Check out what’s working right now for fashion and style simulation games ad creative:
Discover user motivations for fashion and style simulation games
Compare top fashion and style simulation game creative trends
Get the breakdown on successful Super Stylist ad creative
Fashion and Style Simulation Games: Why Super Stylist Ads Work
From revenge makeovers to pets and parties, fashion and style simulation games pump up the beauty, drama, and personal connection for gamers. We analyzed the best-performing fashion and style simulation game ads based on MobileAction data. The strongest ads in this category are simple, quick, and funny. Dramatic and relatable relationship stories stand out. Letting the viewer feel like they’re making gameplay choices through real or augmented mechanics motivates engagement. And to combat the negative impacts of IDFA loss and the erosion of lookalike audience targetingplayer motivation matters. Whether we call it motivation-led, profile-based, or persona-led creative, Facebook says this approach to user acquisition is a “future-proof solution.”
With IDFA loss rendering A/B or multivariate creative testing useless, tailoring creative to different player motivations is the most efficient lever for sustained profitable user acquisition. To better understand why people hit that install button, our creative learning agenda incorporates intensive research into game genre, personas, and user motivations as well as understanding what ads our target users are responding to in other markets.
Here are ad creative trends we’re seeing for fashion and style simulation games:
Choosing what’s next from the player POV to direct narrative while interacting with the game’s characters
Game trailer/overview that showcases user experience, core objectives, and other game features
Fashion and style challenges
Using social media or texting to convey the narrative or primary message
Character focus using countdowns, origin stories
Vignettes featuring short character scenarios or stories
Achievement opportunities like level progression and mastery of a game
Success vs. Fail gameplay contrasting experienced and amateur players
Why these trends work:
By analyzing high-performing ads through the lens of player motivations, we can break down why specific ads appeal to different audiences.
Choosing what’s next appeals to self-expression, progression, and escapism
Fashion and design challenges appeal to self-expression and escapism
Using social media or texting appeals to social connection
Focusing on character stories and vignettes appeal to discovery, relaxation, and escapism
Achievement opportunities and Success vs. Fail gameplay appeals to expertise, power, and progression
Why Super Stylist Ads Work
Top-25 RPG Super Stylist is a fashion story game that earned 2 million downloads in August 2021 and over 50 million downloads since its 2019 release, according to Sensor Tower. Through Mobile Action, we can see how Super Stylist’s high-performing ads make the most of popular creative trends for fashion story games.
Featured creative trends:
Relatable character vignette: The main character prepares cocktails for a party and when her friends arrive early, she must get appropriately dressed
Social/text overlay: text helps the story progress and reminds players of social interaction
Player choice: choosing makeup, hair, and outfits allows for self-expression and decision-making
Challenge and mastery: showing the countdown timer and fluctuating success triggers sparks a desire for mastery and achievement
“Fail” gameplay: The final cumulative outfit decision is ultimately unsuccessful providing an opportunity for the player to do better
Creative Concepts for Fashion & Style Games
Create ads based on choosing what’s next:
Use diverse characters and situations
Offer multiple quick choices
Use popular themes like jealousy, cheating, hooking up, fantasy, and revenge makeovers
Insert player into the narrative:
Have character interact directly with the player
Use meters to rate player responses
Feature simple situations, not complex narratives
Use popular themes like what to wear, hooking up, fantasy, and revenge makeovers
Fashion & Style Challenges:
Event-based fashion choices like what to wear on a date
Revenge-based makeovers from being rejected by a character
Male makeovers based on rejection or aspiration
Self-acceptance makeovers rejecting perfection in favor of body positivity
Design a perfect date by choosing the right movie, food, etc.
Hyper-customization including avatar skin tone, facial features, room design, etc.
Feature gameplay with emoji overlays and talk bubbles to communicate emotions:
Humanizes and adds humor
Showcases game graphics
Appeals to players motivated by community, being on a team, interacting, fantasy, and surprises
Create side-by-side videos of good (Pro) versus bad (Noob) gameplay:
Shows the challenges
Highlights both “wins” and “fails”
Create gameplay videos that explain the experience in detail:
Detail benefits of playing (customization, escapism, social connection)
Explore live-action to differentiate from category
Feature influencers or players discussing the game
Explore CG concepts to differentiate from category
Consumer Acquisition’s Ad Concept Model
To stay ahead of creative fatigue, Consumer Acquisition’s Ad Concept Model systematizes the creation process. Using our model, it’s possible to create dozens of persona-led ad concepts efficiently and effectively. Every app category or game sub-genre can leverage a unique combination of distinct emotional triggers and creative trends to attract users. Here is our Ad Concept Model for Style and Fashion games.
Why trust our UA and creative recommendations?
Founded in 2013, we are a technology-enabled marketing services company and creative studio that has managed over $3 billion in creative and social ad spend for the world’s largest mobile apps and performance advertisers.
We provide end-to-end creative and user acquisition services for mobile app marketers via performance-oriented creative storytelling, integrated UA, and creative optimization.
We provide game-changing results driven by quantitative optimization and a relentless focus on increasing your net profit driven by client-specific, creative learning agendas.
Clients we’ve helped grow: Roblox, Glu Mobile, Disney, SuperHuman, Rovio, Jam City, Wooga, NBA, MLB, Ford, Sun Basket, Lion Studios, MobilityWare, and many others.
Apple’s iOS 15 gives its internal apps, products, and services an advantage over third parties. Are they intentionally confusing customers? Here’s what we learned:
California Court rules against Apple’s anticompetitive practices in Epic Games lawsuit
App Tracking Transparency (ATT) differences for iOS 14 third parties vs iOS 15 Apple’s apps
Insights into Apple’s anti-industry and anti-consumer practices
“…the Court finds that common threads run through Apple’s practices which unreasonably restrains competition and harm consumers…”
Epic Games, Inc. v. Apple Inc.
Is iOS 15 Intentionally Confusing Customers?
Consumer Acquisition has been reporting on Apple’s anti-developer, anti-advertiser restrictions for months now. While our reports have primarily focused on devastating advertising revenue loss and impacts, two recent Apple developments have shown they are also anticompetitive to the disservice of consumers and developers.
Personalized Ads or Tracking: Apple’s ATT Prompt
Apple released iOS 15 on September 20 and there are notable differences in the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) prompt for internal Apple products versus third-party ATT prompts. Their apps are custom-designed to harm the mobile app advertising ecosystem and confuse consumers. According to iMore, this change was visible in the public beta as well.
Any app distributed through the App Store that is now Apple’s is required to ask each consumer if they will allow having their activity tracked using the following language: Allow [App] to track your activity across other companies’ apps and websites? (See graphic below). Developers can add one customizable sentence to explain the value of tracking. Users must select “Ask App Not to Track” or “Allow” before continuing in the app.
Apple’s Inconsistent Privacy Language
For iOS 14.5, Apple automatically opted-in consumers to be tracked for Apple’s internal apps, which was troublesome considering their privacy rhetoric. With iOS 15, Apple is now showing an ATT prompt for their internal Apple apps; however, they provide substantial advantages to Apple by using specifically designed soft language for this purpose. In contrast to the terse, transactional prompt to permit tracking, for their own apps Apple asks you to “turn on personalized ads”. They also include a wordy explanation of all the benefits of said personalization, along with privacy protections and increased content relevance.
You cannot overstate the difference in language. One prompt is about empowering a user to do a positive thing while the other prompt is about preventing a negative thing. Personalization is delightful and sought out, while tracking is intrusive and objectionable. An empowered user can turn a feature on or off like a light. However, a disempowered user must ask for something negative not to happen to them.
Apple’s Unfair Standards
Apple’s behavior is custom-designed to give their products a strategic advantage over third parties like Facebook, Google, and TikTok. For all of Apple’s extensive privacy promises, the rhetorical spin-doctoring they employ to persuade users to be tracked for Apple’s benefit casts a new light on their commitment to privacy. But, the end result is the same. If a consumer opts out of ATT they will not see fewer ads. Instead, they will see non-personalized ads, essentially unsolicited spam.
Why is it okay for Apple to use advertising-friendly language with their own apps and then use aggressive anti-advertising language for third parties? This language is creating an inconsistent and confusing consumer experience. However, Apple seems to be building a walled garden of perceived consumer safety and security. At the same time, they are screaming like Chicken Little when third-party, AI-driven algorithms offer elegant, unbiased recommendations outside of Apple’s human-curated preferences. As app developers and advertisers are hobbled by IDFA loss, what resources do they have when the iOS rules are so blatantly different and unfair? Hopefully, Apple will create universal standards they apply consistently to their own apps. Apple’s recent announcement that native apps can now be reviewed and rated is a step in that direction.
Monetary Impact
In Q2, 2021 earnings calls, both Applovin and Playtika shared that iOS 14.5+ adoption was over 80% and the ATT opt-in rate was only 35-40%. Zynga warned IDFA removal would have a material impact and H2 2021 bookings could be down by $100M. Consumer Acquisition is seeing a -15% to -20% average revenue loss for iOS broad audience games and a -35% revenue loss for heavy IAP/niche audience games.
September data from Flurry shows that worldwide, users being shown the ATT prompt have been opting in at a rate of only 23% week-over-week since August. In the U.S., the opt-in rate is an abysmal 16%. Custom and lookalike audience size is down -77% worldwide (86% in the U.S.) with these low ATT consent rates. As a result, effectiveness has dropped. Many mobile app developers have paused spending on iOS or shifted heavily to Android, inflating CPMs.
Epic v. Apple Ruling
Last week, there was a monumental ruling in the industry-shaking lawsuit of Epic Games v. Apple. Epic sued Apple “alleging violations of federal and state antitrust laws and California’s unfair competition law based upon Apple’s operation of its App Store,” with Apple disputing the allegations. While the court did not conclude that Apple was a “monopolist” or engaging in “antitrust conduct,” the trial did show Apple’s “anticompetitive conduct” under California law.
The evidence in the case demonstrated that gaming apps make up nearly 70% of all App Store revenue. And only 10% of all app store users generate that revenue. The court found that Apple’s anti-steering restrictions—which prevented developers from communicating with users about lower prices on other platforms— “hide critical information from consumers and illegally stifle consumer choice” and called for “nationwide remedy.” You can read the full court findings here.
In the ruling, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers issued a permanent injunction declaring that Apple is “permanently restrained and enjoined from prohibiting developers from (i) including in their apps and their metadata buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms, in addition to In-App Purchasing and (ii) communicating with customers through points of contact, obtained voluntarily from customers through account registration within the app.”
The ruling takes effect in 90 days unless delayed or reversed. Then, app developers can add metadata buttons and external links for alternative purchasing mechanisms outside of the App Store. By offering users these alternatives, app developers can decrease IAP costs for users. They can also reduce their own overall App Store commissions by 30 percent. Increasing the diversity of the monetization ecosystem will ultimately benefit the entire mobile game industry.
