Toca Boca World drives brand discovery and revenue growth in
new markets. 

As part of an always-on strategy, the Toca Boca team invested in Apple Ads search results campaigns, boosting app discovery with diverse audiences on the App Store. They focused investment on brand campaigns, helping protect their leadership position, maintain high share of voice, and capture strong intent for their brand. The team at Toca Boca further categorized nonbrand keywords based on their relevance and potential for acquisition, reaching people actively searching for similar apps and staying ahead of the competition. 

“With over 1.1 billion downloads worldwide, Toca Boca has a long history on the App Store,” says Spin Master President of Digital Games Marc De Vellis. “With Apple Ads, we meet players in key moments of discovery, whether they’re searching for Toca Boca or looking for something new. It’s the right balance of brand and performance to support thoughtful, sustainable growth.” 

During peak seasons, the team shifted more budget toward nonbrand campaigns, driving efficient cost-per-acquisition. “Apple Ads evolved from an effective way to reengage churned customers and reach people already searching for Toca Boca in the App Store to being a major driver of our acquisition growth,” says Spin Master Head of Growth, Global Digital Games Sara-Beth Harrison. “We understand the ongoing value of share of voice and brand defense, and we now see Apple Ads as a powerful discovery network as well.”  

The team also continually differentiated their Apple Ads strategy based on the life cycle of several apps they promote on the App Store. The team ensured that each product has its own defined lane, optimizing keyword strategy so that they surface the right product for the right audience at the right moment. Campaigns for more established products focused on defending the brand share of voice and maintaining their category position, whereas the Apple Ads approach for new products was more invested in discovery and brand building.  

To reach even more people at different stages of the customer funnel, the team complemented their search results campaigns with multiple ad placements across the App Store. With ads on the Today tab, they increased app visibility on the first page, making their brand some of the first content that millions of people saw. “Today tab ad campaigns delivered massive reach, especially during tentpole moments and periods of high seasonality, driving over 10 million impressions,” says Harrison. “With this multiple placement approach, we were thinking more holistically about the audience journey, and Toca Boca World was able to maintain a constant presence across the App Store.” 

Search tab campaigns extended brand reach even further while influencing consideration. “We used Search tab campaigns as part of this ‘display for performance’ strategy, achieving efficient and profitable cost-per-acquisition (CPA),” says Harrison. Product page campaigns also improved discovery with people looking at similar apps. 

“We saw a significant boost in new impressions delivered, and a lift in our search results conversion rate, when users were primed with our brand and discovery placements across the App Store,” says Harrison. “We’ve intrinsically understood that brand placements augment evergreen search result campaigns. But through intensive testing, we’ve been able to prove a direct correlation.” 

In fact, the team found that competitive search results campaigns were 104 percent more efficient when paired with Today tab placements. Similarly, Search tab ads boosted brand search results campaign performance by 1.3x and competitive search results campaigns by 6x. 

Entering new markets is often challenging and time consuming given the quickly evolving landscape and diverse potential audiences. “For us, looking at new opportunities for geographic expansion is an art and science,” says De Vellis.

To more efficiently scale performance to tertiary markets, the Toca Boca World team relied on the Maximize Conversions bid strategy — intelligent automation that optimized their search results campaigns to spend more efficiently as well as save time and effort. With Maximize Conversions, the team created a desired target cost-per-acquisition for every market. The AI-powered tools then automatically set an individual bid for each query in addition to Search Match, which places a single bid across all new potentially relevant terms. This combined approach optimized the team’s ability to uncover valuable keywords in new markets.  

“Maximize Conversions accelerated our ability to test new markets and quickly refine a strategy that delivered profitable scale. It gave us faster clarity on where the real opportunities were,” says Harrison. Within a week, the team had a clear view of what was working and could start scaling investment and bidding strategies. Acquisition efficiency improved by as much as 88 percent for some new markets. 

“We looked at Maximize Conversions as a way to dictate what success looked like for us in a particular market and then allowed the platform to just take care of the rest,” says Harrison. “That means significantly less manual intervention on the finer points of really understanding what it's going to take to make each market work and allowing the platform to better optimize toward our vision of success.”  

Seasonality for Toca Boca World doesn’t follow typical retail periods. The months following the end-of-year holidays tend to be a seasonal peak as new devices and gift cards are being enjoyed at home due to winter weather. The app’s product release calendar, as well as partnerships with other like-minded brands such as Sanrio, also created moments of increased opportunity on the App Store throughout the year. To better capture the attention of diverse audiences, the team tailored creative with ad variations based on custom product pages set up in App Store Connect.

More typical custom product pages highlighted relevant app features and gameplay, aligning creative assets with specific user interests and archetype play-patterns, such as design or storytelling. For major partnerships and special collaborations (Katseye, Hello Kitty, Wicked: For Good) with strong brand recognition and global fandoms, the team at Toca Boca World highlighted visuals and messaging featuring popular characters, attracting a wider audience beyond their typical customer base. 

“With custom product pages, we can speak to the things that are going to appeal to a distinct audience and visually curate a customer experience that’s relevant and engaging,” says Harrison. “For the bigger brand partnerships that means focusing on that affinity as a way to promote our product to audiences who may not otherwise find us. That creative approach is different from what we’ll highlight to people just searching for a storytelling game.”