The global mobile gaming industry is estimated to be a $40 – $50 billion market and is growing at 20%.

About

Jam City (formerly SGN Games) is a Los Angeles-based mobile studio behind six of the Top 100 highest grossing games across Google Play and the Apple App Store. Their games have been downloaded more than 800 million times and are regularly played each month by nearly 50 million people; half of whom live outside the United States. Jam City’s portfolio of hit gaming apps includes Cookie Jam, Panda Pop, Juice Jam, The Book of Life: Sugar Smash, and Genies & Gems.

Jam City has fantastic game development skills, but its long-lived success is also due to its ability to reach and retain new users and to grow new geographies as part of their expansion strategy. More than 40% of their users are from outside the US.

The Approach

Jam City’s user acquisition strategy is integral to their success. Most of the games Jam City produces are free-to-play and give users the option to make purchases with real money to obtain more lives or add special in-game skills that allow them to advance further in the game faster.

App Preloads, an oft overlooked and misunderstood ad unit, are a key driver of their acquisition strategy. “Our goal is to see our games in the hands of new customers, and Digital Turbine provides us an efficient way to do just that,” said Sumee Oh, Jam City’s Director of Marketing. “As an alpha-partner of Digital Turbine, we’ve witnessed impressive results leveraging their Native App Preloads.”

This success is rooted in Digital Turbine’s capability to dynamically reach users directly on their smartphone at the important stage of device activation as well as over the life of a device.  A Native App Preload strategy mitigates the risk of app abandonment as it allows customers to engage more quickly with the app when they are most actively looking for new content —at the time of device purchase and setup.

Jam City’s Director of Marketing, Sumee Oh, observes that the majority of users typically open their preloaded app within the first 30 days of new device ownership. But unlike other ad inventory, the app continues to be opened over a longer tail making the conversion rate even more compelling over time. “The presence of the app on the phone can be a plus over time. I price that into my model because I pay off a download and a click, and then an open,” Oh says. “It’s a no-brainer. One, I get the branding. Two, I have a higher likelihood that the user will choose to engage – that they will click, check out and play our game.”