I always admired their UA approach because it's heavily ad creative focused and, despite an incredibly aggressive approach, it doesn’t seem wasteful. The other two highest-grossing months happened pre-ATT launch during the peak of the COVID pandemic. According to Sensor Tower, in January 2023, their grossed over $250M in IAP revenue which is their 3rd highest revenue month ever. This approach not only helped them survive the proverbial mobile marketing winter but also helped them record one of the highest revenue months in their recent history. What inspired me to write about them is their approach to User Acquisition (UA) and how UA and creative findings impact their product roadmap. With a portfolio of popular games such as Gardenscapes, Homescapes, and Fishdom, Playrix has established itself as one of the most prominent players in the mobile gaming market, with over $8B in lifetime revenue. Playrix is a leading mobile gaming company that has been making waves in the gaming industry for its highly successful games, incredible production value, and, yes - misleading (aka non-representative ads) ads. We need to find a new product market fit. Our products need to be reinvented to fit the new reality. This is proof that if the audience is there and the need is there, it's not that the market is broken.

While some companies saw a rise in cost and a decline in revenue, others managed to rise above the situation, launch successful games, or reinvent themselves and continue growing. The changes shook up the mobile gaming ecosystem and, along with the current macroeconomic situation, had a devastating impact on the valuations of its key players.

W hen AppTrackingTransparency was introduced, many predicted the doom and gloom situation and the death of mobile gaming.

Gardenscapes misleading ads