Last Asylum: Plague Ads: A $3.8M Revenue Week on Two Markets
How Last Asylum: Plague runs 4,700 ad plans across 11 networks, with 579 US-only and 269 Japan-only plans behind a $3.8M weekly revenue high.
Daniel Brooks
Creative Strategy Analyst
Published
Updated
A February 2026 worldwide release, a $3.8M weekly revenue high and 4,700 ad plans in one 30-day window: 37Games’ medieval plague-survival title cuts its buy with two single-market blades — 579 plans that target only the United States and 269 that target only Japan.
Key takeaways
- The commercial picture is public: AppMagic estimates reported by industry trade press in September 2026 put the game’s weekly in-app revenue at a $3.8M high for the week of Aug 10–16 — sixth among midcore 4X strategy titles, ahead of Puzzles & Survival ($3.5M) and Evony ($3.2M) — with weekly installs at 918K, up about 80% across two weeks. The same coverage credits a mid-year content update and hook-driven ad creative for the climb.
- The buy behind it is broad but not flat. Of 4,700 tracked plans, the single-market treatment concentrates on two geographies: 579 plans target only the US and 269 only Japan. Every other top-coverage market carries between 20 and 81 exclusive plans.
- Meta’s four surfaces (Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Audience Network) each cover 35.6% of plans, with Applovin at 28.5% — a rare structure where the open-web networks get real volume alongside Meta.
- The creative library is 74% video, skews 85% portrait, and runs long: five of the highest-exposure cuts we decoded run 27–59 seconds, led by an anti-pay-to-win narrative that opens on the line “3 days in and I’ve deleted.”
Data scope
All delivery figures in this breakdown come from CreativeScope and describe Last Asylum: Plague between August 21 and September 20, 2026, on a rolling 30-day window. Counts describe tracked ad plans and creatives — not spend, installs or conversions. Revenue, install and launch-timing figures are external store-intelligence estimates and are labeled as such where used. CreativeScope’s own 180-day record for the game lists 8,847 creatives, so roughly 42% of its tracked creative history is active inside this one window.
One identity note, because publisher credits are easy to get wrong: the game is offered under 37GAMES GLOBAL, the overseas publishing brand of the Chinese games group 37 Interactive Entertainment (三七互娱) — the same group behind Puzzles & Survival. The publishing entity is taken from the game’s store listing; this breakdown makes no studio-credit claim, and everything below is a statement about this one product rather than about the group’s wider portfolio.
A plague-survival skin on the 4X playbook
Last Asylum: Plague wraps the standard midcore 4X loop — build, recruit, expand, ally — in a medieval plague-doctor setting: a beaked physician, plague-stricken villages, makeshift hospitals and green potion vats. That theme choice matters for UA. Where most 4X ads default to either base-building footage or fake-gameplay bait, this library keeps returning to the plague-doctor character as its visual anchor, and the published coverage of the game’s revenue run credits a mid-year content update plus hook-driven ad creative for the climb.
The stakes are real. Published estimates report the game posting a $3.8M weekly in-app revenue high in mid-August, overtaking long-running 4X titles, with weekly installs reported at 918K — up about 80% across a two-week stretch. Store records list a worldwide release in late February 2026 rather than a staged soft launch, so the delivery scale in this window is what roughly half a year of compounding looks like on the buy side.
Delivery cadence: a plan machine that never idles
The 4,700 plans in the window did not arrive in one batch. New-creative activity clusters into regular pulses, and the pulses themselves carry new plans — this is an account that adds inventory almost weekly:
| Activity day | New creatives | New ad plans |
|---|---|---|
| Aug 27 | 113 | 225 |
| Sep 17 | 154 | 167 |
| Sep 16 | 123 | 167 |
| Sep 1 | 129 | 159 |
| Sep 7 | 120 | 154 |
| Aug 25 | 80 | 176 |
| Sep 5 | 120 | 125 |
Seven days in the window each added 80+ creatives, and the largest pulses pair new creative with disproportionate plan growth (Aug 27: 113 creatives, 225 plans). Only 328 of the 3,687 window creatives are flagged as reinvested — about 9% — so the machine is overwhelmingly minting new cuts rather than re-running old ones. The mid-September spike (Sep 16–17: 277 new creatives, 334 new plans across two days) is the freshest evidence that testing cadence has not slowed with scale.
Channel structure: Meta first, but the open web gets real volume
Plan coverage across the window’s eleven active delivery surfaces:
Overlapping plan-target coverage; shares do not sum to 100%. TikTok and Mintegral appear in the game’s all-time delivery record but carry no plans inside this window.
This is the structural difference from most Meta-heavy midcore accounts. Meta’s four surfaces lead at 35.6% each — that is a coordinated buy, not four independent ones — but Applovin covers 1,339 plans at 28.5%, and even fourth-tier networks like Vungle (190) and Ironsource (150) carry more plans than many titles give their second network. The exposure side inverts the ranking: the highest-estimated-exposure video cuts in the window sit on Unity and Applovin, meaning the open web is where this account’s most-seen creatives actually run.
Two market knives: where the exclusive plans live
The plan map reaches 61 markets, with ten of them carried by more than 20% of all plans. But coverage is not the interesting part — exclusivity is. These are the top single-market pools:
Bar length is scaled to the US exclusive count (579). “Exclusive” means the plan’s delivery-country set equals that single market; coverage is multi-attribution and overlapping.
The US pool is the sharpest: 44% of all plans that include the US in their target list are US-only. Japan’s pool is proportionally even deeper — 28% of Japan-covering plans are Japan-only, making it the tighter of the two blades. Meanwhile Singapore posts the third-largest coverage (1,309 plans, 27.9%) but only 81 exclusive plans: it is a delivery hub inside broad multi-country target lists, not a market being addressed on its own terms. France, Canada, the UK, Germany and the rest of the European block all show the same pattern — heavy coverage, thin exclusivity. Only two geographies get the single-market treatment at scale, and both of them are re-fed with dedicated plans every week while the rest of the map rides along on multi-country lists.
The video library: portrait-first, long-runtime, three narratives
Video carries the plan structure. Of the 3,687 creatives in the window, roughly 2,733 (74%) are video files; the video pool splits 2,323 portrait (85%) against 410 landscape (15%), with effectively no square inventory — an unusually clean two-shape library. The landscape minority is not randomly distributed: 42% of landscape cuts run on Unity, 28% on Applovin and 17% on Ironsource, so the open-web networks absorb almost the entire 16:9 supply while Meta surfaces carry the portrait feed.
Runtime runs long. Five of the highest-exposure cuts we decoded for this breakdown deliver 27 to 59 seconds, with four of the five past the 50-second mark. The same five cuts resolve into three recurring narrative shapes:
- Anti-pay-to-win monologue — burned-player captions over village and hospital footage (“No pay to win”, “No VIP No Shortcuts”).
- Satisfying restore-and-upgrade loops — patients lowered into glowing vats, fishing nets scooping the sick, pots upgrading on screen.
- Skits with dialogue cards — a rat on a barbecue grill arguing with the household, ending in the hospital’s favor.
Creative Spotlight: five cuts from the top of the library
The five creatives below are the highest-exposure video cuts of the window across Unity, Applovin and Admob — one anti-pay-to-win monologue, two upgrade-loop demos, one dialogue skit and one chaptered Admob cut.
Spotlight 1 — The burned-player monologue (highest exposure, Unity)
Hook (0:00–0:02). The ad opens on a plague village with a crowd of the sick slumped against timber houses, and the caption “3 days in and I’ve deleted” — a confession, not a pitch. A resource bar and a level badge top the frame, marking this as real gameplay capture rather than staged footage.
Body (0:05–0:22). The beaked doctor kneels in a meadow at 0:05 under the caption “No pay to win”, then the scene cuts to a candle-lit ward at 0:11 where tapping a patient triggers a +881 heal and the caption “save lives”. At 0:16 the view pulls back to farmland rows with “Recruit people” as new villagers spawn along the path.
