How did Trucky Overlay Revenue Skyrocket Overnight?
Trucky Overlay is part of the Trucky Platform, a complete and multichannel suite of services dedicated to the Virtual Trucking Community on ETS2, ATS, and TruckersMP.
A few months ago, I decided to start monetizing the application by introducing Overwolf ads. ADS SDK is really simple to integrate and people at Overwolf, my developer manager, and the monetization Overwolf team were really helpful to understand where to put ads and how they must behave.
At the beginning of September, I released the first version containing ads: on the “start” page with the closed game (NotInGame), a 400x300 video, and on the post-game page (EndGameReport), a 160x600 display.
Meanwhile, I’ve also participated in the Monetization Webinar hosted by Overwolf. It was really nice to hear from highly professional people how Overwolf Ads works behind the scene. Understanding user behavior, average window opening time, and how ads work is vital for good monetization.
After a week — and this is normal, don’t be in a hurry — the desktop window has started to generate revenues, few to tell the truth, but simply because it is a page that not all users see necessarily. The post-game page, instead, for several weeks has not generated revenue, yet it is the page that everyone sees when the game is closed.
So the 160x600 format was not good? Probably not for the use I was making of it.
Another point of attention is the average page opening time: it was too low, users were not interested in seeing that data.
It’s like a domino effect: no engaging, no good opening time, not enough time for Overwolf to load an ad, no ad displayed means no impression, so no revenues.
Something had to be done to make that page more interesting and change its structure to insert a 400x300 video ad.
Using the telemetry data of the game I built more interesting statistics, I made the EndGameReport real-time, which was no longer a simple post-game page but could be opened during the game and left in a second monitor.
Moreover, I added some elements to increase the interaction and keep it open more time: sliding gallery of screenshots and recordings created during the session.
Before:
After:
I also changed the NotInGame making it more interesting to all users by adding graphical buttons to start supported games (Euro Truck Simulator 2, American Truck Simulator and TruckersMP), it became a real launcher.
To publicize this change and let users know the new potential of the new Game Summary, I also created a small promotional video, published a post on the official blog and linked in the Changelog window that opens when the user starts a new version for the first time.
It’s important to share and publicize properly the new features and changes to our applications: we want users to use and know them, especially when the goal is to increase revenues.
Immediately after the release of this version, the new Game Summary window started delivering ads, the average opening time increased slightly, not so much actually but it went from 50 seconds to about 60 seconds, but necessary to load the ad.
Revenues have skyrocketed, with an increase of hundreds of % in a few days. Over time, the completion rate also increased, from 50% to 65%.
Every day I review Partner Reports to understand how user behavior is changing and make adjustments or changes as quickly as possible that can increase the KPIs described above.
