How Supercent’s New Games Made It To The Top In The Stagnating Hypercasual Market
Supercent’s Success Strategies Unveiled with AppMagic’s Insights
Last month, AppMagic, the leading mobile market intelligence company, highlighted our new games in their blog, noting that “Pizza Ready” and “Outlets Rush” quickly became standout products and climbed to the top of the global hyper-casual game charts shortly after their release.
They also noted that, unlike the typical hyper-casual games which experience rapid peaks and declines, Supercent’s games have managed to sustain user interest over a significant period.
Intrigued by our success, AppMagic invited us to share our journey and the strategies behind our games’ enduring popularity — including those backed up by insights from AppMagic.
Through this collaboration, we aim to provide valuable insights backed by Appmagic’s analysis, detailing the key factors and methods behind Supercent’s achievements in the hyper-casual gaming industry.
The following article is from AppMagic’s latest post(Click here)
Hypercasual Games: Market Dynamics
As we all know, the Hypercasual games market has been on a downtrend in terms of total downloads after its peak month of January 2022. In 2023, it was down 11% on a similar period in 2022.
If you’ve been following our quarterly Hypercasual games reports, you already know about the trend we highlighted back in 2023, with studios evolving their strategies to include the development of their older titles by refining their mechanics and creatives. Even Azur Games, in the Q3 2023 report, shared that it had become considerably more expensive to create a new hit game than it had been several years ago, as it had become more challenging to get into the rankings due to the sweet spots being occupied by mature, well-known titles.
We can indeed confirm those words just by studying the graph above. In 2023, there was only one game released in that same year that made it into the worldwide top 50 free ranking, which is only one-fifth of that in 2022 and, in fact, one-tenth of the amount back at the peak of 2021! And this only game was Supercent’s Burger Please!
Supercent’s Hits Overview
For the sake of comparison, we will focus on two Idle Arcade titles by Supercent, Burger Please! and Outlets Rush, and try to find out how exactly they were able to stand out among other Hypercasual titles.
The UA Strategy
In terms of UA, Supercent starts with a weekly analysis of their competitors’ creatives, hunting for insights about their target audience and looking for creative inspiration. The team prefers to mix Video ads and Playable ads featuring several of them simultaneously, as the former capture the game’s essence quickly, while the latter offer an interactive experience. Indeed, looking at ad creatives for Burger Please!, they’re mostly video ads with a sprinkle of playability on top.
The publisher also tries to go beyond color and UI, paying closer attention to more subtle aspects like user experience in the initial few seconds and the emotions evoked.
Sub-source Optimization Approach
Supercent enhances ad campaign efficiency through sub-source optimization. This involves adjusting ad exposure across various apps (sub-sources), focusing more on high-efficiency apps with better performance metrics like LTV, ROAS, retention, and playtime. Optimization requires setting different CPIs per app with individual configurations for each country.
Supercent analyzes returns from ad networks and sources with their BI, using metrics such as revenue and eCPM, and unloads conclusions about A/B testing hypotheses on mediation and investment in specific media sources.
Small-Scale Ad Networks
Supercent leverages small-scale networks for advertising to reach diverse player groups effectively while managing costs. They prioritize broadening ad exposure to attract new users, focusing on reach rather than immediate installs, and believe these networks offer a safer environment for campaign optimization. Managing these campaigns involves frequent communication with network account managers and continuous monitoring to align with KPIs.
Outlets Rush
Another big hit from Supercent’s list of released games is Outlets Rush, which acquired 52M installs over lifetime. While the game began to lose its monthly installs shortly after the peak in December 2023, it’s still generating 6M downloads monthly.
Theme & Mechanics
Outlets Rush and Burger Please! are quite similar in terms of the mechanics they use: both rely on simple mechanics, such as stacking, and movement control with virtual joysticks.
What is very different between them is the choice of themes: somewhat evidently, Outlets Rush revolves around clothes rather than burgers. According to Supercent, the theme can both make or break the game as it has a major impact on its CPIs. Thus, prior research is essential.
Conclusion
In 2023, Supercent was the only publisher to launch a new Hypercasual game that cracked the top 50 worldwide downloads ranking, bucking the trend of a slowing market and a focus on updating existing games.
Supercent’s unique approach gives its games a competitive edge. By leveraging small-scale ad networks, Supercent manages to target diverse player groups while maintaining low costs. Additionally, it exploits specifically adjusted sub-source optimization strategies for each type of media source. The result? One for the textbooks, probably.
