Turbine
Company
Documents about Turbine
Designing Live Service Games | Design Club
Live service games represent a fundamental shift in industry strategy, moving away from static, one-time experiences toward models defined by long-term engagement and recurring content updates.
- Live service games shift the industry model from static, one-time experiences to long-term engagement loops driven by persistent progression and recurring content updates.
- The core operational requirement for success is maintaining a consistent cadence of new features and events that evolve the game’s identity while utilizing telemetry to drive daily retention.
- Developers must manage the tension between rigid production pipelines and the need for innovation by establishing specialized teams dedicated to post-launch product management.
🚨📢 BREAKING NEWS: Stillfront's CEO Steps Down + AdColony Sold for Under $5M + Meowdoku Hits 1.7M DAU
The mobile gaming industry is currently experiencing a period of rapid structural shifts, characterized by the decline of aggressive roll-up business models and the emergence of new, high-growth casual titles.
- Stillfront's CEO is stepping down following a period of declining revenue, downloads, and share price, signaling the risks of roll-up business models that rely on high valuations for acquisitions.
- The casual puzzle game Meowdoku scaled from 15,000 to 1.7 million DAU since mid-May by combining Sudoku mechanics with cat-themed aesthetics, generating estimated daily ad revenues of $70,000 to $120,000.
- Affle acquired the AdColony brand and technology assets from Digital Turbine for less than $5 million, gaining access to approximately 80,000 existing app integrations.
Session: How To Boost Your Ad Revenue By Implementing Offerwall – Best & Worst Practices.
The primary purpose of this presentation is to outline best practices for implementing and optimizing offerwalls within mobile games to maximize ad revenue.
- Offerwalls typically engage a niche audience of 2% to 5% of daily active users, making them a targeted monetization tool rather than a broad-reach solution like rewarded video.
- Successful offerwall integration requires a robust in-app purchase (IAP) economy, making the format best suited for casual, mid-core, and hardcore games rather than hyper-casual titles.
- Developers should include both paying and non-paying users in offerwall campaigns, as data indicates this approach boosts total revenue without cannibalizing existing IAP sales.
two & a half gamers session #36 - Google AdROAS campaigns, Admon Exchanges, Survivor.io update
Google’s Target ROAS (tROAS) campaigns have become a critical tool for ad-monetized mobile games, offering robust performance even for titles that integrate hybrid in-app purchase models.
- Integrating competing ad exchanges like Digital Turbine into mediation layers forces demand-side platforms to bid against each other, yielding revenue increases of 12% to 20% on lower-value inventory.
- Google tROAS campaigns perform optimally when developers adjust budgets and bids by 10% to 20% increments while maintaining frequent creative asset rotation.
- Survivor.io maintains daily revenues of $1.3 million to $1.5 million by prioritizing aggressive live-ops and rapid value extraction, despite facing low long-term retention rates of 3% at day 30.
Why you should diversify your demand | Eado Hofstetter from Digital Turbine
The mobile gaming industry faces significant economic headwinds characterized by reduced venture capital investment and a decline in consumer in-app purchases.
- Developers must diversify revenue beyond performance-based ad rotations by integrating external capital from brand advertisers, such as consumer goods companies and fintech firms.
- To build economic resilience, publishers should adopt a multi-channel strategy incorporating offer walls, device preloads, and brand-performance hybrid ad formats.
- The industry is shifting from traditional waterfall monetization to in-app bidding, a transition that is essential for maintaining competitive performance throughout 2024.
Looking for Alternatives - Duncan Blackett, Digital Turbine.
The mobile app economy is currently facing significant headwinds, characterized by a 30% year-on-year decline in advertising spend and a notable decrease in user monetization.
- The mobile app economy is experiencing a 30% year-on-year decline in advertising spend, forcing developers to seek alternatives to saturated and restricted traditional user acquisition channels.
- Alternative Android app stores represent a significant market opportunity, having generated $36 billion in revenue in 2021 while Apple and Google account for only 49% of global app installs.
- Direct-to-device marketing, facilitated by partnerships with carriers and original equipment manufacturers, allows developers to bypass the app store duopoly and secure more favorable revenue-share agreements.
Keynote: WTF Is AQI Ad Quality Index - Kim Grewal, Digital Turbine.
The Ad Quality Index (AQI) serves as a critical metric for mobile game developers to evaluate how advertising experiences influence player retention and long-term revenue.
- The Ad Quality Index (AQI) is calculated by dividing the number of users who exit a game during or immediately after an ad by the total number of users exposed to that ad.
- Developers can isolate financial losses caused by poor ad quality by comparing the ARPDAU of user cohorts before and after exposure to specific ad networks.
- High fill rates and eCPMs often mask hidden revenue losses caused by user attrition, making AQI a necessary metric to balance short-term gains with long-term retention.
How Digital Turbine delivers user acquisition with Ron Alini
Digital Turbine operates as a comprehensive mobile growth platform, providing integrated solutions for user acquisition and ad monetization.
- Digital Turbine operates the DT Exchange, an independent ad mediation suite that integrates directly with over 80,000 mobile applications.
- The 'DT Off-the-Wall' format drives user retention by allowing players to earn virtual currency through native, non-intrusive in-game tasks rather than external redirects.
- Market efficacy is shifting away from traditional banners and interstitials toward rewarded video and offer walls, which prioritize user-centric engagement.
Speed Panel: Using Preloads as the Ultimate Playable Ad
Mobile user acquisition faces significant hurdles as traditional advertising methods increasingly struggle with consumer ad fatigue, misleading creative, and the widespread adoption of ad blockers.
- Approximately 26% of gamers identify pre-loaded games as a more effective discovery method than traditional television or online advertising.
- Preloading bypasses traditional ad funnels and reduces friction by installing games directly onto devices, which results in superior user retention rates compared to standard digital marketing.
- Platforms like Digital Turbine’s Ignite enable fraud-free, high-intent installations by integrating directly into the device lifecycle rather than relying on conventional ad placements.
FTUE: Batman: Arkham Underworld
Batman: Arkham Underworld, a mobile strategy title developed by Turbine and published by Warner Bros., serves as a case study for the integration of high-profile intellectual property into the free-to-play mobile market.
- Batman: Arkham Underworld utilizes a hybrid model combining base-building mechanics similar to Clash of Clans with squad-based tactical combat.
- The game relies heavily on the DC intellectual property and film-related cross-promotion to drive user acquisition rather than mobile-first innovation.
- Aggressive push notification prompts early in the user experience risk permanent rejection due to iOS limitations that prevent re-prompting after a denial.