Subway Surfers · B2C · endless runner mobile game
Put a few hundred dollars behind posts already going viral
Tens of thousands of dollars total; helps hits spread to other platforms
What they did
What happened
- Stage
- scale
- Effort
- Tens of thousands of dollars in total
In their words
What Subscription Apps Can Learn About Monetization From Gaming — Mathias Gredal Nørvig, Subway Surfers
David BarnardWhat does that look like on the paid side and how has that evolved over the years? Are you putting money behind these UGC things? Are you paying for brand? Are you doing playable ads and things like that? What's the paid strategy behind the kind of brand and content flywheel?
Mathias Gredal NørvigThe short answer is that we spend nothing. We spend salaries-
Jacob EitingWow.
Mathias Gredal Nørvig... so it's all organic, but it's also fair to say that we use various small budgets to boost things when we see that they go viral. So we do amplify it, but we're talking tens of thousands of dollars. We're not talking hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. We're doing it very strategically, when we see that some content picks up, then we might put a few hundred dollars behind it.
Jacob EitingJust to create other opportunities for it to go viral, right? Get it front more people.
Mathias Gredal NørvigExactly. So it transcends different platforms, because of course if you see it on one platform, then we see that this content could perhaps ignite on other places.
Jacob EitingSo bring it over to Instagram and then spend on some ads to get it to go viral on that platform as well. That makes sense.
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More from this episode
- Move the game to a new city every three weeksGuest credits it with keeping the game fresh for 13 years; no numbers
- Keep the core game free and unlimited, and never lock content behind paymentTop-5 downloaded game every year since 2012; 1M installs a day
- Have a small in-house team post 5-10 videos a day riding pop culture trendsViral hits of 75M-100M views on salaries only; guest says it lifts app store featuring
- Let anyone use the game in their videos, and repost the cool onesCreators, including a K-pop star, make unpaid content; the game became a meme format
- Let players watch an ad for a reward instead of payingAds bring in 80-85% of revenue; still the top game in tier-2 and tier-3 countries
- Ask players' age, show kids only child-safe ads, and block gambling and gun adsVery few complaints across a billion ad impressions a month
- Swap characters with other hit games, with no money changing handsBrings back lapsed players and boosts both games; Crossy Road got the bigger bump
- Sell day and season passes next to the subscription for occasional usersHost cites it as working; no numbers
Tags: tiktok, instagram, boost-winners, cross-platform, small-budget