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What is ASO?

App Store Optimization (ASO) refers to the process of improving the visibility of an app in stores such as Google Play and the App Store, as well as optimizing the metadata elements shown to users to increase conversion rates and drive more downloads.
This includes everything a user sees when they visit the store, such as screenshots, app icons, videos, and descriptions, as well as keyword search optimization and paid keyword ad elements.

Why do ASO?

1) Acquiring organic users + Reducing acquisition costs
ASO can be considered part of a mobile marketing strategy. As competition in the marketplace grows fiercer and advertising costs rise, marketers invest substantial effort to stabilize the cost of acquiring new users.
As of 2022, there are over 2 million iOS apps and 4 million on Google Play, making it increasingly unlikely for a game to be discovered in the store without any action. While many game companies are focusing on optimizing user acquisition (UA), the highest quality users are inherently those who organically download the game on their own.
ASO Optimization Strategies to Increase Mobile Game User Conversion Rates
Flamingo: The First Step Towards Creating a Better Game Development Environment
At Aloha Factory, through our Partners program, we engage with and learn from the stories and experiences of small game developers from around the world. We believe in discovering great games that have yet to be recognized and helping them find their way to a global audience. Our passion lies in working with developers who pour their energy into creating fun and innovative games, and we are committed to growing alongside them as we bring these games to the world.
What should we never overlook in the journey from developing a great game to reaching our players?
While immersing yourself in creating a game with an original concept and exciting ideas, there are critical factors that must be considered throughout the process. Often, developers can become so focused on the game’s development that they may miss the core element of fun that the game needs, or struggle with connecting the game to a viable monetization strategy, leading to difficulties in generating revenue. Additionally, a lack of attention to marketing investments can pose the risk of the game going unnoticed in the marketplace.
This is why it is crucial to continuously assess and review your product from the early stages of game development. Step-by-step evaluation ensures that every aspect of your game — from gameplay to monetization and marketability — aligns with creating a successful and well-received game.
Flamingo: The First Step Towards Creating a Better Game Development Environment
How Are UA Marketing Creatives Made? The Work of Aloha Factory’s Creative Team
In the highly competitive mobile game market, UA (User Acquisition) has become increasingly important for driving business growth. The ability to create high-quality creatives that lead to high user conversion, along with a detailed process that analyzes and improves marketing KPIs at every stage, is crucial.
While many companies now employ performance marketers to handle UA, it’s still rare to find organizations with an in-house creative team dedicated to producing UA-specific content. Many rely on marketing agencies or general creative teams. This is because producing effective UA creatives requires not only production skills but also a deep understanding of marketing.
At Aloha Factory, we’ve established an in-house creative team specifically focused on UA to ensure strategic responses to market challenges. So, what does Aloha Factory’s creative team do?

Video Production for New Projects

Before a game enters the operational stage, our team plans and produces creatives for marketability testing and initial marketing phases. During the early concept testing stage, the goal is to assess whether the game can attract user interest through test marketing. The creatives made during this phase highlight the game’s core mechanics, play style, and concept in a way that potential players can easily understand.
At this stage, it’s important not to overuse flashy video techniques or trendy elements to artificially boost engagement. Instead, the creative should focus on showcasing the game’s concept and basic gameplay to determine whether it has natural appeal. Based on the CPI (Cost per Install) and other performance metrics, we decide whether to proceed to the next phase of development.
This focused approach allows Aloha Factory to test the true marketability of a game early on, ensuring that the core concept itself is strong enough to resonate with users.
How Are UA Marketing Creatives Made? The Work of Aloha Factory’s Creative Team
What is a Postmortem?
A postmortem is the process of reflecting on and reviewing a project after its completion, with the aim of identifying lessons learned and seeking ways to improve future projects.
The importance of postmortems lies in revisiting the decisions made during the project's execution and assessing whether those decisions were sound and if there are areas for improvement. This reflective process serves as an opportunity for both individuals and the organization to grow.
The goal is not only for the team involved to learn from the experience but also to share the results with the entire organization, so the company can grow collectively through these lessons learned. This ideal approach allows the organization to continuously improve based on these reflections.
Aloha Factory conducts a postmortem process based on a structured game development process, which includes prototype implementation and market testing. Games that meet the necessary criteria move on to the operational development phase, while others are discontinued. Regardless of the outcome, Aloha emphasizes the importance of learning from each project, viewing the insights gained during these challenges as foundational for creating better games.
The postmortem process at Aloha Factory proceeds as follows:
Aloha Factory's Game Postmortem: Creating Games Loved for the Long Run

What is ROAS?

