Game Insight: Using App Events to Acquire and Retain Players

One of the biggest challenges for a mobile game developer in a crowded market is finding new people who are a good fit for their game, and then keeping those players engaged once they arrive. One way developers can better understand their core audience is through App Events — Facebook's product to help developers measure how people are engaging with their app and determine the success of their ad campaigns.

We're now making it even easier for iOS developers to implement App Events in their apps. With the newest version of the iOS SDK, it's now possible to automatically collect App Events for in-app purchases. Developers can choose to enable the “Automatic Purchase Logging” switch in their app dashboard. Without writing any additional code, developers will be able to measure when people initiate a checkout, make a purchase, or cancel their in-app purchase. This is an existing feature we've already offered to developers, but the update will now make it easier for them to implement.

Developers can then view this purchase data through App Insights, and analyze it to answer questions like:

• Which items are being purchased most frequently?
• What countries or devices are driving the greatest amount of revenue?
• What percentage of people come back and make purchases in the app after installing it?
• How can I bring back people who started a purchase but didn't complete it?

Game Insight, known for developing hit games including Dragon Warlords and Tribez, used App Events to re-engage more than 200,000 former players of their popular game Tribez back into the app. Leveraging App Events, Game Insight generated dynamic Custom Audiences of people who had made a purchase in the app in the past, but who hadn't opened the game recently. Using these audiences and mobile app engagement ads, they were able to successfully re-engage players resulting in a 5 percent increase of daily active users and an 800 percent ROI. Game Insight has also used App Events to cross-promote their mobile games to people playing the desktop versions.

To read more about how Game Insight used App Events, check out the case study here. To learn more about how to enable in-app purchase events for iOS, check out the iOS App Event docs. Also check out our App Events guide for suggestions on what type of events to log based on your category of app.