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Case Study
How WorldGuessr Nearly Doubled Its CPM by Partnering with Playwire
WorldGuessr's CPM sat in the same narrow band for five months with its previous provider. On Playwire's RAMP Platform, its most conservative month came in 89% higher, with viewability holding at 83%.
- Browser geography game
- Weekday-heavy traffic
- RAMP Platform
What changed
CPM
October against the previous provider's five-month average
Revenue
September against the old stack's best month, on roughly 29% fewer impressions
Viewability
Held across the full Playwire period
Previous provider: January to May. Playwire: August 17 to October 27. Publisher data.
The short version
- 89% higher CPM: measured against the previous provider's five-month average.
- 55% more revenue: publisher earned 55% more total revenue on roughly 29% fewer impressions.
- 83% viewability: sustained across the entire Playwire period.
About the publisher
Worldguessr
WorldGuessr is a free, browser-based geography guessing game that drops players into a random location and asks them to pin it on a map. Gautam Sudarshan Anand Viruthagiri runs the site, handling development and monetization himself.
Traffic skews hard toward weekdays. Weekday impressions run roughly four times weekend volume.
The problem
A CPM That Stopped Moving
Before RAMP, WorldGuessr monetized through another provider. The rates were stable, which sounds fine until you look at the trend line: across five consecutive months, CPM never broke out of a band about 20% wide from worst month to best. Seasonality barely moved it. The ceiling was obvious.
Gautam's ask was rate. He came to us to find out whether a different demand stack would pay more for the same inventory.
Going Live
Simple Setup, Straightforward Approval
Gautam runs multiple monetization providers, so he has a clear basis for comparison on how painful an integration can get. He worked with Louis on our partner team to get WorldGuessr live on RAMP.
The technical lift was minimal, and the approval moved without the back-and-forth he was used to elsewhere.
It was very simple to set up. I have worked with multiple providers, and the approval process here was probably the best one. It was really straightforward.
The Outcome
CPM Up 89% in the Most Conservative Month
October, the most conservative month in the data set, came in 89% above the previous provider's average. Measured across the full period from August 17 to October 27, the gap widens to 115%.
Neither number leans on a seasonality trick. The previous provider's months run January through May, typically the weakest stretch of the year for CPMs, and WorldGuessr's August launch weeks carried an inflated rate. October strips out both and still lands at close to double the old rate.
On Playwire I'm consistently getting anywhere from the same rate up to much higher. Depending on the day, it's a 50% to almost 2x improvement.
Quality
Viewability Held at 83%
Rate increases mean nothing if they come from stuffing the page or selling to demand nobody wants to sit next to. Viewability on WorldGuessr held at 83% across the full period, inside the 70-90% band we target for sustainable yield.
The revenue gain tracks the same story. September beat the old stack's best month by 55% on roughly 29% fewer impressions, so the lift came out of rate.
Support
Faster Support and Direct Snowflake Access
If I have any questions or concerns with the system, I can just email the team and they respond within a day.
The team has given me Snowflake data access recently, and that's pretty cool. I can query data whenever and however I want.
WorldGuessr didn't change its traffic. It changed who was selling its inventory, and nearly doubled its CPM.
If your rates have been sitting in the same narrow band for months, that band is a function of your demand stack. Your audience isn't the constraint. RAMP connects your inventory to demand that competes for it properly, with yield ops people watching the auction instead of a dashboard running on autopilot.