Choosing the appropriate ad format necessitates marketers to investigate every available option and how each setup may be tailored to their requirements. The good news is that, according to 78% of customers, they are happy to be exposed to advertising that is relevant to their interests. Finding out what works best for your app isn’t as straightforward as it sounds.
Playable advertising is a fantastic illustration of how advertisements may be highly entertaining for customers while also being beneficial to the advertiser. According to eMarketer, US agency professionals choose playable ads as the most effective in-app ad format, followed by interactive ads and rewarded videos. This article covers everything you need to know about playable advertisements, from defining the term to sharing best practices.
What are playable ads?
Playable advertisements allow people to sample your app before they install it and, after doing so, gain full access to the complete experience. This necessitates the creation of a drastically reduced version of your application’s critical features to enable users to “try before they buy.”
Playable ads are often associated with mobile game marketing, in which consumers can try out the game, become hooked, and eventually install it. Other industries are using creative methods to get value from highly engaging playable advertisements. Lendi, a fintech firm based in Australia, used playable ads on Facebook for brand awareness campaigns. By developing a playable refinance calculator, the company was able to boost incremental leads by 30% while also reducing costs per lead by 66%.
Snippets of the app’s user experience, when coupled with in-app purchases and other incentives that may be redeemed within your app, might be enough to entice consumers to install. These iterations of gameplay generally last around a minute. After the preview is finished, your ad should include a call to action (CTA) so that users can click to download the software.
What are the advantages of playable ads?
Reduce uninstall rates and increase retention
Playing ads are an excellent approach to engage users since they give the opportunity to try your app before downloading it. Furthermore, by giving consumers a clear idea of what they’re getting into, playable advertisements will decrease churn and uninstall rates. User retention is also more probable as a result of playable advertisements because users may experience gameplay highlights before deciding to download your app.
Attracting consumers who are more likely to be retained for longer helps you increase your audience’s lifetime value (LTV), resulting in greater value for each ad dollar spent. A Facebook case study revealed that playable ads helped mobile games developer Me2Zen achieve a 50% improvement in return on ad spend (ROAS) while simultaneously generating x3 as many in-app purchases and lowering their cost per install (CPE) by 9%.
Gain access to valuable data insights
Advertisers can use data from playable ad developers to find behavioural trends and other findings that might assist them in optimizing their campaigns. For example, you may discover the sort of person who will interact with your advertisements and which call to action performs best at converting leads.
How to develop playable ads for your mobile app
Developing play-able advertisements necessitates more complex programming skills than other ad models — and there are far more components to test and optimize. The advantages, on the other hand, frequently outweigh the additional time it takes to build good playable advertisements.
You’ll need to choose the most exciting aspects of your game and utilize these to create the best possible ad to entice users to convert. You must also make sure that your playable ad is a genuine depiction of what consumers may expect throughout the complete user experience. Selecting which characteristics to highlight is a balancing act that you can improve by A/B testing and receiving consumer comments.
Interactive video vs. pure HTML
There are two methods for producing engaging advertisements:
- Interactive video: This is a combination of HTML code and video. Interactive video may be a smart alternative for playable advertisements that are 3D or cinematic in nature. Playable videos utilizing interactive video have larger file sizes and cause greater network strain than pure HTML playable.
- Pure HTML: The playable advertising is built from the ground up, mimicking the in-game user experience as accurately as possible using HTML code. Pure HTML provides complete control over the ad and a higher level of fidelity in replicating your mobile gaming experience.
Create a tutorial for your playable ad
the first item that a user sees after viewing your ad is a tutorial. It should be succinct and basic, containing just enough information to get started. The most effective playable advertisements are intuitive. Otherwise, the attention of the user will be wasted on data that is unlikely to cause them to install the app. Consider (and reduce) the number of clicks required by users before they can enjoy the game while developing a tutorial.
Optimizing your playable ads
Once you’ve finished creating your playable advertisements, it’s vital to test and optimize them over time. A/B testing is essential for improving your click through rate (CTR) and ROAS.
To implement A/B testing, you must first create variants of your advertisements and expose them to lookalike audience groups. The objective is to determine which variant produces the best results in order to scale up and save money later on. There are five phases in the process of A/B testing.
- Develop a hypothesis: You must research and evaluate the data you have in order to build your theory. For example, determining which in-app purchases are most popular and which gaming level is most popular with your audience can assist you in deciding which variable you should test.
- Segment your audience: To have confidence in the results of your A/B test, create two audience groups that exhibit similar behaviour. It’s critical to have faith in your experiment’s outcomes. The closer these groups are to one other, the easier it will be to determine which variants had an influence on conversion rates.
- Analysis: After finishing campaigns for both audiences, you may examine the outcomes to see which variant produced the desired effects
- Implement changes: By taking your research into consideration, you can optimize the performance of your playable advertisements.
- Adapt your hypothesis and repeat: You may now try a new variant to continue to improve your advertisements. You can improve the efficacy of your playable ad content over time, ensuring that high-value users convert more frequently.
Best practices for creating and optimizing your playable ads
- Keep it simple: Users should not have prior experience with your game. As a result, it’s critical to keep your playable advertisements basic. Making your ad easy to enjoy is an effective technique for obtaining results. The user should be able to figure out how to play immediately after completing your quick tutorial as a rule. It’s also essential that the call-to-action (CTA) be brief and simple to understand
- Optimize your app store entry: Even if your playable ad is optimized and encourages high-value users to download from the app store. Optimizing your app for the app store (ASO) may help boost conversions, including making modifications to your app title, description, and inclusion of useful screenshots and videos
- Include your game’s essential features: Consider your playable ads like a highlight reel for your app. Although you only need to build a simplified version of your app’s gameplay for your playable ads, make sure to include the important elements that will encourage consumers to convert. In addition, because your game has animations and characters that set it apart from others, it may be worth including them in the highlights reel.
- Timing is critical to success: Playable ads are enjoyable, but they can’t compare to the overall experience of your app. However, the most interesting ad will not result in conversions if you don’t provide a Call To Action (CTA) before users move on. To get better results over time, you must test and optimize the placement of your CTA.
- Reward players to encourage them to convert: Users may be more inclined to convert if you incentivize them for their activity. If a user gathers coins in your playable ad, for example, you might provide them with a rewarded boost so that they start your mobile game with an advantage. Providing incentives gives users a clear incentive to install your app and claim what is rightfully theirs during gameplay. The boost you give to consumers is another element that may be A/B tested for the best effects.
- Showcase your ad’s interactivity: Because most ad formats aren’t interactive, consumers must be aware that they can interact with your playable advertisements. You may lose out on high-value users who would have installed your app if this isn’t immediately apparent. Avoid using unchanging images in the first few seconds of your advertisement, instead opting for appealing visuals to indicate interactivity.
If you’re looking for playable adverts for your business, why not contact Appetite creative
