Sandwiched between ReelShort and Netflix: a drum pad from an app factory in Da Nang, Vietnam, and how "switching categories" pushed a decade-old genre into Europe

In Nov 6, the top 18 free Entertainment apps on Google Play in Poland were short drama and streaming: DramaWave, ReelShort, DramaBox, Netflix, Prime Video, and Disney+. At #19 was a phone drum pad called Easy Drum Pad: Music Maker, made by Neli Creative in Da Nang, Vietnam. It has 1.91M cumulative installs, and +167k in the last 7 days. The product itself has nothing new: the drum pad genre was fully worked out 2014 years ago. It got in because of three things unrelated to the product: it went into a category nobody else was putting drum pads in, it's backed by a pipeline of 24 apps' worth of revenue, and it has an ad monetization setup that can absorb cheap installs. Below I break down these three things, and why you probably shouldn't copy it as-is, though you can copy its category approach.

A one-star review with 32 likes

The most visible review on the store page is a one-star review from user Tuiba Jacob on Jul 31:

worst game every I think all the others review are paid ones every click ads and can't event play one game peacefully 5 or 6 time ads

32 people marked it as helpful. Another review with 12 likes was more specific: "To actually play it, you have to watch 5 ads first, and then another one shows up after 2 minutes."

That's pretty much the business model of this app: users install it, tap the drum pad a few times, watch a few interstitial ads, and leave. Ads pay for everything.

What it is

A phone drum pad plus a piano tiles game. The store page says "Two Fun Modes: Drum Pad for making beats, Piano Tiles for a relaxing rhythm game." There are also sample packs (Trap, Lofi, EDM, Dubstep), a loop sequencer, recording, and several effects. The positioning is blunt: for beginners and people who want to unwind, "no music theory needed."

The package name crams in two search clusters: easy.drum.pad.beat.maker.music.dj.piano.tiles. Anyone searching for drum pads or piano tiles might see it.

Free to download, with ads. Starting Oct 31 it added in-app purchases, now just $5.99–12.99 (most likely to remove ads or unlock sounds; inferred). The third-party site AppGoblin examined its APK and found 13 ad networks and 2 mediation SDKs integrated, and judged 100% of revenue comes from ads.

How much it grew, and when

The inflection point came around Oct 25. Timeline recorded by the third-party site AppInsider: 10-25 in one day it entered charts in 7 countries including Brazil, Germany, the UK, and Italy; 10-27 France and Sweden; 10-28 Germany top 100,11-01, US, Indonesia, Taiwan. By Nov 2 it was on 26 charts: #16 in Vietnam, #19 in Poland, #23 in Sweden, #24 in the Netherlands.

Before the scale-up it went through updates: 10-15 and 10-22 back-to-back releases, 10-31 added in-app purchases, 11-02 another release, 11-03 changed the IAP pricing (per the Google Play update log and the third-party timeline). Tuning monetization first and then scaling is a standard move for paid-acquisition teams.

The store's "release date" says Jul 9, but in early June it already had 840k installs. Another 11 apps from the same company also have release dates between Jun 23 and Jul 10, and each already had traffic before then. It looks like the whole developer account had its info reset at once during that period, which reset the launch date (inferred). The real launch date wasn't found.

Two numbers suggest most of these installs didn't come from word of mouth. One is the rating rate: 1.91M installs produced only 885 ratings, about 0.46‰; in the same category Groovepad is 14.8‰ and Drum Pad Machine is 4.7‰ (Google Play, 11-06). The other is the rating distribution: 1 stars 139, 2 stars 23, 3 stars 0, 4 stars 139, 5 stars 582, with not a single three-star rating, which doesn't look natural. Together with the "other positive reviews are fake" remark, there's suspicion of incentivized positive reviews (unverified).

Growth has also already slowed: from Nov 4 to 6 it only added 27k in two days, roughly 14k a day (Google Play).

Where the traffic comes from

Switch categories. This is the one move that can be confirmed and is most worth studying. Other drum pads are almost all in "Music & Audio" or "Music Games"; this one is in "Entertainment." The same developer's Easy Piano is in the music category, with its best rank #165 in France; Easy Drum Pad is in Entertainment, #19 in Poland. Above it on the Entertainment chart are only short drama and streaming apps. The real peers aren't on this chart, so tens of thousands of installs a day are enough to reach the top 20, and once it's charted it gets extra exposure from category browsing. AppInsider's model estimates 47% of installs come from store browsing, 38% from search, and 15% from paid ads (model estimate; for reference only).

Push the whole pipeline together. Neli Creative has at least 24 apps running on Google Play, about 37.7M installs combined, almost all new releases from the first half of 2026: drawing, keyboard skins, wallpapers, alarm clocks, instruments, and more. In late October they rose together:

(Google Play,11-06)

Daily new installs across the family were about 530k in Oct 31 and about 550k in Nov 3. This isn't one app going viral; the same paid-acquisition and monetization machine is running in batches, and whichever app pays back gets more budget.