Even if you generate substantial revenue from acquired users, if the cost of acquiring those users exceeds the revenue, the campaign cannot be deemed successful. Therefore, to maintain sustainable game services and generate profit, you must continuously monitor ROAS, the most critical metric in UA (User Acquisition).
ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) is a key performance indicator in marketing, representing the revenue generated compared to the cost of advertising. In other words, it shows how much revenue you have earned relative to the ad spend on a particular campaign. For example, if Aloha Factory spent $1,000 on a marketing campaign for Dragon Island and generated $2,000 in revenue, the game's ROAS would be 200%.
By measuring ROAS at specific intervals, such as N days after app installation, you can identify the channels and campaigns that bring in high-value users and adjust campaign creatives and channel management accordingly.
Calculating ROAS
How to Improve Mobile Game Marketing Performance with ROAS Measurement: Aloha Factory Case Study
If you’re a game developer, you’ve likely heard about game publishing and the role of publishers. Game publishing is generally divided into two types: self-publishing, where the developer manages everything from development to distribution, marketing, business, and operations, and publishing through a third-party publisher.
At Aloha, we have our own in-house studio focused on game development, and we launch games through self-publishing in collaboration with our publishing business team. At the same time, we also serve as a publisher for games from other developers.
As the competition in the game market has become more intense, driven by lower barriers to entry and the ability to utilize various assets, simply releasing a game with natural user acquisition is no longer a guaranteed path to success, even if the game is fun and of high quality. As a result, the role of publishers, who possess professional expertise in game operations, has become crucial to success.
A game publisher collaborates with the developer to handle the overall business processes needed to successfully operate the game service. This includes running marketing campaigns, supporting game operations, and developing strategies for game monetization.

