How We Topped D7 ROAS by 400% by W2 Running iOS and Android Re-engagement Campaigns for CookieRun: Kingdom

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Results at a Glance

Campaign Goal

The goal of the campaign was to re-engage lapsed payers, bring them back to use the game and motivate them to make additional in-app purchases, with a specific ROAS being a KPI.

“From the outset of our collaboration with Persona.ly, they have consistently surpassed our KPIs, distinguishing themselves from other partners by maintaining exceptional performance.
No matter how much we scale, we’re thrilled with the quality of their campaigns.
We’re especially excited about their success in untapping iOS re-engagement, bringing high-value players back to enjoy CookieRun: Kingdom.”

Hong In Kim, UA Manager at Devsisters Corporation

Programmatic Re-engagement Process

At the initial stage of the re-engagement campaign, using our programmatic ML-driven DSP segmentation engine, available to clients at no extra cost – Live Audiences – we quickly generated the audience to target.

From the first week of the campaign, we outperformed the D7 ROAS KPI by nearly 4 times, for both iOS and Android campaigns. As our programmatic DSP gathered more data for our machine learning algorithm to refine predictions, we consistently outperformed the ROAS KPI.

Campaign Results

iOS Campaign

D7 ROAS and Campaign Scaling – Android Campaign

From the first week of the campaign, thanks to factors such as targeting audiences who were more likely to make new in-app purchases and a special event in the CookieRun: Kingdom app, we outperformed the D7 ROAS KPI by 3.9 times.

We further scaled the campaign while substantially outperforming the ROAS KPI beyond the special event period.

Bid Optimization

As part of the strategy and to ensure the incrementality, only video creatives were used for the re-engagement campaign. Being the most lucrative ad units in the programmatic ecosystem, video creatives enabled us to both immerse users back into the game and ensure no conversions were misattributed.

The use of our proprietary Live Audiences allowed us to focus on two segments of users:

1. High-paying users – based on the amount spent in the app
2. Payers – users who made purchases in the past but haven’t reached the High-paying users spending threshold

The campaign’s key challenge was identifying users within each segment who had the highest probability of making additional purchases.

Our bid optimization strategy included two critical steps:

1. Bid shading: A practice used by ML-based DSPs to predict auction market prices based on historical data and bid optimally. Processing over 4 million ad auctions per second, our machine learning-driven platform adjusts bids based on the audience’s predicted lifetime value (LTV), enabling significant budget savings.
2. Bid optimization based on multiple factors: Following the initial learning period, our DSP’s ML algorithm predicted user behaviors that increased the likelihood of users making additional purchases.

The graph below displays the effect of bid optimization: as we focused on users with a higher probability of making additional purchases, the eCPM increased to win the audience in programmatic auctions. The D7 re-purchase after reattribution increased in line with eCPM.

About Devsisters

Since its founding in 2007, Devsisters has been providing games and services, centered around the Cookie Run IP, that have been loved by more than 200 millions users around the world. Devsisters is currently expanding its horizons to multiple platforms, such as mobile, PC, console gaming, and VR.

“We’re thrilled with the outstanding results of our re-engagement campaign for Devsisters’ CookieRun: Kingdom. This success underscores the power of our programmatic expertise in driving high-value user engagement for one of South Korea’s most iconic mobile games.
Beyond our advanced machine learning-driven DSP, we aim to provide strategic insights and foster long-term partnerships with our clients.”

Rachel SEO – Business Development Director, Korea 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 (DMP).

We help leading mobile companies like 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 lifetime value (LTV), driving strong return on ad spend (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.