When a US-based app publisher SensusTech spotted a chance in the Eastern European mobile market, they knew they had to jump on it. Find out why and how they made it big.
Get Started
Join the Yandex Ad Network for high eCPMs and access to 300,000+ advertisers in Russian-speaking regions!
At first, it seemed like a real challenge. We were worried about the complexities of entering a local market, but we really needed those long-term users that stay in our apps.
Also, one big upside of the Russian market was that major brands and apps had left, making the market less competitive and easier to enter. We knew one thing for certain: without Google – the tool we were used to working with at the time – we needed help from someone with local expertise and experience. We just couldn’t afford to miss out on this opportunity.
Actually, we don’t spend any money on traffic acquisition from Russia, they come to our apps organically. We’ve heard about Unity and AppLovin for user acquisition, but we just haven’t seen the need for it. The keyword competition is so low after our competitors left the market that all we need to do is make sure that we monetize the traffic we end up with.
Not gonna lie, it’s a very nice situation. And judging by the dynamic over the last month, we can get to the top 3 search results in the AppStore within a week – that’s how easy it is right now. Basically, if you secure a strong ASO ranking in the stores, you can expect 100-200K monthly downloads for sure. It’s a long-term deal, too, because for multiplayer games like Fortnite each player you get will likely become a loyal customer for 1-3 years.
Yes, absolutely. With our Russian-speaking audience growing, we noticed it’s important to localize (translate and adapt) our games into Russian. App localization is super cheap, around $100-150 per app, and takes no more than a week. Not a huge investment for us, but very important for a positive user experience for our players.
Without local support, growing organic traffic felt nearly impossible. Because we’ve been in the mobile app business since 2016, we’ve known about the Yandex Advertising Network – it’s a local ad network that’s interconnected by an ecosystem of its own apps for daily use – like taxi, maps, food delivery, and others.
So that massive network of apps, advertising and monetization tools gives advertisers and app owners a lot of revenue opportunities. So, we decided to integrate the Yandex Ad Network into our apps. I won't get into the technical details — not because they're boring, but because it was pretty straightforward.
Partnering with local networks like Yandex made it easy for us to navigate the market and build a strong presence. I realized how powerful Yandex is when I saw it has an entire ecosystem of services that work together and uses AI to analyze data for your campaigns.
Choosing Russia as one of the main markets for monetization was a game-changer for us. Currently we have 250K monthly active users and solid revenue growth thanks to high engagement and widespread app use on affordable devices. Our projects on iOS and Android in Russia brought in 100-200K downloads every month. And despite our concerns, the payouts have been smooth, with stable financial flows.
One tip? Russia is a great market for app developers, it has a really large number of mobile users and an active gaming community. So my tip is to partner with a local network or service provider like Yandex, which will give you an edge due to less competition and knowledge of the local market.
