If you look at the chart, actually, and we covered Jigsaw Lit there extensively on the podcast in a special episode. Cardscapes is actually on the second spot already. You see this giant growth, 200% in last month, because again, it just killed. So, if I go into DAU, there won't be any DAU to say anything for you, Felix. So, just to understand, like, this is not some random game that we did and we're copying the competitor. We're pretty much right behind him. Like, we'll get him if we continue [laughter] growing. So, that's the meaning of this.
[music] [music] [music] [music]
[music] [music] [music]
Hello, everybody. Welcome to your favorite mobile gaming experts, it's two and a half gamers. Special episode, it's not only three of us, but five of us today. And I'm recording up from from Bratislava, which you might see. Anyway, my name is Matej Lančarič, welcome. Felix Robert. I'm Jakub Remiar. And we are your hosts, and we have Rizky and we have Vlad on the podcast. Guys, welcome. Please introduce yourselves. Let's start with Vlad, because it's first time on the podcast. Rizky, you will get your your time as well. Okay. Thank you for having me today. My name is Vladimir. I'm from Belarus, and I represent company Malpa Games. We do smart casual publishing for puzzles.
And mostly our games is words and jigsaw puzzles and Sudoku. But I'm glad to share with you all we know how we build and scale our games, if you have such questions. Yeah, of course we will have. Yes. And I'm Rizky. I'm one of the co-founders at PVX Partners. We provide user acquisition financing. I'm one of I'm the lucky lucky partner of to Malpa Games in supporting them uncapping their budget. Nice. Amazing. So, again, we're going to talk about Malpa Games, numbers, a little bit of creatives, we'll show the game. Vlad's going to show us some some interesting slides as well. We definitely have some questions, as usual. Looking forward. Looking forward. So, Vlad, do you want to do you want to show us a little bit and then talk about like Malpa Games? Yeah, I think maybe for you and for our viewers will be very interesting to know the idea, because we are not very popular publisher and studio. So, I'm going to
put some light on us. Yeah. Yet yet not popular. Not yet so popular, but after this podcast, absolutely going to be. I hope. I hope in a in a good style. Yeah. Absolutely. So, I want to just to have some visuals to to see what I'm talking about. For example, So, mostly we're doing games for more than 10 years for now. And we are focused on games that not involved a lot of graphics, let's say, because founders were technician guys. And when we started 10 years ago, for us it was very difficult to find a good graphic designer. So, this is, you know, shaped the niche that we are started working in. So, we started from word games, because it's easy to program and not a lot of heavy graphics or a lot of narrative game design, let's say. We started from 2017. And during that period we were grinding the ideas how to survive in red ocean of
word games, of jigsaw puzzles and Sudoku, because in such specific niche, where nobody is waiting you with your creative and fancy ideas, you need to be very precise and very good at production, at operating, let's say. During all that period, for 10 years, you know, just several decisions a a day, but you come better and better. Now we have 100 million downloads usually every year, and more than 100 specialists working at for the company. So, 100 head count already. Yes. Here here's some visuals what we do. We are now far away from what we started. Now we have a very good graphics and a lot of a lot of game designers and they all try to put their ideas. Not all of them perceived very good from audience. Some of them like just nothing, some of them are very good. And it's very sad that usually in such
games not very easy to do how to say, groundbreaking change. It's mostly
Innovative genre, I mean. Yeah, it's mostly every update, if you increase 1% your retention or monetization, it is a it's a it's a boom. It's a good month for you. So, and I also, yeah, if can you imagine somebody who created Sudoku in 2024? That's our our studio. And it's still scaling. Looks like there is a market, let's say, niche, small portion of the market that wasn't covered and we covered it. I think maybe we steal some players from other existing players, but this is a market. It is very Oh, but like we've seen who was it? Hungry Studio just recently released a Sudoku game, which is like the biggest game casual game on the market. So, you know,
in the good trend, like, no worries. Exactly. And look, this is I think this is even harder to build than like nice visuals and stuff, because this is I mean, people already know what this this got Yeah, exactly. This is already like people already know like what they they can expect and you need to nail it like perfectly. Yeah. And the most difficult part here is that existing competitors have long period data. They know how people behave in the very late stages of the game, but we should only predict that behavior. So, still, yeah, I'm not blaming anything, just showing you our, how to say, passion. So, we are mostly doing evergreen titles and trying to utilize that maybe advantage that we have, that we I think I suppose we have some superiority in technical realization, in operational stuff. So, meaning being able to create games fast. I have to ask, but this looks like it's beautiful ad revenue, right? 100% ad revenue, I
