How MAS Helped ActFirst Improve its ARPDAU by 48%

ActFirst Games, the studio behind the hit RPG Obsidian Knights (available on iOS and Android), connected with Yodo1 through a former client who joined their team and recommended trying MAS. While ActFirst previously had a self-managed mediation setup, the team decided to test MAS to explore untapped monetization potential through automation and optimization of their strategy.

The Challenge: Boost Revenue With No Extra Weight or ANRs

Beyond ad revenue uplift, ActFirst had two non-negotiable requirements:

• Minimize app size. Large SDKs can significantly increase app size, reducing organic visibility and ultimately hurting install rates—something ActFirst wanted to avoid.
• Keep ANRs under Google Play’s bad behaviour threshold. Google penalizes apps if more than 0.47% of daily users experience ANRs (App Not Responding errors). This is especially risky when multiple SDKs are integrated.

The Solution: Geo-Optimized Network Setup + Smart ANR Control

To meet ActFirst’s goals, we implemented MAS with two key strategies:

• Geo-targeted network selection with size in mind. Instead of a one-size-fits-all SDK stack, we chose ad networks based on the regions that mattered most for Obsidian Knights — Russia, the USA, and South Korea. For example, in Russia, we initially prioritized Unity Ads over heavier SDKs like BIGO or Mintegral, helping to keep the app size lean without compromising revenue potential.
• Device-aware ad serving to reduce ANRs. One of MAS’s unique features is its ability to dynamically adjust ad serving based on device specifications. On low-end devices with limited RAM or CPU power, MAS can disable or defer ads to avoid app freezes — a common cause of ANRs. This proactive control happens remotely, requiring no additional work from ActFirst’s developers .

Together, these features let ActFirst monetize smarter, without sacrificing technical performance.

The Result: 48% ARPDAU Uplift with No Trade-Offs

ActFirst’s original monetization setup used AdMob mediation with Unity SDK. Yodo1 implemented a new formula under MAS umbrella : AppLovin mediation with AdMob and Unity.

We rolled MAS out in three phases:

• Phase 1: 10% MAS roll-out focused on monitoring ANRs. The selected configuration stayed well within Google Play’s ANR threshold.
• Phase 2: 50% MAS and 50% original setup, allowing for A/B testing. The results spoke for themselves — MAS outperformed the original setup by 26% in overall ARPDAU.
  • In Russia, ActFirst’s top market, MAS brought an 23% ARPDAU uplift.
  • In the USA, the second key region, the uplift reached 30%.
• Phase 3: 100% MAS roll-out across the full audience is now live. Together with ActFirst, Yodo1 decided to keep the phase 2 network set without additional tweaks. The results speak for themselves — overall ARPDAU increased by a significant 48%.

What comes next?

In the coming months, Yodo1 will support ActFirst in adding three more ad networks — Bidmachine, Moloco, and Mintegral — to further scale revenue uplift, while staying true to the original goal: keep app size small and ANRs low.

If you're also looking to boost ad revenue but feel that market solutions lack the customization you need — and managing it in-house doesn’t fully capture all revenue opportunities — it’s time to get in touch with Yodo1. We have build MAS to deliver the flexibility you need without adding pressure to your team — so you can focus on your game while we optimize for scale and revenue.

Lucas The Spider X The Ants: Case Study


Every mobile game hits a point where current players start looking for other games or entertainment options and finding new players outside of already-addressed audiences becomes more challenging.

Banding together with other games or other IP holders for crossover events renews interest among your core audience, expands your addressable markets, and boosts revenue. Licensing can give explosive power to a mobile game’s popularity and profits.

The trick is finding the right match between your game and a corresponding IP. In the case of The Ants: Underground Kingdom, a popular, insect-themed strategy title from StarUnion that caters mostly to young people, the challenge was to bring in an IP that shared thematic elements and similar story beats.

Yodo1 Licensing landed on Lucas the Spider (Fresh TV) as the perfect protagonist and universe to weave into the game. This case study shows how we identified the right IP partner for StarUnion’s game, how we crafted the partnership, and solved expected and unexpected challenges along the way.


Here’s the game trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qFTJwvehGw

This collaboration was powered by Yodo1 Licensing

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Bringing Lucas the Spider into The Ants: Underground Kingdom was a rousing success for the mobile game and the brand.

