February 2015 Level Up The Game Developer s Guide to Global Advertising Advertising Automation Software
Table of Contents Introduction... 3 Level 1 Set Up... 5 Level 2 Monitor... 9 Level 3 Optimize and Scale...10 Level 4 Creative Refresh...12 Bonus Level...14 Insert CoiN To Play Nanigans Advertising Automation Software 2
Introduction According to a report released by App Annie and IDC, the freemium business model has driven a disproportionate volume of app revenue across both the ios App Store and Google Play. While most game developers compete for cheap installs, savvy marketers know the truth: in-app purchasers are worth the investment. Most apps have a 1-2% average conversion rate. Even the most addictive, time-swallowing games generally hit a conversion ceiling of 10% for getting users to take a specific action like an in-app purchase, level played or achievement earned. Data from mobile analytics firm Flurry shows that average US users spend 2 hours and 42 minutes per day on their mobile devices; 86% of which is spent in apps. Of that time, 32% is spent in gaming apps; in comparison, social and messaging apps take up 28%. While user acquisition is of course the key to gaining a fan base, don t forget that retention is crucial to monetization (and survival). Mobile app install ad campaigns are crucial to the success of your game launch, and when approximately two weeks are all that stands between you and App Store oblivion, every minute counts. Need to scale your audience, fast, without sacrificing ROI? You d better go global. Facebook s international reach allows you to tap into a much larger pool of potential gamers. Global domination emarketer has been covering the global growth and popularity of social networking and its implications for mobile marketers. Facebook Flies High in Finland Facebook Rules Australia s Social Network Space This Sounds Familiar: Facebook Is No. 1 for India s Social Networkers Nanigans Advertising Automation Software 3
Old school approaches International game launches typically require a ton of data uploads and downloads, not to mention methodical creative testing. But the good news is, you re alive in 2015, and tech can take on all that manual labor. Ad automation software delivers not just your highest value customers, but also: Cost savings of up to 40% over middleman advertising markups Extra time to focus on strategy Granular-level data in real-time Scaled spend and reach Bidding automation means you only have to set things up right the first time. Once launched, campaign settings are flexible; you are free to start out with a CPI goal and then switch to Revenue Optimization (RevOpt) once you ve gathered sufficient data all with the click of a button. Hundreds of creative combinations can be tested while you sleep, with the best performers advancing and the worst shut off automatically. This guide will help you set up and deploy a two-week, geotargeted, large-scale game launch using Facebook and mobile RTB without crashing any servers or driving your campaign manager crazy. A little bit about us Our customers marketed 250+ games around the world using Nanigans software in 2014 alone. Nanigans provides Software as a Service to leading gaming companies, allowing in-house advertisers to scale ad spend and automate optimization across live campaigns. Increased cost efficiency, near real-time data, custom metrics and spend visibility are just a few of the reasons why app developers use Nanigans for user acquisition and retention. While our platform does the heavy lifting, you can focus on what s important: monetization. Nanigans Advertising Automation Software 4
Level 1 Set Up Successful mobile campaigns are built on a solid strategic blueprint. When we kick off with a new client, we have a detailed discussion around business objectives and identify the Nanigans functionality that will pave the way. When it comes to international game launches, our clients often have a Cost Per Install (CPI) target by country in mind as an initial metric, so we ll base our examples on that premise. Pro Tip: Before setting up your first campaign, make sure your app developer has linked your game up with our native mobile app SDK. This will allow you to close the attribution loop, automatically feed mobile tracking data back into your campaign optimization, and get full insight into customer Lifetime Value (LTV) by monitoring app installs, purchases, time of click, time of conversion, and other in-app events with API calls on the hour. If you ve been using Facebook s Power Editor for previous campaigns, you should also take advantage of Nanigans Facebook account import tool, which will allow you to leverage creative assets, media, and performance data in any new campaigns. With the click of a button you can import all of your ad data from the Facebook Open Graph, and it will continue to sync over time. Storm8 uses the Nanigans platform to create, optimize, and scale our social acquisition efforts beyond our existing network of more than 400 million users. The Nanigans family is insightful, diligent, and supportive much like the excellent platform they ve built, and their pay-it-forward approach continues to drive our shared success in mobile marketing. Nanigans Advertising Automation Software 5
