Monthly Spending Hits 10 Million! Bilibili Mini-Game "Breaks Through" to Become a Top Hit

When it comes to casual games, in addition to revenue and user base, there is another metric that is equally critical for gauging a product’s market competitiveness: advertising spend.

In this sector, monthly spending exceeding 10 million yuan is widely regarded as a key threshold for top-tier products.This figure is not only a direct reflection of a product’s user acquisition capabilities but also indirectly demonstrates the scale of the platform’s traffic, conversion efficiency, and the maturity of its commercial ecosystem. For this reason, impressive monthly spending figures in the tens of millions have long been concentrated on mainstream mini-game platforms such as WeChat and Douyin. Products that achieve this milestone are mostly top-tier hits that rank among the top 10 on WeChat and the top 5 on Douyin.

However, just recently, 37 Interactive Entertainment’s *Finger Pixel City* has steadily reached 10 million monthly active users on Bilibili’s mini-game platform—a platform that lies outside the industry’s mainstream spotlight.

This achievement not only reaffirms the product quality of *Pixel City at Your Fingertips* but has also prompted Teahouse to reevaluate the ecological potential of Bilibili’s mini-games. This platform, which has long been quietly honing its craft, is shattering preconceived notions with its proven capacity, while also opening up new possibilities in the previously stagnant mini-games market.

01

How did the monthly cost of 10 million end up being calculated?

How exactly did *Pixel City* generate 10 million yuan in ad spend on Bilibili? After analyzing the campaign, the agency summarized its core advertising strategy into three key points: integrating with the ecosystem, capitalizing on emerging trends, and leveraging IP.

Bilibili is a platform that prioritizes content, fosters a strong community, and boasts extremely high user retention. When running ads here, you certainly can’t simply copy traditional user acquisition tactics. *Pixel City* hit the nail on the head by leveraging Bilibili’s content-driven nature and adopting a strategy of “turning high-quality videos into editorial content.” By using editorial-style content for as much as 64% of its materials, the campaign truly treated ads as content.

After these ad creatives were released, they quickly reached a massive audience by blending seamlessly with native content, garnering millions of views and a flood of enthusiastic comments. At the same time, the high-quality content allowed for precise targeting of the core audience. As a result, the ad creatives for *Finger Pixel City* saw an 180% increase in average ARPU per ad unit and a 20% increase in advertising ROI, successfully achieving dual improvements in both ad spend volume and conversion efficiency.

Selected Popular Content from "Pixel City at Your Fingertips"

The rich and engaging user-generated content has also become a hub for players to interact and share. Large numbers of players gather in the comments section to share their gaming experiences and exchange humorous memes, fostering a vibrant community atmosphere.Furthermore, many users have actively created derivative works based on the content, fostering positive organic dissemination. This has enriched the game’s content ecosystem, increased the product’s visibility, and boosted user sentiment. This demonstrates that the vast amount of high-quality content not only enabled *Pixel City* to efficiently meet its short-term advertising spend goals but also successfully built up the product’s reputation and cultivated a loyal core user base.

Fan-created content has sparked lively discussions among players

In addition to utilizing a large volume of written content, *Pixel City at Your Fingertips* closely followed the pace of platform feature and technology upgrades during its Bilibili campaign. By capitalizing on the launch and testing phases of the demo feature and AIGC technology, the campaign further enhanced its efficiency and effectiveness.

The key advantage of play-to-win ads lies in their ability to let users experience a game’s core mechanics directly within the ad itself. By engaging players with authentic, interactive content, these ads strike a balance between user experience and advertising effectiveness, effectively increasing dwell time and boosting conversion rates. Perhaps recognizing this potential, *Finger Pixel City* was the first to integrate play-to-win ads in early 2026, supported by Bilibili’s platform capabilities.

"Pixel City at Your Fingertips" Demo Ad

Since then, riding the wave of the platform’s growing traffic, ad spend on the game has steadily increased, and it has now successfully topped Bilibili’s trial-play ad spend rankings. Furthermore, as expected, the trial-play creatives delivered outstanding results in the rewarded video placements—the primary focus of the campaign—with ad spend increasing by 34% compared to traditional video creatives, while the campaign’s ROI rose by 28% over the same period.

As it entered a critical phase of user acquisition, *Finger Pixel City* actively participated in Bilibili’s “Smart Derivative Creative” beta test, fully leveraging the platform’s AIGC technology in the creative production process. During this phase, AIGC image creatives achieved a 48% penetration rate and accounted for 55% of the game’s ad spend, clearly demonstrating AIGC’s immense potential in the image creative sector.Furthermore, compared to non-AIGC assets, AIGC assets saw a 36% increase in click-through rates and a 19% increase in projected ad spend. This demonstrates that the application of AIGC not only significantly improved the efficiency of asset production and ad delivery but also provided robust technical support for achieving breakthroughs in ad spend during the game’s growth phase.

In addition, the game leveraged Bilibili’s high-quality IP resources to collaborate with the classic IP *The Hundred Demons Chronicle*. By engaging both players and IP fans in ways that resonated with them, the game successfully generated significant buzz on the platform and drove substantial growth.

Following the launch of the collaboration content, the game’s popularity on the platform surged rapidly. Coupled with the traffic boost during the Spring Festival, ad spend quickly reached its peak. Data shows that the cost per ad for this IP collaboration exceeded 150,000 yuan, and a significant proportion of *The Hundred Demons Chronicle* IP fans and series viewers successfully converted into game users, accounting for a substantial share of the game’s total conversions—a highly impressive conversion rate.

