AIP 402: $APE as a Fuel for Mobile Growth to Help Make Dookey Dash a #1 Hit Game
Proposal Category
Ecosystem Fund Allocation
Team Description
Caldie - has held pivotal UA roles including Chief Revenue Officer at Ketchapp (acquired by Ubisoft), Vice President of Marketing at Dots (acquired by Take-Two), and General Manager at KIXEYE (acquired by Stillfront), and CEO at Superfine AI, he has achieved over 2 billion downloads with dozens of #1 hit games on iOS and Android.
Squiddy - The Community Maestro of web3 gaming. Served as a core team member for Champions Ascension, playing a huge role in the spin off from Jam City into Plai Labs. Former Community Manager for NBA Top Shot. Currently VP of Culture at Superfine, and BAYC member since June 2021. Recently asked to join the first interaction of Yuga Gaming Council.
Alex - Alex Paley is a co-founder of Faraway. Faraway is best known as the studio behind Serum City, Dookey Dash: Unclogged, Mini Royale: Nations, and Legends of the Mara: Mobile. Faraway is proud to be supported by some of the best web3 investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, a16z, Sequoia, Pantera Capital, among others. Prior to founding Faraway with his long-time co-founder, Dennis Zdonov, he was VP of Product at Scopely and Head of Studio at Glu Mobile.
Advisors:
Chris Akhavan - Chris is the Chief Gaming Officer at Magic Eden, a prominent web3/NFT marketplace. He has a rich background in the gaming industry, including pivotal roles at Glu Mobile, where he played a crucial part in their transformation from a struggling company to a leading mobile free-to-play studio acquired by Electronic Arts for $2.4B. Chris also worked at Tapjoy, a mobile gaming startup that reached over a billion devices and was acquired by ironSource/Unity for $400M.
Nebojsa Radovic - Nebo is a seasoned mobile marketing professional with leadership roles in entertainment and technology. He’s currently the Senior Director of User Acquisition at Zynga, a top-grossing mobile game developer. Before Zynga, he contributed to the success of N3TWORK, MZ, and Nordeus, driving hundreds of millions of app installs. Nordeus and MZ had apps ranked in the top 10 grossing charts in over 100 global markets on Android and iOS platforms.
Eric Seufert - Eric is a User Acquisition veteran who currently serves as the General Partner at Heracles Capital, a pre-seed stage venture capital fund dedicated to the future of mobile. With a background in both consulting and authorship, Eric provides strategic guidance to media and tech companies as a Management Consultant at Heracles Media. His book, “Freemium Economics,” published by Elsevier in 2014, is considered foundational educational material for mobile marketing teams worldwide. Eric’s career includes impactful roles such as Head of Platform at N3TWORK, Head of Marketing at Wooga, and leadership in user acquisition at Rovio Entertainment, the creators of Angry Birds, highlighting his expertise in mobile marketing and strategic insights that establish him as a significant presence in the industry.
Abstract
Imagine $APE as fuel for growth to generate more demand for $APE. Presented by a team with a proven track record of launching dozens of chart-topping games like 2048 and Two Dots, this proposal seeks to help propel the Apecoin DAO as a marketing tool to not only encourage more games to implement $APE in their ecosystem, but to also market the games directly to the masses. For its first iteration, this proposal is set to help propel “Dookey Dash” to a #1 hit mobile game. By achieving this milestone, we aspire to amplify global awareness of $APE, and create a precedent for how $APE, through targeted ad spend across major ad networks, can fuel new demand for $APE in an ROI positive manner.
We are $APE holders and we want to see new demand for $APE. It is in the DAO’s benefit for there to be a #1 hit mobile game that is utilizing $APE to be exposed to a wider audience of gamers, and burst outside of our current bubble. The more new players exposed to games involving $APE, the more new demand there will be for $APE. This will hopefully serve as a great use case to not only provide DAO marketing support for games utilizing $APE in their ecosystem, but also act another way to encourage games to implement $APE into their game.
Superfine, a Made By Apes Company, is an AI growth tool for games to maximize their UA. It allows the capability to spend $APE across all ad networks simultaneously, focusing on maximizing your goals, be it maximum installs, lower CPA, or ROAS (return on ad spend). The game is able to determine which player qualifications it wants to target (by country, age, etc) and will only hit the bid if it fits into the desired goal. This AIP is also represented by Faraway, the studio behind Dookey Dash, which has also produced another game, Serum City, that implements $APE and supports the ecosystem.
Benefit to APECOIN Ecosystem
The proposal aligns with the $APE Community’s mission, specifically with its boldness and transparency. We want to reach traditional gamers, and with Dookey Dash: Unclogged being released, we feel like we can provide the DAO with a great opportunity for $APE to reach a more broad audience. With $APE at the center of the economy for the game, and the game being incredibly popular from the first time around, we feel like this could do wonders for the exposure of the DAO. The more people that download Dookey Dash, the more people that are exposed to $APE. Not only does this proposal serve an immediate impact, but it also sets the stage to serve as a marketing platform as additional mobile games come to the DAO seeking performance marketing support.
Steps To Implement and Timeline
Quite simple! If the AIP passes, the funds will be sent to a Superfine wallet, and 100% of those funds will go to campaigns dedicated to the growth of Dookey Dash. Superfine will not charge any fees whatsoever for any services rendered and has the team in place to manage the campaigns. 100% of the funds will go towards the campaigns.
We will create a marketing plan to deliver one week from when the AIP is formally approved by the DAO, then run test campaigns across selected major ad networks (TikTok, Instagram, etc) starting the day that Dookey Dash is formally launched. We would run the campaign for one month. At that time, we would provide a full report on the campaign with results, which ad networks worked best and had the best results, etc., to the DAO. The testing phase is critical for testing marketing creative, which channels work best, and testing game KPIs before a global launch.
In terms of marketing this game, this involves setting desired CPI (cost per install) to maximize the budget amongst traditional ad networks such as Tik Tok, Instagram, Meta, etc. Those targeted ads you get while scrolling social media? Imagine a plethora of new players seeing Dookey Dash for the first time, with the allure of great game play and huge prizes they could win by downloading and playing the game, which would be exposing more gamers to the $APE ecosystem. We do this using the Superfine platform, which as mentioned, is connected to 30+ traditional ad networks that mobile games use to attract new users.
We upload the creative that the Superfine team will build in house using creative provided by Faraway Labs and gameplay footage, and then run campaigns that a User Acquisition Manager would do. Traditionally, mobile gaming companies have people where their only job is to run ad campaigns on said ad networks. The initial campaign will run for one month when Dookey Dash launches.
Overall Cost
We are seeking $150,000 in $APE from the DAO, essentially serving as a grant from the DAO to support the growth of Dookey Dash, the first potential mainstream mobile game that implements $APE. Every dollar will be used to market Dookey Dash and discover which creatives, bidding strategies, and targeting parameters work to scale most effectively, with full transparency provided to the DAO. These tests are incredibly important to the success of a mobile launch, and the DAO would be able to play a key role in supporting these efforts.
Conclusion
Thank you for taking the time to read and review our AIP, and look forward to the discussion that ensues. We want what is best for the DAO and for $APE, and this proposal represents us playing our part in our area of expertise to properly advertise games on traditional ad networks, with the intention of Superfine becoming an additional marketing arm to the $APE DAO to support games, both current and future, utilizing $APE in their ecosystem.
