TapDefense

Quadrupling Revenue For a Popular Free Game

Background:

TapDefense is one of the more popular Tower Defense games on the iPhone. It's a strategy game, where the user must place towers on a grid in such a way as to stop the enemies from getting through the map. With different kinds of towers and killer animations, TapDefense provides hours of fun for players.

A sample virtual goods store:

Business Issue:

When it was released, TapDefense was one of the most popular Tower Defense games on the iPhone. Months later, while still considered a great game, it wasn't monetizing as well it once was through advertisements.

TapDefense integrated the Tapjoy SDK and started selling new "towers" to users in exchange for users filling out offers. Offers included installed other iphone apps (both free and paid), and/or filling out CPA offers from advertisers, which were provided by Offerpal through the Tapjoy SDK.

Results:

Upon launch of the new version, users immediately started to fill out offers and install other apps in order to get their new "Towers". These rewarded offers provided a whole new revenue stream for Tapjoy - within the first few days, this new "offers" channel was outperforming banner advertising by over 3 to 1, bringing TapDefense's revenues up to their highest level.

"Selling" virtual goods for offers / rewarded installs is clearly a viable monetization engine.

Through it's new virtual goods system, TapDefense was doing $50 per 1,000 daily active users (DAU) within the first week. Using the Tapjoy Virtual Goods system, the TapDefense team is now preparing more virtual goods to provide to players.

TapWord

Vaulting into the Overall Top 25

Background:

TapWord brings a classic word game to the iPhone. The end user has to find words embedded within a grid of jumbled letters, by sliding his or her finger through adjacent letters. Features include minimum word size, multiple board sizes, endless game play, and easy to use sliding mechanism.

Business Issue:

TapWord released into a category that was littered with many word games, some that were well-entrenched. TapWord needed a way to distinguish itself to get noticed in this category. There were approximately 1,000 daily active users one week after its release. Not bad, but not exactly going anywhere.

TapWord integrated the Tapjoy SDK and purchased rewarded installs on Tapjoy's pay-per-install model.

Results:

Upon launch, TapWord vaulted up the ranks in the "Games - Word" category. Within the first day, it was in the top 25, then moved to the top 10.

Within a few days, TapWord had become the #1 word game on the iPhone App Store. So popular was the game that it not only topped it's category, but went to the top 25 of all games downloaded on the iPhone, which was an achievement given that there were over 60,000 apps in the Apple iTunes App Store.

The number of daily active users went from an average of 1,000 to close to 90,000 within a week of starting the rewarded installs.

Tapjoy delivered tens of thousands of installs in a risk-free way (Pay-per-install), within days. It cost less than $5,000 to drive 20,000 installs. This increased visibility made TapWord the top game in its category. TapWord then leveraged this by continuing to get organic downloads and has become a favorite game for many iPhone users.

Book Bazaar

Making a Bestseller - Getting into a Category Top 10

Background:

Book Bazaar is a book pricing search application - the user enters a book title or author, and the application finds all the editions of books which match, and then compares prices across multiple on-line sources: Amazon New, Amazon Used, Borders.com, Barnes & Noble.com, AbeBooks, Half.com, and many other sites. The Local Bookstores features lets a user find a bookstore near them that has the book in stock.

Business Issue:

Though it had been in release for a few months, Book Bazaar had a very limited number of users and was not even in the top 100 in the books category, with less than a hundred daily active users. Book Bazaar integrated the Tapjoy SDK and purchased rewarded installs on Tapjoy's pay-per-install model.

Results:

Upon launch, Book Bazaar release 1.1. vaulted up the ranks in the "Books - Free Apps" category using Tapjoy rewarded installs. Within the first day, it was in the top 50 inside the "Books - Free" category; within the second day it was in the top 25, and by the third day, Book Bazaar reached the top 10 in the Books- Free Category. At one point, it was #5, below only the apps owned by Amazon and Barnes and Noble, a big win for a small company in the Books category.

Tapjoy delivered thousands of installs in a risk-free way (Pay-per-install), within a few days. The increased visibility allowed it to become a well known application in the books category, and the user base has continued to grow organically.