Players level up their pool skills.
8 Ball Pool drives growth
with redownloads.

To maximize high-quality acquisition and stay competitive across markets, the Miniclip team set up Apple Ads search results campaigns, separated by keyword theme. Brand campaigns captured strong intent from gamers actively searching on the App Store for their app’s name and brand-related search terms. Competitive and category campaigns with more generic gaming terms related to pool attracted players showing interest in similar apps and gameplay.

“Our game has been around for nearly two decades. We have strong brand awareness, and loyal players usually return to either brand or more generic pool keywords,” says Miniclip Head of User Acquisition Kemal Kılıç. “With Apple Ads, we can maintain strong share of voice, reach a massive audience, and capture gamers on the App Store when they’re ready to download our type of game.”

Players who had previously downloaded 8 Ball Pool presented a valuable acquisition opportunity. The team at Miniclip activated reinstall attribution logic through their mobile measurement provider to more accurately evaluate the impact of Apple Ads redownload campaigns on overall performance, return on ad spend, and quality of installs. By adjusting how they attributed player acquisition, the Miniclip team included both new and returning users in their search results campaigns globally, structuring ad groups by top-performing brand and category themes and highlighting signature features of gameplay.

With this more complete, informed view of revenue from Apple Ads redownload campaigns, the team was able to more efficiently allocate budgets and increase bids across all campaigns. This strategy helped them become more competitive on the App Store, winning more new and returning players. In fact, the team at Miniclip saw return on ad spend increase by 20 percent quarter over quarter. They also found that revenue per average user for returning players was 20 percent higher than for new users. “By improving our attribution logic, we saw that redownloads are a key driver of revenue, far exceeding our expectations. With this new understanding, we’ve been able to adjust our bidding, capture higher share of voice, and be more competitive, which has led to incredible scale of our Apple Ads campaigns and valuable install growth from returning players,” says Kılıç.

The Miniclip team also leveraged Apple Ads insights to optimize their App Store product page. “We’ve seen how the paid and organic impact go hand in hand with Apple Ads campaigns, positively impacting organic growth and our App Store rankings,” says Kılıç. “This holistic approach to our App Store presence is a key factor in our continued success as one of the top games in our genre.”