Solitaire Grand Harvest drives discovery across App Store and Apple News.

In the highly competitive gaming category, Playtika — the developer of Solitaire Grand Harvest — needed to drive increased visibility and cost-efficient acquisition of their well-established app during peak holiday season. To maximize discovery of their in-game Snoopy integration, their marketing team wanted to reach a broad demographic of new and returning players, capturing strong intent on the App Store for card games as well as Peanuts nostalgia. Their goals were to optimize the launch campaign for both awareness and performance across the App Store and Apple News to ensure strong return on investment and revenue.

Capture seasonal and TV demand with ads across the App Store and Apple News.

By aligning the introduction of Snoopy gameplay to their biggest season, the team at Playtika wanted to protect their position as a market leader during the critical end-of-year holidays and tap into new potential audiences. They developed a highly integrated TV and social campaign centered around the IP collaboration that drove players to the App Store. To capture this increased intent and maximize visibility of their app during the most competitive season in gaming, the Playtika team combined investment in ads on the Today and Search tabs on the App Store with a variety of ads across Apple News.

Today tab ads helped Playtika reach millions of people by positioning their brand prominently on the front page of the App Store. With ads on the Search tab, they reached gamers right as they began their search for apps to download. Additional carousel card, banner, and video ads across Apple News extended the awareness of their Snoopy integration, reaching new premium audiences engaged with trending topics and cultural moments in an editor-curated environment.

With Apple News, Playtika drove 6.6 million impressions, and video ads had a completion rate of 15 percent.

Leverage keyword insights to optimize search results campaigns.

Search results campaigns separated by keyword themes captured audiences further down the funnel. During the Snoopy launch, the team at Playtika found discovery campaigns particularly valuable. Search Match and broad keyword campaigns helped Playtika identify a previous nonexistent search term: Snoopy Solitaire.

“People may not download directly from an ad on the Today tab or after they see a TV ad, but they later recall those ads and go to the App Store to proactively search,” says Kaplan. “We could never have predicted how significant this Snoopy Solitaire term would become. Finding this keyword through our search results campaigns was essential to the success of our overall launch, driving exceptional conversion rates because players typing Snoopy Solitaire had clear intent; they knew exactly what they had seen in an ad and knew what app they wanted to find.” The impact of this keyword insight extended beyond this launch. Playtika plans to incorporate the learning into their Apple Ads keyword strategy for all future IP collaborations.

Throughout the campaign, the team actively monitored campaign performance, adjusting budgets and optimizing keyword bids based on KPIs like cost-per-impression and return on investment. “When people search for your brand or relevant generic keywords, their intent is at its highest — not only to download the app but also to make in-app purchases,” says Kaplan. “With Apple Ads search results campaigns, we were able to optimize performance in real time as well as maximize the impact of our TV campaign and display placements, attracting players who convert into paying customers and driving higher-quality acquisition.”

Optimize ad relevancy to create integration and drive performance.

To further optimize performance, the Playtika team created ad variations based on custom product pages set up in App Store Connect. They aligned high-performing keyword groups (including the new Snoopy Solitaire term that emerged) to creative highlighting the new Snoopy gameplay. When potential players tapped one of these ads, they landed on a custom product page that matched the ad creative — creating a more engaging App Store experience.

“We wanted players who saw our ads on TV to also encounter our message on the App Store and across Apple News. We wanted to grab their attention with adorable Snoopy visuals across every single platform and touchpoint. By strategically investing in aligned creative across placements in multiple locations, we created a seamless customer experience,” says Dagan. Custom product pages improved tap-through rate by 300 percent and conversion rate by 20 percent for generic keyword themes. Tap-through rate increased by 100 percent for brand keywords after running custom product pages.