SkyVu uses mobile to boost Battle Bear App Store ranking

By Giselle Tsirulnik

March 15, 2010

Battle pink zombie teddy bears

SkyVu Pictures ran a mobile ad campaign to boost the ranking of the Battle Bears iPhone game.

The campaign ran via the AdMob mobile ad network. AdMob cost-per-click text ads were meant to drive downloads of the free application in a burst campaign, a high volume of click-to-download banner ads deployed in a short period of time.

"Our major update to Battle Bears was released during a very competitive Holiday season,” said Benjamin Vu, founder of SkyVu, Bellevue, CA. “With the help of AdMob, we launched a weekend burst campaign for Battle Bears, which catapulted both our paid and free versions back into the top 50.”

SkyVu Pictures is an animation studio specializing in computer-generated animation for commercials ads and entertainment projects.

Here is a screen grab of the ad, landing and installation page:

The goals of the campaign were to Push Battle Bears Free into the top 100 overall free applications.

SkyVu also aimed to reach the top 50 free games and generate increased sales of the paid application.

Thanks to the mobile ad campaign, daily download volume of the application increased by 1,000 percent.

Daily paid download volume of the application increased by 300 percent.
 
Overall the free application's ranking improved from below the top 150 to No. 59.

Additionally, the overall paid application is ranking improved from No. 102 to No. 29.

The games category free ranking improved from No. 147 to No. 31 and the games category paid ranking improved from No. 64 to No. 14

The paid application ranking reached No. 82 in the overall top-grossing application's list.

Battle Bears is a one-person shooter game that lets players control a renegade teddy bear positioned behind sandbags, shooting at approaching enemy teddy bears.

Oliver the teddy bear is stuck behind enemy lines and has to survive unending waves of adorable pink teddy bears wishing to hug him to death. Armed with his trusted rifle and a whole lot of attitude, Oliver blasts away armies of cute huggable bears and earns powerful weapons along the way.

Game play is quite simple and, according to reviews, is very fun.

Players just use one thumb to tap and fire. To pause, all they do is tilt the iPhone 90 degrees during game play.

Battle Bears was created by Mr. Vu and the team at SkyVu Pictures.

Here is a picture of Mr. Vu:

Here is a demo of the game:

"Battle Bears came to us with the goal of pushing their app into the Top 100 Free Apps, driving downloads and boosting the ranking of its paid version," said Johanna Werther, manager of product marketing at AdMob, San Mateo, CA. 

"By displaying Battle Bears ads within AdMob’s network of mobile applications, users had the opportunity to easily download the application and the results for Battle Bears were strong," she said.