Here is My Take on Apple’s iOS 15 Anticompetitive Behavior
Only 10% of all App Store users, mainly from games, are generating 70% of App Store revenue. Apple appears to be trying to corner the market of high-value spenders by:
Preventing users from accessing less expensive and less flexible alternative purchasing methods in the App Store. This is to maintain their high margins (i.e., the Epic Case)
Luring users out of third-party advertising platforms with privacy scare tactics (i.e., anti-advertising ATT language)
Making it very difficult for third-party platforms to identify top spenders and effectively build lookalike models (i.e., obfuscation of IDFA)
Ultimately, this behavior is highly disruptive to the vitality of the iOS advertising market. It is having a negative impact on mobile app game developers, advertisers, and consumers.
For More Background On Our Perspectives Around Post-IDFA Loss
Mobile app advertisers agree that the full costs of internal UA teams are 6-8% of media spend. We work with your team to bring industry-wide expertise and insights across paid social providers. This will provide a broader understanding of the highly evolving IDFA impact.
We provide a creative studio and user acquisition services for Facebook, Google, TikTok, Snap, and Apple Search advertisers.
Our Hollywood-based storytellers can produce ongoing persona-driven creative concepts to stay ahead of creative fatigue.
Founded in 2013. Manage over $3 billion in creative and social ad spend for the world’s largest mobile apps and web-based performance advertisers.
Get creative tactics from high performing TikTok ads to use in your next UA campaign
Get the latest creative recommendations straight from TikTok for Business
TikTok says, “to captivate new audiences, the key is to continuously share fresh and diverse content.”
TikTok Creative Hot Tips
To offset the impacts of IDFA loss and automated media buying across networks, mobile game advertisers must be willing to try different platforms to unlock new audiences. To help UA and creative teams adjust to the evolving ad ecosystem, we have compiled expert recommendations for TikTok UA campaigns. Our market insights and creative expertise come from managing over $3 billion in creative and social ad spend for the world’s largest mobile apps and web-based performance advertisers.
Appeal to mission- and achievement-oriented gamers through a direct call-to-action in text or copy, with TikTok reporting an 11.3% lift in impressions for this tactic.
Showing features and gameplay is more effective than talking about them, with TikTok reporting a 12.6% lift in impressions.
Adding an end card to summarize key download information or gameplay tips resulted in a 47.3% lift in impressions.
83.2% of top-performing videos have a resolution of 720p or higher so shoot high-resolution high-quality videos.
Always include music or talk track because 93% of top-performing videos use audio.
1 in 4 top-performing videos are between 21 and 34 seconds long, but the length of your video should ultimately be informed by the message you want to get across.
Videos that use a full 9:16 aspect ratio see a 60.5% lift in impressions over those that include black space or fit poorly.
TikTok users expect to keep their devices in portrait orientation and videos shot in vertical format see a 40.1% lift in impressions compared to videos using a square or horizontal aspect ratio.
TikTok’s Creative Solutions
As we have reported, without deterministic tracking on iOS or effective lookalike audiences, relying on general broad-stroke creative won’t be enough to profitably expand your audience. However, persona-led creative developed around player motivations, preferences, and interests is the key to sustainable user acquisition. In TikTok’s Creative Solutions: The Ultimate How-to Guide their recommendation is clear: “in order to captivate new audiences, the key is to continuously share fresh and diverse content.” With the platform built on a content graph instead of a social graph, “diverse discovery” keeps users “inspired and energized.”
When we analyze high-performing ads through the lens of player motivations, such as those identified in Facebook’s 2021 Big Catch Playbook, we can break down why those ads appeal to different audiences.
TikTok’s List of High-Performing Game Ads
According to public reporting from TikTok For Business Creative Center, below are six examples of high-performing game ads in the U.S. from the past 30 days, based on impressions, CTR, and video view rate. We’ve identified what creative trends these ads leverage to be optimized for TikTok as well as player motivations they trigger.
Founded in 2013, we are a technology-enabled marketing services company and creative studio that has managed over $3 billion in creative and social ad spend for the world’s largest mobile apps and performance advertisers.
We provide end-to-end creative and user acquisition services for mobile app marketers via performance-oriented creative storytelling, integrated UA, and creative optimization.
We provide game-changing results driven by quantitative optimization and a relentless focus on increasing your net profit driven by client-specific, creative learning agendas.
Clients we’ve helped grow: Roblox, Glu Mobile, Disney, SuperHuman, Rovio, Jam City, Wooga, NBA, MLB, Ford, Sun Basket, Lion Studios, MobilityWare, and many others.
Want better results from TikTok creative UA?
Working with a knowledgeable marketing partner that can provide extensive quantitative creative testing ensures you get the best performance from your TikTok ads. Email us at sales@consumeracquisition.com to discuss your user acquisition goals.
Are you ready for NFL kickoff? Check out what’s working right now for NFL sports apps ad creative.
Discover user motivations for sports app users
Compare top creative trends
Get fresh creative trends
NFL & Sports Apps: High Performing Ad Creative
NFL starts this week and mobile app advertisers competing for the attention of fans will have to get really creative. As we have reported, the loss of IDFA has caused massive disruption to the mobile ad ecosystem, and the erosion of lookalike audience targeting alongside automated ad management means app advertisers must focus on persona-led creative designed for different motivations and interests to unlock new audiences and Facebook just published Creative Prototyping and The Big Catch Playbook full of recommendations. Krystel Bitar, Global Gaming Product Manager at Facebook emphasized in a recent article about Automated App Ads (AAA) how critical creative diversification based on motivation is: “it’s time to make different creatives inspired by these motivators. The more unique these are, the easier it will be to ultimately determine what has attracted its audience.”
With the loss of deterministic tracking in full effect, insights into player behavior continue to deteriorate and a one-size-fits-all ad creative limits advertisers to the players they’re already familiar with. Now is the opportunity for mobile app advertisers to adapt. Tailoring creative to different interests, motivations, and desires of players will attract high-quality top-of-funnel installs from new audiences that were missed by more broad advertising, making creative the most efficient lever for sustained profitable user acquisition. Our creative learning agenda incorporates intensive research into game genre, personas, and user motivations as well as understanding what ads our target users are responding to in other markets.
Here are competitor trends we’re seeing for sports apps ad creative:
Gameplay and game overview that showcase graphics and players (Home Run Clash, NBA 2K, Boxing Star)
Distance or performance challenges for viewers to propel an object to reach a target (Baseball Boy, Slap Master)
Competition videos dramatizing head-to-head competition between rival players or teams. (Darts of Fury, Home Run Clash)
Noob vs. Pro videos displaying bad and good gameplay (Darts of Fury, Mini Golf King)
Real player footage replacing game characters and gameplay (Tennis Clash, Sniper Arena, Draft Kings)
Cinematic techniques like slow-motion and camera pan utilizing game characters (Johnny Trigger, Mr. Bullet, Sniper Arena, Tennis Clash)
Augmented gameplay adding illustrations, emojis, talk bubbles, and voiceovers to gameplay or characters (Mr. Bullet, Draft Kings, Flip & Dive 3D)
Game controller overlay on gameplay to give it a game console effect (Tennis Clash, City Fighter Vs. Street Gang)
UGC styles leveraging influencer and player interviews and reviews (Underdog Fantasy)
Team creation scenarios and what-ifs
Mapping these creative trends to game player motivations, such as those identified by market researcher Quantic Foundry, we can break down why they work and find more opportunities for unique creative storytelling.
Real player footage and cinematic techniques provide immersion, fantasy, and excitement
Distance challenges and Noob v. Pro videos appeal to mastery, competition, power, and fantasy
Player rivalries appeal to competition, mayhem, action, challenge, power, and fantasy
Gameplay and controller overlays appeal to immersion, excitement, challenge, and competition
Augmented gameplay provides social appeal and story immersion
Team creation scenarios appeal to creativity, customization, strategy, and making decisions
Here’s what’s working in sports apps ad creative based on MobileAction data and Facebook Ads Library:
Head-to-Head Player Stats
DraftKings showcases NFL player’s pics with head-to-head stats between rival players, appealing to users who value achievement, challenge, and competition.
Team Creation
SuperDraft also showcases NFL player’s pictures and fantasy team stats, appealing to users who value strategy, decision making, creativity, completion, and challenge.
Head-to-Head Team Rivalry
WinView games showcase head-to-head team rivalry appealing to users that value community, achievement, challenge, competition.
Head-to-Head Players
FanDuel showcases individual NFL players to appeal to users who value strategy, making decisions, achievement, and competition.
Influencer/UGC
Underdog Fantasy uses side-by-side player discussion to appeal to players who value a connection to other players.
Dramatic Gameplay
Baseball Clash dramatic cinematic techniques applied to gameplay to appeal to players who value immersion, fantasy, and excitement.
Performance Challenge
Tennis Clash uses an overlay of a player’s hand to guide shots, appealing to players who value mastery, competition, power, and fantasy.
Simple Gameplay
Golf Rival uses simple progressive gameplay and mellow music to appeal to players who value immersion and mastery.
Noob vs. Pro
Pool Ball Night uses gameplay footage of cringe-worthy shots overlaid with a player-in-picture and request for help from the viewer, appealing to players who value achievement, mastery, challenge, competition, and community.
Sports Apps Creative Concepts
Create videos that incorporate statistics into the gameplay
Overlay graphics to show the distance of tape measure shots and challenge viewers to play
Overlay stats graphics on characters, challenging viewers to beat their opponent
Appeals to players motivated by competition, power, challenge, excitement
Create a countdown of featured players in the game
Showcases animation style, range of players, and stats
Style graphics like collector cards
Spark curiosity about who is (or is not) included
Appeals to players motivated by completion, surprises, competition, community, and power
Add trash talk over gameplay
Showcases gameplay and graphics alongside subtitles
Appeals to players motivated by competition, community, being on a team, mayhem, interacting
Feature gameplay with emoji overlays and talk bubbles to communicate emotions
Humanizes and adds humor
Showcases game graphics
Appeals to players motivated by community, being on a team, interacting, fantasy, and surprises
Intercut gameplay with real footage, so that it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s the game
Showcases game graphics and simulation
Appeals to players motivated by immersion, fantasy, action, discovery
Re-create the feel of a famous announcer calling a legendary game with gameplay and voice over
Creates emotional “what if” scenarios
Engages viewer’s curiosity
Highlights the passion of sports fans
Appeals to players motivated by community, being on a team, immersion, fantasy, action, discovery
Create videos using cinematic techniques and voiceover to up the emotional ante of the game
Showcases game graphics
Utilizes nostalgic sports documentary feel
Appeals to players motivated by community, being on a team, immersion, fantasy, action, discovery
Create side-by-side videos of good (Pro) versus bad (Noob) gameplay
Shows the difficulty of the game
Highlights both “wins” and “fails”
Appeals to players motivated by competition, power, challenge, excitement
Create a sing-along music video of gameplay with a famous sports chant
Most chants are in the public domain
Showcases graphics and gameplay
Appeals to players motivated by community, being on a team, immersion, fantasy
Why trust our UA and creative recommendations?