Over the course of the collaboration event, players downloaded the game over 800,000 times, blowing past the expectation Yodo1 set initially. Paying users also increased by an impressive 11%. Compared to the previous month, game downloads rose by 30% and revenue by 19.5%, with DAU increasing by 21%.

The crossover event also increased visibility for The Ants and Lucas the Spider. More specifically, the game’s rank rose by about 120 spots on Google Play and the App Store.

The event was split into five chapters, not including a warm-up period to hype players about Lucas the Spider’s imminent arrival. Interestingly enough, the biggest revenue spike occurred in the final chapter, right before the event finished, with the first chapter generating the second-most revenue. The event integration lasted for one month.

While it’s tricky to highlight a single factor behind the event’s performance, compelling content, a consistent rollout of rewards, and effective marketing all contributed to enough momentum to keep players aware, engaged, and excited.

According to Mobidictum, the collaboration generated $ 3.3M revenue in October 2024 with over 7,000 creative ads produced for the campaign.

The Ants: Underground Kingdom is a mobile strategy game by StarUnion where you lead an ant colony to survive and thrive in a ruthless natural world.

As the commander, you’ll build and expand your nest, hatch powerful Special Ants, tame wild insects for combat and labor, and form alliances to fight for dominance. From defending the queen to conquering the Sacred Tree, every decision shapes your colony’s fate in this fierce battle for survival and supremacy.

When Yodo1 Licensing first started working with The Ants, it was already a known entity in Japan, SEA, and the US, among other key mobile gaming markets. It had also gathered 50 million downloads on Google Play and the App Store, and around 400,000 players were visiting The Ants every day. Overall, The Ants was already a strong performer.

The goal for StarUnion was to sustain this level of success while finding avenues of raising engagement and revenue without fundamentally altering what made the game an achievement in the first place. A well-orchestrated IP event became the winning strategy.

On the IP side, Yodo1 Licensing identified the popular animated web series Lucas the Spider, which first caught the attention of wider audiences in 2017. Created by Joshua Slice, it featured an adorable animated spider and grew from a short film to a viral series on YouTube and other social platforms.

The show’s stories and overall tone, along with its cute art style, seemed to fit perfectly as a way to expand the in-game universe of The Ants. This was also the first time Lucas the Spider featured in a video game, mobile or otherwise.

To reengage The Ants’ current player base and welcome new audiences to the game, Yodo1 Licensing proposed a month-long crossover event featuring an IP that would exemplify what StarUnion’s players enjoyed about the game. Lucas the Spider fit from narrative, design, and play perspectives.

The Ants and Lucas the Spider shared values of curiosity, appreciation for nature, and social interaction. Yodo1 recognized that the character of Lucas had a specific charm and vibrancy that would enrich the game world, rather than distracting from the game’s core values and loops.

Understanding that the two universes would work well together, Yodo1 wanted to harness the Lucas brand to expand the game’s user base and retain its current fans.

The crossover event featured insect skins, special decorations for troops and anthills, unique avatar customization options, and redesigned chat bubbles and icons to add to the event’s immersive qualities.

To generate buzz and activate players over time, the collaboration would take place over six phases, including five chapters and a warm-up phase. Along with other features, we created a rollout plan for users to play as Lucas the Spider, Findley the Fly, Bidhi the Chameleon, Maizie the Bee, and eponymous Ants.

What we brought to the table

IP licensing can be a long and winding process, especially given that both parties need to be represented to their own rigorous standards. Yodo1 Licensing acted as the bridge between StarUnion and the IP holder so that both players maintained creative control and felt their works were being well represented.


As the bridging third party, Yodo1 brought several key actions to the partnership.

• Proactive planning: IP partnerships come with all types of issues, so we crafted an airtight yet flexible plan to counteract challenges that we’ve seen time and time again.
• Effective communication: Maintaining clear and open communication is absolutely vital. We helped set the right expectations upfront, prevented misunderstandings, and sped up decision-making.
• Adaptability: IP partners should always expect rejections along the journey. IP partnerships involve a lot of tough creative decisions. Our aim was to modify content quickly and preserve the project timelines, while encouraging a collaborative mindset.
• Expectation management: Game makers and IP holders across varying scales tend to have different expectations of what an IP partnership means and what it takes to go from conceptualization to implementation. One of the most important focal points for us is always helping our partners come to a mutual understanding of the process and intended outcomes. This is essential in balancing creative visions and approval standards.
• Focus on stakeholder satisfaction: IP partnerships should last well beyond one or two crossover events. So we take great care to support the interests of both parties and find common ground, laying the foundation for long-term success.

