The objectives of this phase were as follows:
1. To get an indication of the cost to acquire game users in the chosen countries.
2. To get early in-game data on user behaviour to assist with the development roadmap decision making and prioritisation process.
Over the 3-week period, a total of £6,859 was spent on acquiring users across 4 territories: Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and the Philippines. This resulted in 5,910 installs. The campaign was optimised throughout to reduce the cost per install (CPI), which quickly fell from £4.76 to just over £1. This was lower than had been expected by the team.
The Unity channel, which targets gamers through video ads, performed best as an advertising platform overall, with 60% of those who installed the game going on to play 1+ match and 13% who went on to play 3+ matches.
A significant learning from this phase of the trial was a 45% drop in users from installation to completed registrations during the draft process. As such, the team will re-design this process in order to take users to the core aspect of the game as early as possible before commencing phase 2 of the soft launch.
At its peak, Gameday Live reached #44 and #45 in Apple & Google sports charts, respectively, for the Netherlands (the most popular territory over this phase). In comparison, for the period Top Eleven sat at #31 & #28 and Gameday Live was some distance ahead of Soccer Manager, which sat at #425 and #301 respectively. This was achieved with a modest budget, with higher positions expected to be achieved in the next phase.
The next phase of the launch will focus on increasing the number of users of Gameday Live. As the team increases the volume of users, this presents an opportunity for organic growth as they push Gameday Live further up the charts. Even with a modest spend, they have achieved some encouraging chart positions.