Magic Sort! Ads: A Veteran Inside the Sort-Puzzle Boom
Two years after launch, Magic Sort! still runs 2,678 creatives and 5,912 tracked ad plans. Inside a veteran of the sort-puzzle boom: one dominant network, a five-market-spanning US lead, and a playable library that outnumbers its films.
Emma Lee
Editorial Research Contributor
Published
Updated
Magic Sort! Ads: A Veteran Inside the Sort-Puzzle Boom
By Emma Lee · Creative Intelligence Reports · October 16, 2026 · Data window September 16 – October 16, 2026
Last year's reporting on casual games landed on one finding that matters here: puzzle was the only top casual genre to grow, and inside it the sort-and-screw corner grew faster than any other subgenre. None of that reporting shows how a game inside the wave actually buys. That is what this piece is for. Magic Sort! launched on June 26, 2024, and two years and four months later the water-sort puzzle from the Turkish publisher Grand Games is not coasting: in the last thirty days it kept 2,678 deduplicated creatives and 5,912 tracked ad plans in rotation across 15 networks and more than two hundred markets, with an estimated lifetime exposure of 820.7 million behind the creatives active in the window. And 492 of those creatives are flagged as re-invested - the same films and playables that carried earlier quarters are still carrying this one.
Network mix: one giant, a strong second, and a long tail
AdMob covers 3,511 plans - 59.4% of the account. That is not a preference; it is a structural choice: the Google network carries the bulk of the video creatives (36.5% of video material records) and a fifth of the playables. AppLovin is the clear second at 24.2% of plans, and it is the playable channel: 76.6% of all playable material records sit there. YouTube follows at 11.3%.
Ad-plan coverage by network (multi-attribution, shares need not sum to 100%)
The Meta family - Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network and Threads - sits at 8–9% each of plan coverage. For a puzzle account this size, that is a deliberately light touch: the buying weight sits on Google's network and AppLovin, not on Meta.
Markets: the United States takes almost half, and keeps 1,424 plans to itself
US plans total 2,689 - 45.5% of the account - and 1,424 of them target the US exclusively. Germany, Canada, Japan and France round out the top five at roughly 2,000 plans each. The store footprint matches the buying footprint: the Google Play listing has crossed 42.5 million cumulative downloads.
Top ten markets by plan coverage (exclusive = plans targeting only that market)
Formats: a playable library first, films second
The format split is the least typical thing about this account. Using the wider lifetime-overlap attribution (2,559 format records against the 2,678 deduplicated count), playables account for 1,430 records - more than half - against 1,060 videos and only 69 images. AppLovin hosts 76.6% of the playables; AdMob carries the video weight.
Format records (lifetime-overlap attribution, total 2,559)
The busiest day was October 10: 243 new creatives and 251 new plans in a single day, the strongest refresh of the window. September 22 pushed 329 new plans on just 53 new creatives - a scale-up day on existing material.
Creative Spotlight
Spotlight 1 · The 60-second shelf film that runs everywhere
AdMob + YouTube · video · 60s · active Jan 31 – Mar 19 · est. lifetime exposure 29.59M · re-invested · 7 related plans · target list: 230 markets.
The highest-exposure film in the window is a straight gameplay piece: three rows of shelves packed with bottles lying on their sides, a funnel pouring from the top, colors separating as the liquid pours, and a full-screen grid of sorted bottles before the Magic Sort! logo and a green Play Now button close it out. The internal title - MS_185_v3+188_v3_60s - marks it as v3 of a two-part edit, and the 230-market target list makes it the account's global workhorse. This is the film that shows what the account runs on: a re-invested creative by flag, still the biggest delivery unit in the window.
Spotlight 2 · The drag-and-drop record, three days only
AdMob + YouTube · video · 60s · active Aug 5 – Aug 7 · est. lifetime exposure 22.57M · re-invested · 39 related plans.
Six frames, one scene: two columns of bottle shelves on a violet-grey background, a player's hand dragging bottles in and out, no cuts, no logo until the end. The three-day activation window against 39 related plans is the giveaway - this is a burst creative, pushed hard for a single weekend and then parked. Its 22.57 million in exposure makes it the second-largest unit in the window.
Spotlight 3 · The street-challenge opener: "Only 1% can solve this puzzle"
AdMob + YouTube · video · 56.2s · active Aug 21 – Aug 27 · est. lifetime exposure 10.00M · re-invested · 2 related plans.
The most human film in the set opens on a city square: a whiteboard reads "Only 1% can solve this puzzle", a woman in a red dress walks a crowd through the bottle-sorting logic on the board, and the film cuts from the street to the game - same brown-white-yellow palette, same pouring mechanic. It is the only creative in the top ten that leaves the game engine at all.
Spotlight 4 · The TikTok copy-led film for five markets
TikTok only · video · 60s · active Sep 25 – Oct 4 · est. lifetime exposure 5.76M · re-invested · 8 related plans · target list: IQ, JP, KR, TH, TR.
On a green background, black-white-green-orange bottles are sorted in a straight gameplay record under the on-screen line "Puzzle game of the year". What makes it worth a spotlight is the target list: five markets only - Iraq, Japan, Korea, Thailand and Turkey - a narrow pocket of Asian and Turkish markets that the rest of the account never isolates. TikTok exists in this account for exactly this kind of pocket.
Spotlight 5 · The playable that opens with "Harder than you think"
AppLovin · playable · active Apr 23 – Oct 14 · est. lifetime exposure 4.68M · not re-invested · 1 related plan · 56-market target list.
The playable opens on the line "Harder than you think" over a tower of pastel bottles, with a hand cursor already inviting the first tap; the interaction is the real sort mechanic, not a scripted loop. A single plan has carried it since April - nearly six months of continuous delivery from one interactive unit. It is the largest playable by exposure in the window and the clearest evidence for why this account keeps a playable library this large: one file, one plan, months of delivery.
Lifecycle read: a mature product, stated as one
Magic Sort! is a 2024 release with a 42.5-million-download Google Play snapshot. Everything above is framed as continued delivery structure, not a debut: the 492 re-invested creatives are treated as ongoing rotation, the AdMob weight as a standing arrangement, and the October 10 refresh as a routine scale-up on existing material. No spend, CPI, ROAS, install or conversion claims appear anywhere in this piece, and none can be derived from tracked plan counts.
Data notes and limitations
All figures come from CreativeScope tracked ad records for the window September 16 – October 16, 2026. Exposure figures are global lifetime estimates for creatives active in the window - not period increments, not country-level, not comparable across windows. Market and network coverage is overlapping multi-attribution; shares never sum to 100%. Format records use a wider lifetime-overlap attribution (2,559 records against 2,678 deduplicated creatives) and are reported separately. Grand Games maintains two tracked store records for Magic Sort! (this report covers the June 26, 2024 record with 2,678 creatives; the sibling May 28, 2024 record carries a separate 1,940 creatives and is never merged into these figures). A menu-stage snapshot from October 15 (2,646 creatives / 5,764 plans) is retained as a drift baseline only.
FAQ
As plan coverage, yes - 59.4% of tracked plans point at AdMob. The Meta family sits at 8–9% per surface, which is light for an account of this size.
Why do playables matter so much here?Because they are the majority of format records (1,430 of 2,559) and they are cheap to keep: the spotlighted AppLovin playable has run on a single plan since April. For a sort-puzzle account, one interactive file can carry months of delivery.
Does the US really take half the plans?US plan coverage is 45.5%, and 1,424 plans target the US exclusively. That is coverage of where plans point, not where installs land.
What does it mean that the old creatives are still running?492 creatives carry a re-invested flag, and the top film in the window is one of them - a January-produced 60-second shelf film still out-delivering everything else. The account refreshes heavily (243 new creatives on October 10) but keeps its proven units in rotation.
Explore the underlying records yourself on CreativeScope, browse more breakdowns in the blog archive - including June's Journey at nine years and Foodie Pop!'s playbook-skipping launch - or query the library directly through the MCP interface.
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