“The key was keeping both teams aligned on the narrative and design vision,” said Rachele Li, project manager for the collaboration. “Lucas and his friends needed to feel true to themselves within The Ants universe. We worked closely with all stakeholders to anticipate potential friction points early and provide practical solutions to keep the project on track.”

Actions Taken

After taking time to understand the game’s core loops and its aesthetics, we introduced exclusive skins and avatar customization options, weaving Lucas the Spider intricately and seamlessly into the game’s current experience. This gave players the chance to engage with a beloved IP without having to alter their behavior within the game.

Figuring out how the collaboration would look in-game was only one piece of the puzzle. Almost more important was the marketing around the collaboration, ensuring that a critical mass of current and new players experienced it.

Key Learnings

While Yodo1 Licensing has an established playbook for successful IP partnerships, every relationship and event come with their own unique challenges. Bringing together The Ants and Lucas the Spider yielded stellar results for the developer and IP holder, but the process also came with learnings for future collaborations.

Here are our five favorite insights from our supervision head Hector Wan about this collab:

1. Teamwork is everything. Open collaboration between developers, IP holders, and partners is key to tackling challenges and getting over the finish line.
2. There’s no substitute for a clear vision. IP partnerships involve a lot of creative people who care, and a well-defined vision helps everyone work toward common goals.
3. Always be ready to adapt to the many setbacks coming your way.
4. Infuse positivity into how you manage stakeholders and focus on human connections. Smoother approvals and feedback processes will follow.
5. Iterate and learn from mistakes. Build in regular feedback loops so you never miss a chance to voice potential concerns or ideas for continuous improvement.

About the Company

Founded in China in 2019, StarUnion is a mobile game publisher that focuses on bringing games from its local market to the world stage. The company has established itself as a leader in simulation games, with major successes including its flagship titles The Ants: Underground Kingdom and Beast Lord: The New Land.

About the IP

Lucas the Spider is a popular animated web series originally created by animator Joshua Slice, later developed into a television series by Fresh TV Inc. The series features an adorable animated spider named Lucas.

The IP debuted in late 2017, when Slice grew Lucas the Spider from a series of YouTube shorts into a widely recognized property. It quickly gained popularity on social media and was subsequently acquired by Fresh TV Inc. for further development.

Following its initial success on YouTube, Lucas the Spider was picked up by Cartoon Network and Boomerang, and it has since been featured on major streaming services, including Max.

About Yodo1

Yodo1 helps mobile game developers grow globally through innovative solutions, including licensing, monetization, IP partnerships, and publishing. Yodo1 Licensing, one pillar of Yodo1, creates lasting IP partnerships between mobile games and media brands to achieve awe-inspiring growth. We help developers and IP holders identify and implement thrilling crossover strategies that build customer loyalty, bring in new players, and stand out in an increasingly competitive market. To learn more, visit yodo1.com.

How a 59% Boost in Revenue Provided Breathing Room to Scale

We talk a lot about mobile games here at Yodo1—it’s our passion, after all—but did you know that apps can also benefit from tailored ad optimization and monetization strategies?

Last year, we began working with Kenpasoft, a Brazilian app developer, on their ad monetization performance, which led to a remarkable revenue surge for them. Read on to learn more about how ad optimization can lead to next-level growth and change your roadmap.

Problem: UA ROAS Wasn’t Hitting the Mark

Kenpasoft is the parent company of Brasileiro Apps, an Android-based developer that creates practical, accessible applications to meet the daily life needs of Brazilians. Their portfolio of apps includes financial, health, transport, and other tools that provide efficient and innovative solutions to enrich the lives of their users. Since their inception in 2022, Brasileiro Apps has gained popularity throughout Brazil; their most popular apps have over a million downloads.

