The Gaming and App Developers Guide to Advertising on Facebook
Introduction This white paper is our guide for game and app developers for advertising on Facebook. Facebook s highly engaged population of 1.2 billion users represents a huge opportunity for developers to find players and users. In this white paper, we will cover why Facebook should be the primary channel for game and app developers. We will discuss important tips and tricks for maximizing the value of Facebook when finding and retaining players and users. Based on our extensive industry experience, we will also provide an in-depth analysis of the key factors in determining what makes a successful game or app. -1-
Why should Facebook be your most important channel? As a game or app developer, you are well aware of the potential barriers that could prevent your product from becoming widely played or used. Naturally, a poorly designed game/app will have a much harder time finding success, but most of the time even a great game/app suffers from misplaced marketing resources and weak marketing campaigns. Using Facebook as your main marketing channel will enable you to dodge this threat and empower you to find quality players and users. Here are 5 key reasons why Facebook should be your primary channel for user/player acquisition and retention. 1. FACEBOOK USERS ARE EVERYWHERE Facebook has 1.2 billion active users, and 53% of Facebook users are gamers. This works out to be about 630 million gamers for you to connect with, advertise to, and leverage for recommendations. With numbers at this scale, you are guaranteed to find an audience. YOUR PLAYERS ARE ON FACEBOOK -2- Facebook users who play games 53%
2. FACEBOOK USERS PLAY GAMES According to allfacebook.com, 50% of all log-ins to Facebook are to play games. For game developers and app publishers the Facebook unified login is a great tool which will help you not only identify your customers but also make it easier for them to access your game. These log-ins could either be to play a game that is a Facebook canvas app, or to use Facebook credentials to log into a mobile app. The more that people log-in with Facebook, the more you can integrate your game into their social network. 3. FACEBOOK IS A MONETIZATION PLATFORM 20% of Facebook gamers have paid cash for in-game benefits. Since there are 630 million gamers on Facebook, we can estimate that about 134 million gamers are willing to make in-game purchases such as power-ups, credits, and customizations. 4. FACEBOOK IS A MULTI-DEVICE PLATFORM Gamers today are multi-device users. Even when doing non-game activities like watching television, we are using the second screen on our tablets and phones. Almost 70% of smartphone owners use their phones while they watch TV, and almost half do it every day. Facebook is the perfect channel for app and game publishers because Facebook users are multi-device users. Facebook is your gateway between different platforms, because as your players jump from one device to the next, they will still remain connected through Facebook and reachable to you. Nearly Half of U.S Population Uses Their Smartphones While Watching TV Every Day How often do you use these decives while watching TV? (US Data) 100% 90% 80% 70% 67% { BI INTELIGENCE } 62% 60% 50% 46% 39% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Multiple Times A Week 2Q / 2012-3- 1Q / 2013 Daily
5. FACEBOOK CONNECTS FRIENDS Games are meant to be social, and Facebook is a great tool to create a gaming community. It allows users to play with other users, boast about their in-game achievements, and share new tips and tricks. Facebook also enables developers to connect with publishers through their fan pages, which when used properly can foster discussion and create passion among your community of users and players. -4-
Who Do You Know? Leverage your CRM data to create custom audience targets The key to targeting users is by leveraging data that you already have. Using your CRM database, you can turn your existing player data into a custom audience on Facebook. Using a player s phone number, email address, Facebook ID, or ios ID, you can create a custom audience on Facebook to be the focus of your ads. Once you have created a custom audience, you have empowered yourself to leverage your user data into high quality acquisition and retention campaigns. Based on a study during the first 6 months of 2013, of campaigns run by Adquant customers that use custom audiences for targeting, custom audiences had on average a conversion rate 2.7 times higher than standard interest targeting. Follow these tips for using custom audiences: Likes: Encourage your existing fans to like your Fan Page. Once you obtain that like, your fans will be more open to communications from you. The larger your Fan base is on Facebook, the more people you can reach via free posts in their news feed. You can use these posts to promote things such as retention offers or announce information about a new game that is coming out. If your game doesn t have a Fan page yet, get one now. If it is too much for you to manage one page per game, then make sure your players are able to find your company page. Monetize Existing Players: With a custom audience as your target, you can focus on your existing players. Create highly targeted promotions that will push them towards monetization. Bring back old players by reminding them to play, and prevent existing players from quitting by offering incentives, such as leveling up. Exclude Audiences: This might seem counter intuitive, but custom audiences can be used for negative targeting as well. When you build wide reaching new player and user acquisition campaigns, you can exclude your existing players/users from seeing those ads. This will help you control costs and assure that your budgets are going to the most effective audiences. Reach New Players and Users: One of the most powerful features in Facebook is the ability to combine custom audiences with lookalike audiences. Lookalike audiences is a feature that Facebook offers which finds Facebook users who share interests and behave in a similar fashion to your target audience. This works much better than targeting friends of your Fans because lookalike targeting incorporates user behavior as part of the equation. Friends of Fans could lead you to target family members and colleagues of your players whose potential interest in your games would be quite low. Lookalike audiences will find Facebook users who not only have related interests, but also perform similar behaviors, like playing a game or commenting on a post. Recommended Strategy: App developers can use custom audiences as a tool to push messages to existing users. Let old users know about your latest features and updates. You can also encourage users who have uninstalled your app to come back and give it a second try. -5-
Where Is Your Message Most Effective? The power of the Facebook news feed The Facebook News Feed is a recommendation engine. It s where Facebook users go to get the latest information based on their social network. You can think of the news feed as the online version of opening up the fridge at home, just to have a look. The news feed is where you will find content that your friends and family are recommending for you. It is populated with timely content that our friends hope we will find interesting, mixed with advertiser promoted recommendations. In Facebook you can choose from 3 delivery placement areas for advertising your game: Mobile News Feed Desktop News Feed Desktop Right Hand Side Column Mobile News Feed -6- Desktop News Feed Desktop Right Hand Side Column
