The Turkish game studio Gram Games is back in the news. This week, it has launched Six! a free-to-play game on iOS. And, guess what? This game has already been downloaded more than 75 million times! Earlier this year in January, the studio had come up with a block merging puzzle called ‘Merged!’ that crossed over 1 million downloads in its first week. Prior to that, it had scored over 50 million downloads with ‘1010!’, a Tetris-like puzzle game. Founded in 2012, Gram Games attributes its success to the partnership with AppLovin, a marketing automation, and analytics company. 

In the initial two years, Gram Games was struggling with revenue generation in spite of receiving excellent reviews for their games such as ‘Robi: Cosmic Savior’, ‘Railroad Gangs’ and others. They started with the team of 5 people who has the passion for game creation. One of their co-founders Mehmet Ecevit is the current CEO of the Gram Games.The founders didn’t know how to expand the user base across geographical barriers. It was the time when they realized that they needed strong analytics to measure the user traits and behavior pattern so that they can engage actively with the users.

When Gram Games was about to launch ‘1010!’, it partnered with AppLovin to scale its reach to mobile customers. AppLovin was founded by Adam Foroughi, John Krystynak, and Andrew Karam. It does the job of tracking consumer data and uses targeted mobile ads to find similar consumers. Their goal is to build more products that will help brands communicate more effectively with consumers.

AppLovin strengthened the market strategy of Gram Games in two ways:

• It collaborated real-time data to monetize it effectively.
• It utilized this data to reach new users at scale.

AppLovin analyzed Gram Games’ data to demonstrate what worked and what didn’t. Its dashboard displayed the big picture and helped them to analyze the minutest details of the KPI’s. Gram Games was also able to pinpoint the exact efficiencies, which enabled it to tweak the product placement accordingly. Gram Games also used this data to understand the game players – their likes, dislikes, playing patterns and retention patterns.

The partnership resulted in tremendous success within a few weeks of the launch of ‘1010!’. Gram Games secured a spot in top 10 mobile games on iOS and Android across 65 countries.

With this data-driven approach, Gram Games started monetizing its games. Today, about 99% of the revenue flows from display ads. The users have the option to unsubscribe to ads by paying $4, though.

Gram Games has also set up an in-house data collection and analytics platform, which works closely with AppLovin to determine the strategic format and positioning of ads on a granular level.

AppLovin upped the game of Gram Games through targeted marketing, driving the later to become one of the fastest growing tech startups in the world. This partnership is a fine example of how two businesses (with different subject expertise) can work in tandem to create something big!

Please share your thoughts in the comment section below
Subscribe with us to get your dose of interesting news, research & opinions in the startup segment. Fill the form below:

Name

Email*