The Yodo1 team has been fantastic to work with. It’s great when you have a partner who cares as much as you do about making a great game. They provide not only a great advertising platform but a skilled team to help you improve gameplay and ad design.

Michael Dobele

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"In Yodo1, we found a partner with expert knowledge of local ad networks and Chinese players."

Maximizing Ad Revenue in China: Protostar Partners with Yodo1

In 2014, the Australian duo Matt Knights and Dean Loades co-founded Protostar. Their goal is to make fun games with a broad appeal at the highest quality standard. Now as a team of seven, Protostar has put out a number of great titles, including Sling Kong, Super Starfish, and their latest, It’s Literally Just Mowing. Their fun and casual games have garnered more than 20 million downloads worldwide. Continue reading to learn how Protostars partnership with Yodo1 allowed them to maximize their ad revenue in China. 

Protostar needed a partner with local experts who could help them better understand the market and increase ad revenue in China through local ad networks. When the Protostar team put Super Starfish on the Chinese market, they got featured on the Apple China App Store and enjoyed some great exposure. However, they were struggling to capitalize on and monetize this traffic.

Yodo1: The Partner Who Understands Both China and Ads


Before MAS, Protostar worked with several advertising agencies, but it wasn’t until they connected with Yodo1 that the studio found the partner they were looking for. With Managed Ad Services (MAS) platform, Yodo1’s monetization team helped Protostar improve their in-game ad placements and suggested better ways to localize the game for China.

 "China is a huge market that we’re still not capitalizing on enough with our games. We’re looking forward to continually improving that with Yodo1.”

The Protostar team is now looking forward to greater success with another Yodo1 partnership: releasing Sling Kong into China’s booming H5 games market.

Learn about the many ways our partners use Yodo1 solutions to turn their games into scalable businesses.

Featured Partners

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By integrating Transformers, one of the 
most loved and recognized brands in China, 
Mini World has sold more than 360,000 
character skins in 3 months.

Mini world

The Featherweight & Yodo1 partnership has 
allowed each party to focus on what we each 
do best, with the Yodo1 team spending the 
bulk of their efforts on live ops, 
distribution and promotion.

Rodeo stampede

Transformers: Earth Wars increased their D1 retention by leveraging their in-game KTplay community, helping new players join.

Transformers earth wars

With Yodo1’s AI capability and market experience, we did more than increase impressions and retention- we found a trusted partner.

Sweaty Chair: A successful partnership with Yodo1

With MAS, all we had to do was register and submit
our games once, then the system took care
of all the network configurations for us.

We boosted ad revenue from 10% to 40% since integrating MAS.

Dmobin Studio: “You can rely on MAS to increase your ad revenue!”

For Dat and his team in Vietnam, making games was just a spare time activity—until they took the leap to follow their passion and started Dmobin Studio. They love developing adventure games and puzzles with game mechanics that mimic real-world physics, where players can be the hero.

The Challenge: Growing Games, Stagnant Revenue

While their games were racking up downloads, monetization was unfortunately another story.

“We had a hard time creating a monetization strategy because we didn’t have much experience optimizing our ads, and we had difficulties when using other mediation networks. Then we met Chaula from Yodo1 and discovered MAS.”

What Dmobin Studio needed most was help optimizing the ad placements and monetization model of their games, customizing it to their player base and characteristics.

The Solution: A Painless Platform and a Team that Takes Care of You

A pleasant surprise when switching to MAS was just how easy it was.

“Since we started using MAS, on average our revenue has increased from 10% up to 40%, which makes us very happy to be using it.
And the MAS team does a lot more than provide technical and managerial support: they are passionate about working with us to keep making our games perform better.”

“We now have eight games setup with MAS, and the best part of the experience is the revenue uplift.
We are definitely planning to add more games in the future”

“We always hoped that someday there’d be a mediation platform that would help us optimize our ad revenue without a difficult set-up. If you’re looking for an easy way to monetize with great results, integrate MAS. It will help you build scenarios for optimal monetization, and you can rely on it to improve your revenue.”

Yodo1 is definitely a great company to work together with and provides good opportunities within a crowded market.

SimpleBit Studios

After releasing Trench Warfare 1917, SimpleBit’s initial attempts to monetize failed until they identified the problem and found the right solution.

How SimpleBit used Yodo1’s MAS to increase eCPM by almost 80%

When childhood friends Mads and Oliver noticed the lack of real-time strategy war games on Android, they set about creating one to fill the gap. In the fall of 2019 and while still in high school, Mads developed what was to become the foundation for ‘Trench Warfare 1917’- An engaging and highly customizable real-time strategy game set during World War 1.

