A case study I authored and designed in Illustrator.

1. 2016 © Sensor Tower Inc. - All Rights Reserved. sensortower.com
Case Study
App Intelligence Case Study:
ASO Drives Organic Installs for SEGA
Background:
As more gamers continue to transition from dedicated consoles to
mobile devices, industry trailblazers such as SEGA Networks–SEGA’s
mobile division in the West—have followed suit. Today, SEGA is a
leading mobile publisher, having brought its popular licensed IP such
as Sonic the Hedgehog and Crazy Taxi to the mobile ecosystem. As
publishers compete for a share of this growing market, the cost of
acquiring mobile users has skyrocketed. For this reason, SEGA has
looked to maximize its organic user growth.
SEGA investigated multiple App Store Optimization (ASO)
solutions before deciding to partner with Sensor Tower to help grow its
mobile user base. “Sensor Tower was the best solution for us,” says
Spiros Christakopoulos, Director of Growth at SEGA, adding: “We
selected Sensor Tower because the platform was the most
user-friendly and because of the quality of their data.”
What follows is a look at how the Sega Growth Team uses
Sensor Tower day-to-day to drive the organic growth of its expanding
mobile portfolio.
SEGA had numerous questions regarding general App Store best
practices. How should it name its apps to optimize for search? What
keywords should it be using? Do reviews and ratings effect overall app
rankings in the store?
Additionally, SEGA’s IP drove significant installs, but the
revenue from in-app purchases (IAPs) was not at a level that could
justify large-scale paid User Acquisition (UA) in today’s competitive
marketplace. “If you’re not generating the top revenue, then you need
to focus on organic ways of acquiring users,” says Christakopoulos.
Every time SEGA submits an app update to the App Store, its Growth
Team revisits ASO. SEGA decided to focus on keywords initially, since
this has the most immediate and direct impact on organic traffic.
Ahead of each submission to the App Store, SEGA reviews its
tracked keywords in Sensor Tower to determine what needs
optimization. SEGA keeps an evolving keyword bank for every app it
examines each time there is an update. It has also found success using
seasonal or trending keywords that capitalize on high search volume
queries around events such as Halloween or Christmas, for example.
Customer
Key Titles
Sonic Dash Crazy Taxi
Headquarters
Tokyo, Japan
Sensor Tower Product Used
App Intelligence
Ad Intelligence
Store Intelligence
Results
SEGA routinely sees 15 to 30 percent
lift in organic installs for its larger
titles with high download volumes.
Solution:
Challenge:

2. 2016 © Sensor Tower Inc. - All Rights Reserved. sensortower.com
Case Study
When performing ASO on Android, SEGA primarily focuses on the short
and full app description. Mentioning a keyword three to five times
throughout the full description helps SEGA rank for the keywords it has
chosen to target.
Christakopoulos has also found that “backlinks to the Google
Play page can help improve ranking. This is a widely known best
practice on Google web search when doing SEO, but page rank can
affect your search ranking on the Google Play Store as well. We try to
put links anywhere we can. I put a link in my email signature so that it
will help us build more backlinks.”
Since partnering with Sensor Tower on ASO, SEGA has routinely seen
thousands of additional organic downloads each day, simply from
performing ongoing optimization and adhering to ASO best practices.
Utilizing Sensor Tower to drive its ASO strategy, SEGA has been
able to take Sonic Dash from an average category rank in the 200 range
to the 80 range in the Top Free iPhone Apps in the U.S. “We were able
to do this by iterating on our keywords, screenshots, and
icons—without any paid user acquisition,” says Christakopoulos.
ABOVE: Sonic Dash went from Top 200 to Top 80 without any paid user acquisition.
SEGA has found that ranking well for targeted keywords is
much more important than simply going after the highest-traffic
keywords and ranking outside of the top 20 results. Instead, SEGA
identifies quality keywords through a balanced approach that
accounts for the difficulty to rank, length of keywords, relevance, top
10 chance, and traffic score.
SEGA’s KW Formula = (relevance x traffic/length x difficulty) x top 10 chance
Solution (continued):
Results:
“Sensor Tower was the
best solution for us.
We selected Sensor
Tower because the
platform was the
most user-friendly
and because of the
quality of their data.
Spiros
Christakopoulos
Director of Growth
SEGA
”

3. 2016 © Sensor Tower Inc. - All Rights Reserved. sensortower.com
Case Study
ABOVE: This table illustrates the process SEGA goes through to select its keywords.
SEGA calculates a total score for each term given the inputs on the left. In this
example, “Durant” would be the selected keyword since it receieved the highest score.
By utilizing this formula to select keywords, SEGA routinely sees lifts in
organic installs from 15 to 30 percent for its larger titles with high
download volumes, and between 5 to 15 percent for titles with low
download volumes.
SEGA’s success demonstrates that ASO requires attention each
time a publisher updates its apps. It proves that updating an app’s
keywords, screenshots, icon, title, and description is an ongoing
methodology that delivers results through improved organic
growth—and that Sensor Tower App Intelligence provides actionable
insights which make the process more effective at every step.
Drive organic installs with the world’s most robust App Store
Optimization (ASO) platform. With App Intelligence, you can monitor
all aspects of your app's global storefront. Track, test, and optimize
your own keyword strategy. All while keeping a close eye on your
competition. Increase the visibility of your apps and grow your user
base today with Sensor Tower’s App Intelligence.
Results (continued):
About Sensor Tower
Sensor Tower is the leading solution for
mobile marketers, app developers, and
industry analysts who demand
competitive insights on the mobile
economy. Sensor Tower's product suite
includes: Rankings & Leaderboards,
App Intelligence, Store Intelligence, and
Ad Intelligence.
Learn more
Visit sensortower.com/
solutions/ad-intelligence to learn
more about using Sensor Tower to
shape your acquisition strategy.
More About App Intelligence
We were able to go from an average category
ranking in the 200s to the 80s simply by
iterating on our keywords, screenshots and
icons—without any paid user acquisition.
Spiros Christakopoulos, Director of Growth
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