Stay Ahead in UA for 2024: My Top 43 Tips Revealed
Unlock 2024 UA Success: Ultimate UA guide
I’ve decided to share all the top learnings from 2023. All those made the most impact on my UA ops! It’s quite a lot of learnings so buckle up & enjoy"!
How to do a proper UA & Creatives review?
Channel performance
Campaign structure/campaign type (AAA vs regular)
Targeting options (interests, broad vs LAL)
Optimization structure (Purchase or VO? - mostly VO only)
GEOs
Creatives
Age segments
Android Device performance (is exclusion list used?)
Creative History
What really worked and what really didnt? And WHY?
Types of creatives
The creative team and their processes
Creative refresh cadence
Data setup
Is the MMP setup correct?
Are installs & events numbers matching between MMP, UA channel, and store?
What kind of visualization tool is in place?
What kind of dashboards do UA managers use?
Daily spend vs daily revenue
Paid vs organic installs (revenues)
This should give you pretty good idea of how the game is doing.
Campaign structure consolidation
I often see a lot of campaigns with a small spend across multiple channels when I do a UA game review.
I do understand why teams end up in this situation, but this is far from ideal.
Teams also make a lot of changes very frequently, not giving campaigns enough time and space to exit the learning phase.
What to do? Consolidate campaigns - fewer campaigns, higher budgets to allow exiting the learning phase quickly (no, this wasn’t written by your FB or Google rep)
To be honest, I don’t run GEO-specific campaigns. I usually bucket countries into tiers and put decent budgets behind them.
Example campaigns structure:
US, ROW
US, T1, ROW
US, T1, T2, ROW
Tiers consist of countries with similar LTV/ROAS numbers for the last 90 days.
Make your own tiers based on your own data. If you don’t have data, get inspired here or experiment.
Player motivations for creatives
Different creative concepts bring different retention & monetisation results. (DUH!) Yeah I know I know, but people tend to forget this.
When you are in the retention phase of your soft launch, be sure to test different creative concepts to find the sweet spot.
In early soft launch, I try to understand what are the player motivations of the game I manage. I sit down with the team and look at the target audience. What are some potential player motivations for your game?
Competitive spirit: Some players may be motivated by the desire to compete with others and strive to improve their skills and rankings.
Challenge: Some players may enjoy the challenge of trying to complete increasingly difficult levels or beating their own high scores.
Relaxation: For some players, the act of playing a match3 mobile game may be a way to relax and unwind after a long day.
Social interaction: Some players may enjoy the opportunity to connect with other players through the game, either through in-game chat or by competing against one another.
Aesthetic appeal: Some players may be drawn to the game because of its colorful and visually appealing graphics and animation.
Collecting and customization: Some players may enjoy collecting various items or power-ups within the game, or customizing their game avatar or in-game environment.
Escapism: For some players, playing a home decoration mobile game may be a way to escape from the stresses and demands of everyday life and enter a fictional world where they can relax and have fun.
These are just a few examples. Sit down with the team (UA & Product & Creative) and try to understand this. It will help you afterward in the brainstorming sessions & creative production!
How can AI make your creative process more effective? How to find a creative winner quickly?
Producing a creative winner is not an easy job. There is this tactic when you create multiple different creative concepts - static images. You test them against each other. You take the winner and make a video out of that creative concept.
With the rise of AI, this can be even more effective. For two reasons:
You can build different static concepts super fast and move to video
You can be inspired by what others made and iterate until you find a winner
Examples:
So many different views, angles, places, backgrounds, and ideas that you can use to find a winner quickly.
Thanks to this method, we were able to generate 36% more creative winners. (AHA! 36% is totally made up! No bullshit, I said it)
Does it work for every game? Nope!
Should you try it? Absolutely yes!
Check what others are creating in the mid-journey gallery or other AI tools and get inspired now!