Founded in 2013, we are a technology-enabled marketing services company and creative studio that has managed over $3 billion in creative and social ad spend for the world’s largest mobile apps and performance advertisers.
We provide end-to-end creative and user acquisition services for mobile app marketers via performance-oriented creative storytelling, integrated UA, and creative optimization.
We provide game-changing results driven by quantitative optimization and a relentless focus on increasing your net profit driven by client-specific, creative learning agendas.
Clients we’ve helped grow: Roblox, Glu Mobile, Disney, SuperHuman, Rovio, Jam City, Wooga, NBA, MLB, Ford, Sun Basket, Lion Studios, MobilityWare, and many others.
See our best practices for what’s working right now with Google App campaigns, SKAN Discrepancies, Modeling Delays (pre/post iOS 14.5) and Firebase Events.
According to Google, bidding on Firebase (FiB events) resulted in a median +13% increase in installs and a +20% increase in in-app events with no significant change to cost per conversion.
Advertisers benefit by understanding sources of discrepancies between SKAN data and Google Ads reporting, which may include views, web-to-app, cross-network attribution, attribution windows, and reinstalls.
For iOS campaigns, advertisers should expect at least a 5-day lag in-app campaign modeled conversions and should avoid assessing performance in the first two weeks or before the campaign has generated at least 100 conversions (purchases, events, installs, etc.).
How To Optimize Google App UA Right Now
As mobile app advertisers adjust to an evolving ad ecosystem with the loss of IDFA and increasingly automated media buying across networks, Consumer Acquisition brings you the most up-to-date recommendations for Google App UA Campaigns. As a Google App Preferred Creative Partner Agency, we have market insights and creative expertise from managing over $3 billion in creative and social ad spend for the world’s largest mobile apps and web-based performance advertisers.
Here’s how to better understand, measure, and optimize your Google App UA campaigns right now.
Bidding on Firebase (FiB) events increases performance
App campaigns bidding on FiB events performed better than app campaigns bidding on non-FiB events. Google reports that the median campaign that switched to using Google Analytics for Firebase conversions for bidding saw a +13% increase in installs and a +20% increase in in-app events with no significant change to cost per conversion.
Understanding Google Ads Reporting vs. SKAN
Adjust and Appsflyer dashboards now show Google SKAN data. Below are the sources for common discrepancies between SKAN data and Google Ads reporting, including views, web-to-app, cross-network attribution, attribution windows, and reinstalls.
What’s working for us right now on Google:
Strongest performance from English language targeting Germany, UK, France, Canada & Netherlands
French and German language campaigns targeting tier 1 countries in Europe show promise
The key performance lever is the bid, adjusted periodically based on 7D ROAS
Targeting only Android devices; iOS campaigns, when tested in Q1, had low yields
For timely tips and trends, head over to September’s Hot Tips article to see what’s working on Facebook, TikTok, and Snap right now.
Best Practices For Optimizing Google App Campaigns
Target
Use a target CPA (tCPA). If you haven’t tested this bidding strategy yet, start now. We’ve found it to be a very efficient use of ad budget.
Use a target return on ad spend (tROAS). This feature isn’t out just yet, but it will be available in June for App Campaigns on iOS and Android. Once it’s live, you’ll be able to, say, specify that you want Google to find users who will spend three times what it cost you to acquire them. What advertiser wouldn’t want to do that?
Budget
Set your daily budget caps at least 50X target of CPI or 10X of target CPA.
Don’t change target CPI/CPA bids by more than 20% in 24 hours until your campaign is generating 20-30 targeted in-app events per day.
Target CPI campaigns’ bids should start at least $4-5, even if your CPI goal is lower.
Target CPA campaigns’ bids should start at least 20-30% higher than the goal.
Don’t wait until your app has launched to start building your user base: Pre-launch campaigns are available, and they work.
Creative
Be generous with creative assets. Google App Campaigns work best with a variety of creative – both creative formats and messaging approaches. The algorithm will figure out how to mix and match your images, text, and videos… but you’ve got to give it enough assets to find the ideal combination.
Always include video creative. We’ve found that if a campaign hasn’t been using videos, adding just two videos to their creative asset mix can increase the campaign’s conversions by 25%. So yes, maybe videos are a bit more expensive. Maybe they do take a bit longer to create. But they punch above their weight when it comes to ROAS. And besides – if you don’t want to make videos, we can do it for you.
When you get your videos made, make sure they can “flex,” as in that they can appear in different views and devices, and still look good.
Think beyond user acquisition. We’re seeing some really nice returns with retention campaigns. If you do it right, it absolutely pays to advertise to all those people who downloaded your app but then either didn’t use it or never bought from it. They’ve already done the hard part of installing the app – often they just need a little nudge to activate or to make their first purchase.
Why Trust Our UA Tips?
Founded in 2013, we are a technology-enabled marketing services company and creative studio that has managed over $3 billion in creative and social ad spend for the world’s largest mobile apps and performance advertisers across Google, Facebook, TikTok, Snap and Apple Search ads.
We provide end-to-end creative and user acquisition services for mobile app marketers via performance-oriented creative storytelling, integrated UA, and creative optimization.
We provide game-changing results driven by quantitative optimization and a relentless focus on increasing your net profit driven by client-specific, creative learning agendas.
For the fourth year in a row, Inc. magazine has named Consumer Acquisition to its annual Inc 5000 list, which recognizes the most successful companies within the American economy’s most dynamic segment—its independent businesses. Intuit, Zappos, Under Armour, Microsoft, Patagonia, and many other well-known names gained their first national exposure as honorees on the Inc. 5000.
Consumer Acquisition on Inc 5000 List 4th Consecutive Year
Brian Bowman, CEO, and founder of Consumer Acquisition: “In our fourth consecutive year of being recognized by one of the most important rosters of leading companies, we are again truly honored to be included by Inc. magazine. This recognition is entirely a credit to the people of our organization that continue to drive growth and innovation at Consumer Acquisition year after year.”
Not only have the companies on the 2021 Inc 5000 list been very competitive within their markets, but this year’s list also proved especially resilient and flexible given 2020’s unprecedented challenges. Among the 5,000, the average median three-year growth rate soared to 543 percent, and median revenue reached $11.1 million. Together, those companies added more than 610,000 jobs over the past three years.
Today’s news of Consumer Acquisition being featured in the Inc. Magazine Inc 5000 list comes just months after the launch of its Creative Studio CA+, led by General Manager Evan Astrowsky. CA+ breaks the mold on creative agency services both in creative development and pricing model. Today’s advertisers need to be nimble and able to reach their audience across a wide array of platforms and mediums. This includes social advertising on Facebook, Google, TikTok, Instagram, Snap, and Apple Search Ads. And also advertising on television, digital out of home, online video UGC, influencer campaigns, and more. CA+ brings together best-in-class creative development, production, post-production, testing, and optimization all in one scalable creative house.
Founded in 2013, Consumer Acquisition is a technology-enabled marketing services company. They manage over $3 billion in creative and social ad spend for the world’s largest mobile games and apps. In 2021, the company launched its Creative Studio CA+. Overall, the company provides creative services, user acquisition services, and self-service tools for Facebook and Google mobile app advertisers.
Facebook, TikTok & Google Creative Testing Best Practices: Post-IDFA Loss is our new Q4 2021 update to our wildly successful whitepaper. IDFA loss, SKAN requirements, and media buying automation through Facebook AAA or Google UAC are tough challenges facing user acquisition and creative teams right now. We have new best practices with updated recommendations, including the following:
Facebook, TikTok & Google creative testing best practices
iOS A/B creative testing without IDFA
Updated Android A/B creative testing best practices
Analysis of the evolving mobile app ad ecosystem
Creative testing recommendations for IAP and IAA apps
Automated ad buying benefits and deficits
Facebook, TikTok & Google Creative Testing Best Practices: Updated For IDFA Loss
Creative diversification based on motivation is critical, according to The Big Catch from Facebook: “it’s time to make different creatives inspired by these motivators. The more unique these are, the easier it will be to ultimately determine what has attracted its audience.” It seems obvious that ads should be tailored to appeal to different audiences’ motivations and interests. However, too many UA managers rely on the crutch of behavioral targeting to solve for one-size-fits-all, middle-of-the-pack creative.
Lookalike Targeting: Before and After
Prior to the loss of IDFA, lookalike audience targeting was reliable, effective, and efficient; it offered limitless opportunities to slice and dice revenue events to uncover new high-value users. A strong lookalike audience could scale and run for a month or more; but now, ROAS maybe 0.5% when it was previously 15%. As a result, advertisers are decreasing social ad spend for iOS by 40-50% each month since ATT enforcement and are consistently shifting more ad spend over to Android.
As reliance on upper-funnel campaigns increases, ad creative optimized to appeal to discreet personas is the most efficient lever for sustained profitable user acquisition. Without deterministic tracking, understanding user motivation is critical to attracting high-quality top-of-funnel installs. Beyond the install, the first 48 hours of app usage should identify consumers that indicate a propensity to monetize. We recommend streamlining and instrumenting your onboarding flows and events to capture these early monetization signals. With persona-led creative paired with onboarding events, the algorithms will learn what changes to make to deliver better audiences.
UA teams that understand their target personas can scale efficiently, even without IDFA. While much of the industry has been focused on user behavior, the deterioration of lookalike audiences and the black box of deeper funnel events means a user’s declared interests are critically important for insights into motivation and intent.
To maintain advertising efficiency, you need a steady pipeline of new creative ideas and content to test. When successful, a new creative concept can lift performance by 200% or more. This performance increase is worth the cost, time, and risk that’s inherent with testing new concepts.
STRONG PERFORMANCE COMES FROM SMART TESTING
We test a lot of ad creative. We produce and test more than 100,000 videos and images yearly for our clients, and we have performed over 25,000 A/B and multivariate tests on Facebook, Google, TikTok, and Snap. Our industry expertise comes from managing over $3 billion in creative and paid social spend for the world’s largest mobile apps and performance advertisers. We focus on gaming, e-commerce, entertainment, automotive, D2C, eSports, digital subscriptions, financial services, and lead generation.
Consumer Acquisition runs our tests using our software AdRules via Facebook, Google, and TikTok APIs. Our process is designed to save time and money by killing losing creatives quickly and to significantly reduce non-converting spend. This process also does not necessarily follow the published Facebook, Google, or TikTok guidance of running a split test to reach statistical significance before moving into the optimized phase. Our insights are specific to the above scenarios, not a representation of how all testing on all platforms operates.
