Quarantine through the peak of the pandemic wouldn’t have been the identical with out Sweet Crush, Fruit Ninja, or Conflict of Clans. The COVID-19 pandemic, lockdowns, and stay-at-home life have pushed huge development within the app financial system for conventional players and first-time players alike.
Table of Content
- in-game mobile advertising
- keyword installs
- playstore ranking
- buy android installs
Quarantine during the height of the pandemic wouldn’t have been the same without Candy Crush, Fruit Ninja, or Clash of Clans. The COVID-19 pandemic, lockdowns, and stay-at-home lifestyles have driven massive growth in the app economy for traditional gamers and first-time gamers alike.
Mobile games, in particular, exploded in popularity, seeing over a 45% increase in game installations from 2020 to 2021, blooming into a $120b+ industry. As a result, in-game advertising has become much more sophisticated over the years, proving to be one of the most effective revenue channels for mobile apps today.
In this blog, we’ll cover everything you need to know about in-game advertising including the benefits, formats, expert strategies, and more.
What is in-game advertising?
In-game advertising sells ad space within mobile games as a monetization strategy. These ads come in multiple formats. They can be integrated directly into the game by rewarding users for watching video ads or the ads can show up like traditional banner ads at the bottom of your game screen. We’ll come back to different ad formats in a later section.
What are the benefits of in-game advertising?
In-game advertising provides a symbiotic relationship between publishers and advertisers. For advertisers, in-game ads are a highly interactive and engaging way to interact with users. For publishers, ads are an effective revenue driver and provide a gateway for users to spend more within the app. Let’s dig a little deeper.
Generate revenue – and lots of it
In a world where free-to-play dominates the marketplace, integrating advertising into your mobile game can generate scalable revenue. According to Venturebeat, in-game ad revenue is projected to reach $56b in 2024.
Increase in-app purchases with psychology
Rewarding players with in-game currency for interacting with ads can show users the value of in-app purchases without committing to anything besides watching an ad. Ultimately, it utilizes the foot-in-the-door technique, or getting a prospect to agree to do something small to increase the likelihood of getting them to accept a bigger task. In this case, spending money for in-game benefits.
Get your gamers to game some more
The most effective in-game ad strategy pairs good user experience with an effective rewarding system. Offering your players high-value rewards can keep them engaged for a longer period of time, incentivizing them to come back and continue playing your game. Feeding the reward loop is both an art and a science that requires testing.
Reach new audiences far and wide
Long gone are the days where you could only target young male teenage gamers. Surprisingly, the gender split for mobile game audiences is 51% female and 49% male. And against conventional wisdom, advertisers can now use gaming apps as an effective and diversified marketing channel instead as mobile game adoption continues to accelerate. While the demographic data skews to a younger audience, two-thirds of all internet users aged 55 to 64 play video games, and the number continues to climb by the day.
8 types of in-game advertising formats
Rewarded ads & rewarded video ads (RV)
Rewarded video ads offer users in-game bonuses in exchange for watching a full-screen ad. These ads range from 15 seconds to 1 minute and usually cannot be skipped. Rewarded ads provide a positive experience for both users and publishers, as users don’t have to pay for superior in-game content such as winning in-game currency, unlocking new levels, or receiving unique items. In return, publishers gain exposure and have incredible engagement rates.
Reward Loop definition: A system that rewards users for certain behaviors to encourage habitual behavior to keep users engaged for longer periods of time.
Interstitial ads
Interstitial ads are full-screen and interactive advertisements that appear between in-game activities or levels. These ads provide high visibility, but due to their potentially disruptive nature, it’s important for advertisers to use interstitials sparingly and non-invasively.
Users are then prompted to do one of the following:
- Watch through the entire ad
- Engage with the ad and visit the promotional page
- 5-second delay before skipping the ad
Interstitials also typically end with a call to action to download the app. Interstitials are most effective in between stages without having to interrupt the flow of the game.
Interstitial definition: To be in between two things. In advertising, interstitial ads play in between levels or achievements.
Display banners
The most common type of ad is the display banner. They’re often at the top or the bottom of your screen with rotating designs and creatives. However, due to banner blindness, performance on native banners is trending down. They have low viewability, recall, and oftentimes generate little to no revenue. On the other hand, ad placements are cheaper for advertisers who want to run a large-scale branding campaign.