have to guess, or 95% ad revenue? 90 Nice. I love it. I'm going to enjoy this episode. Yeah. And I will I will say, when we look at we we initially looked at this from a like a financing perspective, I was like, okay, this is going to churn off super fast and then like and then like never have any users after that. But after I saw Vlad's co-cohorts, I was like, oh, wow, this is like almost like hybrid casual type of retention with pure ad mon. And that's what kind of impressed us the most about about Vlad. Like, it's not just the technical competency, I think it's really an engaging like they really know their niche and they really know how to like stretch the engagement. You know what kind of this reminds me of the the beginning of TripleDot as well, because it's also was like card games and heavy ad monetized with really good retention profile. So, Yes. kudos, Vlad, like, very good job. Also, what I would like to highlight here is that all the advertisement you see in our games, it's usually
AB tested dozens of time. So, we our dream in the studio is that we can move, like say, interstitial cool down maybe farther away, but every AB test shows us that it is impossible. Ad tolerance on the market for such genre is very high. So, it's difficult for us. We can't do something because of our goodwill, because we think that less advertisement is better for audience. For sure it is, but our competitor won't do that. Yeah, so we need to drain all the attention from audience. Yeah. Look, I mean, we always joke about this, but it's it's a business. You know, you need to pay those 100 100 people in the company. It's like not like, hey, we have great retention and we don't want to earn money, because we're allergic to money. No, I mean, it's like jokes aside, like, this is a proper business and we need to earn, right? That's where our game designers inside suffer, because all we need we want to do a very
good games with very good retention. But still, yes, we have AB tests and that is, how to say, it is save us from long time thinking, like, what is good, what is bad. We just AB test everything. What also I want to want to ask you something.
from from a UA person, like, how do you structure those AB tests? I mean, just quickly, because it's it's very interesting, because also for me as a UA person, like, how do you structure at least one, let's say, if you have one example that you can share that with AB tests are, let's say, we we don't have a very different uh type of users according to media channel. So, it's more or less same. So, for us, when we analyze AB test, we do segmentation on media source level, but usually we do not design it according to our media source profile, let's say. Yeah. So, because we don't do any tricky marketing with some like channels very bad, some very
good or all or of them for us more or less the same. So, we have very similar traffic. That's that's good insight. Thank you. So, yeah, I just want to highlight at the end that we chosen have chosen our strategy 10 years ago that we firstly should sharpen our production and after that we will try to create some brand new ideas and looks like we are near that point right right now and we didn't want it to start from bright ideas because we always knew that somebody can copy them so fast. So, maybe you have good idea, but you will drop it from your hands just because you're not very precise in production and not very fast in production. So, we started from that and not from the idea, but from the production. And hopefully we started from the niche that can generate enough profit to sustain the and to grow the company, to grow the team. I think that's it from the introduction. Don't worry. Don't worry. I think I can
I can add a little little bit here so people understand let's say the impact of this as we talking about this because I think those charts doesn't really give you justice whereas if I look at the portfolio overview like the company pretty much as we see here on Sensor Tower double downloads in last 3 months from something like 2 million a month to something like 5 million a month. Cardscapes
you know what I'm going to say. It's killing it. You know what I'm going to say. It doesn't Yeah. The the thing is that your chart isn't here, man. That's the problem because you're so new. Yeah, because it was launched yeah, launched a couple months ago and I was looking at I think it's there's no no nothing Because if we look at the chart actually and we covered Jigsaw Solitaire extensively on the podcast in a special episode. Cardscapes is actually on the second spot already. You see this giant growth 200% in last month because again it just killed. So, if I go into the AU there won't be any DAU to say anything for you, Felix. So, just to understand
like this is not some random game that we did and we're copying the competitor. We're pretty much right behind him like we'll get him if we continue growing. So, that's the meaning of this. So, and the game again the game where do I have it? The game looks quite polished, quite good. Like as I said we covered Jigsaw Solitaire similarly it's very very kind of a interesting and the same same thing as we said like the Solitaire traffic being put on the Jigsaw kind of core and so on and so forth. So, yeah, there's everything there as as I was playing through through it today. Ads start on level 10 if I'm in the right AB test on Android or wherever [laughter] I should be, but then it's the usual kind of you know, the beautiful thing with animations and everything that's there. So, yeah, works perfectly in my opinion.
