Knives Out

Players win together.
Knives Out boosts overseas downloads.

Knives Out is a battle royale game with social features that help players cooperate in real time. With Apple Search Ads, the game’s Chinese developer NetEase drove new player acquisition in Japan and improved return on ad spend and retention.

The Results

2x increase in return on ad spend (ROAS) for day 7 players compared with other channels.

1.5x increase in retention for day 7 players compared with other channels.

10% decrease in cost per download.

The Challenge

To maintain their leadership position in Japan, the NetEase team wanted to optimize new player acquisition for Knives Out while meeting cost-per-install and retention goals. They needed a scalable solution to improve app discovery with overseas gamers searching for similar gameplay on the App Store. In a competitive category like games, it’s critical for the Chinese team and their agency, iADBrain, to understand audience nuances in their top market and reach engaged prospects.

Apple Search Ads is an invaluable channel to protect our brand, stay competitive, and acquire engaged new players in our most valuable market.

Kimi Xu,

Senior Marketing Director at NetEase

The Solution

Reach the right audience with keyword insights.

With Apple Search Ads, the NetEase team and their agency focused on ongoing keyword mining in Japan. Discovery campaigns helped find new relevant search terms. “The additional keywords discovered with Search Match delivered on average 10 percent lower cost-per-acquisition compared with existing keyword lists,” says iADBrain CEO Feng Luo.

Heavy investment in brand campaigns ensured high visibility with gamers showing intent on the App Store for the Knives Out brand. To maximize impressions, the NetEase team also created category and competitive campaigns. While exact match keywords drove the most valuable traffic, broad match allowed the team to expand reach to users looking for similar apps.

Adjust bidding to optimize performance.

To further refine their understanding of Japanese gamers and competitors, the team at NetEase actively tracked campaign performance at the keyword level. Using insights from custom reports, they adjusted their bids on top-performing keywords and closely monitored impression share, search popularity, and rank. With this optimization strategy, the team improved return on ad spend (ROAS) and retention while maximizing download volume.

“Apple Search Ads helped us defend our brand while increasing ROAS by 2x and retention by 1.5x,” says NetEase Senior Marketing Director Kimi Xu. “That’s why we now use Apple Search Ads as the performance benchmark for all other paid channels.”

Complement organic growth and capitalize on spikes in interest.

Apple Search Ads has also been an unexpected but vital way to complement organic growth. After optimizing bidding for their brand campaigns, the NetEase team saw a 6.5 percent lift in incremental downloads. “Apple Search Ads helped us understand how important it is to capture additional customer volume that we could not have achieved organically,” says Kimi.

Spikes in gaming during 2020 also provided an unforeseen opportunity for NetEase. With more people at home looking for entertainment, the team quickly increased budget and actively adjusted bids to capture the unexpected demand. They saw overall brand search volume increase by 75 percent and installs increase by 149 percent with this proactive optimization strategy.

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