Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-g...

For Gabriel Leydon, the Super Bowl was a showdown. But it wasn’t between the Seahawks and the Patriots. It was between the game he developed, Game of War: Fire Age, and its better-known competitor, Clash of Clans. Consistently in the top five apps worldwide by revenue, Game of War has been grossing more than $1 million a day, according to Think Gaming, double what it was bringing in just last spring.

But even at that rate, Game of War has persistently trailed Supercell’s Clash of Clans. And so on that Sunday in early February, the two games did battle via media buys. Both were armed. Clash of Clans brought a rapier: Liam Neeson, with a witty, irony-laden riff on a dude addicted to his fantasy duels. Leydon brought a nuclear bomb: Kate Upton. She emerged from some kind of medieval hot tub, and, donning body armor in slow motion, plunged into a melee of monsters and knights.

Critics mocked Upton’s performance, naturally, but in the real world, Game of War trounced its enemy. In the hours after the Super Bowl, the mobile game, for a few hours at least, passed its rival, as measured by rankings from Apple’s App Store. Which is exactly what Leydon had hoped for when the company he founded and runs, Machine Zone, spent $40 million on a four-month campaign with Upton as its spokeswoman.