THE COSTS OF CREATIVE TESTING
In classic testing, a 95% confidence rate is ideal to declare a winner, exit the learning phase, and reach statistical significance (StatSig). However, that ideal 95% confidence rate for in-app purchases may end up costing an advertiser $20,000 per creative variation.
Here is an example scenario: To reach a 95% confidence level, you’ll need about 100 purchases. With a 1% purchase rate (typical for gaming apps), and a $200 cost per purchase, you will end up spending $20,000 for each variation to accrue enough data for that 95% confidence rate. There are not a lot of advertisers who can afford to spend $20,000 per variation, especially if 95% of new creative fails to beat the control.
With a cost of $20,000 per variation and 20 variations to find a winner with a 95% failure rate, it would cost $400,000 just to find a new control.
THE SECRET TO COST-EFFECTIVE CREATIVE TESTING
To avoid such high testing costs, we move the conversion event we are targeting up, or towards the beginning of the sales funnel. For mobile apps, instead of optimizing for purchases, we optimize for impressions per install (IPM). For websites, we optimize for an impression-to-top funnel conversion rate. Again, this is not a Facebook recommended best practice. This is our own methodology, designed to allow advertisers to find new, top-performing creative in the most cost-efficient and reliable way.
This process does pose a risk that high CTRs and high conversion rates for top-funnel events may not be true winners for down-funnel conversions and ROI/ROAS. It is more efficient to optimize for IPMs over purchases, so we take that risk to save the time and expense of optimizing for StatSig bottom-funnel metrics. Perhaps most importantly, this method means you can run more tests for less money per variation. For many advertisers, that alone can make more testing financially viable. $200 testing cost per variation versus $20,000 is the difference between a couple of tests or an ongoing, robust testing program.
Because the outcomes of our tests have consequences, we also test our creative testing methodology. That might sound a little “meta,” but it is essential for us to validate and challenge our methodologies, assumptions, and results. The outcome of every test shapes our evolving creative strategy, so making the wrong call means incremental changes that could have significant consequences. When we choose a winning ad out of a pack of competing ads, we ensure it’s the right decision.
Section 2: Our Foundational Testing Approach
FACEBOOK TESTING BASICS
When testing creative on Facebook, we typically test three to six videos along with a control video using Facebook’s split test feature. We show these ads to broad or 5-10% lookalike audiences. We restrict distribution to the Facebook newsfeed only, Android only, and use mobile app install bidding (MAI) to get about 100-250 installs. If one of those new “challenger” ads beats the control video’s IPM or comes within 10%-15% of its performance, we launch those potential new winning videos into the ad sets with the control video and let them fight it out to generate ROAS.
In November and December 2019, we produced 60 new video concepts for a client. All of these creatives failed to beat the control video’s IPM, which was statistically impossible. We expected to generate a new winner 5% of the time, resulting in three fresh winners. Confident in our creative expertise and execution, we looked deeper into the testing methods.
Based on numerous ad accounts and confirmations from 7-figure spending advertisers, the following ad performance scenario has been common. We’ve anonymized the scenario to share critical performance insights.
A/A TESTING IN FOUR ACTS
To ensure a methodology is sound, you must test your testing system through an A/A test. Instead of testing multiple creatives as you would with an A/B test, A/A tests run the same creative in each “slot” of the test.
If your testing system is working as expected and you are close to statistical significance, all “variations” in an A/A test should produce similar results. If your testing system concludes that one creative variation significantly outperforms or underperforms compared to the others, there could be an issue with the testing method or data.
We set up an A/A test to validate our non-standard approach to Facebook testing and to understand if Facebook maintains a creative history for the control. If so, the control video would get a performance boost making it very difficult to beat.
A/A Test 1
We copied the control video four times and added one black pixel in different locations in each of the new “variations.” This allowed us to run what would look like the same video to humans but would be different videos in the eyes of the testing platform. The goal was to get Facebook to assign new hash IDs for each cloned video and then test them all together and observe their IPMs.
For anonymity purposes, we’ve replaced the actual ad creative with this dapper dachshund. The far-right ad in the blue square is the control creative and all others are clones of the control with one black pixel added. The IPMs for each ad are on the far right of the image.
The far-left ad/clone outperformed the control by 149%. As described earlier, a difference like that should not happen if the platform were truly variation agnostic.
We ran this test for 100 installs, our standard operating procedure for creative testing. However, we did not follow Facebook’s recommendation to allow the ad set(s) to exit the learning phase. We analyzed the results then scaled up to 500 installs to get closer to statistical significance. Our remaining question was if more data would result in IPM normalization (in other words, if the test results would settle back down to more even performance across the variations). However, the results of the second test remained the same. Note: the ad set(s) did not exit the learning phase and we did not follow Facebook’s best practice.
The results of this first test, while not statistically significant, were surprisingly enough to merit additional tests. So, we tested further!
A/A Test 2
Test 2 included six videos. Four videos were controls with different headers; two videos were new concepts that were very similar to the control. Again, the actual ad creative has been replaced with cute animals.
The IPMs for all ads ranged between 7-11 – even the new ads that did not share a thumbnail with the control. IPMs for each ad in the far right of the image.
A/A Test 3
Test 3 included six videos: one control, four visually similar variations to the control, and one very different for a human. IPMs ranged between 5-10. IPMs for each ad in the far right of the image.
A/A Test 4
This was when we had our “ah-ha!” moment. We tested six very different video concepts: the one control video and five brand new ideas, all of which were visually very different from the control video and did not share the same thumbnail.
The control’s IPM was consistent in the 8-9 range, but the IPMs for the new visual concepts ranged between 0-2. IPMs for each ad in the far right of the image.
A/A TEST RESULT ANALYSIS
Facebook’s split tests maintain creative history for the control video. This gives the control an advantage with our IPM testing methodology.
We are unclear if Facebook can group variations with a similar look and feel to the control. If it can, similar-looking ads could also start with a higher IPM based on influence from the control — or perhaps similar thumbnails influence non-statistically relevant IPM.
Creative concepts that are visually very different from the control appear to not share a creative history. IPMs for these variations are independent of the control.
It appears that new, “out of the box” visual concepts vs the control may require more impressions to quantify their performance.
Our IPM testing methodology appears to be valid if we do NOT use a control video as the benchmark for winning.
The line graphs below show the IPMS from the second, third, and fourth tests
FACEBOOK’S AAA ADVANTAGES
We do all our testing on Facebook because of the granular controls we have for bidding, creative reporting, and targeting. While Facebook’s Automated App Ads (AAA) reduce visibility into ad campaigns, there are some clear advantages to using the system.
You get creative performance reporting on images, videos, and text, and you can get that tied to standard events. This reporting persists whereas Google’s doesn’t.
You have a choice between an auto bid and a bid cap.
There are fewer restrictions on the text. You can use CAPS, exclamation points, emojis, etc.
Flexibility with creative assets. You can basically do whatever you want with 50 assets, and the reporting will persist.
You can assume there is a CPM discount and a CPI discount. Whenever you use Facebook solutions that they are encouraging, the platform will give you a discount.
Android and iOS performance can be comparable to standard campaigns.
4 x 5 and square aspect ratios tend to do best on Facebook, though in some placements, a full portrait (9 x 16) is better. Be careful about Facebook allowing you to run creative assets that don’t entirely fit on given placements. Facebook will just shave off the top and bottom of your ads in some cases, which could mean they are chopping off the ad’s CTA or other critical information.
Note: We also suspect that Facebook will soon give advertisers even more flexibility with how many creative assets they can use. They know that creative testing is the best competitive advantage left for advertisers, and they want to give us the tools to aggressively optimize our ads.
Our creative testing process was built leveraging deterministic tracking and 1:1 asset-level reporting of multi-stage creative’s lifecycle testing. This process spans from IPM to ROAS across the learning phase to the eventual optimized phase. A/B creative test reporting is coupled with client-provided revenue targets frequently provided by an MMP (Appsflyer, Adjust, Singular, Kochava).
Even prior to IDFA loss, we tested on Android because it was less expensive and easily translated to iOS. We saved iOS testing for the rare clients without an Android app or those who were solely targeting iOS users. Testing creative for both IAP and IAA (outlined below) continue to work effectively on Android. In that sense, IDFA loss has validated our cost-effective strategies.
Fortunately, advertisers with Android apps who are NOT using Facebook’s AAA algorithm can follow our best practices and maintain their deterministic efficiency. You’ll maintain your ability to A/B test and see results at the individual asset level. Once a winning creative is identified, move it to iOS or other paid social platforms.
OUR 3-STEP CREATIVE TESTING PROCESS FOR IAP (IN-APP-PURCHASES)
Phase 1: IPM Test
No control videos
Create a new split test campaign using 3~6 new creatives (no control).
Setup campaign structure for basic App Install (No event optimization or value optimization)
Spend an equal amount on each creative. Ex: One ad per ad set.
Budget for at least 100 installs per creative
$200~$400 spend per ad is recommended (based on a CPI of $2-$4) if T1 English-speaking country
$20~$40 spend per ad/adset testing in India (based on $0.20-$0.40 CPI)
US Phase 1 testing.
10-15% LAL with a seed audience like past 90-day installers, or past 90-day payers.
Non-US Phase 1 testing.
Use broad targeting & English speakers only
If not available in India, try other English-speaking countries with lower CPMs than the U.S. and similar results. Ex: ZA, CA, IE, AU, PH, etc.
Use the OS (iOS or Android) you intend to scale in production
Use one body text
Headline is optional
FB Newsfeed or Facebook Audience Networking placement only (not both and not auto placements)
Be sure the winner has 100+ installs (50 installs acceptable in high CPI scenarios)
100 installs: 70% confidence with 5% margin of error
160 installs: 80% confidence with 5% margin of error
270 installs: 90% confidence with 5% margin of error
IAP Titles: kill losers, top 1~3 winners go to phase 2
IAA Titles: kill losers, allow top 1~3 “possible winners” to exit the learning phase, and then put into “the Control’s” campaign
Which Creatives Move from Phase 1 > Phase 2?
How To Pick a Phase 1 IPM Winner?
IPMs may range broadly or be clumped together
Goal: kill obvious losers and test remaining ads in phase 2
Ads (blue) have IPMs 6.77 & 6.34, move to phase 2
If all ads are very close (e.g., within 5%), increase the budget
IAA (in-app ads titles) you may need more LTV data before scaling
Phase 2: Initial ROAS
No control videos
Create a new campaign with AEO or VO optimization
Place all creatives into a single ad set (Multi Ads Per Ad Set)
Use IPM winner(s) from Phase 1 (you can combine winners from multiple Phase 1 tests into a single Phase 2 test)
OS – Android or iOS. 5-10% LALs from top seeds (purchases, frequent users + purchase) + Auto Placements
Testing can be done at a lower cost if you wish to run this campaign in other countries where ROAS is similar or higher but CPMs are much lower compared to the US – ie., South Africa, Ireland, Canada, etc.
