redBit games was founded by three friends, Massimo Guareschi, Francesco Comi, and Gabriele Achler, with the goal of competing globally in the app market. Within just one year, the Rome-based firm produced several games, such as Haunted Manor – The Secret of the Lost Soul, with nearly two million downloads, and Cookie Clickers, boasting more than 10 million downloads. To go global, the founding friends knew they needed an ad delivery platform that could connect with advertisers in every major market around the world. They chose AdMob to mediate ads across a variety of networks and millions of advertisers.
An upstream battle to go global
The idea for Splashy Fish came from Massimo’s young nephew Marco who was playing a similar game and wanted to experience more engaging features. The three developers worked around the clock for three days on the new game, where gamers swim up and down by tapping the screen of their mobile devices to navigate obstacles. Although the game reached the #1 spot on the iTunes App Store in 15 hours, and gathered millions of downloads on the Google Play store, the team still needed to find a platform that could efficiently manage advertisers across target markets and help drive downloads.
Maximizing fill rate and monetization for a splash hit
To manage the multiple ad networks that redBit was working with, they partnered with AdMob mediation. This allowed redBit to use a variety of ad networks to boost eCPM, maximize fill rates, and optimize monetization capabilities across multiple countries.
The account management AdMob offers has also been a key feature for redBit. Each time any issue occurs, including integration with other ad networks, AdMob has responded with speed and efficiency. “Now, we view Google as a partner in helping us integrate with different ad networks and solve any issues that arise to get the best eCPM possible,” notes Guareschi.
Building for the future through advertising
redBit has more games in the pipeline that will be monetized solely on advertising revenues, primarily from AdMob. Today, redBit uses AdMob to generate more than 50% of the income for Splashy Fish and cross promote across their 20+ gaming titles.
Massimo believes advertising will become ever more important for app developers in the future. The company is also experimenting more with AdMob house ads and ad network optimization to earn even better returns to fuel rapid growth. House ads are free, and allow redBit to promote their own apps across their app suite, broadening their user base.
“We’re continuing to expand very quickly. Advertising helps us achieve fast returns and build for the future,” says Guareschi. “The AdMob team is always coming up with great new ideas and solving any issues that arise to improve our performance. Our partnership with Google is the perfect vehicle for fueling our ongoing headway.”
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