Selecting a Publisher to Enhance Your Game’s Business Quality

Depending on the size and resources of the development studio, different needs may arise, but having a professional publisher can significantly improve the business quality of a game and achieve higher performance levels. This is because publishers bring operational, business, and marketing expertise, which allows the developer to focus on improving the game’s quality, resulting in more stable services and higher long-term profits.
Choosing a Publisher to Enhance Your Game’s Business Quality
Data analytics is an essential part of creating and running a global mobile game. While there's a lot of flair and flair in game creation, not everything can be done by gut instinct and lead to a 100% successful outcome. That's why it's important to look at data, whether it's marketing metrics or problems in specific areas of the in-game, to objectively identify problems and draw insights on how to improve.
Many developers recognize the importance of using data to improve their games, but collecting data and analyzing it in detail to identify improvement points requires a different set of skills. In some cases, a phenomenon is easily understood from a single piece of data, but in most cases, insights are gained by segmenting the data and analyzing it comprehensively with various variables. Due to these barriers to entry, many developers build and launch games based on hunches, or fail to achieve meaningful results even after trying.
To solve these problems and help developers successfully launch their games in the global game market, Aloha Factory provides data analysis reports to developers who are testing with our partners. The report includes data such as marketing marketability test results, retention, session data, and bounce rate by stage as standard, according to the test stage of the current game, and provides detailed reports on what needs to be improved in the current game through the data of the comparison group.
With the Game Data Report, we provide customized analytics for your game. We segment and synthesize a variety of data to provide you with deeper insights, which you can then draw from. Most importantly, we give you a clear direction for improvement. Based on the data, we clearly present what needs to be improved at each stage and what goals need to be achieved. Woody, Data Analyst, Aloha Factory
How to improve your game's performance with data analytics reports: Aloha Factory Analytics Report
Optimizing game production process with Flamingo's Preset Report
Easy access to game data analysis and management: Introduction of Aloha Factory's FLAMINGO service
The entire value chain of game service consists of game production, marketing, monetization, and operation stages, and especially game production can be divided into more detailed processes. In order to successfully produce a game, it is essential to have not only a sense of "fun" for the game but also objective criteria that can analyze the game quantitatively. In other words, the appropriate harmony between the sensory aspect of fun (pre-feedback) that predicts user interest and the quantitative and objective indicators based on data for problem identification and improvement (post-feedback) is the most ideal form in the game production process.
However, most small and medium-sized developers who do not have infrastructure face difficulties in confirming such qualitative/quantitative feedback. Defining metrics to check what data to confirm, writing an event design document for how to collect data, and then requesting the development team to collect the event and testing it require many resources depending on know-how even in this process, even if the infrastructure is in place.
Even if the infrastructure is in place, selecting business intelligence tools and deriving insights for improving our game require additional know-how and capabilities. To derive insights, it is necessary to have a detailed understanding of where users are dropping out and how to increase revenue efficiency through detailed data analysis of game-specific data such as user indicators, retention, ARPU, stage drop-out rates, etc., which are the basics of game analysis.
The business capabilities required in the marketing, monetization, and operation stages after the production stage become even more challenging for small game developers. In particular, global game launching requires UA strategies that vary depending on country, media, and subject performance, and even more deeply, they act as considerations for user-specific quality.
Therefore, Aloha Factory has developed and operates the "FLAMINGO" service that can support the entire game service stage from game production to marketing, monetization, and operation, and is currently focusing on high-level development of data analysis and insight solutions in the game production stage.
Easy event collection with Aloha SDK installation Aloha Factory has developed the Aloha SDK to minimize the resources required for event design and logging and to quickly confirm data from internal/external production teams. By installing and configuring the SDK according to the guide and adding some events, you can collect data necessary for game analysis and improve the data generated in the game.
Easy access to game data analysis and management: Introduction of Aloha Factory's FLAMINGO service
In the previous post, we introduced a case study on how Aloha Factory achieves successful results in the global market through a systematic manufacturing process.
Aloha Factory goes through marketability test - fun QA process, which not only draws data-based insights in the initial game test process, but also plays the game from the user's point of view and discovers improvements in the game by expert group.
Aloha Factory recognizes the difficulties small studios face in the game development process, and expands and operates production support programs to not only internal studios but also external studios. As a publisher, in addition to monetization and marketing, we also provide Fun QA as a support program along with production guides through data analysis in terms of production.
What is Game Quality Test?
The game quality test refers to the process of checking and giving feedback in detail to the fun elements and emotional parts that actual users feel while playing the game. This process includes a review of game balance such as the speed of content consumption and difficulty, BM elements, and UI/UX of the game.
Above all, in order to create a foundation for a game that users can enjoy for a long time, it is important to solidify the user experience at the initial user entry point and expand the content. It can be seen as a task to create a favorable impression, positive image, and interest in the game in the early stages so that the content produced with great effort can reach as many users as possible.
Game Quality test that increases mobile game Retention: Aloha Factory's Fun QA process
By Aileen, Matthew
In the last post, we looked at retention indicators that are essential for improving game sales.
According to the Revenue Funnel, an increase in game sales is based on the basic premise of increasing the number of paying users or increasing the amount of payment. In this post, we introduce the concept of ARPU and ARPPU indicators, which are essential for game sales analysis, and how Aloha Factory uses these indicators.

