Papaya Gaming finds measurably better players with AppsFlyer’s Signal Hub

How one of the world’s leading skill-based gaming companies tapped premium, real-world purchase signals, activated through AppsFlyer Signal Hub, to reach players who install, stay, and spend at far higher rates than standard targeting delivers.

Background

A skill-gaming powerhouse built on data

Papaya Gaming is one of the most recognizable names in skill mobile gaming, best known for flagship titles Solitaire and Bingo, enjoyed by millions of players worldwide. Behind the scenes, Papaya runs one of the most sophisticated performance marketing operations in the category, acquiring players at scale across Meta, TikTok, AppLovin and Unity.

Its marketing team is relentlessly data-driven: every creative, every audience, every channel decision is judged on measurable outcomes. As a top advertiser in casual gaming, Papaya is always looking for differentiated ways to identify and reach the players most likely to love their games.

Challenge

Finding genuinely high-value players in a signal-scarce world

Like every mobile advertiser in the post-iOS 14 era, Papaya was working with fewer precision signals than ever before. The targeting data advertisers once relied on has become limited, lookalike audiences have grown less dependable, and the gap between installing an app and actually engaging with it has widened.

For skill-based games (where real value comes from players who stick around and spend, not just those who install), finding audiences with proven real-world intent became a strategic priority. Standard campaigns were delivering volume, but the metrics that matter most (conversion, retention, spend) needed to move.

The core question

Could premium, real-world purchase signals, beyond what any single ad platform can see, help Papaya reach players who are meaningfully more likely to install, stay engaged, and spend inside its games?

Solution

Premium audiences, activated through AppsFlyer Signal Hub

Papaya partnered with AppsFlyer to activate Mastercard Audiences through Signal Hub. AppsFlyer’s signal marketplace that connects advertisers to premium, real-world purchase signals and plugs them directly into their existing media workflows, with full, privacy-safe measurement in a closed loop.

Mastercard audiences are built on anonymized, aggregated purchase behavior from one of the world’s largest payment networks, surfacing consumers who have demonstrated real spending intent. Unlike behavioral or contextual signals, this view is grounded in actual economic action, giving Papaya a fundamentally different lens on who its highest-value players are likely to be.

The activation was deliberately simple and outcome-focused:

• Premium audiences, plug-and-play. Mastercard powered segments were onboarded through Signal Hub and matched to Papaya’s target player profile. No new pipes, no custom engineering.
• Activated inside existing campaigns. The same validated audiences ran alongside Papaya’s business-as-usual Meta campaigns for Solitaire and Bingo across iOS and Android, for roughly three weeks.
• Measured end-to-end. With AppsFlyer closing the loop from ad to install to engagement to spend, Papaya could independently validate audience quality on the metrics that matter most.
• Built to scale across channels. Because Signal Hub distributes a single validated signal to multiple channels, the same audience can extend to new platforms from one integration.

Results

Higher-quality players, across every title and platform tested

Across Papaya’s flagship titles (Bingo and Solitaire, on both iOS and Android), players acquired through Mastercard audiences consistently and dramatically outperformed Papaya’s business-as-usual benchmarks on the three metrics that define downstream value: conversion rate, retention, and revenue per player.

Note: lifts shown versus Papaya’s business-as-usual benchmarks on Meta over a ~3-week test window. Revenue per player reflects 7-day post-install spend per player.

What this means

The audiences activated through Signal Hub consistently delivered players who were measurably more valuable than those reached through standard targeting alone: more likely to install, more likely to come back, and more likely to spend. The intrinsic quality of the audience came through clearly on every title and platform Papaya tested.

“Signal Hub marks the beginning of a new era of collaboration between brands, bringing relevance back to audience targeting and enabling smarter, more meaningful engagement with high-value customers.”

Uri Pearl • VP of Marketing, Papaya Gaming

What’s next

From proven signal to scaled advantage

With audience quality validated, the conversation has shifted from “does this work?” to “how do we scale it?” Because Signal Hub distributes a single, validated audience across multiple channels, Papaya can extend the same Mastercard-powered signal into new inventory without rebuilding the strategy each time.

That is the compounding advantage of Signal Hub: a fast-expanding marketplace of premium data providers and signals, distributed across multiple activation channels, with AppsFlyer measurement closing the loop on every one of them. Mastercard is one of many signals Papaya can layer in as the marketplace continues to grow, with new providers joining across payments, commerce and more.