Session: Revealing Winning Patterns From 500+ Top Game Creatives Of 2024 - Brijesh Bharadwaj.

[Music] okay next up we have uh revealing winning patterns from 500 plus top game creators of 2024 and that's Brides from seg Wise is going to come up and give us a little talk great talk to follow up on because we're going to put a lot of data to what M just spoke about so what we've done essentially is analyzed a bunch of like lot of winning creatives from 2024 and tried to find out what parts were actually working for all the top developers that came in through 2024 so yeah this is kind of what the talk is about quick bit about me uh I'm the founder of seg Wise seg Wise basically helps you analyze your own creatives and

tries to find winning patterns in your own creativ so if you're running a bunch of ads and you want to know what elements are working or not working we help you sort of do that really really easily because our AI then watches all your ads and tags all of it with the right metadata and then you can combine that with your ad network data to get inside so uh xua person myself worked in in Mobile and a bunch of other apps and that's how we ended up with seg wise how did we arrive at these winning patterns uh we basically basically took three categories we took puzzle because that was the most downloaded category last year and we took strategy because that made the most amount of money simulation was thrown in as well because it came very close to puzzle in the number of downloads and we took 20 games in each category the top 10 games with the most amount of downloads and the top 10 games with the most amount of downloads that were new so we sort of took care of balancing both existing games and new games with uh for generating these in insites and we made

our tool watch all of these ads watch about 500 ads and sort of understand what elements are working and not workking and that's how we have sort of come up with this Insight so we're going to largely talk about four parts of a creative so what's working in the type of creative what's working in hooks what's working in the body of the creative and what's working at the end sort of CTA uh they just jump into puzzle to begin with uh interesting like like 51% of puzzle games had a text that hooked you in right so this was among all the top ads that did really really well in 2024 51% of them had some text that would lure you in and this is important because a lot of times people are watching ads on mute so having text really really helps so and that clearly shows up in data as well because half of the ads did do that but what's more interesting is what text was it right so our AR I was able to figure out that the

two most common things that people put as text on their puzzle game ads were instructional videos like something that helps you understand how the game would be what you would have to do in the game or it was more interesting for us to find things that would challenge you uh for example it would say Hey you cannot win this game or you are too stupid to win this game something that would make you feel uh irritated a little bit but want to like sort of prove that you can actually it was actually one of the winning patterns in Puzzles last year so if you're a puzzle game maker you should totally copy this right put something out there that would sort of challenge somebody to play your game 42% of them had a character right so it would typically be the character that would be in the game but what's interested interesting about this is that 68% of the character shown in these puzzle games were in some sort of distress and I think mate was speaking to you as well and he mentioned this as

well that most ads portray their characters in some sort of a distress scenario that you and then you sort of come in and save how do you do that you play the game and sort of save the character right so that is something that you can copy as well that if you're making an ad it's great to show a character that's in some sort of a distress and you make the player sort of come in and save that character that you're portraying in the ad and this was done by almost 70% of the top creatives last year so it's something that has been proven to work so yeah this is what you do you ensure that your characters look in distress uh if you're making a puzzle game okay 36% of puzzle games used playables right so uh that's not as interesting but if you dig deeper into what happens inside so Standalone playables for about 30% but playable after video is the C is the sort of direction that puzzle games are taking that if you're doing a puzzle game you lead with a short video probably showing

your character in distress and then sort of let the player actually play the game and save that character right so this is the kind of uh patterns that we saw in all of the puzzle game creatives that we were analyzing but yeah so leading with videos is the way to go in puzzle games and don't directly throw them into the playable uh without actually telling them a bit about the game in your videos okay this was interesting these are trends that we saw are basically things that have not been done by a majority of developers but we think could be really really big in 2025 uh 27% of ads had a very unique element in them and these are those elements so IQ meters so basically things that showed people getting smarter as they played your game work really really well in puzzle games so and we had about like 55% of winning creatives in Puzzles have IQ meters on them so you should definitely copy that if you're a puzzle

game uh the other one that did really well is countdowns so especially in like videos that are like uh like especially in playables having a countdown sort of brings that urgency into the picture and if you have a puzzle game playable that you're making you should definitely sort of incorporate some element of a countdown which makes the user feel like they have less time to sort of complete that uh that level that you're showcasing in the puzz uh in the playable ad this was interesting as well that puzzle game tend to sort of do really well if you're able to show depth in the game where if the player knows that there are lots of levels that I can sort of play they're more inclined to download something in the puzzle category so ensuring even if you don't have that many levels just highlighting the fact that there are lots of levels could be really really helpful to bring down your CPI because that's something that has worked for a lot of puzzle games last year cool so that's all about puzzle Gam games now we move on to the second

category which made the most amount of money in 2024 so if you're doing a strategy game you should definitely pay attention some of the stuff is totally applicable to other categories as well because it's like something that would work for most games as well again 70% of strategy games ensured that their main character was focused in the ad so if you have a character-based strategy game ensure that they're part of your ad and again the distress theme continues to play out here as well that a majority of the characters that were in strategy games were shown to be in scenarios which were life-threatening right it would it could be like a polar bear that's about to kill you or a large sort of object that is going to fall on your head something that makes the player who's watching the ad feel like they need to step in and save the character is something that works really well across genres and it did so in puzzle it did so in strategy games as

well cool so 46% of strategy games and it doesn't matter if it was a very complex strategy game they ended up using these hooks in their ad so they had hold based or survival based sort of themes in their ads to hook the players in to actually playing the actual game the actual game might not have this as a core part of the game play but in ads these kind of mechanics really really work so if you're building a strategy game you should totally ensure that you have a bunch of ads that are portraying some sort of a h based or survival mechanic so uh like you have a bunch of examples there but among all the games that among all the assets that we saw hold and survival based ads were the number one sort of type of ads that did really well last year and then there is Base building Defense building and Gat Runner games as well so these are types of sort of mechanics that really work in ads so even though you might have a lot