A metric that measures the revenue efficiency of games: ARPU

ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) is an indicator of average revenue per user, and is the revenue per unit divided by the total number of users. In mobile games, it is mainly used as a case of ARPDAU to check the revenue per active user. ARPU is used as an important metric in all mobile games because it can determine how much revenue an average user earns over a given period of time. ARPU is usually affected by hardcore games such as RPG games showing higher numbers than light casual games. Casual is a game enjoyed by many users, but is less loyal and pays less than core games, while core games have a high proportion of users who are loyal and pay a lot.
ARPU during a user's life time means LTV (Life Time Value), which plays a key role in designing marketing costs as expected revenue per new user. It is important because it tells you how much revenue the channel that introduced users through UA activities generates and evaluates which channels are providing customers with the highest sales quality.
Guide to increasing game revenue through data analysis Part 3: ARPU, ARPPU
By Aileen, Matthew
In the previous post, we looked at the user metrics that should be examined to improve game revenue. As explained in the previous post, increasing paying users is the foundation of the Revenue Funnel to improve game revenue, and this requires an increase in traffic as a basic premise. And to improve traffic, a structure that leads to an increase in new user acquisition or retention rate of existing users should be formed. Retention is an essential metric that must be considered not only for games but for all services to be maintained. In this post, we introduce the basic concept of retention and how Aloha Factory utilizes this metric.

Metrics representing user engagement

Retention Retention is a metric that measures how many users visit the game again after installation. A high retention rate means that users regularly visit and play the game. It is an important metric for measuring not only the retention rate of naturally acquired users, but also the cost-effectiveness of marketing efforts. Without supporting the user's retention level, there may be no revenue metric that exceeds the ratio of the cost of marketing expenses.
Guide to Increasing Game Revenue through Data Analysis Part 2: Retention
Do you want to create a global hit game played by millions of users around the world?
We have a great idea, and we want to make this game and present it to users all over the world. A-Z of a game that must be accompanied in order to implement a game: implementing the basic flow of a game, adjusting balance, collecting events, fixing bugs, localization, etc., require considerable resources.
What actions can we take if the reaction of users is not what we expected when we introduce a game made with so many resources into the market? You can take the process of finding the cause of failure, drawing improvements, and analyzing it, but improving a game that's already advanced a lot is more resource-intensive and may require an entire change of direction.
For mobile casual games, it's important to go through lots of prototyping and iterative test cycles to find opportunities to discover the best potential and create games that can be enjoyed for a longer period of time.
In the case of our studio, where a small number of people develop in a fast cycle, we focus on improving the efficiency of game development by advancing the rapid development-testing-improvement cycle.
Quickly read market users and trends, focus more on developing highly marketable games, and seize the fun of areas that need improvement from the early stages to maximize performance and potential.
How Aloha Factory's production team makes a global hit game: Game production process Case study <Dragon island>
By Aileen, Matthew
To achieve success in a game, having exceptional ideas and creating fun gameplay are the most fundamental elements. However, it is difficult to predict whether implementing what we have thought of alone can lead the game to success.
To operate a game that is loved for a long time, it is important to provide elements of fun that allow users to come back during their journey of reaching and playing the game, and to measure and improve the game's ability to generate sustainable revenue efficiently.
In this post, we will provide a series of guides on the concept of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for improving game revenue and the basic analysis of these data!
To improve a game's revenue, an increase in paying users is necessary, and to increase paying users, it is necessary to increase traffic or increase the proportion of Purchasing Users (PU). In addition, to increase traffic, a structure that leads to an increase in user inflow or re-visitation (retention rate) should be formed. In this series, we will explain the basic analysis of user metrics to increase traffic.

