Online Solitaire is an online card games platform where you can join over 1 million players who play 4,000,000+ games of Solitaire, FreeCell, and Spider Solitaire each month.
The Brief
Prior to Freestar, Online Solitaire was using an ad management solution that wasn’t meeting their company goals. Online Solitaire needed a programmatic solution that could cater to their unique one page website. With such limited website real estate, Online Solitaire wanted to ensure their ad strategy would effectively monetize users with minimal impact to user experience.
Online Solitaire was looking for a solution that could address:
- Revenue – Online Solitaire wanted to lift revenue and performance by generating the most fill at the highest CPM rate on their ad inventory.
- Customer Support – Online Solitaire was looking for a hands-on Customer Success partner to help support their long-term ad strategy.
- Understanding the Impact of Changes – Built by a software developer new to ad tech, Online Solitaire wanted to work with an ad management solution who could be transparent, educate them and share the process of the ecosystem and the optimizations put in place to empower them.
"Switching to Freestar has effectively increased our ad revenue by 2000%. Working with such a hands-on team, we’re able to strategize different ways like new ad placements, SEO, refresh, etc. to monetize Online Solitaire effectively with minimal impact to UX."
"Switching to Freestar has effectively increased our ad revenue by 2000%. Working with such a hands-on team, we’re able to strategize different ways like new ad placements, SEO, refresh, etc. to monetize Online Solitaire effectively with minimal impact to UX."
The Approach
Online Solitaire was concerned about integrating a new ad monetization strategy. It can be nerve-wracking to make website changes that may have a negative impact on ad revenue. The integration of Freestar with Online Solitaire was quite smooth and Online Solitaire was able to maintain a great deal of control throughout the process.
Freestar identified areas to optimize for Online Solitaire, particularly focusing on SEO, page layout, ad placements and ad refresh. Freestar worked with Online Solitaire to shift the page layout to accommodate new placements and larger ad sizes in an effort to increase revenue. The larger ad sizes opened the door to testing a new video player. Freestar enabled Mantis demand network which generated higher CPMs. Freestar also enabled ad refresh and dynamic floor. The resulting performance data provided actionable insights to strategize further changes.
The Results
Through working with Freestar, Online Solitaire shifted into a great position for long-term growth; the site has seen significant increases to viewability, CPM, and yield. Q1 growth YoY has been notable as optimizations to improve ad products and behaviors have increased video revenue by 200%, daily AdSense revenue by 1000% and CPMs by 177%.
Online Solitaire was able to target areas to improve ad layout and SEO while Freestar worked simultaneously to add demand density through new strategic relationships, like the Mantis network. Overall, Online Solitaire has grown their ad monetization to a level that delivered significant results. Freestar continues to work closely with Online Solitaire to find new ways to optimize and stay ahead of industry changes.
