How Bravestars Games’ app marketing playbook drove 5X higher conversion rates

In Bravestars Games’ 2026 playbook for increasing app user engagement, every seasonal moment is fair game.

Easter bunnies bearing eggs. Pineapples soaking in Thailand’s Songkran Festival. Cherry blossoms heralding the Golden Week holidays. Those Live Operations (LiveOps) are among the vast array of festive gaming experiences that the Vietnam app developer is rolling out across its global portfolio.

From Fruit Merge to Yarn Fever Unravel Puzzle, Bravestars’ gaming titles are rapidly ramping up LiveOps. Those continuous updates to the apps’ content, events, and features are designed to keep players coming back long after the initial download.

Bravestars’ moves may look like what its peers are doing: The world’s 130 top mobile gaming apps have increased average monthly LiveOps events by 18% to 89 in 2025, App Magic reports.

But one ace card sets its LiveOps strategy apart: a three-part playbook for applying the right game content, app marketing solutions, and AI-powered creative workflows to grow customer lifetime value (LTV). And it’s already reaping breakthrough results, including 5X higher conversion rates for Halloween LiveOps events.

Here are the three ways Bravestars is using Google’s data-led insights and AI-powered solutions to keep its app experiences always in-season and enticing for users.

Synchronise LiveOps content and experiences to satisfy users

Bravestars became a leading developer by amassing more than 1 billion downloads across 400 apps. But as global app downloads declined in recent years, it needed to pivot to a new growth engine: LiveOps events and marketing that are seamlessly coordinated to drive in-app purchases (IAP).

Working with Google’s International Growth Team and Account Managers, Bravestars devised a new playbook for scaling LiveOps during seasonal windows. Winning those moments is critical to capturing gaming IAP revenue growth, which rose 1.3% globally in 2025, according to Sensor Tower’s 2026 report.

Ahead of Halloween 2025, Bravestars deployed the playbook, starting with a two-pronged strategy for creative synchronisation.

1. Ensure visual consistency by aligning seasonal assets across touchpoints

Google’s research shows that visual inconsistency can undermine LiveOps events. For instance, an app may feature seasonal elements in-game, but not in ads. That can cause friction across user journeys, lowering conversion rates (CVR) and returns on ad spend (ROAS).

So Bravestars revamped its creative strategy to harmonise everything from the in-game atmosphere, characters and backgrounds, to ad creatives and store pages.

And to scale this strategy efficiently across markets and seasonal moments, it harnessed Nano Banana. The AI-powered model generated end-to-end matching images that aligned with seasonal themes. That amplified the LiveOps’ seasonal resonance, improving user retention.

2. Customise seasonal ad messaging for myriad audiences

Tapping Google’s insights into user preferences, Bravestars tailored synchronised LiveOps experiences and ads for different audience segments. Here are three examples from its Halloween app campaigns:

• For women aged 35 and above: Yarn Fever created a cozy atmosphere for players to unravel knitted ghosts and pumpkins. The ad message: “It’s a festive treat for your brain, with none of the scary tricks.”
• Young adults: Fruit Merge unveiled a fast-paced, monster-matching game for Halloween parties. The ad invitation: “Challenge your friends to a spooky Pumpkin Merge-Off.”
• Busy parents and professionals: Bravestars’ fun logic games offered a quick, rewarding work break. The ad treat: “Sharpen your mind with a five-minute Halloween brain teaser.”

Optimise App marketing for ROAS using the right ad solutions

With a synchronised content strategy in place, Bravestars was ready for part two of its playbook: Maximise engagement and results for global app campaigns during Halloween and beyond.

To acquire users with high LTV, Bravestars tapped App campaigns with Target ROAS, an AI-powered bidding strategy that maximises returns. It also used Playable ads that let potential customers try out games before downloading, increasing conversions while boosting overall ROAS.

And by advertising limited-time promotional bundles, Bravestars incentivised players to spend more time in-game and make purchases during seasonal moments.

Optimising LiveOps content and app campaigns has delivered impressive results. During Halloween, for example, CVR and click-through rates soared, while cost per install dropped as much as 60%.

Localise creatives efficiently using AI-powered workflows

The global Halloween campaign’s success didn’t end there. Bravestars went on to apply its learnings and AI-powered workflows to scale user engagement in-market across more seasonal moments, from Lunar New Year to Halloween 2026.

For part three of its playbook, Bravestars used the following AI-powered solutions:

• Nano Banana and Google Ads tools for high-quality, localised asset generation. That boosted Bravestars’ creative variety and velocity so effectively that CVR soared 50%, compared to traditional workflows.
• Testing on Google Play Console to find the top-performing creatives. A/B tests of seasonal elements allowed Bravestars to optimise video, text, and Playable ad assets for diverse audiences. Additionally, Store listing experiments helped it to better understand how users in different markets respond to ad variations, and optimise ad delivery accordingly.
• Google Ads campaigns that target tiered markets. By using machine learning to analyse millions of signals, including users’ settings and behaviours, the campaigns efficiently engaged the right intended audiences via ad assets that best matched their local language and content preferences.

Bravestars is also collaborating with Google to finetune localisation tactics. That ranges from identifying the right LiveOps launch timings, to customising seasonal elements that resonate best with its 180 million monthly active users across about 70 markets.

Those efforts are gaining traction. Yen Le, Bravestars Games’ user acquisition manager, credits the “invaluable insights provided by Google” for helping it to optimise localisation strategies during major seasonal events.

Bravestars’ playbook results show how game developers can be rewarded for adopting a synchronised, optimised, and localised LiveOps strategy. By harnessing Google AI in your app marketing, every seasonal moment can be a lucrative opportunity to grow user engagement and returns.