By the way, I wanted to thank you for a good episode about Jigsaw Solitaire. Yeah, it's
[clears throat]
helped us also to save our strategy. And thank you very much for listening, guys. I think we can we can end it here.
That's good to hear. Yeah, everybody's laughing all the way to the bank, I guess. [laughter] I mean It's also quite happy, I I would say. No, but this is great. Uh and this is what like 3 months old what was it like it's very scaling. Say yeah, December 12th and now it's starting scaling rapidly in in January and February pretty much. This is great. Uh very important to have different portfolio. We have a lot of games where I don't know for let's say Steam player or console player it's all same stuff, but for us it's very different. Sudoku word game, Jigsaw and when we started to do user acquisition on Cardscapes we definitely find the exact location. It is between this game and this game and we predicted the curve that should have been there. We are not 100% sure, but it's uh let's say we will be very
surprised if it won't go like that. And every day we we check our prediction and usually it goes like we predicted. That's why we saw certain and why we scale it so good. Yeah. I think we had a conversation a while back, Vlad, where I asked you like, "Okay, what are you targeting in terms of spends next month?" And then you said, "Listen, I don't tell my marketing team how much to spend. I tell them to spend as much as they can as long as they hit this ROAS kind of like threshold." And I think I would love to understand kind of like how you arrived at that that kind of like philosophy to to kind of manage the the team and why you think that's I think it's the right way to do it as well, but I'm curious to hear from your side. I wasn't I wasn't always be so brave and only after partnering with PVX as a fund source for us, we described for our marketing team the perfect targets, how to say, including interest rate of our partner that until
our prediction go that way we have no limitation on the UA user acquisition spend. That's a paradigm change we did only after partnering with PVX. Before that it was quite difficult to grow. Even if you see good metrics still your cash flow is very slow for games of that niche. Payback period of 1 year, 1 and 1/2 year is normal and it is only like 100% as a gap you will achieve only as a profit margin you will achieve only after that. So, it's very it's quite risky. Yeah, very risky. No, no, no. He His name is Risky, not risky.
