The 2 Most Important Ways to Make Your Playable Ads More Efficient

We live in a world where engagement and attention are the key pillars to success. As brands and advertisers struggle to cut through the noise and work hard to compete for users’ attention, one thing is becoming quite clear: more is not always better. As the volume of ads increases, users become more and more used to them, which leads to lower effectiveness and poor campaign performance. The solution? Playable ads.

Playable ads: effective but under-represented

When it comes to ad formats, banners and video ads are still the most popular ones out there. However, playable ads generate the highest engagement rates - not only that, but the quality of users they acquire is better, resulting in higher retention rates as well.

Source: eMarketer

Most brands and advertisers believe that playable ads generate the best results for their campaigns. However, as we mentioned, video and banner ads are still the most used formats.

Source: Statista

So if playable ads are very effective at acquiring and retaining high-quality users, why are they not the main ad format in today’s mobile advertising landscape?

Playable ads can be difficult to mass-produce and distribute

The main issue is that playable ads are not easy to create. A lot of work goes into making one: storyboarding, UI designing, coding, developing, testing, iterating, and more, all of that needs to happen every time you need a playable ad. Because of the technical and financial challenges that come with producing playable ads, this is simply not doable for many advertisers.

Another issue is around optimization. As campaigns grow in reach and scale, advertisers must optimize their ad creatives to ensure they maximize their campaign ROI. But how can you do that at scale and maintain a steady budget spend when playable ads are so resource-intensive?

The solution: element-level iterations and dynamic creative optimization

One thing that’s clear is that you simply cannot rely on one ad creative to carry your campaign to success. Keeping your creatives fresh is crucial, but what do you do when creating a range of different playable ads is not possible from a financial or technical (or both) point of view? 

1. Element-level iterations

Iterating on an existing playable ad is a great way to keep things fresh, while also keeping your budget under control. Since playable ads are HTML5, you don’t need to render and export the results every time you want to make a change. Thanks to the Playturbo platform, advertisers can simply edit playable ad elements like characters, ad duration, game difficulty, background music, ad copy, and more - all of that, with just a few clicks.

Here’s an example of a previous project we worked on for Color Bump 3D. We made 2 versions of ad creatives:

• Version 1: brand new playable ad creative, IVR increased by 124%, and the iteration cycle took 7 days

• Version 2: changed one element from the existing creative (game skin), IVR increased by 80%, and the iteration cycle took 1 day

Creating a new playable ad is definitely valuable, but when time and/or budget are an issue, making small iterations is often the best way forward.

How element-level optimization can improve results with minimal costs

2. Dynamic creative optimization

When it comes to ad creatives, it makes sense to try multiple versions and then invest more in the best-performing ones. This is where dynamic creative optimization (DCO) comes in.

This technology allows advertisers to optimize their creatives around multiple variables in real-time, which is something that banner ads and video ads have been using for a long time. But it doesn’t have to be just these ad formats anymore.

Imagine being able to use DCO on playable ads - that’s exactly what the new Playturbo platform aims to do. As the advertising technology evolves, creative optimization will become a major tool for the wide-spread adoption of playable ads. We have some exciting new features coming soon and we can’t wait to share them with you. In the meantime, make sure you sign up to learn more about Playturbo and you’ll be among the first to hear about it.