Banner Blindness definition: Advertisements and ads appearing in locations traditionally reserved for advertising are increasingly being ignored by users.
Playable ads
Playable ads are interactive ads where users are prompted to play a quick demo of the game they’re advertising. According to SmartyAds, this gamified ad format performs 8x better than traditional interstitial ads. The ads come in three parts:
- A quick explanation of game mechanics
- Short, playable demo
- A call to action to download the game
Gamify definition: to include elements of a game to reward interactivity with something that traditionally does not engage with the user.
Offerwall
Similar to rewarded ads, offerwalls ask users to install other apps, fill out surveys, or play games in exchange for in-game rewards.
While payout for publishers were high, many ad networks have banned offerwalls due to low performance. In 2018, Apple began cracking down offerwalls as they deemed it to be a way to manipulate the App Store charts.
Coupon ads
Coupon ads provide users unique voucher codes to redeem prizes and discounts in the real world. This online-to-offline strategy targets advertisers focused on driving foot traffic with physical brick-and-mortar locations.
Online to Offline (O2O) definition: a marketing strategy to draw sales in physical stores using online channels
Cross-promotional ads
Cross-promotional advertising is the marketing strategy to promote a parent company’s apps on their own network of apps, especially when they notice a higher likelihood to churn. This strategy is a free way to promote their highest revenue-generating game at no cost besides the opportunity cost of not selling ad space to other advertisers. However, we recommend you exclude your highest spenders in cross-promotional ads to keep them spending on the games they already love.
The 13 most popular mobile game genres
Action: Ranging from platformers, to beat ‘em ups, action games focus on dexterity, reaction-time, and hand-eye coordination to overcome difficult challenges. Rewarded video ads work exceptionally well for players who want to boost their stats or obtain new items. Additionally, action gamers are more likely to become paying players once they realize the exponential benefit of paid or gifted items, so be sure to reward your players who engage with your ads and increase your opportunities for in-game purchases.
Arcade: Classic-style games that require skill for one unique game mechanic. Rewarded video ads and interstitial ads work well if the arcade game has multiple levels. Consider offering extra lives or reward multipliers for engaging with an ad.
Battle Royale: Online multiplayer games that use the elements of survival, last-man standing, and scavenging. Similar to action games, consider a luck wheel or rewarded video ads when a player needs an extra boost. You may draw inspiration from Call of Duty’s $559 million mobile monetization strategy. Consider offering free bundles, crates, or even credits for engaging with a video ad.
Casual: Low-stakes games targeted at a mass-market for hobbyists. Similar to arcade games, consider non intrusive interstitial ads in between levels to create a seamless gaming experience.
MMORPG: Massively multiplayer online role playing games that involve online-play, controlling and growing your own character, and role-playing. Due to the immersive nature of MMORPGs, in-app advertising is more difficult than other genres. Hardcore gamers play for hours a day and constant engagement is a priority for publishers.
MOBA: Multiplayer online battle arena games involve two teams of players competing to score goals or take over opposing team structures. Most common ads include interstitials and rewarded video ads.
Puzzle: Require logical and conceptual skill to beat. Similar to casual games, interstitial ads in between levels are the most common form of advertising.
Sports: Games that emulate sports including basketball, soccer, baseball, and more. Rewarded video ads are very common for sports games.
Trivia: Games that test extensive and broad knowledge across multiple subjects. Trivia games often involve lightning-fast rounds, which makes quick and snappy interstitial ads an effective form of advertising.
Word: Involve wordplay, spelling, or rearranging of letters. As a subgenre of puzzle games, word games also involve levels which makes sense for interstitial ad placements. However, for longer crossword or sudoku games, banner ads are also very common.
How to identify your target audience
As we discussed previously, mass gaming adoption has allowed advertisers to reach a wide range of audiences across the world. The ‘typical’ gamer profile is no longer relevant. When targeting your advertising to your most relevant audience, you must understand the psychology and behaviors of your key personas.
This includes the wants, needs, and challenges your audience faces. A good place to start is to conduct a survey or leverage research companies to help you form your personas.