[laughter]
A little bit of a little bit of dad jokes. No, because okay, so But then like can you explain like how the extra money allowed you to actually scale because people still don't realize like how helpful it is. Like how this technically actually works. Yeah, technically how it Yeah, how it how it
helps. Uh maybe on the easy example which is let's say not real maybe help help somebody to understand. You can spend 100k with I don't know, 120% in year one. It is 20k in profit in pure profit. But with if you have good numbers and your game is ready for scale, you can spend a million and have I don't know, maybe 100 110% still for example give the half to the guy who give you money and half you receive it's still at 50k instead of 20k. So, scaling is good if your game is ready. It's important part. It's not scaling is not for everyone, only for games that retain users that can have long-term paybacks. So, something Let me add something here as well, right? Because there's a lot of people that don't understand what ad monetization is that scale is very
important when it comes to ads because you'll get higher eCPMs, you'll be able to do dirty deals with your mediation partner that improves your profit margin and basically you're going to be treated better, right? You're going to be able given access to things otherwise small publisher accounts don't get. And I usually say that scale in ad monetized products is probably worth anywhere between 10 to 15% on a bottom line basis, right? So, if you're earning 3K a day and if you're earning 150K a day, you will have 15% higher margins from ads just for being a big player. Yes. Felix is completely correct. I just firstly put your business model first and then you get this margin of 10 or 15% using some some paybacks, something else. Yeah, it works like that. See Yakub, see like this is something that never tells you. No, this is the usual way. Nobody tells you that. We have this music thing and then like how do I get it? Like you need
to ask for it your rep. Like Yeah, but sometimes the rep goes like, "Yeah, we don't have it." And then you're like and then you're like, "I know you do." And then they go like, "No." And then you scale to 75K a day and then the rep goes like, "Oh, you mean that tool?" Yes, of course. Yeah, sure. I hadn't understand you correctly. And the best part is that the larger you get so like I used to manage a portfolio kind of similar to this that got very large like 300K a day and you realize that you think you know all the dirty deals, but then suddenly they just like the bigger you get the more they come and the more helpful they are. Yes, scale is very important in ad monetized products. That's great. That's where That's where yeah, that's where Risky came into the equation and helped this. Are you are you able to maybe talk about a couple of learnings that you did from your mediation setups as you scaled, right? Because basically you must have gone through 10K a day, 15K a day to 100K a day to probably now closer to
150 or something like that plus, but what have you learned from scaling and what like mediation setups you've changed from that perspective? You must be on Max, right? So, yeah. Yes, we using Max and to say that previously even before reaching such high numbers of daily revenue, our monetization team is quite big and doing tremendous job. I think we achieved a lot of that comes with amount we received just because of our business development activities, let's say. So, in our particular case nothing changed a lot just because we overcome it previously with our activities, let's say. So, but for you it's for any publisher on the market it is important always to think about the the placement. There is different ways of they have some aggressive advertisement, some soft advertisement. It's always better to ask your mediation partner to check it, to test. Sometimes it works.
And also we do a lot of work which is included in I think in every package with the bit floors. We do a lot of work with it. Bit floors is kind of like the dark arts right now. I'm not sure if it's how to say you need to achieve something. I think it's open from the start. I'm not sure.
It's open from the start but most people don't actually play around with it and realize its significance and basically it's the only defense now when we're in header bidding only that you can use to basically increase your eCPMs massively, right? And basically there's schemes you can do to basically start doing this and the longer you wait the more money you lose essentially. Yeah, by the way we have always this payoff. You need to retention and you need to monetize and it's not about cool down. Cool down is only about the static time frame but also maybe if this advertisement is very cheap, maybe should I pass it not to show it right now. It's very good ideas to to think about.
Sounds like an interesting A/B test. Very good one. Yeah. I mean I think you want to go UA. I mean we can go UA. I can I can show I mean You you just mentioned you're on yeah you're you're on max pretty much. I mean that says a lot. Max and guess what's what's there in terms of the UA. That's ROAS campaigns, right? Yeah. Yeah, Ad ROAS campaigns is main engine for user acquisition. And I would say that uh last maybe year or when ROAS 28 was introduced I don't remember. Last year pretty much. Last year and from the beginning I suppose it started to perform very good and for our genre it uh it's accomplished the goals and uh I like that. So it's easy to operate and the volume is oh my god Yeah,
[laughter]
we can see. We can see. You can see. It's pretty much AppLovin quite a lot. I mean that's correct by the way in battle. know. I know I know I know. I know it's you pretty much it's too early to say or like too early to show on sensitive data. There's usually like a delay. So you have AppLovin but you have I'm pretty sure you have Google as well. Uh and I'm supposed okay. Google and then Facebook is here so I guess a little bit of Facebook there as well and then what else is Ad ROAS campaigns? Mintegral? What else? Unity kind of? So what else do you have in the mix? So you can scale like crazy if you can share. AppLovin is a main engine. The main engine for that Google Google Ads is I think the second. Yes.
