🎮 Why ad ceative is more important than ever
In Today’s Email
🚀 This week, we dive into how to adapt creatives to a changing privacy landscape.
On the go? Listen to one of our podcasts from this week, we’ve got
🎧 TWIG #213 THE SEASON FINALE!
🎧 Veteran Technical Director James Marr Answers: What Makes A Great Game Engineer?
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In a privacy-centric world, creative is more important than ever
With privacy becoming more important to mobile players and the prevalence of artificial intelligence (AI) in app advertising inventories, the quality of your creatives has never been more important to the success of your games. This was one of the key takeaways from our recent discussion with Sandro Gelashvili, Head of Creative Works at Google, and Rau Dosymbetov, Creative Producer at Nexters, on the Deconstructor of Fun podcast.
More than ever, user acquisition teams must rely on machine learning and AI to find the right audiences for their games and apps. While these tools are incredibly powerful, marketing professionals have to think outside of traditional optimization tactics to show the right creativity to players.
With privacy becoming more important to mobile players and the prevalence of artificial intelligence (AI) in-app advertising inventories, the quality of your creatives has never been more critical to the success of your games. This was one of the key takeaways from our recent discussion with Sandro Gelashvili, Head of Creative Works at Google, and Rau Dosymbetov, Creative Producer at Nexters, on the Deconstructor of Fun podcast.
A critical step to generating great creativity that can attract new players is to understand the wants and needs of your current player base.
“Start with the audience. Start with the players,” advises Sandro. “You need to understand your audience and discover what motivates them so that you can generate new creative that appeals to more players like your biggest current fans.”
Rau explains how they used this method at Nexters to generate some of the well-known and highly performing creative you’ve likely seen for their hit hero-collecting RPG, Hero Wars:
“We believe that our players are thinkers. They like to solve problems and calculate numbers, levels, points, and percentile chances. So we conducted research and we found out that 80% of the time players spend in Hero Wars is spent on the menus. Players are distributing talents, rebalancing squads, sitting on the main menu, and thinking rather than in actual battles. This is a counterintuitive finding because when you think about games like Hero Wars you’re normally thinking about the appeal of the battle game, not of the menus.”
The path to success in a modern mobile marketing environment is to understand and work with the nature of these AI-powered tools. The better you understand how they work, the more successful you can be in using them to drive high-quality players to your game.
As Sandro and Rau explained in the interview, the best tool you have to influence the targeting of your ads is the creative itself. As a result, it’s important to do the research to understand your current player base, what they like, and what motivates them. From there, you should generate iterations of ad creative around specific targeting hypotheses. If you can find creative that appeals to the wants and needs of a high spending demographic that will enjoy your game, then you will be able to find long-term success. As mobile players continue to expect more privacy, this is the way for mobile marketers to profitably use performance marketing tools to acquire new and engaged players.
🎙️ Deconstructor of Fun Podcast
🎧 TWIG #213 THE SEASON FINALE!
This is the last TWIG of 2022! Closing out the year, Seufert, Kress, and Laura discuss the 2022 Game Awards and what game launches to look forward to in 2023, Apple’s concessions on outside the app store payments, a brief FTC vs MSFT update, Playtika’s layoffs and Brawl Stars removing Loot Boxes. Have a great end of the year and we look forward to delivering all your game-related news in January.
🎧 Veteran Technical Director James Marr Answers: What Makes A Great Game Engineer?
James Marr has been a Technical Director at studios including DeNA, Zynga and N3TWORK Studios. His work includes Eliminate, which was not only the first 3D, competitive shooter on the App Store, but its first free-to-play game as well, as well as top-grossing hit Legendary: Game of Heroes. In this wide ranging discussion, he goes deep on the qualities which separate Good vs Great when it comes to Game Engineering. He blows Ethan's mind talking about why it's not the hard skills like math and language proficiency as much as the soft skills - Empathy, Listening & Communication - which are the necessary ingredients of a truly great game engineer. This is hands down Ethan's favorite interview of 2022 and is simply not to be missed!
📝 NEWS
📊 INDUSTRY
EU Commission argues against FTC lawsuit to halt Activision-Blizzard deal
Loot Box State of Play 2022: Regulatory and Policy Research Developments
Win the Launch: How Google is helping game developers successfully launch their games
Apple prepares to allow alternative app stores in the EU
2022 Pocket Gamer Awards finish the year in style. And the award goes to…
ASA issues new guidance on mobile gaming advertising
Gayming Awards 2023 unveils its nominations
USK adds loot boxes and online risks to age ratings
EU calls for greater player protections in video games
Tenjin and InMobi’s monetisation report shows short-term effects of Google Play’s new ad policy
11 games that could exceed $2 billion in revenue in 2023
LoopMe: 80% of mobile gamers are multitasking while playing
Gaming browser Opera GX surpasses 20 million monthly active users
Fewer games but greater revenue - the reality of the global mobile games market
Data.ai: consumers spent $129B on in-app purchases in 2022
Azur Games summarises trends in gaming through 2022
FIFA Mobile enjoyed a 92% increase in downloads in South East Asia
Mobile version of Vampire Survivors reaches 1m downloads in a week
💻 PUBLISHER
Supercell removes loot boxes from Brawl Stars
Riot Games suing NetEase, claims Hyper Front copies Valorant
Playtika announces layoffs of over 600 employees
Report: Microsoft is willing to put Call of Duty in PS Plus
Riot Games brings PC & mobile titles to Xbox Game Pass
Zynga's Virtual Diversity Platform encourages inclusivity in gaming
Voodoo launches casual and midcore games publishing
My.Games to exit Russia, restructure business
Amazon Games will publish next major Tomb Raider title from Crystal Dynamics
💎🙌 INVESTING / M&A
Metaverse company Infinite Reality will go public through $1.85B SPAC
Keywords acquires PR firm LabCom
Jagex acquires Gamepires, studio behind Scum
Turkish studio Pink Games has $1.2 million valuation after first investment
Jarvi Games raises $3m in a seed funding round
Keywords acquires Labcom with initial $1 million cash consideration
Anima raises $3M for Onlybots augmented reality digital pets
👾 NEW GAMES
‘Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis’ Gets New Gameplay Trailer, Closed Beta Test Delayed to Summer 2023
A Remaster of the PSP RPG ‘Blaze Union: Story to Reach the Future’ Is Coming to iOS, Android, and Switch Next Year in Japan
Vikings: Valhalla, the strategy game based on the series of the same name drops on Netflix next year
Ninja Must Die, Pandada Games' action platformer with stylish visuals, is out now on iOS and Android
New Hogwarts Legacy Gameplay Showcases Open World, Combat, And The Room Of Requirement
Rogue Company: Elite is a made-for-mobile shooter that's now open for pre-registration
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Deconstructor of Fun Oy, Jääskentie , Espoo, Finland