Overcoming privacy-driven data blindspots to regain ROI insight
Overview
- Gaming company FunPlus faced limitations in data visibility following the implementation of privacy restrictions. This created significant challenges in maintaining data granularity across channels such as TikTok, Meta, and Twitter.
- Partial solutions didn’t relieve the issue, leaving about 10% of data in the dark and a 30-40% data gap.
- By securely joining its first-party data with AppsFlyer conversion data in the Data Clean Room, FunPlus could get brand-new, aggregated insights into user activity and behavior and regain control of its metrics and KPIs.
- The team became more efficient and regained confidence in the accuracy of their insights, allowing them to make smarter and bolder campaign decisions.
Background
Founded in 2010, FunPlus is a world-class, independent game developer and publisher headquartered in Switzerland and with operations in China, Japan, Singapore, Spain, and the United States.
With over 350 million app downloads worldwide, FunPlus is one of the world’s leading hardcore gaming companies, powered by the KingsGroup Games and Imagendary studios. FunPlus’s leading titles include State of Survival, King of Avalon, and Guns of Glory.
Challenge
Like many gaming companies, FunPlus had relied heavily on device-level reporting to optimize its paid user acquisition campaigns. The company depends on its internal business intelligence (BI) systems, which combine data from multiple sources — including MMPs, networks, and mediation networks — with first-party data for analysis.
Working predominantly with networks like TikTok, Meta, and Twitter proved challenging when these partners began restricting advertiser access to device-level data. “Due to these restrictions, a number of our initial strategies were rendered ineffective on these media platforms, significantly limiting our ability to optimize our launch efforts within them,” says Sia Wang, Marketing Science lead at FunPlus.
The FunPlus mobile marketing team ran their own unique logic for optimizing their user acquisition campaigns. They measured core KPIs like ROI, and would then break down ROI into finer indicators such as <user_type>. This approach allowed them to identify actionable measures to enhance customer acquisition from various perspectives, including optimizing their creatives and the overall game experience.
The FunPlus user acquisition (UA) and marketing operations teams rely on the internal BI analysis to make campaign decisions. But the implementation of privacy restrictions severely limited data visibility, creating significant challenges in maintaining data granularity across these channels.
Wang offers this analogy: “This can be likened to a pixelated screen resolution, where our usual 4K resolution is diminished to just 360P on media channels that impose restrictions on device-level data access. Just as a pixelated image lacks clarity and detail, our team is unable to delve deeper into the data and perform in-depth analysis at the user level. Consequently, we face obstacles in adapting and optimizing strategies across multiple dimensions, including bidding methods, creatives, and product experience.”
This resulted in the marketing team often choosing more conservative acquisition strategies and minimizing risks in these media sources. Conservatism is often the enemy of success.
Even partial solutions, like the Google Play Install Referrer API (a Meta-approved solution for device-level data for Android), didn’t relieve the issue: “At first we thought that Google Play Install Referrer was covering the majority of our Meta data blindspots, leaving about 10% of data in the dark. It turned out that we still had a 30-40% data gap even with the Google Referrer API,” Wang reports.
FunPlus began exploring alternative solutions, but didn’t find anything on the market that suited its specific needs. AppsFlyer’s Data Clean Solution was in its very early development stages at the time, and FunPlus came on board as part of the first alpha stage. Having worked with AppsFlyer as a trusted provider since 2021, FunPlus felt confident venturing into this new space together. “We feel strongly that AppsFlyer is an expert in their field, and we felt confident working with such a professional, experienced team,” recalls Wang.
Solution
FunPlus joined the alpha stage of AppsFlyer’s Data Clean Room (DCR), using this to securely join its first-party data with AppsFlyer conversion data.
While FunPlus’s access to device-level data from Meta, TikTok, and Twitter is restricted, these partners do share this data directly with AppsFlyer. AppsFlyer, in turn, is restricted from sharing this data directly with customers like FunPlus, but can share aggregated insights based on device-level data. Joining this restricted device-level data with its own first-party data gave FunPlus brand-new, aggregated insights into user activity and behavior.
The DCR is designed to help marketing teams make informed, data-driven decisions comfortably within the restrictions of the new privacy era. Wang explains how this worked for FunPlus: “The Data Clean Room helped our marketing teams regain control of our metrics and KPIs. It wasn’t about getting access to new metrics or capabilities, it was about regaining confidence in the accuracy of the data and allowing our teams to do what they do best.”
Results
The team’s efficiency increased tenfold when they no longer needed to cross data from multiple sources, and confidence in the accuracy of their insights was restored. The team also learned how to work efficiently with personalized, aggregate data reports that provided much-needed insights into lifetime value.
FunPlus is also using the DCR to create a report that connects data on ad creatives and in-app events, reflecting user behavior. This report provides insights that go beyond maximizing revenue: “We know that Meta, Twitter, and TikTok put a lot of emphasis on the creatives. The DCR provides us with more accurate data insights on creatives, restoring our confidence to make aggressive marketing decisions, and turn our ideas into reality,” says Wang.
“Thanks to the DCR reports, we can put more detailed tags behind creatives, like new users, legacy users, game behaviors, and so on. These tags help us better understand the user persona.” The FunPlus marketing teams refer to reports like this on a daily basis.
As the industry shifts more and more toward privacy-centric measurement, FunPlus expects that AppsFlyer DCR will continue to provide valuable insights, regardless of what other limitations may arise. “This is our solution of choice,” says Wang. “We strongly feel that AppsFlyer is an expert in this field, and we rely on their professionalism and innovation.”
Through the AppsFlyer Privacy Cloud, we can obtain more data insights into the effectiveness of marketing activities, so as to optimize marketing more accurately. We very much look forward to further cooperation with AppsFlyer on the privacy technology level.
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