Mintegral is good but not so Yeah. Facebook's not working at all for us. I don't know. We don't have maybe experience. Maybe it is No no no no look a lot. Facebook Ad ROAS campaigns the worst the worst campaign on the
market. Unfortunately it is it is like this. So it's not you it's Facebook. Yeah. And the days where like oh it was really big on hyper casual where like everybody was were using these ICPA campaigns even if you CPA campaigns here on Facebook is not going to get you any any good results unfortunately because everything else is better. Even them saying it's it took them so long to introduce Ad ROAS campaigns because it's going to be three times better than everything every solution on the market. It's not true. It's not true. So yeah you're you're fine. By the way our top channel list is very similar to AppFlyer index. I usually and put a plan for user acquisition department like we should be somewhere near AppFlyer index. If we have some differences you should explain why or something like Nice. Interesting. That's really good. Maybe sometimes people have explanation. Sometimes no. How how was basically I'm curious to know like did you guys see any changes
now with AppLovin rolling out a lot more e-commerce demand over Christmas? Did that change anything on the UA side and on the ad monetization side Maybe slight change on the ad monetization side that we received higher eCPMs. I'm not sure exactly about that. I It's not something that we're very um how to say certain. We're not certain but I surely haven't seen any changes in user acquisition side but ad monetized at the end of the year usually growing very good. E-commerce or not I don't know. Okay. Is that something you're seeing Felix like as a pattern?
Uh there's a couple clients I work with that basically their UA struggling a lot because basically it's higher prices right now because of the e-commerce is competing with the gaming stuff. Yeah, overall like you see eCPMs go up. Yeah, but it's not by as much as we thought, right? But it's still expected that AppLovin has about a 5% market share on e-commerce spend right now. So still very small, right? So I think when they go to 10% which they inevitably
will, right? That's probably when you'd see more of an impact, right? I guess the only place you do see it is really in banners if you also have Amazon publisher
services and they're not the most easy partner to start working with because they don't take new publishers for the
last year, right? So
for these types of fraud. It's nice. Okay, so but then do you use the play time for for like the offer system in rewarded UA or what kind of offers do you have? Like let's see and let's say I achieved level 100 so they play more and so you can get out more money out of it. Usually it's about the progression. Yes, I'm not very deep inside that but can be rephrased, let's say. Pass several chapters, pass 100 levels, something like that. Okay, nice. So so what at what point
it's because of the genre we have. We have level based game. Exactly. No, that's that's perfect because that's that's correct. And then the question is like at what point did you start like talking to to Risky PVX partners? Okay, that's first part of the question. Because then I'm looks high like super big scale. So like when when did you start working or talking? You know my
meeting with Risky started from uh book idea that start looking for financing before you really need it. So at the end of 2024 we were how to say simulating our cash flow to the future and seeing that if we increase our spends we can earn more maybe. So let's go to the market and start thinking about where to find any kind of external financing for us. What are the instruments that we have? And the first consultants told us that only selling half of your shares is the only solution. Let's say.
[laughter]
publishing companies only one solution like something like that. And hopefully third consultant told us there is something new on the market. It's UA cohort financing and he dropped intro for Risky and that's how we met each other. I started talking and we understood that it is exactly what we were looking for. We don't need to sell the company. We still in the business in the game. So we wanted to continue. Just we need fuel
for the marketing. And also after we started working with PBX, we not after the signing, even before that, we understood that we receive even more than just money. We receive the let's say competence in financing because we don't have dedicated experienced chief financial officer who can predict how cash flow can in in how to say like influence life in the future. Like that. And Risky and guys from PBX have a lot of instruments and they showed us and we also have such light due diligence which is also also important for business that we are doing things right. We see the market as other guys not really how to say, they don't need to be very believers in your products. They look at it from financial perspective of you and we very value this. Yeah. We value And also in this fact that when we started to work with
PBX, they after 3 months they come to us and told, "Guys, do you see that you are under spend now? Like you can spend more."