of depth in your strategy game having these as your ad hooks really works for you so you should just ensure that these are part of the adets that you're running or you do a Fusion right so you Ed a bunch of these assets together so you could end up trying like a h survival with a Defense building which a lot of people did or a h survival with a gate which is again very popular and these are all numbers that we have found by actually looking at the games that did really well last year so these are actually kind of proven tactics that will most likely work for you so why sort of reinvent the wheel when somebody's already told you that this is working awesome so playables right so if you're doing a strategy game playables are like a big part of what you should be focusing on uh but what's working only 133% of ads in strategy

games are using playables which we feel is an opportunity I think we can figure out ways in which you can take out little parts of your game doesn't even need to be a very big part of your game but if you can convert them into core ad mechanics it might do really well for you right but what we found in these 13% was very interesting half of them were like Standalone playables but the other half which was again similar to puzzle games lead in with a video because it might be difficult for people to understand a strategy game right off the bat if you throw them into a playable it's again really important for you to sort of lead with a video that sets the tone for what the game is about and then you throw them into the playable and like I said before the playable doesn't need to be like the actual entirety of your game it can be a small snippet and ideally it should f it should sort of follow one of the themes that we spoke about like a hold mechanism or a gate Runner mechanism okay yeah so 100% of uh playable ads in strategy

category ensures that people understand how to start the game right so what you don't want to do is throw them into a playable and they don't know how to make the first move right so 100% of uh all ads that we analyzed had something that helped you make the first move 70% of them had a hook scene uh hook scene text and 80% of that was instructional so again strategy games are hard to digest uh which is why they don't see a lot of direct playables being used but if you're doing them it's very important for you to ensure that the player understands how to start the game so having instructional uh text on top of those uh creatives is really really helpful uh this is the fun part 56% of playable ads in this category end abruptly right which basically means that just about just when the user is getting into the game the ad ends and it throws you into the Play Store and that works really well because because you've heightened the expectation and

excitement of the player and that's the best time to throw them into the play store so that they would go ahead and install the ad install the game so half of puzzle games are half of strategy games are using this strategy where they end the ad in a very abdr way and then take you to the Play store so yeah this is a summary of using guiding elements you need to create a hook scene text which helps them understand how to play and you need to end it abruptly so that they are left wanting more and they end up installing your game okay the last one is simulation again one of the top categories of 2024 by downloads uh and let's quickly give you what worked for them 80% of all creatives in this category use the game play again because simulation is something that is so visual and you can actually represent it really really well uh 80% of the winning creatives last year showed how it plays

I'll give you an example so this is uh this is like the split of how these ads played out last year so you had 80% showing game play 60% showed the game play but it was animated so it was not actual real gam play it was a heightened or I would say like a slightly exaggerated version of the gameplay but it was gameplay nonetheless uh only 8% had ugc so again we believe that if you're building in this category of uh simulation games we feel that ugc is an opportunity that has not been maxed out yet but it's an emerging Trend you should capitalize on before everyone starts doing it in this category as well uh 60% are hybrid which is again interesting where they will show you some element of the actual gam play but we'll ensure that there's an element of it which is exaggerated uh this allows them to sort of like ensure that you get hooked with the animated part where they also give you a real taste of what the game would look like so that you don't

install and then uninstall right so they need to manage both your expectations and get you to install but also ensure that you don't churn so which is why they show you a bit of the game play but they hook you in with an animated version of uh of the game ugc again is super under represented in this category which we feel is like something that if you're building in this category you can capitalize on ugc hasn't crept in as much as it has in hyper casual games so if you're building in this category you should definitely think about you using ugc a lot more 30% of ads in simulation were playable a lot more uh than strategy because you can actually do you can actually throw people into this experience and they will figure it out because simulation games are slightly easier to understand than strategy games so 30% are already using a playable but let's tell you what's unique about them uh again a a theory that's sort of playing out in all of these three categories is you lead them in with a

video uh if you're doing a playable ad that's kind of how you should do it you should lead with a video that sort of sets the tone and then throw them into the playable uh 58% of ads again in this category of uh playable ends abruptly just when the player is about to sort of get into it they throw you into the Play Store and ask you to do something which is install the ad and that's kind of how we are ending this as well uh we hope you you go check out seg wise because this is something that we've done on the top creatives but if you want to do this on your creatives we make that really really easy just uh get all your creative data into one location our AI then tags it all for you and then you can figure out if these Trends are playing out in your own assets if not we can sort of help you find what's working and what's not working so thank you so much I hope this was useful and you can copy some of the stuff and and use it in your own ads awesome we have a few questions if

anybody has one I'm happy to take it uh anything on the methodology or how the tool can help you out I'm happy to answer I'm here oh thank you that was very good thank you who is uh making the ads for the developers do they need to make these ads themselves or you working with them to take their content and make the playable ad uh for them so we don't generate ads so what we do is if your ad is already running we fetch the ad data from the ad networks and then we fetch the asset also from the ad Network what the AI does is it watches the ad or it plays the ad and captures metadata so that you can also come up with insights like this for your own creatives so for example if I am let's say building a puzzle game and if I have four characters that are part of my game and I want to know which one of them does really well in ads I would have to manually tag all of my assets with those

four characters we can automate that where I ra AI will sort of automatically identify character one character 2 character 3 character 4 and then it'll automatically tell you which one of them does really well for you in the ad it can be super specific like you can ask it questions like which one does really well in the first 3 seconds or what needs to happen in the end of the ad for me to have a better click to install so all these questions become easier to answer for us