End sequence (0:22–0:27). Rather than a store end card, the cut closes on argument captions: crates and barrels at 0:22 under “No VIP No Shortcuts”, then a final aerial of the village at 0:26 with “Tired of fake strategy games?” — the CTA is rhetorical, aimed at players burned by fake-ad rivals.
Takeaway. This is the library’s flagship because it weaponizes category fatigue. Every caption targets a known 4X ad complaint (fake gameplay, pay walls, VIP meters), and the footage answers each one with visible, mundane progress. For UA teams in saturated midcore genres, it is a template for selling trust instead of spectacle.
Spotlight 2 — The vat upgrade loop (Unity)
Hook (0:00–0:04). A giant cheese wedge lies sliced on a haystack in a walled yard — no captions, no UI explanation, just an oddly satisfying still life that dares the viewer to keep watching.
Body (0:10–0:31). At 0:10 a patient sinks into a steaming blue vat and stands up renewed, captioned “I feel better now”. By 0:21 the same patient stands beside a cauldron ringed green with the caption “this pot seems to be upgradable sir”, and at 0:31 the upgraded vat bubbles over with coin payouts — the upgrade directly pays on screen.
End sequence (0:42–0:53). The ward fills with recovering patients at 0:42, then the cut lands on the Last Asylum store card with App Store and Google Play badges at 0:52.
Takeaway. The vat loop is this library’s comfort food: a two-beat cycle (fix a patient, upgrade the tool that fixes them) compressed into seconds. It sells the idle-arcade mini-game that sits on top of the 4X base — the hybrid structure that gives this title a lighter on-ramp than pure strategy competitors.
Spotlight 3 — The fishing-net harvest (Applovin, portrait)
Hook (0:00–0:06). A green-glowing tank machine with a “50” price tag sits over a conveyor of skeleton-stretcher patients — the machine hums, the queue advances, and the economy is legible within two seconds.
Body (0:11–0:47). At 0:11 a patient hops off the slab — “HUH I FEEL MUCH BETTER NOW” — before the view shifts at 0:23 to an orange fishing net being cast over a pumpkin patch, dragging the crop back to base. At 0:35 the caption “new equipment” introduces a second machine, and at 0:47 the net itself stretches longer with “well done let’s upgrade to a more powerful fishing net” as it scoops three beds of patients in one pass.
End sequence (0:56–0:59). The Last Asylum key-art store card with both store badges closes the cut.
Takeaway. This is the tool-progression fantasy in its purest form: the ad’s whole promise is that the machine you like becomes objectively bigger. Portrait delivery on Applovin also shows where the account trusts the open web — not with leftovers, but with a 59-second hero cut.
Spotlight 4 — The barbecue rat skit (Unity)
Hook (0:00–0:05). A rat lies splayed on a smoke-belching barbecue grill while a horrified maid and the plague doctor loom over it; the caption reads “IMPOSSIBLE! YOU MUST BE MISTAKEN!” — a full skit premise in five seconds.
Body (0:11–0:33). At 0:11 smoke rolls over the grill under “MAYBE WE COULD TURN IT INTO BARBECUE”, the doctor’s deadpan proposal. The scene snaps to gameplay at 0:22: a survivor triggers a spike trap in a torch-lit corridor under “OH MY GOD”.
End sequence (0:44–0:56). Back in the ward, rows of orange patients heal in unison under “THE HOSPITAL IS GETTING BETTER AND BETTER. YOU’RE A GENIUS”, then the store card lands at 0:54.
Takeaway. Dialogue-card skits are the newest shape in the library: the ad is a joke with a beginning, middle and punchline, and the gameplay only appears once the viewer is already in on it.
Spotlight 5 — The chaptered progress cut (Admob, portrait)
Hook (0:00–0:05). A dark courtyard littered with the infected, a chapter counter reading 1/25 in the corner, and the caption “I must save them!!!” — the ad announces it is a 25-chapter journey before anything else happens.
