In the Sandbox With Creative Success! AppsFlyer, ACE Games, Product Madness.

[Music] [Music] [Music] we are going to Welcome to the stage to do a live version of their podcast in the sandbox with creative success I'd like you to welcome please uh Adam from La supplier PE from product Madness and Cy from Ace games a round of applause

so yes I can't believe they let us do this live but for anyone who doesn't know p and I have this little podcast called in the sandbox with he came up with the name not me we've got two listeners at the moment which is my mom and dad but we're hoping to grow that listenership so hopefully you like what you hear and you'll go look up our podcast what are we talking about what's the I mean let's talk about creative what do you think yeah let sounds good what is creative seriously she's going to walk off the stage yeah I think she's going to walk off no but let's start let's get into the serious part of it well let's introduce ourselves first who who are you I thought people knew me no sorry uh I'm peos uh I'm director of growth at product Madness and we've been doing the podcast for the last two years and it's been fun so please do subscribe if you can I'm seala I'm uh SCP of marketing at Ace games one of the best games

developers please download Fiona's Farm available on I and Android help out with that creative testing what how creative Ace we we have Ace games that are name of the company so our creative is Ace no I'm kidding good and and I'm Adam smart I'm director of product for gaming at apps uh so yeah this is this is this is kind of what we do yeah his name is Adam smart just keep that in mind for the next 20 minutes uh we're going to going make smart jok jumped to 17 knocking it down right anyway so let's start very very basic what do we mean what do we mean when we say creative either one of you I think in the past okay not making jokes um for now um in the past it was always static video and what playable but now the granular art has gone a lot more than that because we're now looking at the type of content whether it's ug PC

cinematic mix of both maybe it's a simple gam play and even within the playables it becomes more of a you know is it going to look like the actual gaml or is it going to be a combination of both so that we can mix it with a narrative and stories that we're telling inside our games no definitely and just just to add to that I think essentially creative is something that from a marketing standpoint that's the touch point that is the touch point for the user so it doesn't matter what kind of targeting you're doing what kind of audience you have and stuff like that that remains the touch point and it has to be very essential that you have a creative that is consistent across the board uh you know when you're trying to Target a users from from a creative standpoint to the App Store standpoint to the landing page everything should be in sync so creative is the basic touch point that users care about truly so I hear a lot that like this this whole levers analogy that you know with scan and everything you only have so many levers now and creative is one of the big ones why uh look the the fact remains that uh

we it's about the data inconsistency essentially the the granularity of data has actually gone down on iOS and potentially going to go down with on Android as well in the next coming two years right now if you think you're a um manager you have to understand what do you have what what are the options that you have so basically there are three things for growth marketing you got you got you need to find the Right audience on iOS the audience part is gone there's no suppression it becomes very difficult to use first party data to actually Target users right so audience has become quite difficult to sort of work on second part is obviously the creative now that becomes the biggest Li because that's the only way when you can reach out to the user and communicate a message even though your message might not be relevant for that audience because in this world of on especially on the iOS side you might not be able to sort of find the Right audience but still your creative speaking if you're creative speaking some you know uh is increasing some sort of brand awareness for the user that's good enough and the third part of this is basically the

issue that has become bigger right now especially on iOS is the creative analytics part because it's becoming more difficult to figure out uh you know the data at a creative level especially through scam because it's almost impossible you're not going to get a lot of data on that phone now you can always get an indicative data uh or based on opting users and stuff like that but the fundamental issue remains with the creative data is the level you have a campaign you have an ad group you have an adet now within that you have Banner video playables uh inter within layers right now now if you wanted to do a very Apple to Apple comparison you'll go even further and check the size that 720 cross 90 is behaving like what across the board so the more granular you go the less data availability it becomes and that becomes a bigger concern because you can't validate what is working anymore in that sense but at the same time but hang on hang on step step back you're getting you you got the entire process going ahead of you right there before we get to that point what is it that creative

actually controls what what does it give you like as far as in my head all I can really really put this down to is whether you use a clicks or not right I mean uh do you want to okay I mean it's a hook right that's what it is creative gives you hook especially first five seconds depending on the platform if it's reward a video then you can go as long as 30 seconds and 60 and create excuse me almost like advertising experience where then people actually follows through the narrative but if it is something where you don't have to watch to be rewarded for something on any of the srns or any of the other networks where you can skip the hook is the very important vital part you have only three to five seconds to hook the view the attention you have to grab the attention of the viewer and convince them to watch the rest of the video uh or whatever creative might be so that then you can convey the story about your product if there is a story or you know

