ORCAMOBILE DSPORCA Ads · Mobile gaming
ORCA Ads finds players who progress, spend, and stay, then turns what you learn about their value back into sharper acquisition. Optimize toward the in-game milestones, in-app purchases, and ad revenue that define your title.
01 · The Growth Challenge
A successful game needs more than downloads. In most titles a narrow slice of players — commonly 2–5% — produces the majority of in-app purchase revenue, while the rest monetize through ads or not at all. Buying installs at the lowest cost optimizes for the wrong group. ORCA bids on predicted 30-day player value instead, so acquisition reflects who actually funds the game.
02 · How ORCA Supports Game Growth
### Acquire promising players
Rank every impression by predicted day-30 value — IAP revenue, ad revenue, or both for hybrid titles — rather than by install probability. Advertisers moving from install-based to value-based bidding typically see 20–35% higher day-30 retention among acquired players.
Rank every impression by predicted day-30 value — IAP revenue, ad revenue, or both for hybrid titles — rather than by install probability. Advertisers moving from install-based to value-based bidding typically see 20–35% higher day-30 retention among acquired players.
Optimize toward the events your live team already tracks: tutorial completion, a level or chapter milestone, first purchase, or a session-count threshold. Campaigns generally need around 50 of the chosen event per week to optimize stably, so early-funnel milestones work well for new titles and purchase events for established ones.
Bring players back for a season, event, or update, using inactivity windows you set — commonly 7, 14, or 30 days. Campaigns typically recover 8–15% of a lapsed cohort within 30 days.
For hybrid titles, feed both purchase revenue and ad revenue back as outcome signals, and monetize the non-spending majority through the ORCA Ads SDK. Acquisition then optimizes against total player value rather than one revenue line.
Expand into new markets on evidence: most campaigns produce a reliable read on a new market within two weeks, across 190+ markets.
03 · Relevant Use Cases
04 · Business Outcomes
### Acquire more engaged players
Buy players who progress instead of players who churn on day one — typically 20–35% higher day-30 retention than install-optimized buying.
Buy players who progress instead of players who churn on day one — typically 20–35% higher day-30 retention than install-optimized buying.
Optimize against IAP revenue, ad revenue, or blended value. Teams giving ORCA Ads a revenue-linked objective commonly reach 15–30% higher ROAS within the first two months.
Monetize the players who never purchase through competitive ad demand, where publishers adding the ORCA Ads SDK often see double-digit ARPDAU gains.
Launch, run live-ops moments, and enter new markets on a two-week read rather than a quarterly retrospective.
05 · Customer Proof
A hybrid-casual mobile game studio with titles live in more than 40 markets had been buying installs on cost-per-install bidding, which favored high-volume, low-value players and left the studio's ad-revenue-driven titles under-monetized. Acquisition moved to bidding on predicted day-30 value that blended in-app purchase revenue and ad revenue together, so a player who watched rewarded video regularly counted alongside one who spent directly. Within the first two months, the studio saw 20–35% higher day-30 retention among newly acquired players and 15–30% higher ROAS across the portfolio, measured in its existing attribution stack.
"We had one bidding strategy built around spenders and a completely different monetization strategy built around everyone else. Blending both into a single value signal let acquisition finally buy for the whole player base, not just the top few percent." — Head of User Acquisition
A mid-core RPG studio running a hybrid IAP-and-ad-supported model, with a player base concentrated in Europe and Latin America, used seasonal events to win back lapsed players and then fed the results back into acquisition targeting. Inactivity windows of 7, 14, and 30 days triggered lifecycle campaigns ahead of each new season, recovering 8–15% of the lapsed cohort within 30 days at 40–70% less than the cost of acquiring a new player. The same event and purchase data informed which markets to expand into next, and new markets typically produced a reliable read within two weeks — evidence the live-ops and acquisition teams could act on together instead of running separate playbooks.
"Live-ops and UA used to be two different meetings with two different spreadsheets. Now the signal from a season launch tells acquisition where to spend next, and that loop is what scaled us into new markets." — Director of Growth
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