Twin Harbour targets lapsed players as user acquisition costs rise

Twin Harbour Interactive began investing in re-engagement approximately 18 months ago, senior growth marketing manager Faisal Nimri said, as rising user-acquisition costs made attracting new players harder. The studio behind Supremacy 1914, Call of War 1942, World War 3 and Warhammer 40,000 now looks to re-engage lapsed players from its established mid-core strategy audience.

Historically, Twin Harbour concentrated on user acquisition, or UA, rather than reaching people who had already left. Its years of live operation and large pool of mid-core strategy players made retargeting a natural fit, Nimri said, although re-engagement remains new at the company.

Nimri said: “As CPIs are getting higher and higher, UA is becoming more challenging.”

What does re-engagement change for Twin Harbour?

For Twin Harbour, the change creates a second acquisition route that can be measured against incremental revenue rather than assumed from familiar players and attribution reports. The company can advertise to previous users, retain a control group and determine whether those campaigns produce additional spending.

That gives its marketing team a more disciplined way to judge re-engagement. The studio does not have to treat every returning player as a success simply because an ad generated a click.

Measuring revenue, not clicks

Twin Harbour uses incrementality testing to compare an exposed audience with a control group, using a method Nimri likens to a pharmaceutical trial. Typically, 80% of the audience sees the advertising, while 20% does not, allowing the studio to measure the revenue difference between the groups.

Standard attribution identifies who clicked and where the click originated. Incrementality testing instead asks whether the advertising changed player behavior and generated additional revenue.

The studio considered three ways to run those tests:

• Testing internally would have required significant team resources.
• A retargeting partner’s free measurement would have limited comparisons between channels.
• A third-party tool offered a more complete measurement option.

Twin Harbour selected AppsFlyer’s incrementality product because AppsFlyer already held the relevant audiences and integrations needed for the work.

Learning from a failed first test

“The first test was a failure. It didn't generate any uplift,” Nimri said. The company initially targeted too broad an audience, but that miss produced a clear operational lesson: retargeting campaigns need distinct segments before the studio can judge their performance reliably.

After the change, Twin Harbour separates non-paying users from paying users. It then divides paying users into high-, mid- and low-spender groups, allowing the team to compare more precise audience treatments rather than treating every former player as the same prospect.

Incrementality testing became a regular practice following that segmentation work. Nimri also warned against recycling user-acquisition creative for retargeting, because lapsed players already know the games and need a reason to return or try something new.

Comparing channels and timing campaigns

Partner comparisons use another split: two channels each receive 40% of a segment, while the remaining 20% serves as the control group. After three to four weeks, Twin Harbour takes the better-performing channel and tests it against a new challenger.

Larger audiences can support three channels simultaneously, giving the team more opportunities to identify a partner that produces measurable incremental revenue. Smaller tests still provide a direct comparison between two active channels and their shared control group.

Timing matters as much as segmentation. Nimri said re-engagement works best when paired with a major update, such as a new hero, map or game mode. Seasonal periods create another opening: Christmas in the US and Europe, and Ramadan and Eid across the MENA region.

During those periods, players have more time. An advertisement can remind them of a game they previously played, then give them a new reason to return.

A smaller studio’s starting plan

The other common mistake is impatience. Reaching statistical significance can take time, and Nimri said campaigns sometimes need to remain active for an extra week. Studios that end a test too early risk reading normal revenue variation as a campaign result.

For smaller studios, Nimri recommends allocating 5% to 10% of an existing UA budget to retargeting. He also advises changing the standard 80/20 test split to 50/50, which reaches statistical significance faster while shortening testing from approximately four weeks to two and reducing costs.

For studios in Amman, he suggests running an initial test during Ramadan and scaling investment only if the results are positive. This approach treats re-engagement as a measured experiment rather than a wholesale change to acquisition spending.

Nimri is scheduled to speak at PGC Jordan next week in “A Guide to Re-Engagement and Incrementality Testing,” with tickets available. The market signal worth watching is whether segmented retargeting produces repeatable uplift around major updates, rather than merely attracting players who might have returned anyway.