Lifetime budget $3,500-$4,900 or daily budgets of $500-$750 over 4-6 day (depending on your $/purchase).
WARNING! Skipping this step is highly likely to result in one of the following scenarios:
Challenger immediately kills the champion/control but hasn’t achieved enough statistical relevance or exited the learning phase and therefore the sustained ROAS/KPI may not be sustained.
Champion/control video has a lot more statistical history and relevance and most likely has exited the learning phases and may immediately kill the challenger before it has a chance to get enough data to properly fight for ROAS.
The latest change to our Phase 2 strategy: we have become more focused on retention than we were a few months ago. Before, we were just looking at pure ROAS. Now, we pay attention to retention information as it comes in on Day 1 to Day 3 or so. This is usually possible, because we’ll run Phase 2 ads for about 5 days, and that’s worth weighing in for which pieces of creative you take to Phase 3.
Phase 3: ROAS Scale
No control videos
Use strong CBO campaign
Choose winner(s) from Phase 2 with good/decent ROAS
You have proven the ad has great IPM and “can monetize”
To win this phase, it must hit KPIs (D7 ROAS, etc.)
Create a copy of an existing ad set
Delete old ads and replace them with your Phase 2 winner(s)
Allows new ads to spend in a competitive environment
Then, create a new ad set, roll it out towards target audiences with solid ROAS / KPIs
CBO controls budgets between ad sets with control creatives and ad sets with new creative winners.
Intervene with ad set min/max spend control only if new creatives do not receive spend from CBO.
Require challenger to exit the learning phase before moving to challenge the control “Gladiator” video.
Once the challenger has exited the learning phase, allow CBO to change budget distribution between challenger and champion.
Our 3-Step Creative Testing Process for IAA (In-App-Ads)
Phase 1: IPM Test
We use the same approach for IAA ads as we do for IAP ads in Phase 1.
Phase 2: Initial RPM
Look at your MMP. Find whichever countries/regions/geos are paying out a good RPM, and just go with those.
No control videos. Multiple ads per ad set. We call this “the gladiator battle.”
Create a new campaign with AEO (not VO), but instead of the event being a purchase, have it be an event that could only occur after someone has played the game for a long time like they’ve achieved a certain level.
For AEO, with a nonpurchase event, you can lower your budget down to even $250 per day.
Auto placements are okay if that’s what you typically use for the account. Generally, just use the placements you already know will work. No need to reinvent the wheel here. Just run your default best setup.
For audiences, just run your top two to three audiences. If you are concerned about budget, stack your audiences so you only have one ad set. This will get the ad set out of the learning phase faster and save you some money. (Keep in mind that you may not get out of the Learning Phase at all sometimes in Phase 2 testing.)
Phase 3: ROAS Scale
For IAA, there really is not a Phase 3, but our recommendations for what to do at this stage depend on your budget:
If your budget is small, you are not going to know performance for several weeks and so you might as well just roll your best-performing ads out into production.
If your budget is large, do a scaled-down Phase 3 structure as we suggest for IAP advertising. This is especially important if you have control ads that are still doing well. Roll strong Phase 2 performers whenever you need a win.
iOS CREATIVE TESTING WITHOUT IDFA
The loss of IDFA has profoundly impacted creative testing on iOS and requires a new strategy for creative optimization. Unfortunately, the trifecta of IDFA loss, account simplification required by SKAN, and media buying automation through Facebook’s AAA or Google UAC had an immediate impact on creative testing and creative strategy.
If you don’t have an Android app or you have embraced Facebook’s AAA algorithm or Google’s UAC, get ready for a different way to A/B test: ASSET FEEDS!
Most major platforms (Facebook, Google, Tik Tok, Snap) will have limited account configurations due to iOS14 SKAN tracking limitations. iOS14 accounts will be restricted to 9-11 campaigns with 5 ad sets per campaign, meaning you’ll have 45-60 permutations. It will be difficult to justify burning these ad sets on A/B testing. Therefore, new concepts will be the most important lever for your UA team.
Facebook (XML feed spec) and TikTok (XML feed spec) have published solutions for asset-level reporting data tied to dynamic asset-feeds for creative. The solutions attempt to:
Allow creative partners to tag, track and measure the performance of individual media.
Allow basic dynamic reporting (eg. CTR, spend/asset, clicks, impressions) for an individual asset in the Ad Set. However, they appear to not allow for multivariate-level reporting of the combination of ad copy, headline, and creative.
Prevent MMP data from being married to asset feeds based on the current platform’s specs. This may be a concern for companies leveraging their reporting to make creative or financial decisions from A/B testing.
Help with fatigue identification through Google’s introduction of asset performance labels (Best/Good/Poor…). This will aid in asset feed performance diagnosis and is a starting point to provide simple suggestions for what asset to optimize or replace.
From small changes to wholly new concepts
Due to limited testing slots and opaque creative-level reporting, creative strategy is shifting from optimizing with small changes to testing entirely new concepts. When creative optimization moves into asset feeds, the performance results of each creative are blended together into a kind of creative blob. Unfortunately, it will be difficult to know the contribution of each element is optimized. What we’re seeing:
Creative iterations and variations based on the most effective asset in a portfolio provide a higher likelihood for success but a much lower lift in performance (think < 5%).
Creative optimization is very likely to shift toward new concepts that take 5-20x as long to conceive and execute, but they offer a much higher potential for success (think 20% to 500%) and a correspondingly large risk of failure.
On average, we see a 5-15% success rate for new creative concepts, but when they succeed, the results can be a massive increase in KPI performance.
As creative becomes a targeting mechanism and user-intent filter, the new demand for fresh creative concepts vs iterations is certain to put a large strain on internal creative teams.
Google UAC Creative Testing
The loss of Apple’s IDFA has a cascade of consequences including how ad creative is used on Google. If you are running an asset feed ad like Google UAC, you need plenty of creative combinations within the feed to be truly effective.
With Google AC split testing feature not yet widely available, we recommend a phased Evergreen> Motivation ad group test plan.
Account Creative Cycling Structure
Week 1
Launch with one ad group (evergreen)
Fully loaded 20 video assets, landscape image, and 10 text assets
Week 2
Open 3-4 ad groups with distinct text assets only, centered on product motivations
Social, Exploration, Achievement, etc.
Week 3
match top motivation text group with corresponding video assets and iterate
Kill underperforming motivation groups
Repeat the process and iterate on the winning motivation concept
Tactics
Avoid relying solely on Google’s Best/Good/Low Creative Score for optimization; these scores are relative to other comparable sized assets in the ad group and do not always align with KPI
Instead, identify creatives with scale potential at KPI and consider creative metrics IPM/CTR along with CPM
Google UAC Advantages
Flexibility in campaign bidding structure.
You can have multiple campaigns running in any geo. You can have different CPAs, campaigns just running for installs, etc.
Better transparency for performance with 1:1 event reconciling via MMP data.
You can see the performance by traffic source.
Using multiple Ad Groups you can put different creative approaches into separate “buckets” and see how their performance compares. This also means you can run seasonal or ad hoc events without disturbing evergreen campaigns.
Being able to create multiple Ad Groups also means you can test a lot more creative than you can on Facebook. Google does cap your assets at 20 videos and 10 images, but if you need more you can just create more Ad Groups.
Portrait (9 x 16) and landscape (16 x 9) aspect ratios are the best bet right now for videos on UAC.
Google UAC CHALLENGES
In Google, you can have up to 20 videos and 10 images. Those are hard caps; you cannot swap out and have even 21 videos and 9 images. But if you swap those assets out to add new assets, you will not be able to see the stats for those creative assets. It is possible to get the stats back if you re-add the videos. So, the data isn’t lost. It’s just not shown.
Reporting on creative performance is harder to get.
You cannot control bid settings (like an auto bid and bid cap).
You cannot control where your traffic is coming from, or how it is allocated throughout your campaigns, Ad Groups, and ads. This means you cannot really do a proper split-test. You can have one creative in one Ad Group, and then create as many Ad Groups as creative variations, but that is not a proper split-test.
Google is more restrictive about the text. It will not allow CAPS, exclamation points, emojis, etc.
There are no standard campaign options on Google. There’s only UAC.
TIKTOK CREATIVE TESTING
TikTok’s A/B testing capabilities are still rapidly evolving so we recommend A/B testing on Facebook Android. If you can only test on TikTok, here are our suggested best practices:
Creative testing on TikTok is limited to running two creatives at a time, due to the limitation of two split audiences
Broad targeting is recommended for testing to keep CPMs low
Each ad set within a split test must spend at least $20/day in order to run
TikTok automates split tests to run for 7 days, but this can be shortened
Tests can be run with an optimization goal of Clicks, Installs, or In-App Events
Available bidding: Cost Cap Bidding or Lowest Cost Bidding. The lowest cost is recommended to maximize your number of results.
Both Standard Ads and Spark Ads (Organic Posts) can be split tested.
Musical iterations of ads can be easily created and tested using the TikTok Video Editor
OPTIMAL CREATIVE SIZES ACROSS PLATFORMS
To maximize creative testing, run optimal aspect ratio and media types relative to each platform across Facebook, Google App Campaigns, TikTok, and Snap. However, as the failure rate of new creative is 95% you will also want to minimize the number of sizes you produce until you have uncovered a fresh winning creative. Below is our recommendation to maximize distribution and while minimizing creative production.
Section 4: A Final Word On Creative Testing
IDFA loss, SKAN requirements, and media buying automation through Facebook’s AAA or Google UAC are tough challenges facing user acquisition and creative teams.
But don’t despair. Dean Takahashi from GamesBeat says, “Advertisers aren’t helpless. In a post-IDFA world, Facebook, Branch, and Consumer Acquisition recommend focusing on ‘persona-led creative’ (or marketing to a type of person) to regain efficiency by allowing paid social algorithms to cluster users based on behaviors and creative trends.”
Tactics we recommend throughout these pages may not be strictly aligned with publicly available platform best practices. But we know they work. Our market insights and creative expertise come from managing over $3 billion in creative and social ad spend for the world’s largest mobile apps and web-based performance advertisers. Since 2013 we’ve worked with Roblox, Glu Mobile, Disney, SuperHuman, Rovio, Jam City, Wooga, NBA, MLB, Ford, Sun Basket, Lion Studios, MobilityWare, and many others. We provide end-to-end creative and user acquisition services for mobile app marketers via performance-oriented creative storytelling, integrated UA, and creative optimization.