create a story as well but what's what's the to download what's the the sort of consequence of that like when you're you know obviously for for I know what you're trying to say effective media buying us when doing auctions no put the put the row ass thing aside because I I I I think that's Hocus Pocus but any anyone can disagree by the way but with the you know the knock on effect of of obviously most ad placements you're you're bidding for in some way shape or form right so the more clicks that you get for those those uh um creatives yeah brain's gone completely I think I I got the question so I'll just uh sort of uh jump in and add one thing over there which is look there is no way in the world had anything just answer the question I'm I'm just coming to that give me some time uh you have let's give him five seconds to get a hook if you

like what you hear Look up the podcast yeah this is how we ban uh but anyway going back to the topic so the issue right now in my head is uh if you look at what is creative essentially like even if you are a gamer right so you get a lot of ads about different different games you do get lot right because obviously like now your profiled as a gamer in the audience section so you we know that you're a gamer will try and Target you with different you know sort of creatives yeah now I can't Target you with one creative there is no way in the entire world especially in a gaming space that one creative would convert the user there's very less likelihood unless you're aware of the brand so it it's a step-wise process right so you run two three Crea just to create the brand awareness that okay this kind of game exists right two three on the creative if done I mean I'm just thinking from a sequence standpoint right the next two three creatives you create another hook saying okay you can play the game maybe do a playable over there because now users are more interested because they're aware of the brand and the third step is you converting eventually right so it's it's about trying to figure out where I can find you as a user and trying to how many you with at least 10 to creat

that's why the frequency is pretty high and use that hook in in a sequence manner to convert you but the more the more of those ad placements that you convert into a click that's got to be better for the the you know the percentages that are converting to installs and and so on and so forth it so the numbers for user acquisition are going to end up looking much much better because you've got the more more clicks coming through for the Impressions no but you you can you need to understand that we're paying for the Impressions we're not paying for the click or we not paying for anything else we're paying for the impression so irrespective of whether user conver there's more chance of getting an install if the user clicks but that's the attribution play that's where you guys come okay uh but overall from an Advertiser standpoint and from a user standpoint that's the hook the attribution play something different that's where the whole thing around last click and last View and stuff like that that becames that becomes quite a big uh sort of discussion point right um You can fight about it whether it's right or wrong because you're showing 12 creatives there is potentially more creatives that could have converted before for more

channels that could have converted before because they have been they've been sequencing you to eventually download so last click and last view has always becomes a quite a big question that's something different but you're talking about attribution but I'm just thinking from a user standpoint what what exactly it does fair enough let's let's pause that it's fun conversation but let's pause it let's step back a bit and I want to try and understand from sakala who's done a lot of work surrounding creative the team that you've built and the way that you've you've built the team up in order to understand creative and iterate on on different versions of creative and ab test and that sort of stuff how how does that function what does the flow look like with that and where did you start with creative okay so big question sorry yeah it's actually it's started before me uh at e games because uh creative team is a part of marketing team and that's the right decision that was made before me

and they've done really really well with making sure that there is a robust testing framework in place the regularity of testing competitive benchmarking all the things that we do so do do you have artists within the marketing team specifically for creating specifically for Creative um whether it's cinematic 3D artist rendering uh producing a GCS Quick videos Statics whatever we need they're dedicated to marketing creative art okay okay and so how does that how does that feedback loop work and sorry also sort side question is that the same for you pe yeah I mean uh again as CA said right so I'm going to like probably put them in a bucket let's say so we have there are three aspects to it you got creative designing team that that that designs the creative you got a creative distribution platform like you can have your own bi tool and stuff like that where you upload the creative to make sure that the data is coming into the system and the third is creative testing right where you actually go and test and check on what what measures you actually

say that the creative is working or not right because also the second part you you mentioned bi but in terms of and for the people listening in terms of that bi what are you actually trying to achieve by pulling the data out of these separate platforms look the idea basically is again do some sort of competitive Benchmark because you obviously within Facebook like there are different layers to it within Facebook within a vo campaign a value optimation campaign a creative would behave differently than let's compare let's compare it to Mi camp campaign in maloco right the behavior would be somewhat different so it's about comparing within that channel multiple creatives that you're running and seeing maybe CTR or whatever you believe in because a campaign can have so many different creat so many different and also the tagging of the Creator becomes very important in that factor because you want to look at the overall picture as well did this creative concept work right now concept is a very large term right that combines a lot of creative together this this creative theme work are we launching something for the birthday of an app uh like heart of Vegas in our case is did that work for us right so the tagging

becomes extremely important for you to understand if the whole idea behind the Creative Design actually worked well for or not because you have four years of data so not not necessarily looking at a single creative but grouping a bunch of creatives together to come up with some form of theme exactly right a concept right so yeah we do something similar like that but um we have several stages and this is our level up to to kind of stage gate the creative because at the beginning you just look at the basic performance of the creative whether it's CTI ctrm looking at the auction cpms where it's targeting but then uh taking from that is like basic creative testing then next one is scale up depending on the campaign types whether it's tros AO or whatever it may be in different networks and then the large one goes to the main bucket um you you mentioned CTR there what metrics do you use to measure here we go the effectiveness of creative