Alternatively, GameRefinery developed eight key player archetypes that can help inform your decision. Once you’ve built out your ideal customer profile, map them to the types of games your audience would most likely connect with.
Source: GameRefinery
4 expert in-game ad strategies
Obsessively iterate to generate great creatives
There’s no better way to get people excited about your game than producing great ad creatives. Show the most fun aspects of your game while staying true to your game experience. Show the pivotal aspects of your game first as a hook, be quick to reveal the punchline, and have clear call-to-action (and A/B test everything).
Leverage remarketing for gaming apps
In our State of Gaming report, our research shows that apps utilizing remarketing as an ad strategy significantly increases retention, share of paying users, and average revenue per paying user. Remarketing campaigns are most effective when paired with push notifications, email marketing, and social media marketing to re-engage with your paying users off-platform.
Set clear goals
The best way to determine the success of your in-game ads is by setting clear metrics for success. Rewarded traffic, for example, requires extensive testing to maximize your revenue and app retention. Is your ultimate goal to boost volume? Or is it to maximize ROAS? Are you measuring your success based on cost-per-action or cost-per-click? In order to answer these questions, watch this whiteboard session about maximizing rewarded traffic.
Hedge against fraud
According to our research, gaming apps see low install fraud rates but are at higher risk for in-app fraud. Fraudsters are targeting post-install in-app events to tinker with CPA events beyond the download. Invest in fraud protection technology to avoid wasted dollars.
Measure your success
Dumping money on advertising without measuring performance is the equivalent of “spraying and praying” in a shooting game. Mobile advertising is an investment that can pay off handsomely when you pay close attention to attribution. The worst thing you can do is leave it to ‘best guess.’
Set up proper ad revenue attribution to pinpoint your best sources of traffic. With more data, you can start delivering to the right users who are most likely to engage with your ads – at the right place and at the right time. Who wouldn’t want that?
Cell video games, specifically, exploded in reputation, seeing over a forty five% improve in sport installations from 2020 to 2021, blooming right into a $120b+ trade. Because of this, in-game promoting has change into far more refined through the years, proving to be one of the efficient income channels for cell apps at this time.
On this weblog, we’ll cowl every thing you should find out about in-game promoting together with the advantages, codecs, skilled methods, and extra.
What’s in-game promoting?
In-game promoting sells advert house inside cell video games as a monetization technique. These adverts are available a number of codecs. They are often built-in instantly into the sport by rewarding customers for watching video adverts or the adverts can present up like conventional banner adverts on the backside of your sport display screen. We’ll come again to completely different advert codecs in a later part.
What are the advantages of in-game promoting?
In-game promoting supplies a symbiotic relationship between publishers and advertisers. For advertisers, in-game adverts are a extremely interactive and fascinating solution to work together with customers. For publishers, adverts are an efficient income driver and supply a gateway for customers to spend extra throughout the app. Let’s dig just a little deeper.
Generate income – and plenty of it
In a world the place free-to-play dominates {the marketplace}, integrating promoting into your cell sport can generate scalable income. In keeping with Venturebeat, in-game advert income is projected to succeed in $56b in 2024.
Enhance in-app purchases with psychology
Rewarding gamers with in-game forex for interacting with adverts can present customers the worth of in-app purchases with out committing to something in addition to watching an advert. In the end, it makes use of the foot-in-the-door approach, or getting a prospect to conform to do one thing small to extend the chance of getting them to just accept a much bigger job. On this case, spending cash for in-game advantages.
Get your players to sport some extra
The simplest in-game advert technique pairs good consumer expertise with an efficient rewarding system. Providing your gamers high-value rewards can preserve them engaged for an extended time frame, incentivizing them to come back again and proceed taking part in your sport. Feeding the reward loop is each an artwork and a science that requires testing.
Attain new audiences far and large
Lengthy gone are the times the place you could possibly solely goal younger male teenage players. Surprisingly, the gender break up for cell sport audiences is 51% feminine and 49% male. And in opposition to standard knowledge, advertisers can now use gaming apps as an efficient and diversified advertising and marketing channel as an alternative as cell sport adoption continues to speed up. Whereas the demographic information skews to a youthful viewers, two-thirds of all web customers aged 55 to 64 play video video games, and the quantity continues to climb by the day.