Here is the checklist for setting up a CPI-based international ad campaign using Nanigans: 1 2 Decide what actions you re looking to track and optimize on Nanigans can optimize up to 7 actions, tracking and reporting on up to 15. Try to place an action or event at each point in the user flow (e.g. track daily active users, people who have made it through your app s tutorial, bonus level completion; not just install and purchase events). Set up those actions within our easy to use Conversions interface, keeping in mind that monitoring early activity will allow you to pinpoint specific user segments for retargeting. Create a Budget Pool This sets constraints so that ads will pause down or (re)activate once they ve crossed a set threshold such as Daily Spend. It also allows you to keep campaign data separate. For example, you could create one budget pool for desktop and one for mobile, or one budget pool for user acquisition and another for retargeting. Once you get to the Strategy Group setup, you can further segment your campaign by device (Android vs. ios). 3 Set up a Strategy Group Strategy Groups is the brain behind Nanigans; it s where you put controls and rules in place, set up pacing, and adjust for optimization. After you ve tied your Strategy Group to a Budget Pool, set an explicit target for your campaign in the Goals section (choose from Maximize Yield, Maximize Volume, or Minimize CPA). Additional performance guidelines like Daily Spend Target, Cost Criteria, and Yield can be set in the Rules section, whereas the Bidding tab allows you to select automated bidding strategies. For a CPI-based campaign goal, we suggest ocpm as your ideal bid type. Our optimized budgeting algorithms allow you to dynamically set spend levels for each one of your individual Facebook ads. You may also provide instructions to our algorithm on what customer actions you consider to be strong indications of potential value. Nanigans Advertising Automation Software 6
4 5 6 Enable the Stop-Loss algorithm in Strategy Groups This will automatically pause ads that exceed CPA limits on a daily and/or lifetime basis. The Nanigans algorithm will also identify high-performing ads (i.e. low CPI, high lifetime value customers) and increase budget accordingly via automated bidding. Use Creative Tester to identify your best ad combinations The Nanigans Creative Tester tool is an easy way to narrow down dozens (or even hundreds) of creative combinations to the ones that attract the highest value customers. Load your copy and creative in, and our software will automatically ramp up, pause down, and swap in ads based on data it gathers about their performance. We recommend that you test out 5 to 10 creative sets per ad. Generate Lookalike Audiences based on existing customers When you feed existing customer data like emails, phone numbers, or website browsing behavior into Nanigans, you can ask Facebook to target other people who have similar characteristics to those who have indicated interest in your games (and are therefore more likely to be interested in downloading an app from you). You can generate Lookalike Audiences for either reach or similarity audiences directly within the Nanigans user interface. 7 Create your Ad Plan This is your ad workshop, and the place to set creative and targeting parameters for your initial ad campaigns. As you set up a global ad push, restriction dialogues will be one of your most powerful assets; they allow you to assign languages to specific countries (e.g. Restrict copy in French to France) and restrict genders to certain ads (e.g. You would most likely want to restrict a Sex in the City themed slot game to women). In Ad Plan, you can also target a cluster of countries by language spoken (e.g. EFIGS English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish). See Level 4 for suggestions on images and ad copy. Nanigans Advertising Automation Software 7
8 Segment ads by device Marketing is a science, and science means testing variables. Segmenting and comparing your campaign results by device will give you deeper insight into your mobile conversion funnel. For example, you may consider retargeting customers who haven t logged in to one of your games on iphone in the last 30 days vs. retargeting customers who haven t logged in to one of your games on Android in the last 30 days 9 Identify country targets and set value-based bidding parameters How much is an install worth to you? When kicking off a campaign in Nanigans, ask yourself what you re willing to bid to acquire a new user. Keep in mind that you can target people with a history of response to mobile app install ads, and even zero in on customers who have downloaded other titles you ve released. With granular settings like our Audience Override Table, you can assign multiple countries to one Strategy Group and set exceptions on what you re willing to bid based on cost per install for each country, gender, or age range. For example 18 to 24 year olds may have a lower propensity for spend in the UK than in the US. Or, women in France may have a lower CPI than men in comparison to Spain. There are a number of ways you can structure overrides, so ask your Account Manager about this advanced tool. Once you ve set your campaign structure in place, it generally takes about 20 minutes to clone and modify settings for a new country, which means you only have to complete Level 1 once. Remember: You can download, modify, and upload campaign settings from the dashboard, and also make adjustments directly within Nanigans from the Reporting tab and share data with your colleagues. Next Level Nanigans Advertising Automation Software 8
Level 2 Monitor During a game launch, your mobile app install campaign success is often determined in the first 15 days. You ll need to build hype quickly, so your biggest spend push should fall in the first 5 to 6 days ideally within the $50-200K a day range. With automated tools like Nanigans Exploration Boost and Optimized Budgeting at your fingertips, new ads can be pushed quickly and confidently. Remember: Your ultimate mission is to identify the most qualified app installers and in-app purchasers. The idea is not to blindly spend buckets of money; as you push your ads, you will get revenue data in real time and be able to adjust your approach accordingly. A week should be enough time to understand performance and see if it varies from, say, a Monday to a Sunday (which it often does). Nanigans business intelligence tools are a very valuable addition to the product, allowing us to easily review performance of our campaigns and take action all in the same view. This means we are able to manage our campaigns much more efficiently. It s been great to see Nanigans software evolve into the amazing tool that it is today. Even with low CPI as your goal, keep in mind that you re not just gaining installs with the money; you re getting the word out about your game and attracting organic traffic. Once you ve built a solid foundation of users and captured gamers attention, your high rank in the app store will help you gain additional (free) publicity. Nanigans is a one-stop dashboard for all your company s sites and titles, providing high-level stats on performance and a deeper dive into data at the site or app level. It provides near real-time (data refreshes every 15 minutes) visibility into live ads, allowing you to quickly access the data needed to make a business decision without waiting for your analytics team to pull it. From the Reporting tab you can see how Nanigans automated bidding algorithms are adjusting your ad performance and get full transparency into the logic behind these decisions. Next Level Nanigans Advertising Automation Software 9
Level 3 Optimize and Scale If you ve hit a plateau in CPI or spend, you can use Precise Interest Targeting or Facebook s Behavior Targeting to expand your audience. You can also leverage our newest channel, Mobile RTB, to reach additional eyeballs via CPM bids. Mobile RTB (real-time bidding) Maximize your campaign reach with programmatic access to mobile web and in-app ads via our first mobile ad exchange partner, MoPub, while maintaining the same level of control over bidding and budgeting as our Facebook advertisers. CPM bidding is a smart choice when you re targeting a specific audience of your known best customers. Using a Custom Audience of previous high-value game downloaders, CPM bidding is an efficient, cost-effective way to drive more installs. Going global Whether your game (or your gaming company) has been around for years or months, testing new markets is a smart way to boost user acquisition and build momentum on high-value audiences. In two clicks and 20 minutes you can launch thousands of ads to additional countries by editing the existing ad plan. Pro Tip: Don t forget to contextualize your creative with translations and image changes appropriate to each new country. If you re not sure how to approach expansion to APAC or EMEA, the knowledgeable account managers in our Singapore, Sydney, and UK offices can help you localize your messaging. With over 50 million monthly players across Wooga s portfolio of games on Facebook, Android and ios, we re excited to take advantage of all the performance benefits, control and transparency Nanigans software provides our in-house marketing team to reach and re-engage players effectively now across multiple inventory sources and publisher channels. Nanigans Advertising Automation Software 10
