Sooner or later, most mobile game developers will face the need to make ad creatives: whatever people may say, the success of an organically marketed project is not comparable to what a large-scale ad campaign can achieve.

Everyone gets why marketing is important, but what do you do when an outsourcing studio wants $6,000 for a playable ad, competitors make misleading ads, and gameplay videos for your project are being edited by a puzzled artist in whatever way they see fit?

Let’s figure it out together using the example of hyper-casual games, review possible ways to approach the process and discuss key points to prevent you from doing too much.

There are three main types of ad creatives:

Now let's talk about where and how certain formats can be used, about the difficulties you may encounter, and the steps you should take while putting together a creative team.

Where to start

Step one. Play games and watch ads. Sounds pretty obvious, but it's a great way to help you gain visual experience and develop a general understanding of popular trends. To start off, it’s enough to catch onto the types of videos from different companies that are most common.

Step two. Analyze the competitors who have products similar to yours. This is a must for all developers because trying to randomly find a successful marketing strategy is like finding a needle in a haystack. A more efficient and safer way is to compile the top 5 competitors that release a lot of ads, figure out the trajectories they’re moving in and do something similar. If it works, you can make the subsequent creatives more complicated and enrich them with your own ideas on the foundation you already have.

These days, searching for data for analysis is quite simple:

Mobile game ads are often similar due to the fact that particular creatives are performing better at a given moment. Their success is also based on analytical data from large marketing departments, and these guys know what they're doing. However, you can’t just go with the safest option and kick back forever: trends change, so you need to constantly analyze the market.

Step three. Monitor trends. It's not just about advertising trends, it’s about everything: it's important to think globally and use non-gaming content that your potential users like right now. It could be anything, from a popular show like Squid Game to a viral sound from TikTok.

An example of a working trend is when the "player" in the ad messes up, takes a long time to think, and then loses. The best option is making a video where the “player” fails at the very last second, and give users a clear understanding of how it was supposed to go at the beginning. This is what shot Party Match into the stratosphere — the metrics were average, but it soared into the top 5 after we added a creative using this method.

This works great for the entire hyper-casual audience, but such videos require a delicate balance that can only be achieved with practice. You need to create a feeling of a real attempt to win, albeit unsuccessful. At the same time, the viewer must understand what had to be done in order to win.

If you make it too difficult, don’t give any hints, or make an extremely stupid attempt, the user won’t have the incentive to go and do it “the right way”. One or two videos out of ten with errors like these will work, but if the budget doesn’t allow you to act a little reckless, it's better not to risk it.

There are also more unusual trends, like when a random sound suddenly becomes viral. We tried to add out-of-context chewing noises for Chain Сube and WormsZone. These are completely different genres and target audience, but in both cases the results were good.

Another trend that’s worth mentioning are playable end cards. They quickly gained popularity, and now it’s flat-out impossible to launch on some ad channels without them. End cards don’t require you to adapt the content to them. Actually, it’s quite the opposite: they can be exactly the same as your top creatives. Thanks to end cards, we were able to significantly increase the spend on the channels — for Chain Cube, it even doubled.

People used to use mainly static when it came to end cards, but now simplified variations of playable ads are more common — just one or two clicks so that you don’t waste a lot of the player’s time.

But what if you have a unique mechanic and no competitors? The advice is simple: show real gameplay, don’t try to make it more attractive than it is, don’t use any effects or even color correction — this is always a good start, especially for hyper-casual games.

So, you now have a good eye for trends, you studied them and the competitors, and even drew some conclusions. What's next? Let's move on to specific creative formats.

Statics

You can't do without it at the start, especially when it comes to advertising channels like Google — the slots for statics must be filled, otherwise the launch will either be limited or not happen at all.

The statics will also be useful for ASO on new projects and its subsequent testing. If you’re launching a hyper-casual game, just one picture in different sizes besides the icons may be enough.

If the task is relatively simple and can be done with existing assets (screenshots, gameplay statics, UI for playables/videos, etc.), it makes sense to involve a designer: in this scenario, their skills are more important than the ability to draw. If we need to draw a location, for example, then we involve artists.

Don't spend too much time on statics, though: hand-drawn creatives and logos are completely inefficient in terms of time spent. A beautifully crafted screenshot of an interesting gameplay moment with added interactivity — crosshairs or a hand doing a ‘come hither’ motion — will go a longer way. Producing this kind of creatives takes one day of work tops, but it will work better.

A few things to keep in mind when working with statics:

Videos

Videos are a major driving force in mobile marketing, especially the simple gameplay clips. Next come the options.

In addition to the trends we described above, the noob/pro technique still works very well — take a perfect walkthrough and a failed one, and show them either side-by-side or sequentially. In our experience, this is best suited for titles if there’s some kind of construction and a static camera. Creatives like these perform worse for things like fast shooters.

A more original take on the same noob/pro principle

There are also smaller tricks that can help draw attention to the game: