Report Methodology
ByteBrew is the all-in-one platform to analyze, operate and grow your games and apps.
With ad stack growth levers fading away from publishers, we launched ByteBrew Ads, an AI-layered cross promotion network powered by our proprietary targeting engine, Ctrl, to unlock a new growth lever across the app portfolio.
In this report, we examine the predictive targeting capabilities of Ctrl, our AI behavioural targeting engine powering ByteBrew Ads.
Trained on petabytes of app data from billions of active users on ByteBrew, Ctrl delivers smart acquisition decisions by predicting which users meet your LTV and Retention campaign goals in real time and routes them throughout your portfolio; creating entirely new opportunities to monetize and retain your most valuable users within your app ecosystem.
To start the live study, we acquired 100,000 users in the open market across 5 test apps in a 30 day period to measure the LTV and Retention metrics of users that Ctrl targeted from the sourced user traffic vs. the same metrics generated from all acquired user traffic.
About the Users
For this study, the sourced users were acquired from several networks that each have their own ad engines for producing quality users for advertising apps. The users were acquired in diverse geos in multiple tiers to get a varying range of traffic quality.
About the Apps
To ensure broad genre coverage, the apps spanned multiple app categories including: Casual, Action, Puzzle and Simulation, and monetized through both in-app advertisements and in-app purchases.
Ctrl User Targeting
Across the hundred thousand acquired users, Ctrl targeted over 15,500 for cross promotion in ByteBrew Ads Ctrl campaigns.
Retention Uplift
Retention rate is defined as the percentage of users who return to a game on a specific calendar day after install. Retention is calculated using calendar-day cohorts, ensuring that retaining day metrics reflect discrete return behavior rather than cumulative or rolling retention. The diagram below displays the average retention rate on Day 1, Day 3 and Day 7 across all games in the 30 day window.
Starting on Day 1, the open market audience held a 12.64% average retention rate across all test games in the acquiring date range, highlighting early churn from a low stickiness in the games’ core mechanics. Despite early churn, Ctrl’s predictive targeting identified the test game’s most engaged audience, measuring 36.41% Day 1 retention, which is +187.98% higher than the average open market audience. Engagement quality was amplified in the later retention windows with Ctrl Users achieving 6.15% retention on Day 7; over +243% higher than the market cohort.
Benchmarking against the acquired user population, Ctrl targeted users retention were in the extreme upper tail of observed distribution. Users Ctrl targeted were players in the 99th percentile.
LTV Uplift
Lifetime Value (LTV) is the real cohorted cumulative revenue generated by a user since their install day. This LTV is calculated using realized revenue only to ensure values are not projected or modeled and includes revenue from both in-app purchases and in-app advertising. The diagram below displays average LTV on Day 0, Day 1, Day 3, and Day 7 across all games within the 30-day acquisition window.
Monetization on Day 0 from the open market cohort generated an average LTV of 0.012 across all test games in the acquiring date range. Ctrl targeted users with meaningfully higher initial monetizing value, achieving a Day 0 LTV of 0.016, +36.97% above the open market baseline. This early monetization advantage expanded over time, with Ctrl Users reaching an LTV of 0.020 by Day 7, representing a +45.87% higher LTV.
Ctrl User lifetime value lies in the extreme upper tail of measured user outcomes relative to the acquired user population. The magnitude of the LTV gap is directionally consistent with the observed retention separation, ranking Ctrl User LTV in the 99th percentile.
Results
ByteBrew Ads’ AI engine, Ctrl, consistently demonstrated its ability to identify the highest retaining and monetizing users from the acquired user traffic. Over the 100,000 users acquired across five test apps, the users targeted by Ctrl delivered retention and lifetime value outcomes that ranked in the 99th percentile of observed performance relative to the broader acquired population.
Take Ctrl and unlock a new growth lever with your app portfolio with ByteBrew Ads today.
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