Customer story: Aarki - Exceeds ROI Goals by over 800%

Aarki is a leading provider of programmatic mobile advertising, with a machine learning platform that performs multivariate testing on ad creatives across multiple exchanges. The company?s success in helping advertisers build high-performance campaigns has led to higher demand ? which is why Aarki partnered with Chartboost. By leveraging Chartboost?s large user base of mobile gamers and high-quality inventory, Aarki was able to outperform their return on investment (ROI) goal by more than 800%.

The Challenge

The mobile ad market often looks like a variant on the ?Iron Triangle? of project management: large scale, low cost, and high quality inventory are all available, but you can only choose two. Aarki?s business relies on breaking out of the triangle, and delivering their customers the trifecta of engaged users, at scale, and under budget.For its client in the casual game space, Aarki needed to retarget a specific segment of users spread across five languages ? a challenge requiring extensive real-time optimization ? and to experiment with in-app audio.Aarki is also on the forefront of testing creative variables like format, ad length, and audio. Therefore Aarki needed a partner with the flexibility and capability to help experiment with what works.

The Solution

Chartboost worked for Aarki in three key areas: audience, integration, and ad formats. As a result, the partnership is going strong. ?Chartboost is one of our top exchange partners. We run Chartboost across all campaign types, User Acquisition, and Retargeting, and we buy both video and display inventories?, says Nicol Cseko, vice president of product at Aarki.AudienceWith gaming audiences going global, Aarki needed deep reach into worldwide markets. Chartboost offers a unique in-app advertising platform of over 300,000 SDK-integrated apps, with over 900 million active users. ?Partnering with Chartboost allowed us to reach very high quality in-app audiences, allowing us to scale while improving performance,? says Kim Aquino, Aarki?s director of business development and marketing.Integration & SupportEncore, Aarki?s unified technology platform, uses machine learning technology to create and test ad variants on the fly. It?s a hand in glove fit with Chartboost?s 100% real-time bidding (RTB) platform. The key to this combination is making the two technologies work together seamlessly. ?We find having a technical contact available beyond the initial integration is often key to success and we appreciate that Chartboost provides that,? says Nicol Cseko, vice president of product at Aarki.FlexibilityFor its client, Aarki also wanted some atypical features, such as audio by default. ?We were looking to run ad formats that were not initially supported from a policy perspective. But after discussions about the performance and revenue benefits, Chartboost accommodated Aarki?s request, allowing us to grow our spend and improve performance with new rich media units,? says Kim Aquino, Aarki?s director of business development and marketing.

?Partnering with Chartboost allowed us to reach very high quality in-app audiences, allowing us to scale while improving performance." - Kim Aquino, Director of business development and marketing

The Results

For two ad types, 15 second and 30 second video units, Aarki established goals for CPC and ROI. Both ad types more than doubled all of their goals. Industry wisdom sometimes says shorter ads perform best, but the 30 second ads did particularly well, producing an ROI of 75% ? many times above the minimum goal established for the campaign.Aarki?s also exceeded its cost per click goals for both campaigns. The 15 second ad unit achieved a CPC of 30 cents. The 30 second ads reached 20 cents per click, a 30% savings on the goal cost.For other companies looking for new partners in programmatic, Cseko recommends thoroughly evaluating technology and operating practices. ?Be strategic in looking for new in-app exchanges?they must be transparent and advanced in terms of supply technology, as programmatic is a fast phase industry. Look for partners like Chartboost that can adapt to new trends and features,? Cseko advises.