KPI Metrics in the User Acquisition Stage: NRU

Guide to Increasing Game Revenue with Data Analysis Part 1: User Metrics
After 3 years since the establishment of Aloha Factory, CEO Lee Ho-jin shares the story of Aloha Factory, which has gone through numerous journeys with many colleagues to release over 20 game types and more than 150 prototypes, starting with hyper-casual games.
"The reason for Aloha Factory's existence, which could be considered its mission, is to 'create a world of happiness through contents.' We define happiness as something that can be remembered and cherished even after a long time has passed. We hope that the contents we create, service, and support at Aloha Factory can play that role."
Q. Nice to meet you, Ho-jin! Could you introduce yourself?
Hello, I am Matthew (Lee Ho-jin), the CEO of Aloha Factory. Nice to meet you.
Q. I'm curious about what motivated you to start Aloha Factory.
I started my first career in a startup. Even though I didn't know anything at the time, the experience of doing something myself hit me hard. Since then, I have had a strong desire to do something I can create with like-minded people.
What the CEO Says About Aloha Factory
On the 16th, Aloha Factory announced that it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Kyungil Game Academy to foster global game development talent.
The Kyungil Game Academy provides practical job training with a focus on job competency. Through this collaboration, they plan to prepare the entire process from project production to marketing testing and monetization.
Aloha Factory's hyper-casual game "Kiss in Public," which was released in August, recorded 5 million downloads worldwide and achieved the top spot on the U.S. Google Play Arcade game chart and third place in the overall game chart.
Choi Young-jin, Aloha Factory's business PM, said, "Through this collaboration, we hope to discover the potential to develop competitive games in the global market in Korea and significantly lower the entry barriers to game development experience through the hyper-casual genre." He added, "We also want to expand the Aloha membership to provide more opportunities for individual developers and early-stage development companies to launch globally."
Aloha Factory-Gyeongil Game Academy, Talent Development Agreement
Alloha Factory's new mobile game 'Dragon Island' achieves 3 million downloads
Alloha Factory has announced that its new mobile game 'Dragon Island' has achieved a total of 3 million global downloads.
Dragon Island is a hyper-casual game that combines the characteristics of arcade and idle genres, where players collect various resources, expand their island, and raise dragons.
Hyper-casual games are a genre that serves many users through simple gameplay and is based on an advertising revenue model, mainly in the global market.
Recently, games that combine the profitability of paid items with simple gameplay have been gaining attention within the hyper-casual genre. Alloha Factory's Dragon Island game, which also considers paid item sales, is one such game.
PD Lee Soo-min, in charge of Dragon Island, said, "We focused on capturing both the emotional aspect that users feel when raising dragons and the gameplay during the process." He also stated that they plan to continue making games that maintain their existing casual feel and are loved by users for a long time.
Alloha Factory CEO Lee Ho-jin said, "We hope to see many game development companies leading the trend of the global casual market in Korea as well." He also said, "Alloha Factory will become a mobile game company that can lead the hyper-casual game market, as evidenced by achieving 3 million downloads of Dragon Island in a short period of time."
Alloha Factory's new mobile game 'Dragon Island' achieves 3 million downloads
Game development and publishing company Aloha Factory (CEO Lee Ho-jin), a resident company of the CKL Enterprise Support Center of the Korea Creative Content Agency, has been accelerating its efforts to enter the global market through collaboration with small external development teams, along with the expansion of its internal production studio, after attracting investment earlier this year.
Aloha Factory is a developer and publisher of hyper-casual genre games that anyone can easily access and enjoy in a short amount of time. The company has accumulated experience through game services such as "Block Puzzle 1010!" and "Draw Hammer."
"Block Puzzle 1010!" is a hyper-casual puzzle game genre that requires simple rules but strategic gameplay. It has been recognized for its gameplay, being selected for Google's new game feature and signing overseas publishing contracts.
"Draw Hammer" is a hyper-casual arcade game that utilizes a hammer concept that can express drawing mechanics well. It has gained popularity to the point where various review videos have been uploaded to domestic and overseas YouTube channels due to its addictive and unique concept. "Draw Hammer" has also been selected for Google's new game feature and achieved the number one popularity in the Google Arcade game category in overseas countries.
Based on its game production process and publishing experience so far, Aloha Factory recently started Aloha Factory Partners and is supporting the entire process, from idea planning to monetization, for small domestic development companies.
CEO Lee Ho-jin said, "The growth of the hyper-casual market has lowered the barriers to entry for game production and global expansion," and added, "We will not only expand our internal studio but also strengthen our role in supporting the growth of small domestic development companies."
Aloha Factory has recently signed agreements for joint development with small production teams and studios and is conducting intense testing to create global mega-hit games.
Alloha Factory challenges the global market with hyper-casual games.
'Dragon Island' climbs to the top of the Vietnam free game chart with UA monetization campaign in collaboration with Mintegral

Dragon Island

Dragon Island, one of Korea's arcade/hyper-casual games, has become a global popular game, gaining popularity in the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as Asia-Pacific, thanks to the UA (user acquisition)/monetization campaign in collaboration with Mintegral.
Dragon Island, a mobile game developed by Aloha Factory, a Korean mobile game company that has achieved over 3 million game downloads worldwide, explores Dragon Island and collects various resources necessary to raise dragons, hatch them with harvested resources, and evolve them into Alpha Dragons.