Ro roas yes what how I disagree I hear a cheer out there somewhere well not really because it's not directly it's kind of we can only see accurate RWS on Android of course we won't be able to see it on iOS and that's you know the reality we have to live with but essentially now with the everything that's happening privacy whatever there are so many things we have to study now and connect performance and branding together tell the stories about our games and there is so much more that we need to connect with let's say our creative with our audiences and it's it goes beyond then just gender and age like in know I don't know years ago now it has to connect to motivations feelings personalities what kind of interest in different stories and but isn't that a consequence of segmentation and the actual creativ that you're using as to whether somebody clicks or doesn't click

yes but if you are thisy always moves to click all of a sudden you are an attrib it's all about click yes and no because in the end if you want to see if you are let's say you have 10 creatives or five creatives whatever it may be and then they are within the same let's say campaign and someday one of them performs better than the other and another week it's performing worse let's say if you look at the cpms actually you can see if you are in the same auctions or not and then you can see if everything is the same and the auctions are the same then maybe it's become more competitive or maybe your creative needs to be changed sure that that I agree with that I can that that I can get behind but still you know if your creative is effective and I don't mean like what we used to do years ago when we were able to Las a Target to the point of your device I'm going to send it to because I know you're I don't know idef fa or whatever and I'm going to send you some creepy ads no obviously you've done it

before your best let's not get person here so we can't do that anymore so now we need to work with something that is a math of effective creative let's say buy at the right price we know our LTV and our LTV always has a ceiling I mean I don't know when people say oh no it doesn't matter CP what it does matter because at some point in time your TV in some country and platform is going to have a ceiling so that's a threshold you don't want to uh go over within your payback window so it is effectiveness of the creative because right now with the Privacy at the Forefront you are actually this a things that you have to work with yeah yeah for sure I I kind of interrupted earlier as well when we were talking about the flow so I just I really want to understand that feedback loop of how the artists start to iterate on the the images that are out there or

the the videos that are out there how do they iterate so that that that becomes part of testing process essentially so when you're doing a creative testing right you get all the data over there and then you report back into uh into your bi tool which is where the creative team can sit together and figure out with the marketing team can figure out okay what worked what didn't why it didn't work can we play with different iterations of the same creative can we change the color can we change the text and stuff like that and they keep on trying they keep on learning the fundamental ISS again it boils down the same thing which is what is the metric that people care about right because if you ask a creative team they would never say that it's Ras they would say CTR or CVR at Max right because they'll say that if I'm creating a creative in the moment in that moment the user reacting and installing that's a win for me but from a US standpoint it will always be something longterm I'm going to interrupt you I'm sorry but I think uh we've changed it a little bit actually we used to work together but now a different company made it better I think

I think according to me um our creative Team all the artists they know how to use sensor Tower so they all it's part of the daily job they have to use it so they're very curious they actually I'm very pleased to say that our artist are they love data and this is for competitive intelligence really competitive intelligence yes so the next level I want them to start using some part of the creative tool in UPS fer that we have because there are some things that are actually quite useful for them but that's The Next Step In addition to that we have built internal system visualized in lucer or Tableau whatever you want we use ler and we have merged what they received from the attribution Provider Plus what we have internally and we worked on our naming conventions other tags and everything else to build the dashboard that is understood by everyone and that you don't need to be super super technical to understand then we made sure all the labels are you know in a human Lang language not like uh pseudo idore

something something so something that everybody can understand so that we have a goal of um adaptability of this dashboard understanding so please our Target is not CTR an IPM look I I'll tell you what it is I get it I'm I'll tell you what it is because we only have eight seconds yeah tell us quickly that thing's flashing at us it's a ad spend million the one creative could be million dollars at spend so that marketing artists look at it like did my creative get a lot of AD spend but the spend automatically is part of the channel allocation because the creative is working there will be more spend by default from the algorithm of the channel they don't have to work on zero I think I want to do a load more on this though and I think we should have another session where we start to dive into and actually look at some different creatives and see what would work and what wouldn't so we we'll do that feel free to follow us look at the podcast and we'll we'll add some more as we go along um but yeah for now thank you very

much [Applause] everybody