[laughter]
Yeah. Our dashboard says that if you increase here you will still be in the good shape of cohort returns, let's say. So that was a very funny. As I mean, well, that's that's the thing. I mean, that's why we also like to work with Risky and the PBX partners because on the personal level as well. It's like the it's a we are saying like it's a it's a people business as well, right? So Here we go. So like what what was the the key moment why you choose PBX over the others? If it's not this actually. If not this. For us it wasn't maybe it's bad side of business. I am showing myself as a bad businessman, but I wasn't uh Come on, man. Yeah, I I wasn't going to the market and comparing like number to number any anything that we have. We were just thinking we have some idea in
our head how it should work. We started to discussion we started discussion with PBX and uh all our all our communication fits so well. So it was even without comparing to other proposals. Which is just great because then you don't really need to to hear anything else and then you just go for for the best option which
But after that, you know, we started like that, but after we started PBX did case study on their website. A lot a lot of founders come to me and start asking why PBX, why not other something like that. And that's how I received the benchmarks of the market, let's say.
[laughter]
And you know, it's for me it's so easy going like they just telling me is how which offer they receive and that's how without any effort I get some information. Interesting to know, Vlad. I didn't know that. I didn't know [laughter] that. Yeah, Risky, you you passed evaluation every month, let's say.
Um I will say, Vlad, maybe we we hadn't discussed this before, but you you were also kind of what we would describe our ideal customer profile. And and a lot of people would think that the ideal customer profile for us is just someone who's obviously inflecting in terms of their spend. But from a psychology standpoint, you're an incredibly aggressive founder. I would say that like like yes, maybe it took you 8 years to kind of set the foundation technical foundation, but I know right now if your numbers [snorts] could allow it, you would grow by 4x, right? And you're always pushing the boundary and I think that's really what we see as it's not in my CRM or whatever. I'm not scoring everyone based on this, but like from talking to a lot of founders like every month, there there is a class of founders who, you know, if I ask them the question, if you had unlimited budget, what would you do? And then a lot of them would be measured like very like okay, I would grow a little by little. And then few of them would just
be like, I would grow. I would try to I see a window of opportunity and I'm going to I'm going to go for it. And I think I think that's why I mean as a service provider what we're trying to design our our our our company to do is to try to try to like make it as easy for you to do that. And yeah, hopefully hopefully we we're we're we're meeting the the standard there. Yeah, also I don't know. I would like to drop a message for everybody who is looking for user acquisition cohort financing. It is hard for you guys to compare it like head to head. It's always important to check if there is some restrictions. So the number it's not number one priority for you. Mostly it is how you as Mati said that it is more people to people communication. Because when you put a lot of let's say uh hope into your partner that he will your partner will cover your spend during these months. At the end of the
month there is a possibility that he won't cover and you're in the cash flow hell, let's say. So it is reliability and good communication is maybe more important than such particular interested interest rate that you have in your transaction. I mean But Mati, can I can I ask how you look different at ad revenue compared to IAP revenue when you're actually uh yeah. I mean on the client
doing your due diligence here and seeing how much spend can actually go. How does it differ on your end? Yeah, look, I think from a high-level perspective we understand that they're coming from different user behaviors, right? The the monetization is coming from a different type of user behavior. But from a like a high-level cohort standpoint, it's still like in the class of games or consumer apps that are monetizing through ads, they follow a similar similar like pattern, right? What we what I mentioned at the very beginning is usually when the operator is not I guess anticipating the ad
tolerance of of a user very well, you're going to churn that user very quickly. And so that is like the hallmark I'm expecting to see that. Whenever someone says I'm 80% 90% I I'm always expecting to see at 3 months or month 2 month 3 zero users after that. And then and and and then you have like a horizontal, your favorite word, Felix, asymptote in the in the ROAS after thereafter. But when we see user retention kind of survive way past the let's say break even point, that's when I see like okay, this operator really understands the balance between kind of the the engagement and monetization. And those are the ones that are usually able to scale cuz like you know, you can do this like month 1 month 2 milk as much as you can and then ignore the user as much like that that that strategy is not going to scale and and is not really conducive for you UA financing because that becomes a binary
