Creative Matrix for Marketing Mobile Apps and Games
Cheat sheet for finding high performing creative
Who doesn’t want to find a high-performing creative for their mobile app or game? This has been the core of our UA process since we founded Miri in 2017.
Creatives are one of the most important tools a UA manager can leverage to achieve great ROAS and higher scale. We’ve collaborated with apps and games across a wide range of categories. Very early on, we realised that specific concepts performed well for different categories, and started to understand not only what was performing, but also where.
That led to our categorisation process, where we grouped creatives by concept; the key characteristics behind their performance.
To summarise our findings, we started working on a creative matrix in 2019, and we’ve been updating it ever since. We grouped concepts by app/game category, creating a heatmap of which ones perform best for each genre.
In this article, we want to further define the different concepts we’ve identified in the past few years, and detail on the app and game categories they perform best in.
In a later article, we’ll go into how we apply the creative matrix when we start working with a new client, and explain how execution (how the concept is communicated) influences performance.
Full Creative Matrix
Simplified Creative Matrix
Creative Concepts
Passive Concepts:
Show the product
Here, the user watching the ad is passive. They’re not being asked a question, or told a story. The ad simply shows what the app or game is about, in a visually pleasing way.
That’s ideal if your product can be explained in a few short seconds. These creatives generally perform best for, but not limited to, casual games. We divide the passive concept into a few sub-categories.
>
Explore/Discover
Showing there are elements to unlock or worlds to discover in the game. This can be uncovering parts of a large world from behind clouds, or locking mysterious elements in a treasure chest. These perform well for games that have a detailed world with an expansion and/or item-unlock aspect.
Satisfying
Creatives using colourful or symmetrical patterns, or interesting cascading gameplay sequences fall in this category. You can try this by adding an ASMR intro – a simple video, not necessarily related to the game or app, that creates a strong visual hook to capture attention. These ads perform well for hyper casual or casual games and, in particular, for the ones that are able to showcase those patterns and gameplay sequences. But they also work for strategy and social casino games, as long as the gameplay includes the above characteristics.
Relaxation
This one shares similarities to the previous sub-category. It combines satisfying gameplay with a calming aspect. Relaxation is a key motivation for gamers, so why not spell it out to attract users? Slowing down the creative can better the delivery, but it’s crucial to keep intros under 3 seconds. We’ve seen these succeed for casual games, especially those with less important metagames – for example, games with less precisely defined storylines or characters. It also performs well for puzzle, word games, card games similar to Solitaire, and Mahjong.
Active Concepts:
Invite the user to participate in the ad
Passive creatives are primarily descriptive. What you’re shown is what you get.
Active creatives invite users to interact with the ad. You can explicitly ask them to do something, or represent them with an animated hand completing a task on-screen (unless you want to challenge the user to do better). Often, these elements are combined in one. Ask a user a question, but show it being completed by an on-screen hand in a frustrating way.
>
IQ-related
Asking users to find a solution to a riddle or problem, a.k.a brain teasers. The most successful format? Make something easy look complicated. It flatters the player, and that positive reinforcement keeps them playing. You can also add an IQ meter to visually show how they’re doing. In our experience, these creatives perform well for apps that also see good results with relaxation ads. Word games, Solitaire or Puzzle titles can be both relaxing and challenge your brain at the same time. Although more recently, we’ve seen IQ or brain-related ideas outperform relaxation creatives. But, brain teasers tend to be misleading and inaccurately represent the game, so you should check if CTIs or retention rates dip.
Opinion
Engage users by asking them a question to express their opinion. Ask them which character they’d pick or which language they want to learn. We typically give users between two and four options to choose from. For two options, these are usually closed questions with a yes or no answer. But the more the options there are, the more the user can express themselves.
We’ve seen this succeed for education or health and fitness apps, and a little less well for games. Games generally need to show more than just a question to create an engaging opinion ad.
Self-expression/Customisation
Like the last concept, but with more content for higher engagement. Instead of posing just one question, this sub concept asks more questions, which leads to more customisations, making users believe they can express themselves in the app/game. Ask users for their preferred environment, character or booster, then show the impact of these choices.
Customisation creatives effectively hint at the results you can achieve by using the app. They’re also an excellent way to showcase the metagame, so perform better for less casual games where this richness is a main draw.
Task
Many apps or games revolve around the completion of tasks. We’ve had success with concepts that show a snippet of the app’s experience in under 30 seconds. They work well for games that have a clear objective or end-goal, such as cleaning up a mess or renovating an old forgotten mansion. When combined with the opinion/self-expression formats, they also work for narrative games.
Storytelling Concepts:
Using narratives to attract users
This concept is all about creating a link between the gameplay and the story, often dialling up the drama. Some label these as ‘fake ads’, but we’ve seen the market shift away from this tactic towards a middle ground, where the story is linked to the title through gameplay.
For apps, creatives tend to rely on aspiration instead of drama, but these are normally more branded and less performance-focused. So for this article, we’ll focus on the main storytelling creatives in games.
>
Save
Show the main character in a life-threatening situation and use gameplay mechanics to save them.
Reunite
Show two main characters being separated in a dangerous situation, like a lava barrier. Reunite them using gameplay.