How did 'Dragon Island' successfully enter the global market?

'Dragon Island' climbs to the top of the Vietnam free game chart with UA monetization campaign in collaboration with Mintegral
Game developer 'Aloha Factory' completes 1.4 billion won investment
Participation from Hantoo Partners-Creat Ventures, POSCO Tech Investment, and others... "Next stage of investment planned for next year"
Game developer 'Aloha Factory' completes 1.4 billion won investment
Casual game developer Aloha Factory attracts 6 billion won in Series A investment
Aloha Factory, a casual game developer, announced on the 11th that it has attracted 6 billion won in Series A investment.
In this investment round, LB Investment led the way, with existing investors Korea Investment Partners, KReator Ventures, and POSCO Technology Investment also participating.
Aloha Factory is a startup that develops hyper-casual games. Its games are characterized by gameplay that is easy and intuitive, making them playable by anyone regardless of age or gender.
Last August, Aloha Factory released the game 'Kiss in Public' and recorded a cumulative 10 million downloads. In March of this year, it also achieved 4 million downloads with the release of 'Dragon Island,' an arcade game for children. Recently, it has been expanding its genre by releasing 'Monster House,' a defense genre game.
Park Ji-hyeong, senior inspector at LB Investment, said, "Aloha Factory is a company that fits recent global hybrid casual market trends," and added, "With its innovative game planning and fast execution, we expect it to grow significantly in the future."
Aloha Factory CEO Lee Ho-jin said, "Our vision is to create games that are loved by many people for a long time," and added, "We have advanced the game production process and accumulated know-how by creating over 150 prototypes and releasing more than 20 mobile casual games."
Casual game developer Aloha Factory attracts 6 billion won in Series A investment
Alloha Factory aims to be a global hyper-casual game company.
Mobile games require a lot of development time and resources for manpower such as development, design, and sound, making them content that costs a lot to develop. However, most games are free to download, so how do developers recoup their development costs and generate profits? Of course, many games generate significant revenue by monetizing in-game content purchases, but many games also heavily rely on advertising revenue.
Alloha Factory CEO Lee Ho-jin explained that the hyper-casual genre's interstitial ads (mid-game ads) market has grown significantly worldwide since 2018, moving away from the traditional reward-based ad model. Alloha Factory has been specializing in developing and publishing hyper-casual games while paying attention to these changing advertising markets.
By releasing hyper-casual games such as Block Puzzle 1010! and Draw Hammer, which were selected for Google Featured and received a lot of attention from overseas gamers, Alloha Factory has accumulated global know-how. Based on this experience, they released Kiss in Public in August 2021, which took advantage of the hyper-casual genre's characteristics. Kiss in Public achieved 4 million downloads in just two months after its release and became the number one arcade game and the third overall game in the US Google Play Store, receiving great popularity overseas.
CEO Lee Ho-jin focused on developing games that anyone can easily play and targeting the global market, moving away from the competition-centered domestic game market. He believed that if they had expertise in popular games for global users, they could differentiate themselves from numerous domestic game companies. As a differentiated studio, they aimed to secure excellent domestic talent and ultimately develop games that are loved by the most people worldwide.
This mission of Alloha Factory is also actively inspiring and involving employees within the company. Alloha Factory's Blockbuster Studio Kang Gun-woo PM stated that he wants to create games that provide deep and diverse enjoyment, so people can play them for a long time and remember them.
Alloha Factory aims to be a global hyper-casual game company.