Get top creative trends for RPGs, including for Disney Sorcerer’s Arena
See creative best practices in action
Compare persona-led creative designed for different motivations
Disney Sorcerer’s Arena High Performing Ad Creative
Once considered a messaging app for millennials, Snapchat now reports 293 million people use the platform every day. With Snapchat reaching 75% of millennials and Gen Z, mobile game advertisers willing to test the platform will unlock new audiences with the right ad creative. As we have reported, the loss of IDFA has caused massive disruption to the mobile ad ecosystem, so now is the time for experimentation.
Based on MobileAction Ad Intelligence data, we compared five styles of ad creative for Disney Sorcerer’s Arena, a card collecting turn-based RPG based on assembling a team of Disney and Pixar characters to battle against other players. The broad appeal of Disney’s IP is a perfect opportunity to experiment with persona-led creative designed for different motivations and interests. Due to the idiosyncrasies of the platform, Snapchat creative requires a unique approach; for more on this, read our Snapchat Ad Creative Best Practices here.
Our creative learning agenda incorporates intensive research into game genre, personas, and user motivations as well as understanding what ads our target users are responding to in other markets.
Here are competitor trends we’re seeing for RPG ad creative:
Game Trailer: Overview of the game showcasing characters, gameplay, and graphics. (Marvel Future Fight, Summoners War, Disney Heroes: Battle Mode)
Gameplay: Simple gameplay, sometimes simulated or augmented. (Marvel Strike Force: Squad RPG)
Characters: Concepts built around game character personalities, powers, and origins.
(Raid: Shadow Legends, Looney Tunes World of Mayhem, Rise of Kingdoms)
Player Focused: Player types, player interviews, and PVP gameplay.
(AFK Arena, Marvel Contest of Champions)
Influencers/UGC: Leveraging influencer and player interviews & reviews
(Raid Shadow Legends, Rise of Kingdoms, The Seven Deadly Sins)
Pop Culture: Ads that have pop culture and lifestyle as a primary element.
(Looney Tunes World of Mayhem)
Competitive: Comparing the app against other apps or games. (AFK Arena)
However, without deterministic tracking on iOS or effective lookalike audiences, creative teams can no longer rely on broad-stroke trends. Persona-led creative developed around player motivations, preferences, and interests is the most effective way to sustain profitable user acquisition. Two useful frameworks for mapping player motivation come from Market researcher Quantic Foundry and more recently, Facebook’s Big Catch Playbook.
Now let’s see what style of ad worked better on Snapchat in this creative countdown for Disney Sorcerer’s Arena based on MobileAction data.
#5: Card Collecting
Uses mellow game graphics to appeal to players who value achievement, collection and completion, customization, and challenge.
#4: Theatrical Gameplay
Uses dramatic augmented gameplay, cinematics, and character stats to appeal to players who value immersion, action, surprises, and achievement.
#3: Leveling Up
Uses simplified gameplay through increasing character stats to appeal to players who value achievement.
#2: Influencer/UGC
Uses cinematic scenes with picture-in-picture response narration to appeal to players who value a connection to other players.
#1: Connected Characters
Uses beloved characters connected by their game powers to appeal to players who value story, fantasy, and strategy.
See more of our other high-performing ad creative work:
Applovin: iOS 14.5+ adoption +80%, 35-40% ATT prompt consent
Playtika: iOS 14.5+ adoption +75%, 34% ATT prompt consent
Zynga: warned IDFA will have a material impact; H2 bookings could be down by $100M
Unity: captures 50 billion daily in-app events and sees movement toward a contextual ad model without IDFA; raised 2021 guidance $50m
Ironsource: a platform built to analyze contextual data has 2.5 billion monthly active users; no material IDFA impact loss yet
Skillz: IDFA loss is yet to be determined, but is expected to be neutral; experimenting with engagement marketing rather than UA spend while CPIs remain high
IDFA Impact Q2 Roundup: Public Company Earnings Reports
Over the past three months, Consumer Acquisition data reports have shown the significant impact of IDFA loss throughout the mobile ads ecosystem, including average revenue drops of 15-20%, the erosion of lookalike audience targeting, and skyrocketing CPMs for iOS advertisers, and even impact on Android ads. Overall, we have seen a nuanced impact across sub-genres. This includes a narrowing of audiences, compromised targeting for highest value players, and inefficiencies for in-app advertising. To discuss these insights, I was a recent guest on GameMakers with Joe Kim, CEO at LILA Games, Warren Woodward, Co-Founder & Chief Growth Officer at Upptic, and Matej Lancaric, User Acquisition & Marketing consultant. We talked about the implications of IDFA loss with actual data, including tactics for UA and Marketing. We addressed the impact, product and monetization changes, and the likely winners and losers coming out of all of this.
Gaming and Ad Network Companies
To add to our ongoing data updates, we now have quarterly earnings being reported from major gaming and ad network companies. This includes their own assessments of IDFA impact. We reviewed the respective earnings call transcripts from Apple, Facebook, EA/Glu, Playtika, Skillz, Unity, Applovin, IronSource, Rovio, and others to see how IDFA’s impact is being discussed. Many conversations about fluctuations in user acquisition efficacy actually considered pandemic impacts in tandem with privacy issues. In fact, analysis for these two factors should be separate. As people return to pre-pandemic device habits, year-over-year traffic may decline; but this is only a piece of the story.
Even if ATT prompt consent is as high as 30% to 40%, as some companies are reporting, that would mean 60% of iOS users are not included in deterministic tracking. iOS advertisers losing 60% to 70% of their target audience must be negatively impacting revenue, LTV calculations, and overall marketing stability and efficiency. We have seen inflated organic attribution as users acquired by paid channels fall outside of the severe 48-hour restriction of SKAN reporting, but it is nowhere near enough to cover the -15% to -35% reduction in revenue we’re hearing from our top advertisers.
Below, we have summarized some notable points from the earnings calls. You can read additional excerpts from the transcripts following at the end of this article.
Ad impressions are up 6% and the average CPM is up 47%. Facebook expects increasing ad targeting headwinds in 2021 from regulatory and platform changes, notably the recent iOS updates; they expect to see a more significant impact in the third quarter compared to the second quarter.
Reports 80% of iOS devices are updated to 14.5+ and ATT prompt consent is averaging 35-40%, higher than anticipated. With or without IDFA, scaled first-party data from their 200 million MAU remains intact for reliable LTV models.
They report their “choppy” business performance as a result of reduced COVID-19 restrictions. This drives softness in bookings and Apple’s privacy changes resulting in a higher cost to acquire new players. To compensate for the loss of efficiency, they scaled back iOS UA spend and are adjusting LTV calculations to maintain targeted returns. ROI differences by genre are not material. Though they do see subtleties in some categories, with hypercasual and social casino games doing better than others. They see rising CPMs on Android as more advertisers seeking IDFA relief increase spend there to acquire users in the short term.
Due to broader adoption of Apple’s privacy changes at the end of June, they expect short-term pressure on ad revenue to be more pronounced in Q3 than in Q2, with H2 bookings being down by $100 million as a result; however, they are very confident that the IDFA issue is well in hand and operating within expectations.
ATT prompt consent rate and adoption rates are higher than expected at 34% and 78%, respectively. Successful live ops drive monetization and growth. Due to the operational sophistication required to succeed in a post-IDFA world, smaller companies may see new M&A opportunities.
By capturing and analyzing 50 billion in-app events each day, including one billion in-app events in iOS 14.5, Unity’s scale and depth provide access to a massive amount of end-user engagement and platform performance data. Their movement toward a contextual model that does not rely on IDFA has been successful enough for them to raise guidance by $50 million for 2021.
While there has been no material impact from IDFA loss yet, they say it is still too early to accurately assess and they continue to monitor for short-term effects. Their platform has 2.5 billion monthly active users and was originally built to analyze contextual data. “IDFA changes, we thought that we would see effects in Q1, which didn’t happen, and then in Q2, which didn’t happen. And still, we are conscious and we’re keeping monitoring potential, again, short-term effects.”
The impact of IDFA loss has yet to be determined but is expected to be neutral. They are experimenting with engagement marketing rather than UA spend while CPIs remain high.
IDFA loss has caused concern over revenue impact. However, AppAnnie reports they “haven’t seen anything major” in the data, with only some game categories suffering from the loss of IDFA targetings. Some of these categories include social casino games and strategy games. They remain optimistic about their prediction of 20% growth in the global market in 2021.
MY TAKE ON IDFA IMPACT
Consumer Acquisition’s data representing $300 million in ad spend from January to mid-August 2021 shows that Android click-to-install (c2i) rates remain steady and increase in August, while iOS c2i erodes both for SKAN and non-SKAN tied to IDFA loss. Using c2i as a proxy for traffic quality to avoid the noise generated by CPMs across genres and countries, the erosion of iOS traffic quality is clearly tied to the rollout of iOS 14.5+.
Here’s my take:
Several public companies appear to have tied COVID traffic decreases with IDFA impact as a way to buy time for full impacts to become clear
We see a -15% to -20% average revenue loss for iOS broad audience games and -35% revenue loss for heavy IAP/niche audience games
With only a 35% consent rate to ATT, custom and lookalike audience size has been reduced -65% and effectiveness has dropped
Continued downward pressure on click-to-install (c2i) is indicative of lower traffic quality across paid social channels
Many small and mid-sized mobile app developers have paused spending on iOS or shifted heavily to Android, inflating CPMs
At the same time, while iOS CPMs have consistently been more expensive than Android, we see the gap between operating systems close with a spike in iOS CPMs tied to the launch of iOS14.6.
For mobile app advertising on social platforms, CPMs are up, impressions are up, and click-to-install quality is down. It seems that social platforms are adjusting algorithms to maintain their eCPM (i.e., profit) and the result is less effective targeting and lower traffic quality. Very large companies with significant pools of first-party data are the beneficiaries of IDFA changes while the effectiveness of advertising for smaller companies is heavily impacted.
Here’s what’s working right now
With only a 35% consent rate for ATT, custom and lookalike audience size has been reduced -65% and performance is rapidly eroding, and the highest ROAS audiences—which used to last two to three months—now last two to three weeks with a significantly lower return. As lookalike audiences struggle, we are heavily testing interest groups and focusing on the much smaller ATT opt-in audiences for unique app events in a variety of countries. While these audiences require a lot of work to uncover and they burn out quickly, they offer significant pockets of efficiency for two to three weeks. The strongest performance we’re seeing is coming from top countries with localized ad copy with AEO or broad targeting.
How to survive IDFA Impact and thrive
Focus on persona-led creative to drive performance advertising at scale without deterministic tracking.
Adjust onboarding to identify consumers that indicate a propensity to spend within the first 48 hours of gameplay to effectively operate within SKAN’s restrictions.