Find Clues/Mystery
Imply there’s a mystery to be solved, or set characters on a treasure hunt have performed well in the past. This may be less dramatic, but it’s equally as challenging.
Fix
Put a character in a desperate (but not life-threatening) fix and show them trying to fix it. This can be a bathroom leaking or a house facing a meteor strike.
The best fit for these creatives are casual games with detailed characters, with whom users can build an emotional attachment and feel compelled to save.
They can also work for mid-core titles, albeit less frequently. Take sports as an example. We found success with enhanced animations and a redesigned gameplay where the storyline is about how the user rises to the top. The tower defence sub concept typically also works for less casual titles.
Narrative ads can lead to a lower retention, which can be offset with lower acquisition costs. To maintain retention, try linking the story to the gameplay for both casual and mid-core titles.
Expertise Concepts: Great for mid-core titles
The first three concept groups perform predominantly for casual games, where they can entice users with a sense of challenge or satisfaction. Expertise concepts are better for mid-core titles, where you need to show the richness of the game or the journey the user goes on. And for apps, you need to demonstrate how easy the product is to use or it improves the users’ lives.
>
Tutorial
Show how the app or the game works. Split the creative into a few engaging steps, and show where the app/game can take the user. For a strategy game, demo how to build a base and attack an enemy. For a health and fitness app, illustrate how you set targets and make customised plans, helping the user understand the improvements they can expect. Tutorials are also great at explaining how easy something is to use, especially for apps offering a new service that requires user education.
Tips/Testimonial
Instead of taking the user on a journey from the beginning, start in the middle. Assume they already know the app/game, and provide niche tips. Make it seem like a need-to-know hack or secret cheat code.
We’ve seen this perform for mid-core titles with a large online following and an active community, as well as subscription-based apps. Testimonials explaining what you can achieve have also done well for apps, especially play to earn ones that rely on user trust.
Upgrade
Mainly a gaming concept. Simply illustrate a hand tapping on an upgrade button on a character or a base, and then show the reward. This positive feedback loop entices users by showing how the game will evolve as they play, and how it can potentially expand.
Progression
Similar to expansion concepts, but with a focus on showing progression inside a game (eg. level 0 to 100) instead of upgrades. They highlight the end goal, rather than improvements along the way.
Mastery
Make the creative about how good you can get at the game or app, drawing users by motivating them to become a master.
Before/After
A particularly strong creative for apps. For a self-improvement subscription, showing the difference in the user with and without the app is a simple yet effective way to deliver the core USP and represent aspiration.
Social Concepts:
An important performance driver
Creatives that play up the social aspect of games/apps, especially on paid social platforms, can be quite scalable. It can be drawing comparisons to other people or prompting competitive discussions. Or, on the positive side, focus on how users can build connections with others.
>
Social Connection
It’s always gratifying to see a group of people working together towards the same goal. Show something being completed by several people rather than just one person. This performs well especially for casual titles where the emphasis isn’t on competition.
Competition
Basically, “Me vs you”. When it comes down to it, apps and games are about competition. You can show this through leaderboards or having people compete on-screen. Splitscreens help to exaggerate this idea of opposition. Try this concept for any game, but in particular any PVP titles. Target setting apps can also benefit.
Power
It’s the Mastery concept, but put into a social context. Mastery is becoming good at something yourself, whereas power is about comparing yourself to someone else. Demonstrate what the user can get from using the app or playing the game, but do it through comparison to others. This concept boosts the performance of self improvement apps, but also consider it for mid-core titles.
Our Closing Thoughts
Creative is a fascinating topic. Despite years of consolidation, the market can still systematically reinvent itself and build on previous learnings. This creative matrix is our attempt to summarise the multitude of creatives out there, based on our experiences.
There’s just too many creatives, and too many ways to analyse them, to ever create just one, complete summary. (In fact, Facebook has its own summaries of findings: The Big Catch and Applovin or Adjust). Nonetheless, we’ve found our creative matrix useful for coming up with new ideas as it categorises ads based on the app or game.
Yes, it’s important to find inspiration from others and other categories. But it’s also crucial to really evaluate how to adapt the creative to a specific app or game. Copying is not enough.
When using this framework, consider the key elements of your game or app and draw inspiration from them. Passive ads work well for games with explorable worlds, puzzle games and casual games with aesthetic animations. Active concepts rely on challenging gameplay, but can also perform for apps that set clear goals, as well as task-oriented games and apps. Narrative creatives are great for casual and some mid-core games, but preferably those with characters to boost performance. Expertise concepts show the user what benefits they can get and are a great fit for non-gaming apps. And finally, social creatives utilise connection-building, competition and comparisons for effective mid-core performance.
Once we’ve identified the concepts that best fit a specific app or game, we turn to execution. Defining the right concept and execution helps us form a strategic creative testing plan, which we’ll discuss in the next article.
Adam Turowski
Co-Founder, Miri Growth
Adam started working in the mobile space in Berlin in 2012. After working for a DSP, he moved on to Lamudi, a Rocket Internet company, to work on marketing of their mobile app. In 2014, Adam moved to London to be responsible for user acquisition at Peak before co-founding Miri Growth with Zach in 2017.
