetization.
We defined three workstreams for this: in-app discovery, live ops, and monetization. We were at the beginning of this journey and had not yet run many experiments, but we already had early results.
Problem 1
Previously, we had not seriously worked in this direction, so there was no roadmap or analytics in place.
Solution
We started with a brainstorm to figure out how we could make in-app games more visible in the service, and which of their characteristics we could use to promote them. At the same time, we ran a visual exploration of what this could look like in the future.
Problem 2
To kick off the strategy, we needed simple and straightforward tools to drive traffic to in-app games.
Solution
Create an eye-catching block in the catalog.
Result
+15% daily high-quality players in top catalog games (60+ seconds) and +20% on mobile. Total playtime also grew by +6% on desktop and +8% on mobile.
Problem 3
People do not really like scrolling galleries left and right. While this pattern is familiar on mobile, it is much less convenient on desktop.
Solution
Replace the gallery with an expandable list of games going downward.
Result
Even though users opened the block more often than they scrolled the gallery, this led to a 6% drop in daily players for top games. The number of daily high-quality players in top games on desktop decreased by 2%. As a result, total playtime in top games fell by 7%. The experiment was closed in favor of the control, and we are planning further iterations.
Interpretation
Our hypothesis is that the number of games in the expanded list is too large and pushes recommendation blocks too far down. Because of this, playtime from recommended blocks drops and is not compensated by playtime from the Top Games block.
Problem 4
Some games require additional promotion as agreed with their developers.
Solution
Introduce internal promotion inside the Top Games block.
Result
We increased launches and players by 15-40%, depending on the game.
