Airbridge powers Nexon to drive performance marketing for PC and console games

Introduction

The First Descendant by Nexon is a free-to-play third-party looter-shooter game. It supports cross-play on Steam (PC), PlayStation, and Xbox, allowing players to keep their progress and enjoy seamless gameplay across all platforms. Released on July 2, 2024, The First Descendant quickly became one of the top 5 most-played games and soared to #1 on Steam's Global Top Sellers List at launch.

Based in South Korea and Japan, Nexon is a leading global game publisher and developer known for its extensive portfolio of over 40 titles. Popular games include Dungeon & Fighter, DAVE THE DIVER, FC Online, MapleStory, and Sudden Attack.

Overview

With the launch of Nexon's new PC·console game, The First Descendant, Nexon's UA team needed an attribution and measurement solution that could track PC and console campaigns, enabling them to combine marketing data with down-funnel user in-game events to optimize their budget and scale campaigns effectively.

Previously, marketing for PC·console games relied mainly on community-driven efforts or brand awareness strategies, providing limited insight into their impact. However, for the launch of The First Descendant, Nexon's UA team aimed to go further by adopting a performance-driven, data-focused strategy that leverages down-funnel in-game conversions.

Challenges

• Track in-game user conversions, such as Steam and console installs, in-game purchases, retention, funnel, and engagement.
• Access granular, real-time performance measurement from the channel, campaign type, campaign, and even down to the individual ad creative levels.
• Measure cross-platform campaigns, such as mobile-to-PC·console tracking (e.g., clicks on Tiktok ad placements leading to Steam installs).
• Integrate with Conversion APIs (CAPI) to send data signals for campaign optimization.

Recognizing the importance of partnering with an MMP that could meet all their requirements, Nexon sought expertise from Airbridge to gain the detailed insights and strategies necessary to scale their growth to its full potential.

Solutions

Measuring down-funnel in-game conversions on PC and console

Airbridge's PC and console measurement played a key role in optimizing Nexon's launch of The First Descendant, providing the team with critical down-funnel in-game metrics for both platforms. Tracking metrics that matter for monetization is especially important for free-to-pay games where performance marketing and accurate CPI or ROAS measurement can significantly impact the game's success. For Nexon's previously launched PC·console titles, the team could only track upper-funnel metrics such as CPC, CPM, CTR, and conversions from the "Play Free Now" CTA button on landing pages.

With Airbridge's measurement capabilities, they could now trace user flows from ad clicks to game downloads, in-game purchases, and conversions for both PC and console—all from a single dashboard. This insight into down-funnel metrics helped the team to quickly test new ad products and identify the best-performing ad channels, campaign types, and creatives, enabling them to invest in those that attract the most high-value players.

Armed with these down-funnel metrics, the team was able to identify top-performing ad products across channels such as Google, Meta, TikTok, X, Reddit, and Amazon Ads (Twitch) to maximize the impact of each ad creative. By optimizing both channels and creatives, Nexon's UA team showcased The First Descendant's standout gameplay to the right audience, driving it to #1 on Steam's Global Top Selling List within a month.

Powering cross-platform tracking from mobile to PC·console

The Nexon UA team wanted to test if mobile ads could drive users to PC and console games. For example, a user might come across a TikTok ad on their phone and then switch to their laptop or console to download the game. To test this, the team ran ads featuring cinematic trailers and user-generated content (UGC) on mobile platforms like TikTok for The First Descendant.

Using Airbridge's industry-leading attribution capabilities, Nexon tracked cross-platform events in real-time, from campaign and ad product levels down to specific creatives. With this level of granularity, Nexon's UA team could easily identify which mobile ads led to PC or console installs, allowing them to allocate their budget to high-performing ad channels and creatives for the best ROAS while cutting back on underperforming areas.

Leveraging Airbridge's support, the team was able to confirm that mobile ads can effectively drive users to PC and console games.

Boosting Campaign Optimization with Conversion APIs

Conversion APIs (CAPI) are powerful tools for marketers to help paid acquisition channels optimize towards the outcomes that matter for them. Since in-game conversions on PC and console can't be sent directly to ad platforms' servers via mobile postbacks, Nexon leveraged Airbridge to deliver these events through CAPI integrations. The team sent in-game events to ad servers using parameters like click IDs. With Airbridge's help, Nexon's UA team first sent the signal data to Airbridge's server, which then forwarded it to ad channels. CAPIs were used specifically for Meta and X for The First Descendant's UA campaign.

Alongside CAPIs, the team leveraged ad platform web pixels to send signal data from landing or gateway pages. By combining CAPIs with web pixels, Nexon's UA team successfully optimized events, increasing ROAS for each specific ad product.

"Airbridge's CAPI integrations were incredibly helpful. They bridged the gap between PC and console events and ad performance, leading to better campaign optimization and a higher ROAS."― Sunny Kim, UA Team Lead, Nexon

Results

As Nexon prepares to launch multiple new PC and console titles, the company is committed to making PC·console game marketing more data-driven and performance-focused.

Nexon will continue to work closely with the Airbridge team to improve PC and console tracking, mobile-to-PC and mobile-to-console cross-platform tracking, granular analysis, and CAPI integrations for major ad products.

Nexon and Airbridge are actively testing new solutions for tracking playable ads and measuring CTV campaign performance for PC and console games. These joint efforts aim to drive the success of Nexon's games and advance the industry toward more measurable and actionable PC·console marketing practices.