We partnered with Insight Agency to re-engage churned users for NHN PlayArt’s mobile game #Compass: Combat Providence Analysis System. #Compass is a multiplayer 3v3 battle game with over 17 million downloads, featuring collaborations with major franchises such as Attack on Titan™ and Sword Art Online™.
Results at a Glance
3x
ROAS D30 above the KPI from Week 1
<1 day
To define a creative champion in a new creative set
Campaign Goal
The campaign aimed to re-engage lapsed #Compass players who had previously made IAPs (in-app purchases). The objective was to bring them back and drive incremental in-app purchase revenue.
We were presented with a specific D30 ROAS KPI to measure the success of the campaign.
“By running multiple DSPs simultaneously under identical attribution conditions, we recognized the clear superiority of Persona.ly‘s advanced Israeli data-driven technology and made bold budget allocations. Going beyond merely hyper-targeting the top ROAS tier, we strategically expanded our reach to the next high-value segment, successfully achieving both outstanding ROAS and massive campaign scale.”
Toshifumi Kobayashi, Digital Marketing Division Manager at Insight
Programmatic Re-engagement Process
At the launch of the re-engagement campaign with NHN, we leveraged our proprietary Live Audiences segmentation engine – available to clients at no additional cost – to build a custom audience based on users’ in-app behavior and inactivity window.
Live Audiences segmentation engine classifies users across multiple signals, including activity level, purchase history, and intent. It integrates directly and securely with clients’ first-party data, eliminating the need for third-party tools.
Audiences are updated in real time, enabling immediate exclusion of returning users and instant inclusion of newly qualified audience – an essential advantage in highly competitive gaming categories.
Our programmatic DSP is directly integrated with global tier-1 ad exchanges and local Japanese ad exchanges, including Supership and Fluct. We process over 4 million ad auctions per second. These integrations and processing capabilities enable us to reach most users outside the “walled gardens” globally.
Key Success Factors
ROAS D30 – Persona.ly Results vs. Benchmark
Our ML-driven DSP runs on a private dedicated cloud, processing over 4 million auctions per second and reaching the majority of users in the Japanese market. This technological setup enables faster data processing, eliminates throttling, and reduces costs. Our advertisers directly benefit through improved cost efficiency and full transparency.
Combined with our advanced targeting model, this infrastructure allows us to act quickly and bid smarter.
This approach allowed us to surpass the performance of alternative DSPs by programmatically identifying users with the highest purchase intent, optimizing bid strategies in openRTB auctions, and allocating budgets to audiences with the greatest likelihood of in-app purchases.
Reaching High-LTV Users
Our ML-driven bidder includes vertical-specific features, with “whale detection” built for gaming clients. This capability identifies top-LTV users (top 1%) in the bid stream and adjusts bids based on market price and audience’s projected value to ensure that our bid wins the auction.
The main challenge was to sift through of millions of #Compass users and identify the segments of users who will most likely to re-engage in the game and make multiple in-app purchases, or fewer but larger IAPs.
This dynamic bidding strategy enabled us to successfully re-engage lapsed whale users and bring them back to #Compass.
About NHN
NHN PlayArt, established in 2015, is a Japanese subsidiary of NHN, specializing in casual puzzle and real-time battle mobile games. NHN PlayArt’s leading titles include Line: Disney Tsum Tsum, Yo-kai Watch: Wibble Wobble and #Compass which have collectively surpassed 100M downloads. Their portfolio includes collaborations with popular franchises such as Attack on Titan™, Hatsune Miku™, and Sword Art Online™ (SAO).
About Insight
Insight Co. is a leading digital marketing agency based in Tokyo, specializing in programmatic advertising, affiliate marketing and creative production, providing full-scale marketing services.
“We are absolutely delighted with our ongoing partnership with Insight and NHN PlayArt. The campaign has shown us the growing potential of retargeting within the Japanese mobile gaming market, and we are grateful to the NHN PlayArt and Insight teams’ for their trust in the process which has been a key to the success. We are looking forward to another outstanding year together.”
Elina Watanabe, Head of Business Development, Japan at Persona.ly
About Persona.ly
Persona.ly is a data-driven product company specializing in mobile user acquisition and retargeting, powered by proprietary machine learning algorithms and a robust first-party data management platform.
We help leading mobile companies including King, Tencent, Papaya, NextNinja, Tilting Point, Nexon and many others reach and exceed their growth goals by accurately predicting which users are most likely to engage and convert. Our machine learning models are optimized to target high-value users based on predicted LTV, driving strong ROAS and long-term user quality.
Our in-house programmatic DSP is directly integrated with top-tier ad exchanges and OEMs, processing over 4 million ad requests per second globally.
By combining real-time predictive analytics with programmatic scale, we empower our partners to unlock smarter growth, higher LTV, and measurable incremental impact.
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Galia Lahav
Digital Marketing Manager at Persona.ly. Can talk for hours about comedy series, can't live without her morning coffee, has a superpower of being in three places simultaneously.
