Changing game´s category

Monetizing, Advertising & Marketing Marketing Methods
#1

Hey guys, we released a new game (the one on my signature) on Thursday 3th April. We decided to put the game into Board category because is one of the less busy ones (according to Appbrain). Well, after 12 days the game has managed to get in the Top 5 the New Free Board for several important countries: (USA #3, UK #2, Germany, Italy #2, Spain, Belgium). But the downloads are still between 1800-2000 daily and considering that most of those downloads comes from advertising that’s not a very good scenario… And the ratings have been very good, as well as the average session duration, i think people like the game a lot… but still no “explosion”…

So, i have been considering changing the game´s category from Board to Puzzle, but of course i am a little bit concerned about the “consequences”. Specifically, i would like to know if changing category will make my downloads from the previous category count for the ranking of the new one? Or i would start from zero and would have to spend 1 week accumulating downloads again?

Any experience with this? I have seen successful apps moving from smaller categories to larger ones as they get into the top of the rankings but that’s not much information to conclude anything…

Thank you!

#2

Hi Board category less busy you are correct the other meaning for less busy is user are less in that category, I had played your game it is interesting you can change the category to puzzle it is good decision so you would get more downloads, I don’t have real experience of changing the category after 13 days, I has changed the category in the first day itself for one of my game so I won’t be able to suggest exactly what happens for category change, but I think it won’t start from zero if you change category.

#3

hey both, how do you check which category is “busy”? I just released a game in “Trivia” and wonder if this helped if I change to Puzzle…

#4

You can use appbrain, appannie or any other websites which gives you the statistics of play store it will help you to find which category is popular and busy.

#5

I had the same scenario as you with my latest game. I initially released it in Board and I was top #1 for Board top new free in several countries. Then I moved it to Puzzle and my game was listed #7-10 for the countries where it was #1 for Board.

So the downloads from Board do count in Puzzle.

I can’t say if moving it to Puzzle was a good decision because I advertised my game while in Board and then ran out of budget when moved to Puzzle.

Beware that your game listing will take 2-3 days before it vanishes from Board to appear in Puzzle.

#6

Why did you decide to change your category? Was not getting any downloads from the charts?

and what happened to your downloads when you moved to puzzle?

thank you

#7

I moved it to Puzzle because my Admob eCPM was very low in Board. My downloads dropped but mainly because I stopped advertising.

Even though competition is less for Board, there are less users browsing through the Board categories from what I can tell.

#8

Did the eCPM improve after the change? Never thought the category would impact the eCPM, but now that you mention it, it could make sense

#9

I did see a small increase, about 10%-15% but I can’t be sure it was related to the category.

#10

I just moved !

#11

Ok, good luck!

Let us know how it goes!

#12

What type of advertising did you use? Facebook, AdMob, or anything else?

#13

Facebook, AppBrain, Heyzap, Tapjoy.

#14

Sounds serious. What was your marketing budget? I’ve set aside 150 USD for marketing for my new app (when it comes out). I’ll buy installs and do some FB or Reddit advertising, just to see, what works better. Were you happy with AppBarin and Tapjoy?

#15

A few thousands. Appbrain delivers the cheapest non-incentivized installs while Tapjoy delivers the cheapest incentivized installs. So I got what I paid for.

#16

Did you get a return on the money you spent?

#17

No, I didn’t but the game was released less than a month ago.

#18

Sorry, I should’ve put it another way, did you get any improvement in organic downloads as a result?

#19

Yes, the more downloads an app has, the higher in the top lists it is, the more organic downloads it gets.

#20

Excellent, I’m reassured by that as the concern with spending advertising dollars is that once you stop so do your downloads. That’s great that is your case it didn’t. As everyone has probably noticed discoverability on the playstore is virtually impossible without spending money on installs. This is strongly evidenced by the huge amount of review requests on this site. Developers are desperately trying to get traction with their apps without spending money. Google thinks they have it figured out and we all need to adjust. Keywords won’t get you anywhere but banned these days. Any app you publish that sounds similar to another app will be subject to suspension. For example I published an app on the 5th of April, which was a Saturday and was immediately placed in the review cue for what I believe was simplicity of name. I won’t say exactly what the name was but it was generic like 3D Car Parking. There were no keywords in what was a basic description. Google suspended the app for violation of the spam provision and/or impersonation. The only thing I could possibly think of that would justify this maybe is that Vasco Games has published just about every parking game known to man and maybe the title was too similar to their generic title. The app I made was a high quality unity game in 3D with what I think are high quality 3D models. Anyways, I am not going to republish as I am concerned about losing my account as I had one app suspended years ago as well. Don’t want to get nailed on a 3rd strike. Times are changing. I like all of you am just trying to figure out what it takes to be successful in this game