Hike achieves 35 % lower CAC and 55 % higher ROAS

Founded in India, Hike is a gaming company transforming one of the country’s fastest-growing entertainment segments into a new economic ecosystem where players can play, earn, grow, and become genuine stakeholders in the networks they help build. 

One of Hike’s games, Bingo Champions, is a real-money bingo game built for the U.S. market. In a space crowded with deep-pocketed rivals, Paid Marketing Manager Christo Thomas Jose is charged with one goal: scale fast, but only with players who monetize.

The challenge

The team at Hike faced three core challenges that stood in the way of achieving app growth.

Running Apple Ads without the correct data left the team guessing. They could bid only on the handful of keywords suggested, so campaign growth hit a ceiling. Tracking fresh keyword ideas involved copying and pasting rankings into spreadsheets and hoping to spot a pattern in time.

It was the same story on the ASO side: regional storefronts used different search terms, yet the team had no single dashboard to monitor movements or craft local keyword sets. 

Competitive research was even tougher; there was no reliable way to see which creatives or keywords were driving rival apps up the charts. “This approach was slow, lacked actionable competitor insights, and often delayed our optimization cycles,” said Christo.

The solution

Christo utilized SearchAds.com’s Automations, building a ruleset that listens for every fluctuation in cost per acquisition, ROAS, and impression share. The system raised bids on winning keywords the moment a positive trend appears, paused under-performers before they drain budget, and redistributed spend to the ad groups that can scale profitably, all without waiting for a daily manual sweep. With alerts tied to custom thresholds, the team responded to seasonal surges or sudden drops in real-time, rather than after the fact.

In tandem with the Automations, the team benefited from SearchAds Intelligence to map the high-intent paid keywords. They saw which terms competitors bid on aggressively, how they do it, and where open gaps still exist, turning a guess-based process into a data-backed expansion plan.

ASO Intelligence, particularly Keyword Tracking and Competitor Keywords, provided the same clarity for organic storefronts. The team designed region-specific keyword sets, monitored daily rank movements, and pivoted campaigns the moment a term started to slip or a new opportunity arose. 

Finally, Ad Intelligence closed the loop on creative strategy by exposing the formats, hooks, and channels that push rival bingo titles up the charts. Those insights drove Bingo Champions’ own tests, ensuring that every asset shipped is informed by real market performance.

Christo also stated that, “MobileAction’s customer success managers operated as an extension of our user acquisition team, flagging seasonal keyword spikes, sharing best practices, and calling out optimization opportunities before they become urgent. Their responsiveness turned our efforts into a growth partnership.”

“MobileAction turned keyword guesswork into a data-driven engine. Our bids for Apple Ads campaigns adjust automatically, we see exactly what competitors are doing, and we’ve never been clearer on where to invest next.”

Christo Thomas Jose

Paid Marketing Manager

The results

Christo and the Hike team saw the improvements in their workflow and metrics in a very short time:

• -35% CAC & +55% ROAS. Automated bidding and sharper keyword focus drove acquisition costs down while quality went up.
• Broader keyword coverage. The team added profitable terms they’d never seen before, growing impression share without bloating spend.
• Faster cycles. What once took hours in spreadsheets now happens in minutes, allowing UA managers to iterate and test more frequently.

Looking ahead, Christo plans to tap into deeper market intelligence products to spot new U.S. states and holiday windows early, keeping Bingo Champions a step ahead in the app race.