Recently, Etheria: Restart, developed by XD Entertainment and built on Unreal Engine, officially launched worldwide.

As a visually stunning anime-style team-based RPG, the game quickly broke into the top three on the U.S. iOS free game charts—an impressive feat for a new IP in a competitive category.

In this article, we analyze Etheria: Restart’s global user acquisition strategy based on data from AppGrowing.

Advertising Overview

According to AppGrowing, Etheria: Restart ran a total of 1,070 ads across 41 regions and 7 major ad platforms.

• Rewarded Video emerged as the dominant ad format, accounting for nearly 50% of all placements.

• This was followed by In-Feed Ads, which made up more than 30%.

In terms of creative formats, the campaign leaned heavily on video assets, with over 96% of all creatives being video-based:

• Standard video accounted for nearly 92%

• Vertical video made up about 4%

Ad Volume Trends

The game began limited ad testing in early April, with daily creatives capped at under 30 groups.

In early May, roughly a month ahead of its global launch, ad volume ramped up rapidly, peaking at nearly 500 groups per day.

Surprisingly, in the final days leading up to launch, ad spend was dialed back, with daily ad volume dropping below 200 groups.

Preferred Ad Platform

Etheria: Restart relied primarily on Google Ads, which accounted for 65% of its total media spend.
Meta Ads came in second, contributing about 33% of the campaign’s total ad volume.

Conclusion

AppGrowing’s analysis reveals that Etheria: Restart deployed a nuanced and diversified advertising strategy—tailoring its creatives and media mix to drive impact across different regions and platforms.

We hope this case study offers useful insights for marketers and publishers aiming to refine their own global UA strategies. In a landscape where user acquisition is increasingly data-driven and competitive, learning from the best-performing campaigns can make all the difference.