It can be said that this IP collaboration successfully broke through the game’s original traffic barriers, effectively reaching and converting a large number of users outside the core player base, and provided the crucial traffic boost needed for the game to achieve its goal of 10 million monthly active users.

02

New players have real talent too

The entire campaign process for *Pixel City at Your Fingertips* clearly demonstrates that Bilibili’s ecosystem for mini-games and its campaign infrastructure are becoming increasingly robust, providing a solid foundation capable of supporting campaigns reaching tens of millions of users.

First, to address the diverse advertising needs of different mini-game products,Bilibili has developed a sophisticated and diversified advertising model system that covers multiple targeting objectives, including first-day monetization, first-day in-app purchases, 7-day in-app purchases, and hybrid monetization. This system is fully compatible with various product types, such as IAA (in-app advertising) monetization, IAP (in-app purchase) monetization, and IAAP (hybrid) monetization, while simultaneously meeting diverse operational goals—from rapid return on investment to long-term user engagement. It truly enables precise targeting and efficient reach of the target audience.

Building on this foundation, maximizing the effectiveness of advertising campaigns requires in-depth engagement with core users. This is particularly true for IAP and IAAP games, where only through meticulous user engagement can developers effectively target high-value users, thereby reducing costs while increasing revenue.

To address this critical need, Bilibili has established a comprehensive system for targeting core audiences across its mini-games ecosystem. By segmenting users based on metrics such as activation, payment, and monetization, the platform has developed tailored advertising strategies. Through precise audience targeting and operational optimization, these efforts have consistently yielded significant results, including a 10% reduction in customer acquisition costs and a 35% increase in average revenue per user (ARPU). This has not only optimized overall advertising efficiency but also fully unlocked the value of core paying users.

Once a game enters the stable operation phase, user retention becomes the key factor determining whether the product can achieve long-term growth. In response, Bilibili Mini Games has implemented comprehensive optimizations to the user return process: On one hand, it conducts targeted, repeated engagement with activated users, using gentle, sustained exposure to reinforce their desire to return, which has increased paid user retention by 10%;On the other hand, the Mini-Games Center serves as the primary channel for user return visits. By strategically placing and guiding users through various in-app scenarios, the platform reinforces users’ habits of using this entry point, helping them establish stable return paths. This approach boosts overall retention and lays a solid foundation for the product’s long-term operation.

It is worth noting that the Mini-Games Center not only serves as the primary gateway for user retention but also functions as the official hub for Bilibili’s mini-games.Here, players can discover and experience a wide variety of high-quality mini-games in one place. The platform is using this to continuously strengthen players’ awareness of Bilibili’s mini-games and gradually cultivate the habit of “visiting the Bilibili Mini-Games Center to find games.” This distinctive ecosystem strategy, which sets it apart from other media platforms, has established a unique user engagement hub for Bilibili’s mini-games. While effectively driving user retention, it deepens users’ understanding of the platform, fostering a virtuous cycle between the platform’s ecosystem and user needs.

Bilibili Mini-Games Hub

Moreover, objectively speaking, compared to the intense competitive bidding environment on other platforms, Bilibili’s mini-games currently remain in a phase of tremendous growth potential. With its continuously improving ecosystem capabilities and abundant high-quality traffic, the platform is able to support top-tier products in scaling up while also providing a more favorable user acquisition environment for small and medium-sized developers, enabling all types of products to achieve stable growth at a more reasonable cost.

Taking all these factors into account, Bilibili’s mini-games are becoming a new battleground that an increasing number of mini-game developers are vying to enter.By 2025, both the IAA and IAP segments on the platform will see significant growth in terms of product scale and category diversity: the IAA segment continues to expand rapidly, with the number of newly launched games in Q4 2025 increasing by 108% compared to Q1. Building on its strengths in casual puzzle and simulation genres, the segment has expanded into more diverse categories such as tower defense, puzzle-solving, and shooting games;The IAP segment began to gain momentum in the second half of 2025. It has now established a stable product scale, successfully incubated several hit titles, demonstrated robust overall user retention, and developed a preliminary commercial ecosystem.

Bilibili's mini-games now cover a wide variety of genres

The fact that *Pixel City* has now surpassed 10 million in monthly spending once again fully demonstrates the massive traffic volume and commercial potential of Bilibili’s mini-games, while also showing the industry the enormous growth potential of this new market segment.

Conclusion

In summary, the fact that *Pixel City* has surpassed 10 million monthly active users on Bilibili is not only a testament to the game’s success but also a significant indicator of the steady maturation of Bilibili’s mini-game ecosystem. Its concrete data demonstrates that Bilibili’s mini-games have achieved key milestones in terms of platform capabilities, ecosystem capacity, and advertising efficiency.

From the continuous improvement of its end-to-end advertising infrastructure to the gradual consolidation of its dual-track ecosystem for IAA and IAP, and from the competitive edge provided by its content ecosystem to the ongoing release of platform traffic dividends, Bilibili Mini Games has established a comprehensive system capable of supporting advertising campaigns on a scale of tens of millions, while also developing a replicable and scalable advertising methodology.

It is foreseeable that, with the emergence of benchmark cases like *Finger Pixel City*, more leading developers will recognize the true value of Bilibili’s mini-games and accelerate their entry into the market.As more and more campaigns with budgets in the tens of millions emerge here, Bilibili mini-games will evolve from a “newcomer” in the mini-game sector into an indispensable part of the industry. This will not only inject new vitality into the market but also drive the mini-game industry toward sustained development characterized by greater diversity, higher quality, and more balanced competition.