New Traffic & 2× Uplift in Session Durations for TapNation

Hypercasual games publisher TapNation was founded back in 2019 in the French capital of Paris.

With 500 million downloads, 40 million MAUs, and a portfolio of over 20 hit games released worldwide – such as Ice Cream Inc. and Giant Rush! – the publisher has recently also set up TapNation Labs, its own in-house studio.

Now both a thriving publisher and games developer, the company has released its first game and is growing exponentially in terms of its international workforce.

After the iOS privacy changes, TapNation witnessed the competition’s shift toward the Android market. Studios and publishers transferred their budgets to Android, and rising demand for the inventory drove CPIs up.

It wasn’t easy; TapNation found its monetization was stagnating due to the hypercompetitive landscape, which was putting strain on its UA efforts and budgets. The publisher’s retention rates were also not as strong as they used to be, meaning, it was getting harder to reach its ROI goals.

The Parisian publisher was already using core networks out there, including Google and Meta, for UA. But every other publisher was also there in the mix, competing against each other.

To move forward, TapNation knew it needed new partners and new traffic to navigate the competitive and saturated landscape.

The company found adjoe’s Playtime while searching for new traffic. TapNation saw lots of opportunity to diversify its UA channels and reach new traffic with Playtime’s unique time-based rewarded model and its global SDK boasting exclusive inventory.

The publisher ran a test on Playtime and was impressed by its scalability – not just in the US, where app installs reached up to 100K monthly, but also in other GEOs, including Brazil, Germany, and France.

Playtime’s superior user experience drove more quality traffic to TapNation’s games and helped the publisher reach its UA goals from day one.

Playtime’s traffic now gives TapNation almost 50% higher retention metrics than the other core networks. Take for example Color Water Sort. Day 1 retention climbed by 10% and reached 30% following the publisher’s collaboration with adjoe.

The quality of the users TapNation acquired from the adjoe network meant that overall session durations were longer. TapNation’s average gameplay session durations have in fact since started to reach 11 to 12 minutes, up from five to six minutes.

The publisher also saw that it could hit (and exceed) its ROI goal considerably faster with adjoe – from up to 2 weeks to just 2 to 3 days with Playtime. Meaning that the publisher is now relishing the rewards of additional profit after just a couple of days.

As TapNation strongly believes in the UA potential of Playtime, its strong and collaborative partnership with adjoe will remain a part of their future plans.

The publisher wants to add Playtime to more of its games and to increase its ad spend at least by 5× in the coming months. In the near future, TapNation also plans to diversify its offering and focus on hybrid games, in terms of in-app purchases and ad revenue, and is preparing to launch more games.

The publisher is now also running successful campaigns on adjoe’s level-based ad unit adjoe Advance. adjoe is diversifying its ad unit offerings beyond its rewarded channels, and the publisher has its eyes set on adjoe’s rewarded video platform.