After agreeing on further development, they decided that their game had to be fun and engaging, with a high degree of flexibility for players. In terms of gameplay and monetization, they wanted to allow players to create teams, battles, strategies, and levels. It should have no forced ads, only those that would reward you. Also, the game should have no protracted fake waiting periods. Ultimately, this turned out to be a challenging set of criteria to fulfill, resulting in a low eCPM in their initial attempts to monetize. The team identified poor communications with their partners as a contributing factor, an issue that persisted until they found the MAS team at Yodo1.

The Challenge: Most Games have too many ads

Mads, Oliver, and Bertin became SimpleBit Studios ApS after meeting each other in their teenage years. Before living together as roommates, Mads was already programming games in his spare time and asked if Oliver wanted to join him as the game artist. While the duo made many small games on the weekends throughout high school, it wasn’t until the fall of 2019 that they started considering creating games as a serious career opportunity.

SimpleBit’s big game breakthrough came about while Oliver was traveling Asia with his girlfriend. Having identified a niche in the market, Mads conceived and developed ‘Trench Warfare 1917’- A game where players are able to decide their adversary, build custom battle teams and devise strategies to defeat the enemy. Oliver liked the idea, and along with a good friend Bertin they set about developing the game further. 

From the onset, the team understood their unique concept would take time for new players to master. They also observed that most games had too many ads. With this in mind, a monetization strategy with minimal ad distractions was necessary to encourage high player retention and engagement levels. Meeting this criterion would be a challenge, but making it work would reduce entry barriers and help the game become more attractive for new players to get started.


We had Ad challenges before we found the optimal solution

SimpleBit released a base game after three months of further development, and it was time to focus on game monetization.Their first choice was to align with a provider that offered quick and easy integration. Over time, it became clear that this solution would allow the company to reach its long-term business goals, as the eCPM they were getting was too low. Furthermore, SimpleBit was frustrated by the lack of personal support from their ad provider. After careful deliberation, the team decided to seek out better opportunities and found a third-party ad provider to better serve their interests.

The Solution: Yodo1’s AI-Powered tools and expertise eliminated obstacles to growing revenue

In search of the perfect solution, it wasn’t long before SimpleBit enlisted the help of Yodo 1’s Managed Ad Services (MAS). In simple terms, MAS uses AI-powered tools combined with expert knowledge in maximizing Ad revenue from their own games to simplify the monetization process. With data-driven ad management, optimal ad injection points, and dedicated customer service, the MAS team aims to eliminate the frustrating task of growing revenue.

By switching to MAS, SimpleBit achieved an increase of almost 80% in eCPM from Trench Warfare 1917’s Android version alone. The fact that the team at Yodo1 are developers and avid gamers themselves helped significantly. “They understand us and our unique needs,” quoted SimpleBit.

“Overall, we experienced great customer support. Through Skype, they were able to answer questions very quickly. On top of that, Yodo1’s MAS team were good at setting up meetings to catch up on progress, in the case that we hadn’t talked for a while.” In conclusion, SimpleBit goes on to explain, “The MAS team at Yodo1 is definitely a great company to work together with, and provides good opportunities within a crowded market.”

Moving forward, Yodo1 will provide a consistently high level of service to build an enduring partnership with SimpleBit. Mads, Oliver and Bertin can expect regular feedback and advice regarding Ad monetization and player engagement as they strive to develop more advanced games in the mobile space.

MAS AI and accumulated knowledge have given Yodo1 over 10 years of experience in growing and optimizing revenue. Not just for us, but for all of our partners. 

If you’re ready to take your ad revenue to the next level, contact our expert team today and let’s get started.

You don’t need to register with any ad network yourself–it’s all taken care of.The dashboard inside the service is also very convenient – nothing superfluous, everything is intuitive.”

Alexander Tavintsev

With frequent game crashes during Ads, the SDK stability of MAS eliminated complaints and doubled eCPM

“Great eCPM and Stability with MAS!” - Alexander Tavintsev

Alexander Tavintsev from Krasnodar, Russia, has always loved video games; this former website designer’s life changed in 2016 when, after a simple Google search, he taught himself how to design games.

Just three months later his first game, Zombie Forest HD, was released. “After that, I could no longer do anything except create games!” Since then his one man studio has released eight games for Android, iOS and PC.

Zombie Forest HD is a hardcore survival simulation game set during—you guessed it!—a zombie apocalypse.

Complete with minigames, a heap of weapons and the possibility to play together with other players, the game will put your strategic planning skills to the test, in order to survive this global zombie outbreak.

Zombie Forest HD (Android, iOS). Official Trailer

The Challenge: Low eCPM and Fill-Rate, Too Many Crashes

With the majority of its user base located in Russia and the former USSR countries, the fill-rates and eCPM generated by the local ad mediation platforms
were not up to the standards Alexander was hoping for. Paired with instability SDK issues and difficulties in payment, Alexander needed a different solution. 