8 sorts of in-game promoting codecs
Rewarded adverts & rewarded video adverts (RV)
Rewarded video adverts provide customers in-game bonuses in change for watching a full-screen advert. These adverts vary from 15 seconds to 1 minute and normally can’t be skipped. Rewarded adverts present a constructive expertise for each customers and publishers, as customers don’t should pay for superior in-game content material reminiscent of successful in-game forex, unlocking new ranges, or receiving distinctive gadgets. In return, publishers achieve publicity and have unbelievable engagement charges.
Reward Loop definition: A system that rewards customers for sure behaviors to encourage ordinary habits to maintain customers engaged for longer intervals of time.
Interstitial adverts
Interstitial adverts are full-screen and interactive ads that seem between in-game actions or ranges. These adverts present excessive visibility, however attributable to their probably disruptive nature, it’s essential for advertisers to make use of interstitials sparingly and non-invasively.
Customers are then prompted to do one of many following:
- Watch by means of your complete advert
- Interact with the advert and go to the promotional web page
- 5-second delay earlier than skipping the advert
Interstitials additionally usually finish with a name to motion to obtain the app. Interstitials are handiest in between phases with out having to interrupt the move of the sport.
Interstitial definition: To be in between two issues. In promoting, interstitial adverts play in between ranges or achievements.
Show banners
The commonest kind of advert is the show banner. They’re typically on the high or the underside of your display screen with rotating designs and creatives. Nevertheless, attributable to banner blindness, efficiency on native banners is trending down. They’ve low viewability, recall, and oftentimes generate little to no income. Then again, advert placements are cheaper for advertisers who wish to run a large-scale branding marketing campaign.
Banner Blindness definition: Ads and adverts showing in places historically reserved for promoting are more and more being ignored by customers.
Playable adverts
Playable adverts are interactive adverts the place customers are prompted to play a fast demo of the sport they’re promoting. In keeping with SmartyAds, this gamified advert format performs 8x higher than conventional interstitial adverts. The adverts are available three components:
- A fast clarification of sport mechanics
- Brief, playable demo
- A name to motion to obtain the sport
Gamify definition: to incorporate components of a sport to reward interactivity with one thing that historically doesn’t interact with the consumer.
Offerwall
Just like rewarded adverts, offerwalls ask customers to put in different apps, fill out surveys, or play video games in change for in-game rewards.
Whereas payout for publishers have been excessive, many advert networks have banned offerwalls attributable to low efficiency. In 2018, Apple started cracking down offerwalls as they deemed it to be a solution to manipulate the App Retailer charts.
Coupon adverts
Coupon adverts present customers distinctive voucher codes to redeem prizes and reductions in the true world. This online-to-offline technique targets advertisers centered on driving foot site visitors with bodily brick-and-mortar places.
On-line to Offline (O2O) definition: a advertising and marketing technique to attract gross sales in bodily shops utilizing on-line channels
Cross-promotional adverts
Cross-promotional promoting is the advertising and marketing technique to advertise a dad or mum firm’s apps on their very own community of apps, particularly once they discover the next chance to churn. This technique is a free solution to promote their highest revenue-generating sport without charge in addition to the chance value of not promoting advert house to different advertisers. Nevertheless, we advocate you exclude your highest spenders in cross-promotional adverts to maintain them spending on the video games they already love.
The 13 hottest cell sport genres
Motion: Starting from platformers, to beat ‘em ups, motion video games concentrate on dexterity, reaction-time, and hand-eye coordination to beat troublesome challenges. Rewarded video adverts work exceptionally properly for gamers who wish to enhance their stats or receive new gadgets. Moreover, motion players usually tend to change into paying gamers as soon as they notice the exponential advantage of paid or gifted gadgets, so make sure you reward your gamers who interact together with your adverts and improve your alternatives for in-game purchases.
Arcade: Traditional-style video games that require talent for one distinctive sport mechanic. Rewarded video adverts and interstitial adverts work properly if the arcade sport has a number of ranges. Contemplate providing further lives or reward multipliers for participating with an advert.
