Leading indicators: A gaming platform CFO measures marketing ROI

The heroes in Demon Slayer use Nichirin swords against their vampiric enemies, and the soldiers of Attack on Titan use complex vertical maneuvering equipment to face their gargantuan foes. Patrick Liu, CFO of mobile gaming platform CTW Cayman, wields a different type of weapon: KPIs.

Japanese anime, once an obscure art form for US viewers, has exploded in popularity.

The anime industry in 2024 grew nearly 115% YoY to 3.8 trillion yen ($24.1 billion at 2024 year-end), the Association of Japanese Animations reported in October. Most of this came from outside Japan; international markets grew 126% to nearly 2.2 trillion yen. Anime accounted for more than 4% of all Netflix viewing across global markets in the second half of 2025, while Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle became the highest-grossing international film in North American theaters last year, as of mid-October.

CTW, which runs a web-based mobile gaming platform based on anime IP, has used the growing anime fandom as the basis for US expansion. Because anime has become mainstream, “we believe this [gives] us lots of tailwinds as well as marketing opportunities to market the platform and the games we offer on the platform in this [US] market,” Liu said.

And while anime is catching on outside Japan, mobile gaming is an established phenomenon. The global mobile games market is expected to generate about $134.2 billion in revenue this year, and grow about 5.1% annually through 2030, according to Statista research.

The Japan-based company went public in August 2025, raising $12 million. It planned to use 85% of its proceeds for global market expansion, according to SEC filings. CTW listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange to signal to investors and stakeholders that it’s serious about its expansion, Liu told CFO Brew.

Liu recently shared with us the indicators he uses to track the returns on the company’s expansion efforts.

Measuring success. Liu is tuned into an indicator called return on advertisement spending, or ROAS. CTW wrote in its registration statement with the SEC that “we actively monitor and optimize our ROAS to ensure efficient user acquisition and marketing effectiveness.”

“We are in a rapid growing phase right now as a company,” Liu said. “We’re expanding to the North American markets; we’re expanding outside [of Japan], generally speaking.” To ensure success, “we want to always have a disciplined environment of what the performance really looks like, so that’s why we are focusing on ROAS.”

CTW calculates ROAS differently than some of its competitors, according to Liu.

It takes in-game purchase amounts and divides them by ad spending in a specific reporting period, whereas others typically look at lifetime value of end users, Liu said. CTW looks at in-game purchases because it’s expanding into new markets, where it doesn’t have a history of user purchasing behavior, Liu explained. Its lifetime value models would be based on Japanese users, which might not look the same as gamers in North America.

The company recorded an ROAS of 116% for the fiscal year ending on July 31, 2025, according to a March investor presentation. It recorded a customer acquisition cost of $1.50 compared to new user revenue of $1.75, on a per-new-user basis.

Liu said CTW monitors performance by geographic region, but hasn’t shared any of that information publicly yet because its expansion is still in early days and most of its revenue still comes from Japanese users. According to the investor presentation, 70% of in-game purchases were made in Japan, 10% in South Korea, and 7% in the US.

Although an important KPI, ROAS is not the only metric CTW monitors to understand marketing performance. For instance, it also tracks the time new users spend in a game before making their first purchase, Liu said. It compares these metrics between US and Japanese users for ways to improve in certain markets.