outcome for us. Either you price the CAC or you anticipated the CAC correctly and you and the monetization is above that CAC or you priced it wrong and it's below that CAC like in a long-term basis. So it's really binary. It's either we make our money back or we don't versus a company that has long-term retention, it's not a question of if we're going to make our money back, it's a question of when. Well, this is great. I mean thanks guys for for coming coming on and and explain the the whole relationship and the scaling opportunities. Vlad, Risky, anything you would like to share before before we go to the audience? Not for me. This is Vlad's Vlad's one. My maybe my message to the audience that you should always uh think from different perspective of you and always AB test because in some strange ideas usually
can lead you to some another conclusion that will give you another insight. So we usually test a lot even stupid insightful for us. And try to build more reliable products. It is number one priority. And after maybe I should add it exactly on this particular podcast that we have monetization user acquisition and game design expert. So we should concentrate on game design more. Never forget about the users, about the exact people who playing our game. I think having that lens on your eyes is uh in strategic long-term way is a most valuable thing. Uh monetization user acquisition it is more tactics. But strategy is to think about users how they uh behave, why they they play your game. Thanks Vlad. We are going to hear this 10 million times from now on from Yacob all the time every day.
Thank you. Or Mati is going to cut this
cut episode early. I wasn't I didn't want to say that. Yeah, I didn't want to say that. Maybe maybe this will get into the it's so maybe it won't. I I'm not I don't know.
[laughter]
It will. It will. Yeah, let me let me just end it here that all all the best Vlad will be definitely cheating out for you because I'm looking here at the charts comparing your game to Chick Solitaire will seem like Again, there's like a you know, said there's multiplayer here, but pretty much it's like 115 against like 100 something there. So next month we'll definitely see who take the crown here because I think you're on a very very good trajectory. We'll definitely keep an eye on that. 100%. Guys, thank you very much for coming. This was really really great episode again. Listeners, thank you very much also for uh for listening until the end. Please share your comments in the in the comment section. Ask questions if you have any. Please share. Otherwise, we will see you next time. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Thank you. Bye.
Auto-generated captions from YouTube — names and numbers may be misheard.
Malpa Games has achieved significant scale in the mobile puzzle market by prioritizing operational efficiency and high-volume ad monetization over experimental game design. By focusing on evergreen genres such as word games, Sudoku, and jigsaw puzzles, the studio has reached 5 million monthly downloads. This growth is underpinned by a business model where over 90 percent of revenue is derived from advertisements, optimized through rigorous A/B testing of ad frequency and placement. Recent titles, including Cardscapes, demonstrate the efficacy of this approach, recording 200 percent month-over-month growth by leveraging high-retention mechanics that ensure long-term player engagement.
The studio’s scaling strategy relies on transitioning from fixed budget caps to a return on ad spend model, which permits uncapped marketing expenditure provided performance thresholds are met. This shift is supported by non-dilutive cohort financing, allowing the studio to extend payback cycles and capitalize on the 10 to 15 percent margin improvements associated with high-volume monetization. By utilizing automated bidding tools and managing bid floors to optimize effective cost per mille, the studio maintains a competitive edge in user acquisition. This operational rigor is further bolstered by partnerships with large-scale mediation platforms, which provide access to superior terms and tools that enhance overall profitability.
Ultimately, the studio’s success demonstrates that sustainable growth in the mobile gaming sector is contingent upon the intersection of disciplined financial management and strong core retention. While aggressive user acquisition is a primary driver of scale, it remains secondary to the fundamental quality of game design and user behavior. By securing external capital to fuel marketing efforts without sacrificing equity, the studio has established a repeatable framework for growth that prioritizes predictable returns on ad spend over short-term monetization spikes. This approach underscores the necessity of balancing technical UA performance with a deep understanding of player lifecycle value.
Comments