How To Efficiently Scale Your Ad Spend Clone campaign settings from one country, change the target audience and language of copy, and launch ads in a new country. You can also use Strategy Groups to separate countries and audiences into tiers. For example: Tier 1 Tier 2 Tier 3 English speaking, affluent, historic Facebook usage: EFIGS and Nordic countries. This is a saturated market. Emerging markets, moderate Facebook adoption: APAC, South America (Brazil, Argentina, Chile), South Africa, and Benelux. Slow to adopt Facebook but shows promise: Nigeria, Russia, New Zealand (try layering in Broad Categories like engaged gamers to pre-qualify lower monetizing users) Use data from the Mobile SDK to optimize for high-value users. Leverage insight on not only when someone made a purchase, but who they are, what cohort they came from, what ad drove a click on what device, where they clicked in-app, what level they made a purchase on, and whether they came back and bought more credit. Target more audiences via keyword groups (a plug-and-play into your existing Ad Plans). Ask your Account Manager to leverage our Affinity Analysis tool to identify additional targeting segments. Pro Tip: You may find that your casino game resonates most with Midwestern housewives. Affinity Analysis uncovers off the beaten path targeting opportunities based on this kind of observation; rather than solely focusing on game-related keyword sets like slots or Vegas, you can turn your attention to types of users and their interests (like Michelle Obama or Oprah ). Identify new opportunities based on top performers by country, age, gender, device, and creative. Next Level Nanigans Advertising Automation Software 11
Level 4 CreaTive Refresh As a best practice, our graphic designers recommend adding new creative to the campaign mix to maintain high click and action rates. Nanigans software allows you to swap in images without recreating the campaign from scratch, while Shared Views make it easy to ask a graphic designer or in-house marketer to create similar ad copy and images based on positive data. Pro Tip: Mix in some iteration on Custom Audiences segments based on the users you already have and the users you acquire at the beginning of your campaign. Examples of lists you could build and retarget with new creative include: Top in-app spenders Lapsed users (and/or lapsed users over X days) Lapsed spenders (and/or lapsed spenders over Y days) Nanigans Advertising Automation Software 12
Quick Tips By Game Genre Action Hype up the thrilling aspect of battling enemies and forging alliances. Feature cool weapons, new spells, or especially challenging levels. If your game is part of a series, players will recognize key characters (particularly fan favorites), so use them in images. Turn-based Competition is the name of the game. Call attention to the fun of challenging friends and strangers to solve puzzles quickly. Encourage active users to loop their networks into the action; it will keep them logging in and encourage widespread adoption. Casino/slots Invoke the sights and sounds of Vegas with bright colors and glittery backgrounds, emphasizing luck and winnings. Carry across the themes of your app in the copy and images. For example, if it s an Egyptian slots game, feature a sphinx or pyramids. Strategy Strategy games are a welcome break from routine. Everyone likes to tune out while they re waiting in line at the grocery store and commuting on the subway. Keep your mass appeal by keeping ads age and gender neutral. Next Level Nanigans Advertising Automation Software 13
Bonus Level Once you ve identified winning creative combinations, gotten to know your most valuable audiences, and spread the word to multiple countries, it s time to advance your goals beyond low CPI to where the real money is made: high ROI. Nanigans software is built around the concept of lifetime value for a reason we ve found that loyal customers are well worth the extra budget. Ask yourself: Do you want to target cheap installs or repeat in-app purchasers? Our algorithms want to find you high LTV customers that will spend money in your app. Cohort Analysis allows you to track revenue and pinpoint which ads are bringing in positive ROI at a glance. With easy access to historical performance, you can identify which target audiences are the most valuable over time, building out similar campaigns with the added benefit of predictive revenue data. Busted! In conclusion As we re sure you re well aware, mobile gaming apps pose a huge opportunity for monetization and recognition. Unfortunately, competition for downloads and in-app purchases is fierce, and only getting fiercer. Using ad automation software inhouse allows you to: Easily launch your game beyond an initial geographic market Turn the volume up on ad spend, fast Make on the fly campaign edits Share the data that drives decisions with those who need to see it You know all about your business goals and acquisition targets; we know the ins and outs of mobile marketing and have five years of experience in the gaming vertical. With Nanigans, you get the freedom to seize control of your data and run with what works, while retaining access to a team of analysts and account managers that have run multinational, large-scale campaigns. With Nanigans... You Win! Nanigans Advertising Automation Software 14
Up Your Advertising Game Nanigans multichannel advertising automation software powers the world s most successful in-house performance marketing teams. A leading Facebook Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer (spmd), Nanigans is chosen by today s top ecommerce, gaming, and other internet companies such as ebay, Wayfair and Wooga. Take control of your digital advertising. Contact Us nanigans.com 60 State Street 12th Floor Boston, MA 02109 info@nanigans.com 888-507-4456 2015, Nanigans. All Rights Reserved. Facebook is a registered trademark of Facebook Inc.