As you know, even though we are based in Silicon Valley, Chartboost has been a global company since the very beginning and Europe is home to many of our most beloved partners.

Companies like NeonPlay, NaturalMotion and First Touch Games (from the UK), Kiloo (from Denmark), Outfit7 (from Slovenia) and Supercell (from Finland) were early adopters of our cross-promotional tools and have been great ambassadors of Chartboost in their communities.

Today, we work with hundreds of game developers in Europe, including King, HandyGames, Wooga, Miniclip, SpilGames, Djinnworks, Fishlabs, Gameloft, Bulkypix, Stardoll and SocialPoint. In Russia and the Middle East, Chartboost has also become an important partner for leading companies like GameInsight and Dragonplay.

“Making a good game is just not enough. In today’s increasingly competitive market, nobody can afford to solely rely on virality anymore. Here at Fishlabs, we are constantly looking for partners whose proposition is focused on serving the developer and driving high-quality traffic instead of blind volume. Chartboost has been pioneering this space and continues to be at the core of our strategy for acquiring high-quality users.” Kai Hitzer from Fishlabs

I’ve had the pleasure to build and grow the relationships with many of these developers since I started at Chartboost. During these 2 years, I’ve had very early and very late calls. I’ve tried to visit them in their cities when I was in Europe or, in some cases, we’ve been lucky to shake hands in conferences.

Our brand new office in Amsterdam will definitely facilitate our catch-ups with all of you. From Amsterdam, we will better serve our European partners with closer account management and real-time support.

“We’ve partnered with Chartboost since the beginning of 2012 and their cross-promotion tools (implemented in the HayDay newspaper) have been an important element of our distribution strategies. We’re excited to see the company moving closer to our headquarters, which is also great news for the rest of the game developer community in Europe.” Erlend Christoffersen from Supercell

Amsterdam is the perfect location for Chartboost’s expansion plans. On one hand, the Netherlands has a vibrant and growing development community with big companies like Spil Games and indies like OrangePixel and CodeGlue. On the other hand, it’s a central location that will allow the Europe team to be closer to Chartboost partners and the main game development hubs (London, Paris, Hamburg-Berlin, Helsinki, TelAviv and Moscow).

And I couldn’t be more excited with the team. It will be led by Ilja Goossens, a veteran game developer. Ilja will be joined by Vincent and Milène to do account management. They will be complemented by Cori and Anish, 2 early members of the Chartboost team who are moving to Amsterdam for several months. 

If you’re in Europe, you will start hearing more and more from the Chartboost Europe team. In the meantime, feel free to visit us if you’re in Amsterdam or shoot us an email at europe@chartboost.com.

-Pepe

Every month, Chartboost rounds up its top performing creatives to give our developers an idea of what makes a good interstitial.  Each of the creatives highlighted below had a higher-than-average CTR during the month of April. As always, we recommend highlighting that your game is free, using a call to action (Get it Now!) and inserting the Apple branding for iOS games. Check them out below!

Chartboost celebrated ‘Take Your Kids to Work Day’ today by inviting some of our smallest Chartboosters in to the office for a day of fun! Facepainting, Draw-Your-Favorite-Game-App, and movies were only a few things on the agenda (and maybe a nap at the end of the day… for the parents). 

Dear Developers,

Earlier this year, Sean and I spent some time visiting some of our loved partners in their remote locations. Among them were Kiloo in Arhus (Denmark), Natural Motion in Oxford and Neon Play in Cirencester (UK).

That trip reminded us of one of the amazing things about this industry: developers are everywhere - and from anywhere they can reach an absolutely global audience.

You are all everywhere, but we were in San Francisco, and even if we live in a global interconnected world, there is no perfect skype connection that can replace a beer and a handshake, so we decided to change that.

Hello Amsterdam, Welcome Ilja!

The European team will be led by Ilja Goossens. As the founder of Gamundo and Virtual Fairground, Ilja made games for mobile and other platforms. Ilja shares our gaming DNA and will be joined by two of our earliest employees, Cori Savaiano and Anish Godhwani, plus two new Chartboosters making it a team of 5 on day one.