Body (0:10–0:42). At 0:10 the doctor works a blue ritual tub flagged 01/10; at 0:21 the chapter counter turns to 3/25 with 27M coins banked; at 0:32 it is 4/25 and a siege engine rolls through the yard. By 0:42 the counter reads 8/25 at 112M coins — the ad skips through its own save-file at speed.
End sequence (0:51–0:53). The Last Asylum key-art store card with both badges.
Takeaway. The chapter counter is a retention device: instead of one loop, the ad sells the next 25 loops. Admob’s rewarded and interstitial inventory rewards exactly this structure — a visible progress bar the viewer can believe in during a 30-second sit.
CreativeScope take
Last Asylum: Plague is what a mature 4X buy looks like after the Meta-only era: four coordinated Meta surfaces at 35.6% each, plus an open-web bench (Applovin, Unity, Ironsource, Vungle) that absorbs the landscape video supply and the highest-exposure cuts. The exclusivity map is the sharpest signal — 579 US-only and 269 Japan-only plans against low single-digit exclusivity shares (20–81 plans) in every other top-coverage market. Those two are the only places this account pays for single-market control, and the 74%-video, portrait-first library keeps both blades fed with new cuts at a pace of 80+ per pulse.
Related reading
- The Cozy Florist ads breakdown: 6,939 ad plans, 94% on Meta — the opposite channel structure: one Meta-only machine where this account spreads across eleven surfaces.
- Mystery Dumpling: Unbox ASMR ads breakdown — another plan machine that leans on Google inventory rather than Meta.
- Glow Fashion Idol ads breakdown — how a single-market exclusivity bet looks in the casual genre.
Every number in this breakdown is queryable in CreativeScope. Pull the live plan and creative counts for Last Asylum: Plague, filter by network or market, and compare its exclusivity map against any 4X title on your watchlist — the ad plans refresh hourly.
FAQ
How many ad plans is Last Asylum: Plague running?CreativeScope tracked 4,700 active ad plans and 3,687 creatives for the game between August 21 and September 20, 2026, with 328 of those creatives flagged as reinvested. The account added 80 or more new creatives on seven separate days inside the window.
Which markets get exclusive ad plans?Two, at scale: 579 plans in the window target only the United States and 269 target only Japan. Other high-coverage markets — Singapore, France, Canada, the UK, Australia, Germany — carry between 20 and 81 exclusive plans each, and most European coverage arrives through multi-country target lists.
Which ad networks does the game use?Eleven surfaces carry delivery inside the 30-day window. Meta’s four — Facebook, Instagram, Threads and Audience Network — each cover 35.57% of plans, followed by Applovin at 28.49%, Messenger at 24.91%, Admob at 17.28% and Unity at 11.43%. The highest-exposure video cuts run on Unity and Applovin.
How well is the game performing commercially?External store-intelligence estimates (AppMagic, reported by industry trade press in September 2026) put weekly in-app revenue at a $3.8M high for August 10–16, sixth among midcore 4X strategy titles, with weekly installs reported at 918K. CreativeScope delivery data does not measure revenue; those figures come from the cited estimates.
What do its best-performing ads look like?Three shapes dominate the top of the exposure ranking: captioned anti-pay-to-win monologues over real gameplay, patient-restore-and-upgrade loops built around the green cauldron and fishing net, and dialogue-card skits such as the barbecue rat. Four of the five highest-exposure cuts run 50 seconds or longer, and 85% of the video library is portrait.
Data notes
All plan, creative, network and market figures come from CreativeScope and cover August 21 – September 20, 2026. Country and network shares describe ad-plan target coverage under multi-attribution, so they overlap and do not sum to 100%; “exclusive” means a plan’s delivery-country set equals a single market. Lifetime estimated exposure is a relative delivery-scale signal for creatives active in the window, not a platform-reported impression count, and nothing in the tracked data describes spend, installs, conversions or revenue.
Revenue, install and launch-timing figures are external store-intelligence estimates (AppMagic, as reported by industry trade press in September 2026) and are labeled where used; they are not CreativeScope measurements. Publisher identity follows the store listing, and no studio-credit claim is made. The featured cover is cropped from a tracked Admob image creative carrying the game’s official logo and English copy.
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