How to properly purchase video ads for a mobile game?
Tamara Basova, marketing Specialist at Pixonic, told about the subtleties of working with video advertising at the White Nights St.Petersburg 2016 conference. We offer a short version of the report with presentation slides.
Tamara’s report was based on the experience of promoting Walking War Robots with the help of advertising networks in the USA. Recall that at the moment this is one of the highest-grossing mobile projects made in Russia. His monthly income is more than $1 million.
Tamara BasovaVideo vs Static
Basova’s task when she came to the project was to attract the maximum amount of traffic that would give an effective return on investment (ROI). Tamara started by testing various advertising formats.
During the tests, it turned out that for the Pixonic project, video advertising is much more effective than static. The conversion from clicks to downloads for videos was 11.79% for Pixonic, and 1.73% for static. With such a difference in conversion, by the way, there is nothing surprising in the fact that in the US market, most of the market in volume as a whole is behind video advertising.
Videos
The obvious result of testing was the decision to take up the creation of videos (video creatives). It was decided not to give this case into one hand. At the moment, Pixonic uses two external and one of its own commands for shooting. Since while advertising is shot only on the game engine, its creation is not so expensive – $ 1500-2000 per video.
The team divides the videos into two types: promotional videos and previews. Each of them has its own tasks. Advertising should quickly involve the player in the project, so it should focus on gameplay. As for the preview, its purpose is to demonstrate the priority number of possibilities. Based on this, it already focuses on the main features of the project.
Sites
After the issue with the format was resolved, it was the turn to decide through which networks and platforms, not counting Facebook, it is worth promoting the game. Tamara did not tell which sites the company eventually used, but she shared 11 tips on how to distinguish a good site from a bad one.
The first half of the tips:
The second half of the tips:
Features of working with platforms
At the report, Tamara also noted that it makes no sense for users to show a video of one game more than three times. They just lose interest in this project.
As for the optimal bid (the maximum price set for viewing sites), Tamara advises looking for it as follows:
- you set a certain CPCV bid (the price for full viewing is not counted if the user closed the video before it was completed);
- stabilize CPM (the cost of a thousand impressions is a constant value that cannot be directly influenced, only through the CPCV bid);
- depending on the conversion, you get a price per download (CPI) that suits you.
Basova also recommends not to set too small limits for daily spending on campaigns, as this can significantly slow down optimization due to volume restrictions, and also affect the quality of traffic due to restrictions on connected “premium sources”.
Optimization of the advertising campaign
You can start polishing the campaign after it has given the first thousand downloads. An effective campaign for Pixonic is one that gives the retention of the first day in the region of 48-50%.
In other words, the company tries to bring the results up to this number every time, experimenting with sources, videos, and so on. Since the advertising content changes regularly (3-4 new videos appear every month), it is necessary to return to optimization periodically. At Pixonic, it is held once every two weeks.
What can advertising optimization give, except finding out that one or another grid is not worth using? Tamara stated that the optimization of advertising allowed to increase the retention of the thirtieth day by 20%.
If you have any questions about the presentation, be sure to write, we will ask Tamara to answer them.