Test contextual advertising techniques by combining interest group targeting with persona-led creative tied to customized onboarding flows to help educate the paid social algorithms to deliver better audiences.
How we can help
We have spoken with twenty large spenders, and they agree that fully loaded costs of internal UA teams are 6-8% of media spend. Consider leveraging the expertise and optics that an external agency provides to gain a broader understanding of the highly evolving IDFA impact.
Founded in 2013, ConsumerAcquisition.com is a technology-enabled marketing services company that has managed over $3 billion in creative and social ad spend for the world’s largest mobile apps and web-based performance advertisers. We provide a creative studio and user acquisition services for Facebook, Google, TikTok, Snap, and Apple Search social advertisers.
We can provide your internal user acquisition team a perspective on iOS14+ impact across paid social providers and our Hollywood-based team of storytellers can produce a steady stream of persona-driven creative ideas to stay ahead of creative fatigue.
For more on this, check out this new episode of GameMakers with Joe Kim, CEO at LILA Games, Warren Woodward, Co-Founder & Chief Growth Officer at Upptic, and Matej Lancaric, User Acquisition & Marketing consultant. We discussed the implications of IDFA loss with actual data, including tactics for UA and Marketing to address the impact, product and monetization changes, and the likely winners and losers coming out of all of this. Watch the video below.
“We’ve seen about 80% of iOS devices are now updated to 14.5 or later. And consent rates are coming in quite a bit higher than I think a lot of the folks in the industry had projected. It’s different app by app, but anywhere between 20% to 25% on the low end and 60% to 65% on the high end, and it lands on an average of around 35% to 40% are opting into sharing information.”
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“Great. So, the software side, obviously, is seeing a lot of acceleration, and we touched on its last quarter when we highlighted what we thought IDFA’s impact would be. The changes really govern how third parties share data with first parties and how that data is used for advertising. And in our case, we have a lot of first-party data, both scaled 200 million users a month playing our game, scaled across engagement data, and then also scaled transactional data, which is very unique.
We’ve got millions of customers paying and having paid in our games. And then that data, we’re able to put in our machine learning engine, AXON, to come up with really ad recommendations that drive much better performance for the advertiser. We rolled this out in Q4 of last year. And you’ve seen immense amounts of growth on the software side, both in terms of the dollars that people are spending on our platform, which is reflective of the performance, and in terms of new clients coming on, which doubled year over year.
We’re very confident in this trend going forward.”
—-
“So, business apps, just to be clear, is advertising from third-party, typically, ad networks within our own mobile game applications. And then business software is obviously our app discovery solution and the MAX solution, and now, Adjust, so the software net revenue that we report. That business grew exceptionally quickly with the advantages that we thought we had going into the changing landscape. One of the things we touched on in the first-quarter earnings call is our other prediction on IDFA changes where the prices in the ecosystem would drop on iOS, and that flows through to business publishing.
Now despite that, business publishing had quite sizable growth. The mobile gaming ecosystem doesn’t tend to grow that quickly on a year-over-year basis. So, despite the lower pricing in the ecosystem, we still were able to generate outsized growth in that business as well.”
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“So, if you recall, we touched on in first-quarter earnings, our advantage we felt like going into the IDFA change was — compared to our peers, is that we weren’t going to fall back from a completely personalized solution to a completely contextual solution that lacked the personalization you get with data. Our advantage truly comes from very scaled first-party data. We’ve got 200 million users playing games every single month that we’ve got good engagement data on.
We’ve got millions of customers who have paid us over the history of our gaming business. All that data remains intact and is in our models with or without IDFA. And so going into the quarter, we felt like we had advantages. We articulated it for you all in Q1.
And then obviously, you’ve seen in the step-up in performance that 3x growth in the software business and up 40% quarter over quarter and the huge ramp-up in clients that we’re able to outperform in the marketplace because of those investments we’ve made over the last couple of years.”
“The weakness that we saw starting to emerge in late May in July and June was from cohorts that joined our network in 2021. So, these were cohorts that were recently acquired. And as the COVID restrictions started to lift, we saw people starting to play less or obviously other things to do.
The economy has opened. And that was an area where we started to see the weakness. That was compounded by the fact that IDFA was also hitting at the same time, so we weren’t acquiring new players because we weren’t seeing the paid returns. And so that is what dampened a little bit of that part of the business.
Now at the same time, players that had been with us before COVID hit, even early cohorts in COVID, are playing as much, they are engaged as much, if not more, and also monetizing more. So, for the vast majority of our revenue, that audience base is very resilient, very strong. And even through this period of weakness in these new cohorts, they have held in there.
That has been a very encouraging thing for us to see. And as we have moved through July and started to move into August, and we are starting to see more networks respond to the changes in IDFA and starting to be able to demonstrate improving returns that give us encouragement for why we think these are short-term in nature.”
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“Yes. I think if you look at the two factors that we are dealing with in terms of the reopening with audience choppiness and then IDFA when we talked about IDFA before, we had said that it was going to be a short-term headwind that we would work through because of our advantages in scale in advertising and product management. We remain committed to that. Well, we are already seeing an improvement in early UA trends.
Really, what had to happen was new tools, new ad products, the networks need to retool. We needed to look at real data in terms of the supply and demand factors. And that is what when iOS hit 80% in June, that June period in July is really working through that, and we have seen that improvement in late July and going into August, where we feel very confident that IDFA is something that we are working our way through.
And it is had an impact, but again, a short-term nature type thing that we communicated in the long-term, we don’t see it as a negative. It is something that we just have to adjust for, and we have started to do that by looking at different networks.
Unity Network
We have started to buy on networks that we weren’t buying on before because they have done a good job improving their products. As an example, Unity is a network that has done a good job adjusting to IDFA.
In addition to that, we have used some other techniques in terms of how we value a player, what types of calculations we are doing in terms of looking at the spread between install and LTV. So, it is a variety of different techniques that you experiment against you see the results, you see if they are predictive and then we start deploying those.
So, I’m very confident and feel very good that the IDFA issue is well in hand and operating within expectations. The softness in the cohorts that we acquired in 2021, that choppiness has had more of an impact on the run rate. That has been where we have seen a little bit more of an adjustment that we have had to make with regards to how they were operating versus earlier cohorts in COVID.”
“You know, we feel confident about our positioning regarding [IDFA] for a couple of reasons. As you mentioned, our ad revenues are only 3% of our business, and so our top line is minimally impacted by this. Second, the data we’ve seen on the media buying side has been encouraging. Our effective CPI’s have been stable in pre-and-post-IDFA periods. And our current consent rate and adoption rates are higher than we expected at 34% and 78%, respectively.
In other words, 78% of the impact has been absorbed, and we haven’t seen an increase in our effective CPI’s. Just to be clear, effective CPIs include organic and unattributed traffic acquired. Third, this is a type of event where Playtika’s excellence really stands out. We’ve become very effective in our offline and non-performance marketing campaigns. And we buy traffic from a larger number of networks. So, we’re more diversified in that respect as well.
In addition, with our live ops, we’re very successful at monetization, which means we have more tools to drive growth, and we convert users faster, so our feedback loop is stronger since we get data faster. We also use sophisticated AI and our proprietary [indiscernible] tool that allows us to optimize our media buying and budget allocation based on ROI.
On the upside, we think that IDFA will create more M&A opportunities, given the level of operational sophistication needed to succeed in this environment has just increased dramatically, and many smaller companies are not able to meet that bar.”
“The team has been preparing for IDFA for at least the last two years. I was part of several of these conversations as a board member before joining Unity, and I was always very impressed by the quality of the thinking. But now that I’m on the other side, I’ve been even more impressed and see the plans in detail. Let me try to dimensionalize this for you. Our operating organization captures and analyzes 50 billion in-app events each day.
If you do the math, that’s about 35 million in-app events every minute, and we do this across 20 platforms. This includes roughly 1 billion in-app events in iOS 14.5 each day. We believe that the ability to analyze this data positions us very well in the industry. So, as we talk to the teams, there are probably five key takeaways that I would like to leave you with.
First, spending on our platform is very strong. There is a shift toward ROI-based campaigns on our platform through Audience Pinpointer, which is when advertisers determine the outcome that they want from the campaign, and we determine the right channels and price for them to achieve their KPIs. So that’s point number one. Point number two, our contextual model, which very importantly does not rely on IDFA, is working well.
Privacy
We need to perform for our customers even in a more privacy-aware environment. Unity’s game engine leadership is a strength, and it provides us with deep context for our ads business. Third point, our scale and depth provide us access to a vast amount of end-user engagement and platform performance data, which is the point I was mentioning earlier. It’s about these 50 billion in-app events every day and across these 20 platforms.
The fourth point, which is probably one of my favorites, is the customer feedback we’re getting is very strong, Chris. Let me read to you three quotes that I got from the team which is coming from our customers. Quote number one, “Out of all our partners, we’re most happy with Unity as we’re having a lot of problems with others.” Quote number two, “We partner with every single network available, and Unity’s readiness and guidance are far above the rest.” Quote number three, “We work with every network and none of them are able to compete with Unity when it comes to iOS 14.5 readiness and reactiveness.”
So, if I look at everything with this customer feedback, I’m confident that we’re in a very strong competitive position. And the last point I wanted to make on this is we’re raising our guidance by $50 million, and the driver of that increase is the Operate business.
We have momentum, we beat Q1 expectations, and are raising our forecast for the year. So IDFA will most likely impact the ads industry, but we believe that our data and analytics advantage plus this advanced preparation that I was mentioning, position us very well to manage the IDFA. And we’ll obviously keep you informed as we learn more.”
“Before moving to our guidance, I wanted to spend a minute on IDFA. I also have invested extensive resources in preparing for Apple’s changes, which require apps to ask users for permissions for tracking them across applications. We believe our investment and preparation will help our platform and technology to adapt to Apple’s changes.
While we have not yet seen any material impact for Apple’s changes, it is still too early to accurately determine the full impact. Our guidance takes into account some potential short-term uncertainties related to the change while still reflecting the ongoing success and momentum of the platform. In the long term, we believe that our technology gives us a competitive advantage and position us to provide additional value to our customers in the context of this industry change.”
From Tomer Bar-Zeev
“Look, so I think a lot has been said about IDFA in the last few months. And with a few months already into the rollout of IDFA, I think we have a much better view of the current impact and, I think, a fair estimate on how it will look going forward. And I would say that when we last talked, we said that the ironSource platform is probably best geared to cope with the IDFA changes, among other reasons because it was originally built to provide contextually — to analyze contextual data.
So, by definition, the platform was built with a lot of — taking into account a lot of privacy issues. So, we thought that we would potentially be one of the beneficences of the IDFA changes. That’s not to say that we still might see some short-term effect from IDFA in the very short term, but we remain very positive about our estimation that long-term IDFA is a net-net benefit for ironSource because of the way we deal with contextual data and the way the platform has built from the get-go.”