Paid acquisition. No direct evidence. Neither Meta's nor TikTok's public European ad libraries show it, and searching the Google Ads Transparency Center by company name and domain returns 0 results. Vietnamese tool studios often run Google app ads through agency accounts, so the advertiser not showing under their own name is normal (inferred). The indirect evidence: entering a dozen-plus European countries in a week, daily installs up four to five times, and an extremely low rating rate.

Search. The title, package name, and description are stuffed with drum pad, beat maker, music maker, DJ, piano tiles, lofi, trap, and EDM.

Creators and media: none. Searching "easy drum pad" on TikTok turns up only tutorial videos for physical practice drum pads; nobody on X has mentioned it in the past 90 days; only download sites and third-party data sites have pages for it.

How the money comes back: buy installs cheaply in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe, pay back through interstitial and rewarded video ads, then earn a little more from a $5.99–12.99 in-app purchase tier from people willing to pay. Revenue figures are only third-party estimates: AppGoblin estimates ad revenue above $10k a month, and AppGazers estimates October in-app revenue under $5,000.

Who it's competing with

Easy Drum Pad's +167k over 7 days is middle-of-the-pack among same-period drum pad launches. The category isn't short on players. What's missing is a drum pad chart nobody is putting drum pads on.

Nobody knows about it yet, but there's nothing to fight over

It has almost no visibility: no press coverage, no one posting revenue, no discussion on X. On paper that's good. But this kind of 'nobody knows about it' isn't worth much: drum pads are a decade-old red ocean, big companies are spending on it, and a batch of Vietnamese and Southeast Asian factory apps are spending too, and its own growth has already started to slow. The part nobody has spelled out is the category-switch move itself.

If it were you

One-line verdict. Don't copy this app. It worked because of a studio that ships 24 apps, a ready-made paid acquisition and ad monetization pipeline, and nothing in the product itself you can learn from. What you can learn is one move: put an app from a mature category into a sibling category where it doesn't belong, and use a modest budget to buy chart exposure.

Who it fits. Small teams that already have AdMob monetization experience, have run Google App Ads, and own a few lightweight tool apps with reusable code. This play runs on being able to work out exactly how much each install costs and how many days it takes to pay back.

Who it doesn't fit. First-time app makers counting on organic installs (the front pages of these charts are all paid); anyone wanting subscription or in-app purchase revenue (this one has IAP and has never charted in Top Grossing); anyone trying to build 'a better drum pad' (Easybrain and MWM have been doing that for a decade, and users here want a quick tap-and-go, not a good drum pad).

How to do it. Take a lightweight tool or casual app you already have, or can ship quickly, and on Google Play go through the several categories it could plausibly sit in. Check the top 30 entry bar in each country: if the top is a crowd of unrelated big products (short dramas, streaming, banks) while positions 20–50 take only a few thousand to tens of thousands of installs a day, you've found a mismatched category. Put the app there, and write the title and description to fuse two adjacent search-term clusters, the way this one did (inferred). Note that Google Play has policies on categories and descriptions: the category has to make sense, so don't place it in one that's clearly unrelated.

How to acquire users. Google App Ads. First prove ads pay back in cheap markets like Latin America and Southeast Asia, then pick one or two small European countries (Poland, the Netherlands, Sweden, where chart bars are low) and concentrate spend to push into category charts. Once you chart, check whether browse traffic can offset the paid acquisition cost. Tune ad placements and the ad-removal IAP before scaling up. That's what they did.

When it stops working. This isn't a holiday play, but the entry bar moves: today the entertainment chart's top is short dramas, and once drum pads and pianos pile in, the bar disappears. You can test this now with the app you have.

Signs you've misread it. ① Before December, Easy Drum Pad drops out of the top 50 on the Poland and Sweden entertainment charts and daily installs fall to a few thousand, meaning the volume disappears as soon as you stop spending and category browse traffic can't hold it up; ② peers like LAMAI, AVA GAMES, and Momcenter start putting drum pads into entertainment too, meaning the gap has been filled; ③ you place an app in a category, spend budget for a month, and still can't crack the top 50, meaning the bar is higher than you calculated. Pick a different category.

Data and sources

• Installs, ratings, charts, Neli Creative apps: Google Play, 2026-10-29 to 11-06; the June-to-October curve is AppstoreSpy's estimate.
• Reviews in their own words, store descriptions, developer address (Giap Hai, Da Nang 01): Google Play store page, 11-06.
• Timeline of chart entries by country, traffic source breakdown: AppInsider (modeled estimates).
• Ad networks, revenue estimates: AppGoblin, AppGazers (third-party estimates).
• Company registration: Vietnam business registry (NELI CREATIVE COMPANY LIMITED, registered July 2023).
• Ads: Meta Ad Library, TikTok European Ad Library, and Google Ads Transparency Center all show nothing; searches on TikTok and X turn up nothing relevant.
• Acquisition channels, review-solicitation tactics, IAP purpose, and the 'mismatched category' method are all inferences, marked as such in the text.