As user acquisition costs continue to climb, mobile game studios are under growing pressure to extract more value from the players they already have. Playgap, an IAP promotion platform founded by former Unity Ads and GameAnalytics leaders, is using ML and personalised IAP video promotions to help studios convert more players into payers.

We caught up with Playgap's co-founder, Dima Roznouski, to learn more about why IAP video promotion is delivering outsized results, how payer prediction works, and what this shift means for the future of monetisation in mobile gaming.

With user acquisition becoming increasingly expensive, many studios are rethinking how they grow revenue. How does Playgap fit into that picture?

Mariam, thank you for the opportunity to talk about what we're building at Playgap! The short answer is: we help game developers earn more from the players they already have. Studios are increasingly looking for solutions that help them identify high-value players early and monetise them more effectively. That's exactly what Playgap does.

We are an IAP promotion platform. Our product predicts payers and shows IAP video promotions in place of regular ad impressions to drive more revenue to the game. Our impact on the game economy is measured in higher IAP revenue, higher overall ARPU and more first-time payers.

It sounds like your solution has a positive effect on the game economy overall. Can you share some examples?

Absolutely, we boost the game's overall "health", and this is what gets developers excited. For example, Survival Games ran an A/B test on Ocean Raft, a title they've optimised over eight years. With Playgap, they saw an 18% increase in IAP revenue, and a 12% increase in total ARPU. What was surprising is the halo effect - players who watched a Playgap promotion went on to buy other products across the store, products we didn't even promote. On top of it, they saw a 2% increase in playtime. The whole economy got healthier. 

Hypemasters is another great example. We promote their battle pass in World War Armies, and 84% of Playgap-driven purchases come from players who have never bought a battle pass before. Many of them go on to buy other products too.

You mentioned Playgap predicts payers - how do you actually do that?

We analyse multiple purchase predicting signals - how the player progresses through the game, how they've engaged with previous video promotions, session and device characteristics, their purchasing patterns, and more. And when the player requests an ad, the model predicts whether the given player is likely to pay and drive more revenue by watching an IAP video promotion.

How do you decide which product to show?

The developer picks their top-selling products and lets Playgap handle the prediction: we determine whether to show an IAP promotion, and which product to show based on the maximum revenue outcome for each player. Developers use our segmentation tools to set additional rules. For example, they can map the product’s availability to the context of the player, such as making a resource pack available for promotion to players after a certain level. Developers know their game economy better, so they stay in control.

Can developers do it themselves?

Some do and they see great results. But for most, even for some of the best studios in the world, marrying their IAP strategy with their ad monetisation stack, building payer prediction, and IAP video creatives that actually convert is a complex undertaking - that's months of engineering, product and data science resources pulled off the game’s roadmap. We've spoken to studios who tried and couldn't ship it. Playgap gives every studio that capability out of the box, with no upfront cost and no risk.

Let's talk about non-payers. Can Playgap convert players who have never spent money in a game?

This is where developers get most excited. In some titles, over half of Playgap-driven purchases come from players who have never spent a penny. Video does something a static offer can't - it shows a player what a resource pack or battle pass actually does in the game. A player who never considered spending sees the value, and that's enough to trigger their first purchase. These aren't modelled estimates - developers run their own A/B tests and see it in their own data. As Hypemasters CEO Boris Kalmykov puts it, video promotions for IAPs are "a powerful alternative to normal 2D/3D offers”.

To what extent does Playgap impact the game's ad inventory?

This is a common question developers ask, and rightly so. We show IAP video promotions when the revenue math works in the developer’s favour. We unlock first-time payers and increase the basket size of existing ones. According to developers’ own A/B results, we do so with minimal to no impact on the game's ad monetisation. The developer's economy gets bigger.

What does your billing model look like for developers?

We use a deterministic attribution model - developers only pay when a player watches a Playgap promotion and makes a purchase. If we don't drive the sale, there's no charge. It's the same performance model that's standard in advertising and e-commerce, applied to IAP promotion.

With a team that brings expertise from Unity, GameAnalytics, and mobile game companies, how has that background shaped Playgap's product?

We have built ad tech platforms and we have worked inside game studios. Given we have sat on both sides of the table, we understand what game developers want and expect from third-party tools. For example, we have always obsessed over SDK stability and ease of integration being the table stakes for any game developer. Similarly, we rely on our ad tech experience in building our payer prediction model.

What types of games are the best fit for Playgap?

We look for games where IAP is a meaningful part of their economy and the studio is serious about growing IAP. This usually means games where IAP represents 20% to 90% of their total revenue. We work with some of the biggest studios across a range of genres and regions.

Sounds like you are on an exciting journey. Where does Playgap go from here?

The shift from "acquire players at any cost" to "earn more from every player" is accelerating, and studios need tools purpose-built for that. Today we predict which players are ready to buy and make sure the developer earns more. Over time, we want to get smarter about every dimension of that decision: the right product, at the right moment, in the right context. The longer a developer works with us, the better it gets. That's what we're building toward.

If you're a game developer who wants to learn more, sign up via playgap.io or reach out to us at [email protected].