“I would say that one element that we’re very conscious about is how to best anticipate and to be able to adjust the model for potential IDFA changes, which I think we and the rest of the industry initially thought that we would see some effects in Q1, which really didn’t happen, and then in Q2, which really didn’t happen. And still, we are conscious and we’re keeping monitoring potential, again, short-term effects. And those are budgeted already in the guidance that we’re giving for Q3 and the rest of the year. But I would say, very consistent with our views and our expectations going forward. So, I would say, luckily, no surprises so far.”
“So IDFA is still relatively early in terms of the rollout of iOS 14.5% has been relatively slow. And so, it’s pretty early to read the impact of it. So, I would say we continue to expect that the impact of IDFA will be neutral. On the one hand, cost per install likely decreases as advertisers lower their bids in response to less efficient targeting and attribution. On the other hand, this potentially decreases conversion rates as well.”
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“In terms of what we’re seeing in July for CPI, we’re starting to see the pace of industry pricing increases begin to stabilize, and we expect that pricing to flatten before decreasing later this year. We think that decrease is going to be driven by market dynamics, pushing down industry pricing as a whole, but also as a result of the investments that we’re actively making in our distribution costs, Aarki, other traffic initiatives, brand distribution partnerships, things like that.
In terms of user acquisition versus engagement marketing, what we saw in Q2 was rising CPIs. In the face of that, we maintain the financial discipline and we reduced our UA investment.
This is something that we typically plan for in Q2 as a result of seasonal pressures, but it’s also something that we can allocate dynamically based on what we’re seeing inside the market.
And with that — with the bandwidth that came back to the team as a result of reducing that spend, we were able to increase our experimentation with engagement marketing. You hit it quite right, we’re looking for the most effective way to drive dollars that bring our users back that increase their customer lifetime value. And so, as we look at the path ahead, if CPIs stay up, we’re going to chart a very similar course and we’ll eliminate the experiments that don’t work. We’ll keep the ones that do, but we’ll continue testing as we build for the long-term future of the business.”
“Because of the impact of the pandemic on year-on-year over comparisons, it’s helpful to compare this quarter with the pre-COVID Q1 fiscal 2020 to better understand underlying growth. On that basis, FIFA Ultimate Team is up 47%; Madden Ultimate Team, up 115%; equivalent to CAGRs of 21% and 47%, respectively. Similarly, sales, including Codemasters from our broad portfolio of catalog titles are up 55%, a CAGR of 25%. Mobile, excluding our Glu acquisition, is also up 16% organically over the same period 2 years ago.”
Data analysis representing $122 million in paid social mobile app ad spend reveals how IDFA loss is killing lookalike audience targeting and causing a rise in unattributed organic revenue, resulting in a sustained negative impact on ROAS.
Since late April, ROAS and click-to-install rates have plummeted for broad, lookalike, and interest targeting.
Android ads are not immune to the larger ecosystem effects of IDFA, as Android performance simultaneously declines across social networks.
Facebook warns against the reliance on lookalike audiences: “By continuously using the same optimization tools and same lookalike audiences, advertisers risk limiting themselves to the players they’re familiar with, which can in turn limit growth.”
As insights into user behavior deteriorate, a user’s declared interests are critically important to target based on motivation, intent, and persona-led creative.
Experimentation with agile creative is critical as we await tools from social platforms that enable ROAS-positive, effective probabilistic targeting tied to interest targeting and contextual advertising.
IDFA Loss Has Killed Lookalike Audiences, Now What?
In our review of over $250 million in ad spend for our initial IDFA impact report, we knew the reach and effectiveness of lookalike audiences (LALs) across social ad platforms would decrease as iOS 14.6 adoption increased. And as most advertisers use LaLs derived from revenue events like purchases, the loss of IDFA effectively destroys one of the most common and profitable audience targeting tactics. In their Big Catch Playbook, even Facebook warns against the reliance on lookalike audiences: “By continuously using the same optimization tools and same lookalike audiences, advertisers risk limiting themselves to the players they’re familiar with, which can in turn limit growth.”
But our experience managing over $3 billion in creative and social ad spend means we know how to find new opportunities. Analyzing ROAS for lookalike audiences, broad audiences, and interest groups on large social networks over the past twelve months, we have recommendations to reach your ideal audience in a post-IDFA world.
Lookalike Audience Targeting
Prior to the loss of IDFA, lookalike audience targeting was reliable, effective, and efficient; it offered limitless opportunities to slice and dice revenue events to uncover new high-value users. A strong lookalike audience could scale and run for a month or more; but now, ROAS might be 0.5% when it was previously 15%. As a result, advertisers have been decreasing social ad spend for iOS by 40-50% each month since ATT enforcement and are consistently shifting more ad spend over to Android. However, Android ads are surprisingly not immune to the larger ecosystem effects of IDFA. Android performance across social networks is declining, as well. With GAID going strong, the inflated CPMs aura effect on Android advertising means everyone needs to get more creative.
According to Facebook, creative must speak to the distinct motivations of different types of players; they identify this as a massively underutilized opportunity for ad efficacy as user tracking declines. They recommend, “…as gaming advertisers look to diversify their strategies in response to an evolving ads ecosystem, motivation-led creatives provide a future-proof solution.” For user acquisition teams, experimentation with interest groups may unlock pockets of efficiency, and persona-led creative help advertisers design an experience to meet the target user’s expectations, needs, and desires. Like appealing to motivation, Branch’s 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook recommends aligning ad creative with user intent.
While much of the industry has been focused on user behavior, the deterioration of lookalike audiences and the black box of deeper funnel events means a user’s declared interests are critically important for insights into motivation and intent.
ROAS Campaigns
To provide a perspective on how the loss of IDFA is impacting audience targeting, we analyzed data representing $122 million in paid social ad spend. The following graphs show ROAS for lookalike audiences, broad audiences, and interest groups on large social networks over the past twelve months.
Disclaimer: Consumer Acquisition performance reports are based on limited proprietary datasets; actual marketplace metrics may vary.
Campaign A: Simulation Game
Ad Spend: $7.91m
Period: July 2020 through July 2021
Region: US
Platform: iOS/AndroidCP
Notable: In Q2 CPMs for LALs, interests, and broad targeting all increased. Curiously, this effect was more dramatic on Android than iOS. Q2 2021 CPMs were 2x that of Q2 2019 (pre-pandemic) CPMs. In Q2 click-to-installs remained stable for Android Broad and Interest targeting but plummeted for LAL audiences. Most impactfully, despite paying high CPMs, ROAS and traffic quality has steadily declined since January, for both iOS and all targeting types, with no end yet in sight.
Campaign B: Role Playing Game
Ad Spend: $1.45m
Period: January 2020 through June 2021
Region: US
Platform: iOS
Campaign C: Adventure Game
Ad Spend: $1.21m
Period: January 2020 through June 2021
Region: US
Platform: iOS
Notable: For IOS, both LaLs and Interest targeting CTI declined precipitously since May resulting in 90% of investment moving to other platforms. Android LAL performance fared better throughout the period, outpacing Interest targeting performance in Q2.
Campaign D: Adventure Game 02
Ad Spend: $1.94m
Period: January 2020 through June 2021
Region: US
Platform: iOS
Notable: Lookalike performance decreased sharply on both platforms (Android/iOS) in Q1-Q2. Full transition into AEO+AAA (broad) helped maintain portfolio ROI as VO performance collapsed. Small, lookalike pockets of efficiency have emerged in Android over the past 30 days. This is likely driven by new creative wins and decreased auction LAL competition.
Campaign E: Casino Game
Ad Spend: $23.38 Million
Period: January 2020 through June 2021
Region: US
Platform: iOS
Notable: For iOS, both LALs and interest targeting click-to-install rates declined precipitously since May, resulting in 90% of investment moving to other platforms. Other channels with better broad-based targeting maintained more consistent click-to-install post-ATT.
Recommendations
As insights into user behavior deteriorate, a user’s declared interests are critically important to target based on motivation and intent. The necessary shift to interest-based targeting has increased competition for the most obvious keywords; however, along the periphery of popular interests are inconspicuous affinities where new audiences are waiting. Through ongoing UA experimentation and agile creative tailored to varying demographics, high-quality top-of-funnel installs driven by genuine enthusiasm are attainable.
Persona-led creative is critical to engage audiences efficiently. It also allows the algorithms to identify and cluster users based on their preferences, performance data, and response rates to creative styles. With this insight, mobile app developers can tie events based on the probability of monetization within the first 48 hours and guide consumers into an appropriate onboarding funnel in their app.
Creative Tips
The most important lever in performance advertising is now creative, due to IDFA loss and media buying automation.
85-95% of new creative concepts will fail to outperform the best ad. You will need 20-50 new original concepts to find your next winner.
With A/B testing creative no longer viable on iOS, creative teams need to shift from variation testing to developing new concepts.
UA Tips
Until paid social advertising is thrown a lifeline, we recommend all advertisers diversify their acquisition portfolios across paid social channels and SDK networks to uncover all pockets of efficiency.
The strongest performance we’re seeing is coming from top countries, localized ad copy with AEO or Broad targeting.
Areas of exploration are interest clusters coupled with persona-led creative.
Facebook’s Big Catch Playbook outlines how ads they’re seeing are not speaking to the distinct motivations of different types of players; this is a critical oversight as the ability to track users declines. Pair creative with onboarding, tag to an event and allow Facebook to deliver qualified audiences.
Persona-led creative developed through a creative journey helps advertisers design a solution to meet the target user’s expectations, needs, and desires.
For iOS, focus on tutorials to identify consumers that indicate a propensity to monetize in the first 48 hours post-install. Also, establish onboarding as events to educate the algorithms on what changes to make.
Mobile app developers often succeed or fail based on how effectively they measure and improve retention, revenue, and LTV. Most companies focus on new updates, new features, and revenue.
To stay ahead of and measure creative fatigue and enable a steady stream of fresh creative assets, we are advising app developers to break down the silos between product and marketing teams.
How We Can Help
As research into this post, we have spoken with twenty large spenders. They agree that fully loaded costs of internal UA teams are 6-8% of media spend. Consider leveraging the expertise and optics that an external agency provides. This will give you a broader understanding of the highly evolving IDFA impact.
Founded in 2013, ConsumerAcquisition.com is a technology-enabled marketing services company that has managed over $3 billion in creative and social ad spend for the world’s largest mobile apps and web-based performance advertisers. We provide a creative studio and user acquisition services for Facebook, Google, TikTok, Snap, and Apple Search social advertisers.
We can provide your internal user acquisition team a perspective on iOS14 impact across paid social providers. Our Hollywood-based team of storytellers can produce a steady stream of persona-driven creative ideas to stay ahead of creative fatigue.
