How Netmarble Built a Unified Creative Strategy to Power Cross-Platform Growth

Overview

• Netmarble, a global mobile gaming leader, needed to improve its measurement infrastructure and unify campaign performance across 50+ apps.
• In 2023, the team migrated from Singular to AppsFlyer to enhance measurement stability and better align with internal BI systems
• At the same time, they adopted AppsFlyer’s Creative Optimization solution to streamline creative analysis, improve team collaboration, and accelerate performance-driven decisions.
• Netmarble is closely collaborating with AppsFlyer to build a cross-platform measurement in preparation for future platform expansion.

Background

Netmarble’s mission is to entertain the world with the best games. Known for successful proprietary IPs such as Seven Knights, and high-performing global titles like Solo Leveling: ARISE, the company has launched games across a wide range of genres including MMORPGs, RPGs, and collection-type games.

In 2022, as part of a strategic technology review, Netmarble began exploring alternatives to its existing mobile measurement provider. The company required greater flexibility, stronger partner integrations, and more advanced creative analytics to support both its global expansion and increasing campaign complexity.

The Challenge

Migrating at scale with measurement stability

Netmarble manages a large number of game titles with staggered launch schedules. In early 2023, they committed to migrating over 50 apps from Singular to AppsFlyer. However, this transition had to be executed, any measurement gaps could risk data loss, campaign inefficiencies, or delays in upcoming launches.

One of the biggest technical challenges was aligning AppsFlyer’s more granular data structure with Netmarble’s existing in-house marketing intelligence system. Since Netmarble had previously built its analytics around another platform’s schema, the team had to adjust both internal workflows and systems to accommodate the new structure.

Additionally, the team needed to ensure that all stakeholders across BI, marketing, and design were upskilled and aligned. Product training and onboarding required more than just a one-time session. It had to be an ongoing process to ensure sustained adoption, particularly as new AppsFlyer features were rolled out during the transition.

Fragmented creative analysis and manual workflows

Creative analysis was another area where Netmarble faced major operational bottlenecks. Prior to AppsFlyer, performance evaluation was done at the media platform level. Each platform had different reporting standards, making it difficult to compare performance across channels or regions. There was a need to improve efficiency in the overall optimization process.

Teams often had to extract raw data manually from media dashboards, clean it, and format it before drawing insights. This process was resource-intensive and could take half a day just to prepare the data before actual analysis could begin. Performance metrics were often limited to basic indicators such as impressions, clicks, and CTR, which restricted the ability to optimize based on post-install behaviors like purchases or retention.

Collaboration across departments was also hindered. Without a unified measurement framework, discussions around creative performance remained surface-level. Teams worked in silos and often lacked shared visibility into what was working and why.

The Solution

A structured, collaborative migration with long-term impact

Netmarble began the migration to AppsFlyer in April 2023 with a clear objective: Achieve a seamless and safe transition without any gap in marketing performance measurement, while ensuring full alignment with their internal BI systems. The AppsFlyer team worked closely with Netmarble’s internal teams to map key data fields, build connectors, and validate the data output. Regular syncs, documentation, and ongoing support were central to this collaboration.

To support internal enablement, AppsFlyer provided guidance not only during onboarding but also through continued feature updates and training sessions. This approach helped Netmarble’s teams adapt to the platform’s advanced capabilities and embed it into their ongoing workflows.

One of the early wins post-migration was Netmarble’s ability to measure conversion rates for campaigns that had not previously been measured in detail. For example, Google’s AC pre-registration campaigns, which had previously been a blind spot, could now be evaluated with full transparency. This improved Netmarble’s confidence in campaign performance and enabled better alignment across global teams.

“MMP migration isn’t a frequent task, and our internal experience was limited. The AppsFlyer team guided us through the process, helping us adjust to new data granularity and providing the structured support we needed.”

Seungbok Lee, UA Team Lead, Netmarble

Transforming creative strategy with unified insights

Alongside the migration, Netmarble adopted AppsFlyer’s Creative Optimization solution to improve how creative assets were measured and optimized. Instead of pulling data from multiple fragmented sources, Netmarble used AppsFlyer’s centralized creative dashboard and Creative ETL to feed standardized data directly into their BI system.

This change drastically reduced manual work. Creative data could now be segmented by visual elements, campaign types, and regions, allowing teams to generate reports tailored to different internal users. Marketers could instantly identify high-performing creatives and shorten production cycles. Instead of relying on basic media-level metrics, teams could now analyze down-funnel metrics such as cohort ROAS and app events.

The unified data structure also helped standardize naming conventions and streamline cross-platform comparisons. As a result, creative discussions shifted from generic impressions and clicks to more strategic conversations around creative concepts, audience behavior, and media placement.

“Creative analysis went from being manual and error-prone to fast, reliable, and strategic. AppsFlyer helped us identify what works across different markets and optimize accordingly.”

Seungbok Lee, UA Team Lead, Netmarble

This improved visibility sparked stronger collaboration across BI, marketing, and creative teams. With a shared evaluation framework in place, discussions were more aligned and impactful. Creative insights not only informed campaign adjustments but also started influencing broader product decisions.

Results

Netmarble’s biggest success since adopting AppsFlyer was the launch of Solo Leveling: ARISE, which reached over 50 million global pre-downloads — a first for the company. The game went on to rank No. 1 in revenue in over 30 countries and made the Top 10 list in more than 50 markets. AppsFlyer enabled Netmarble to measure pre-download performance, optimize user acquisition strategies, and maintain stable measurement even during high-traffic periods.

“The massive traffic from Solo Leveling: ARISE required stable, high-volume measurement. AppsFlyer helped us capture all the signals accurately and optimize in real time.”

Seungbok Lee, UA Team Lead, Netmarble

Operationally, the partnership has helped reduce the time spent on manual reporting and analysis. Teams now rely on automated workflows and standardized data to make faster and more confident decisions. The ability to measure creative effectiveness at a granular level has led to smarter media planning, better ROI, and more efficient resource allocation.

The Next Step: Securing Future Growth through Cross-Platform Measurement

Netmarble is actively pushing the expansion of its platforms beyond mobile into the PC and console environments, marking a crucial step in extending its collaboration with AppsFlyer beyond mobile platforms. Even current key development projects are building play environments for PC/console platforms, including Steam, Epic, and PS5.

However, from a marketing perspective, realistic challenges exist due to the expansion. New limitations must be overcome in attribution, user lifetime value (LTV) analysis, and overall user acquisition (UA) strategy tailored to each platform’s characteristics. Platform expansion forces attribution to rely more heavily on probabilistic matching, which directly impacts the accuracy and reliability of ad performance measurement. 

To overcome these limitations, Netmarble is exploring to establish a foundation for cross-platform measurement with AppsFlyer. Besides mobile SDK integration, the Netmarble team is enabling PC and multi-platform S2S integration, building a unified standard for integrating user behavior data that was previously fragmented by platform. Furthermore, the teams are defining standard event structures and data schemas optimized for the PC/Console user funnel to be able to measure LTV, ROAS, and Retention from a cross-platform perspective.

“We look forward to continuing our collaboration with AppsFlyer to further advance cross-platform user analysis. Our ultimate goal is to implement a framework for comparing and defining cross-platform cohort performance for users who play across various platforms.”

Seungbok Lee, UA Team Lead, Netmarble