Despite this, the company had struggled to scale as quickly as they would have liked, in large part due to narrow profit margins from the ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) of their User Acquisition (UA) campaigns. Another way to say this is that revenue from monetized users wasn’t generating enough profit to reinvest into ambitious UA campaigns. A profit problem. Aside from this, they were not very happy with the level of support they were getting from their existing solution, Google Admob.

Specialized Ad Monetization to the Rescue

In June of 2023, Yodo1 connected with them and suggested they try MAS (Yodo1’s monetization solution).

A major benefit for them was that instead of the single ad network they were using, MAS gave them access to over 15 ad networks, and crucially, without the need to get involved with the nuts and bolts of ad optimization themselves–this is all taken care of by Yodo1’s experienced growth team. So, better performance and less hassle.

Kahyam, the founder of Brasileiro Apps, says,

I found you at a time when it was becoming very unproductive working with Google AdMob (at the time this platform was so well known for monetizing apps) and we were having recurring problems, either due to account deactivation that no one could figure out the reason for, with appeals going in vain, or due to monetization getting worse and worse.

Results to Fuel Growth

In Yodo1, Brasileiro Apps saw the potential for a partner who could fully understand the issues they were facing, and do something about it. Not only would Yodo1 take a major load off their shoulders by fully handling ad management and the waterful setup, but there was also the potential for a long-term partnership with an empathetic team of experts in game growth with a track record of amazing customer support. We always look at the bigger picture and bring all our resources to bear on the unique growth challenges our partners face. In this case, it was a growth bottleneck due to underwhelming ad performance. Things started with an initial test using one of their smaller apps.

Kahyam says,

When I discovered Yodo1, I tested it on my first application and saw the results, I was surprised, it was above my expectations, and both that and all the help I received in implementation and direct suggestions for my applications, convinced me even more that working with Yodo1 would be the future for my business to progress further. I hope we have a long-lasting partnership.

With great initial results, by September of 2023, Brasileiro Apps began onboarding the rest of their portfolio to MAS, including their largest app, Consulta Auxílios e Benefícios, which uses React Native. MAS was one of the first monetization solutions to support React Native, a fact that was crucial to them.

The results were incredible. The app’s ARPDAU increased by 59% after a 7-day optimization period! This was driven by a few different factors:

• Interstitials eCPM: up 35%
• App Open Ads IMPDAU: up 70%
• The integration of banners

About the boost in eCPM, Kahyam also adds:

After the partnership with Yodo1 I had impressive results, my main application had an average eCPM that was falling month by month, it was US$5, then it dropped to US$4 and was heading to US$3. After migrating to Yodo1, this app's eCPM hit around $7 and is stable, making my earnings more predictable and scalable.

The massive boost proved to be a complete game-changer for the company and its business strategies.

Just think about it: what would a jump in revenue that huge mean to you? Whereas before it might have been a struggle just to stay afloat, such a significant increase would mean a windfall of resources to reinvest in growth and scale, which is exactly what Kenpasoft did.

With a higher ROAS, they can now focus on UA campaigns that they know will be more successful. And while before they might have been a bit cautious with their ad campaign choices, only running them for special events or holidays, for example, they can now make these decisions with more confidence in the results. It unlocked a cycle of winning and growth that continues to fuel increased growth for a massive win.

Strategically, getting help with their app monetization ensures that, with earnings on the rise, Brasileiro Apps has more time for strategic development and creative focus. On top of this, QuickPay with MAS means they can be paid quicker every month, and thus reinvest into UA campaigns faster.

What Made the Difference?

Yodo1’s monetization solution and Growth Accelerator Program are tailored to the needs of each developer, whether they produce lifestyle solutions, games, or other apps. After installation, our world-class customer service is always on hand to answer questions, brainstorm solutions, and resolve issues as and when they arise.

Teaming up with an experienced ad monetization partner meant that Brasileiro Apps could focus their time, effort, and resources on making their apps the best they can be—and creating new ones to enhance people’s lives.

Again, from Kahyam:

So far working with Yodo1 has been one of the best decisions I've made for my business, you perfectly meet my demands, which are quality and especially support.

At Yodo1, we love to see people making a living from their creativity, and we use our wide-ranging experience to make that a reality. Whatever kind of apps you create, if your user base is growing without a corresponding revenue increase, get in touch today: we can help you take it to the next level and create a growing, dynamic, sustainable business.

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