Battle Royale: On-line multiplayer video games that use the weather of survival, last-man standing, and scavenging. Just like motion video games, contemplate a luck wheel or rewarded video adverts when a participant wants an additional enhance. Chances are you’ll draw inspiration from Name of Obligation’s $559 million cell monetization technique. Contemplate providing free bundles, crates, and even credit for participating with a video advert.
Informal: Low-stakes video games focused at a mass-market for hobbyists. Just like arcade video games, contemplate non intrusive interstitial adverts in between ranges to create a seamless gaming expertise.
MMORPG: Massively multiplayer on-line position taking part in video games that contain online-play, controlling and rising your individual character, and role-playing. As a result of immersive nature of MMORPGs, in-app promoting is harder than different genres. Hardcore players play for hours a day and fixed engagement is a precedence for publishers.
MOBA: Multiplayer on-line battle area video games contain two groups of gamers competing to attain targets or take over opposing workforce buildings. Most typical adverts embrace interstitials and rewarded video adverts.
Puzzle: Require logical and conceptual talent to beat. Just like informal video games, interstitial adverts in between ranges are the most typical type of promoting.
Sports activities: Video games that emulate sports activities together with basketball, soccer, baseball, and extra. Rewarded video adverts are quite common for sports activities video games.
Trivia: Video games that take a look at in depth and broad information throughout a number of topics. Trivia video games typically contain lightning-fast rounds, which makes fast and snappy interstitial adverts an efficient type of promoting.
Phrase: Contain wordplay, spelling, or rearranging of letters. As a subgenre of puzzle video games, phrase video games additionally contain ranges which is sensible for interstitial advert placements. Nevertheless, for longer crossword or sudoku video games, banner adverts are additionally quite common.
Tips on how to establish your target market
As we mentioned beforehand, mass gaming adoption has allowed advertisers to succeed in a variety of audiences internationally. The ‘typical’ gamer profile is now not related. When concentrating on your promoting to your most related viewers, you should perceive the psychology and behaviors of your key personas.
This consists of the desires, wants, and challenges your viewers faces. An excellent place to start out is to conduct a survey or leverage analysis corporations that can assist you type your personas.
Alternatively, GameRefinery developed eight key participant archetypes that may assist inform your determination. When you’ve constructed out your perfect buyer profile, map them to the sorts of video games your viewers would almost certainly join with.
Supply: GameRefinery
4 skilled in-game advert methods
Obsessively iterate to generate nice creatives
There’s no higher solution to get individuals enthusiastic about your sport than producing nice advert creatives. Present probably the most enjoyable elements of your sport whereas staying true to your sport expertise. Present the pivotal elements of your sport first as a hook, be fast to disclose the punchline, and have clear call-to-action (and A/B take a look at every thing).
Leverage remarketing for gaming apps
In our State of Gaming report, our analysis exhibits that apps using remarketing as an advert technique considerably will increase retention, share of paying customers, and common income per paying consumer. Remarketing campaigns are handiest when paired with push notifications, e mail advertising and marketing, and social media advertising and marketing to re-engage together with your paying customers off-platform.
Set clear targets
The easiest way to find out the success of your in-game adverts is by setting clear metrics for achievement. Rewarded site visitors, for instance, requires in depth testing to maximise your income and app retention. Is your final aim to spice up quantity? Or is it to maximise ROAS? Are you measuring your success based mostly on cost-per-action or cost-per-click? So as to reply these questions, watch this whiteboard session about maximizing rewarded site visitors.
Hedge in opposition to fraud
In keeping with our analysis, gaming apps see low set up fraud charges however are at increased danger for in-app fraud. Fraudsters are concentrating on post-install in-app occasions to tinker with CPA occasions past the obtain. Put money into fraud safety know-how to keep away from wasted {dollars}.
Measure your success
Dumping cash on promoting with out measuring efficiency is the equal of “spraying and praying” in a capturing sport. Cell promoting is an funding that may repay handsomely while you pay shut consideration to attribution. The worst factor you are able to do is depart it to ‘finest guess.’
Arrange correct advert income attribution to pinpoint your finest sources of site visitors. With extra information, you can begin delivering to the proper customers who’re almost certainly to have interaction together with your adverts – on the proper place and on the proper time. Who wouldn’t need that?