“The game crashed quite often when displaying ads. In addition, one of my games was banned from Google Play for malicious code in one of the ad networks used in mediation. Some networks also did not allow the withdrawal of profits to residents of Russia.” — Alexander Tavintsev

The Solution: 2.5x eCPM and SDK Stability with Managed Ad Services

To Alexander’s delight, his eCPM is now 2.5 times higher than it used to be. The stability of the SDK is also a major plus, and complaints of the game crashing during ad runs are now rare.

SDK integration is very easy; just install the plugin and fill in your game IDs. There is an excellent debugger that will report any integration errors in the application itself.

“On the same day I signed up for MAS, a separate group chat was created for me on Skype, where they almost instantly reacted to all my messages. I can’t say enough good things about the support response speed! Don’t be afraid to experiment. Especially if you have problems with fill rate, low eCPM or application stability. In addition to increasing your income, you can increase the stability of your game and, from there, its rating.” 

If some of Alexander Tavintsev’s challenges resonate with you, why not reach out? We love nothing more than working with developers to bring their games even greater success!

What I appreciate most about MAS is the highly motivated, dedicated team that not only supported us in greatly increasing our ad revenue but alsoprovided suggestions on how to improve the overall game, as well as marketing advice and market insight.

Staffan

Relying on in-app purchases, we were dealing with bots trying to increase Ad revenue before we discovered Yodo1’s MAS

Carpet Bombing Creators Partner with Yodo1
to Increase Mobile Game Ad Revenue

Can two guys from opposite ends of the globe, who have never met,develop games together and achieve monetary success? 

They sure can.
Meet Staffan and Philip, the people behind Synthetic Mind.
Staffan in Sweden is handling the coding, while Philip in Haiti is doing thegraphics. What started as one man’s new year resolution resulted, six months later, in the release of the studio’s first title: Carpet Bombing. Carpet Bombing was so popular among fansthatthey soon called for more.
Philip joined with some fresh ideas, and together they recently launched the sequel: Carpet Bombing 2. Anyone can pick up this simple-to-control mobile game and get the hang of it instantly. However, the longer you play, the more you’ll find yourself challenged by tougher enemies—requiring you to upgrade your arsenal and skills.

Low eCPM, Minimal Ad Income and No Communication to Fix It

Despite their success,the team had quite a low eCPM, few ad views, and a generally low income from advertisements. Considering ad
revenue a bonus, they relied mostly on in-app purchases. They tried a solution for increasing ad revenue but were unhappy with the lack of communication with the platform. “It was like dealing with a bot. I had little insight into how to improve my ad income, or how to improve other aspects of the game,” Staffan shares.

A Powerful System and Communicative Partner

By partnering with Yodo1 and our Managed Ad Services (MAS) platform, Synthetic Mind was able toincrease ad revenue and better understand the value of ads and the techniques that go into making them effective. From one end, our AI-powered monetization system boosted the game’s eCPM. From the other, our MAS team helped the studio optimize their game byassessing the gameplay and giving ad design recommendations. 

Synthetic Mind’s partnership with Yodo1 hasn’t stopped at MAS. At the moment, Carpet Bombing is being translated into multiple languages—including Chinese and Japanese—and our team is here to help ensure their success in these and other new markets.

“By reaching these new markets, and coupled with the new Carpet Bombing 2 title, we aim to double our income and expand our studio. We have some great ideas for new games we want to bring to the world!To any devs who share our goals, I would say: get in contact with Yodo1.”

Running a ‘Create your own skin’ event resulted in 2,000 submissions and increased player engagement in no time.

Bringing 'Soul Knight' players into an in-game community

Hemperor went viral after recruiting community moderators doubling Twitter followers and Facebook page growth in 1 Week.

Hempire: Driving Social Media Presence with KTPlay

Rodeo Stampede enhanced their marketing efforts by deeplinking between the in-game store and community, increasing sales by 11%

KTplay’s live-ops toolset boosted Rodeo Stampede Sales by 11%

Developers have long since understood the value of building communities around their apps, but managing dispersed groups on multiple external platforms is inefficient. 

KT Play aggregates 100% of your users, under one roof, right inside your app. 

A well-managed integrated community maximizes player engagement and interaction, resulting in higher player retention and ultimately – increased monetization opportunities.

Bringing the community to players makes it part of their gaming experience.

Players can share gaming experiences via text, images, and videos. They can post questions, share tactics and strategies while providing feedback to you in real-time. 

Monitor, analyze, and influence community behavior in real-time

You can curate and program all community content by using KTPay’s live-ops toolset to influence player behavior inside the game.

Better managed communities is your ticket to increased player retention and revenue.

By using KTplay to manage their community more efficiently, Yodo1’s Rodeo Stampede was able to:

Generate +21 million video views on Douyin (TikTok)

Influence 20,000 downloads in less than a week

Significantly increase word of mouth interest and player retention

Eliminate negative feedback to maintain ratings and reduce workload

Deep-link between in-game store and community to boost sales by 11%

Check out the Rodeo Stampede case study here