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By Munira Rangwala

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Ad-messaging and creatives have always been crucial, but in today’s privacy-first world, getting your creative strategy right can be the difference between a successful game and a game that has faded into oblivion. Even the tried and tested UA strategies that have gathered an impressive number of new users in the past, now face the risk of becoming ineffective. Here’s a deep dive into the best creative strategy that will help you better advertise your mobile game.

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First things first, figure out your creative concepts… 

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Creatives that show actual gameplay

This should be included in all campaigns and tested first. While you’re at it, make sure to test variations of the creatives to see the impact on KPIs. Once you recognise which variation works best, you can lengthen the ad’s lifespan and boost performance. Several developers and advertisers swear by testing meta game elements from their app. These elements are what will typically drive new players to try your game. This can include multiplayer chat or introducing interesting characters.

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Example: Royal Match holds the title for the top-performing playable ad in Q1 2022. The ad shows a simple tutorial of the game, and after users complete the match-3 puzzle, they see an option to download the game or retry.

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Add a human touch to your creatives… 

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Users are more likely to engage with and pay attention to ads that somehow resonate with their feelings. Studies have shown that ads which feature human characters or trigger some kind of an emotion perform better. You can use animation to grab a user’s attention, and direct them towards high-recall elements like a popular character from your game. You can even use personalised messaging to remind users of features they enjoy or inform them of a new one.

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Example: Riot Games - the developer of League of Legends - used a genius approach that people had never seen before. They created music videos with the four "League of Legends" champions — Ahri, Akali, Evelynn, and Kai'sa. These music videos not only acted as great ads, but also developed a fandom of their own, getting Riot Games more leads than ever.

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Allocate a budget to Playable Ads…

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As highlighted in “Types of Ads”, playable ads are one of the best-performing ads for gamers. Here’s an interesting fact: According to Udonis, Retention Rates can go up by 30 to 40 percent with playable ads. Because of that, the CPI (Cost Per Install) is higher than for a video or banner ad. Playable ads are more expensive to build and harder to get right. Most developers go wrong when they think of playable ads like videos, because in reality they are very different mediums. In order to make your playable ad successful, you should-

• Get the first 5 seconds right to hook the user
• Use an effective end card to lead the user to the store or app once the playable ends
• Focus on any one concept and keep the experience fresh, leaving them wanting for more
• Test different combination of elements to pinpoint top-performing experiences

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Example: The playable ad for Blackout Bingo acquired more than 100 thousand downloads on Android. When this playable ad ends, players are shown how much money they could’ve won, along with a “claim now” button. The aim is to entice users to download the game.

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It all boils down to effective creative testing…

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There are many who are expecting gaming creatives to take the next natural step towards Augmented Reality. But mobile specialists believe that innovation will come in the form of in-depth A/B testing. Adding new data touchpoints to formats like videos and playable ads will further enable machine learning to carry out real-time optimisation and make A/B testing 100% automated. Ideally, A/B testing should begin with 4 big creative concepts. Test small variations within them to see if your KPIs see any improvement. It's also important to separate the creative element you are testing and run them side-by-side as competing creatives. Doing this will not only show you which elements perform better, but it will also allow you to confidently incorporate those elements into all future creatives.

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Use Feature Tagging to group your creatives based on certain attributes to compare their performance effectively. Example: CTA - On, CTA - Off, Music - On, Music - Off

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Treat a user acquisition campaign as a brand awareness campaign… 

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If you think about it, a user acquisition campaign is nothing but a brand awareness campaign for an app. Brand awareness works best when there are maximum possible eyeballs taking it all in. It is for this reason that a holistic approach to campaign creatives is required. Focus on running a mix of ad types and placements to reach maximum scale. For instance, users are known to skip traditional video ads, but a well-crafted vertical video that takes up all of your screen gets markedly high completion rates. Similarly, banners must compete for attention, but they make up for it by having huge scale and reach. 

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Creative KPIs that determine the success of your ads…

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If you want to optimize the performance of your creatives, they need to be analysed. Click through Rate (CTR), Conversion rate (CVR), and Installs per Million mille (IPM) are 3 metrics you can use to optimise your creative performance. There is also quality which is the trickiest metric to identify. History has shown that the highest quality of users always come from creatives that best describe the gameplay. On the other hand, creatives that are not as authentic tend to have higher IPMs but lower user quality. The key is to keep testing in order to gather the full potential of your creative strategy.

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