Coming Soon to a City Near You

We are planning tons of trips and visits to our partners, and we will also host some happy hours around the Barcelona for Gamelab in June, and Festival of Games this week.

In the meantime, all of you who pass by Amsterdam, feel free to crash our office for free beer and internet. And if you are there now, come join our launch party this Thursday 25th at 7pm at our office in Rokin 75, 4th floor. I’ll be there with Ilja and the team and would love to say hi :)

Europe, we look forward to growing bigger and better together!

maria

Developers,

Today we released version 3.2 of the Chartboost iOS SDK. This SDK does not collect UDID and will be required for anyone submitting to the App Store after May 1st per Apple’s guidelines. Please note that apps currently live with a Chartboost SDK will continue to work past this date and your SDK update can occur as part of your normal release cycle.

We’ve been preparing for this transition since last September when we released version 3.0.7 that collected both UDID and IFA. We strongly encourage developers who are using an older version (pre 3.0.7) of the SDK to upgrade as soon as possible. Developers who remain on these older versions could start seeing a negative impact on performance as IFA becomes the industry standard.

Questions? Shoot us a note at support@chartboost.com.

Spotting trends in the performance of your apps is crucial to improving your results in the long run.  With that in mind, we’re excited to release an update to our Apps Overview page in the Chartboost dashboard that makes it even easier to track your key metrics. Improvements include:

• Slick new interface: the graphics are more beautiful, lines are crisper easier to read, and it loads faster than the previous version.  You can now hover over the chart and the specific data point will show along with the date (example below).
• New platform view: the app tabs provide either a high level roll up at the platform level or you can segment by iOS/Android/Amazon for all your apps.    
• Easier navigation: the apps tabs enables developers with many apps to find the one they are looking much faster than before.  Hover over the app name to retrieve the App ID and Signature or click on the app name to reach its Edit App page.  

The example App Overview page below compares bootups and impressions delivered for all Android apps, with Feb 14th highlighted.  

Below is a sample platform view showing total apps, installs, revenue, and campaign data grouped by platform.

As always, ping us at feedback@chartboost.com with feedback on our new dashboard or other features you’d like to see us add in the future.

Chartboost is always looking for ways to help our partners maximize the reach and effectiveness of their campaigns. While each game is unique in the types of users it draws, there are certain creatives that are more effective than others in raising click through rates. 

Each of the interstitials highlighted below had a click through rate of at least 28% during the month of March. Read on for tips about what makes these creatives successful after the jump. 

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It’s the Monday after GDC week here in San Francisco, and everyone at Chartboost is still reeling from the whirlwind of meetings, presentations, and of course – parties.

While many companies opted for blow-out bashes at clubs and lounges, Chartboost decided to keep things close to home by co-hosting a party with Kiloo in our brand new SOMA offices. Complete with a Mario and Pac-Man themed photobooth, 100 bottles of Kiloo branded champagne, and awesome developers like nimblebit, GREE, Pocket Gems and Miniclip, things got a little crazy – in the best way possible!

Didn’t make it to Chartboost & Kiloo’s GDC extravaganza? Check out the photos below.

While there’s certainly no silver bullet to attacking the App Store, Ludia has shown great success by leveraging big brands to help break through the considerable noise digital storefronts bring. They’ve successfully launched games like Jurassic Park Builder, The Price is Right Slots, Family Feud and several others, each of which has risen to close to the top of the charts. Ludia’s success is predicated both on the following that these big brands garner and their ability to craft quality game experiences in these familiar worlds.

We sat down with François Daoud, VP of Marketing at Ludia, to discuss his thoughts on mobile games, how Ludia has been able to find success and why Chartboost is such a meaningful piece of their overall strategy.

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Each and every year the gaming universe descends upon the Moscone Center in San Francisco for GDC (Game Developer’s Conference). It brings in more than 25,000 attendees each year and, for that one week, is the hub of all things gaming. Being that Chartboost is headquartered in San Francisco, we thought it’d be appropriate to tell everyone some of the best things to do in what we all consider to be the greatest city in the world.

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