Right hand side ads are fairly small in format, putting them at a disadvantage against news feed ads. In addition, right hand side ads are shown sequentially, and therefore must compete with other right hand side ads to grab the user s attention. But, because right hand side ads do allow for multiple advertisements on a single impression, there is more available volume for advertisers, which results in lower CPCs and CPMs. When choosing an ad format make sure to measure quality by CPA or ROI to account for the difference in format prices. It is important to keep in mind that only about 10-16% of your fans will see your posts. This is due to the time of day and Facebook s relevance algorithm, which will give more priority to posts that have deep social connections (like those of your friends). -7-
Ads designed for your needs Mobile App install and engagement Ads Facebook has given game advertisers the tool-set to reach quality players. From the perfect ad format to risk-reducing bid strategies, mobile game and app advertiser s needs are being strongly served by Facebook. Here are the top 3 ad features that you will need to deploy to succeed. 1. MOBILE APP INSTALL AND ENGAGMENT ADS You invest money in your advertising campaigns in order to find more players/users or to drive more revenue from your existing users. To clearly communicate your message to your users and players you need to motivate them to take an action. Within Facebook s Mobile App Install and Engagement Ads you have a proven ad format that includes a call to action button. Tell your potential players/users exactly what you want them to do Install or Play a Game. The button on the mobile ad type is both eye catching and effective and must be utilized by game and app developers to run successful campaigns. Recommended Strategy: Use a mix of call to actions to test which ones are most effective for your product. 2. VIDEO ADS Building a game or an app is a long labor intensive process. Your development team has worked hard to create the perfect look-and-feel experience for your users. Yet when you go to advertise your game you are limited to showing a single image to represent everything that you have built. Well with Facebook, you can now show video ads and give potential players a true taste of your game. Show off all of your hard work as you intended it to be seen. 3. COST PER ACTION (CPA) BIDDING CPA bidding greatly reduces the risk associated with user acquisition campaigns as now app and game publishers can pay per install or action based on their specific goals. As an advertiser you should know more or less how much each user is worth to you. Facebook lets you take this information and build campaigns that will drive new players and users at a cost that meets your goals. -8-
Who do you need to know? - Using targeting to find users and players Targeting isn t always as simple as trying to find your obvious audience. Targeting in Facebook requires a blend of demographic information, user specific interests, and user behavior on Facebook. For game developers and publishers, using interest targeting to reach Facebook users who have expressed personal interest in video games is the obvious target. But this kind of targeting strategy can be both very broad and very limiting. If hundreds of millions of gamers fall into the category of video game player, you will be pushing ads to such a broad audience that odds are very few actual potential players for your game will be reached. The following questions can help you hone in on your targeting goals: What is your target demographic? Always think about your target demographic as a pie. If you reduce your targeting too much at the beginning of a Facebook campaign, you will be missing out on potential players. So ask yourself, Who is my most important demographic? Who is my second most important demographic? and so on. Once you have data for each of your demographic segments you will be able to allocate budgets to those that work for you, empowering decision-making that is based more on data and less on intuition. What are their interests? Interest Groups are very important. Looking at a broad category of interests or a single interest will give you a large potential population, but low-quality results, most likely. Instead, try combining categories with interests or combining multiple interests, so that you can build audiences that respond differently to your ads. Let s say, for example, that you have a mobile tower defense game. You start by creating a campaign for the broad category of Console Games (typically console players) and a second campaign for people who have an interest in Real Time Strategy Games (usually PC players). If you combine these two targeting parameters, however, you create a third group of people who are interested in both and might be likely to play your tower defense game when they are out-and-about on their phone. By measuring each of these groups, you will be able to reach an audience that is more relevant to your game and craft messages that will best engage each unique audience. What are they doing on Facebook? Facebook is not only a network of connections between people; it also contains objects with which users will engage. For example, a Fan Page on Facebook is an object that can be liked by a Facebook user. Posts, events and apps are other common objects. Within Facebook advertising, you can target users based on their behavior in Facebook through their engagement with objects. This is called Action Spec Targeting and allows you to target users who performed a certain action within the last 14 days on an object. For example, you could target all of the Facebook users who commented on a post on video game fan page, or recently played a game in the Facebook app marketplace. -9- BEHAVIORAL INTEREST DEMOGRAPHICS
Who will talk for me? - Going Viral The ideal end-goal for any game is to become a viral hit where, with smart and timely marketing, your game skyrockets in popularity due to word-of-mouth promotion from your players. Facebook is the ideal tool to increase the virality of your game, but you need to make sure as a publisher and as a game designer that you incorporate Facebook into your plan from the beginning. One of the most important actions that you can do is use Facebook to promote achievements. Players like to brag and they like to share their success. Make sure that your players have a channel on Facebook that is open to sharing their in-game achievements. Lastly, utilize your fan page to create a community. Share tips and tricks to get your players even more engaged with the games. If you start a conversation, your players will respond. These conversations are not only great for player retention, but can also be turned into Sponsored Stories. - 10 -
What makes a game great? A solid game is necessary for a solid fan base. To ensure high player acquisition and retention, make sure that you follow these key elements of online gaming success: 1. Goal Orientation: Let your players know what they are working towards. Make sure to offer a tutorial to teach your players how to play the game. This is especially important with mobile games. Keep players informed of their progress, and they will work hard to reach their in-game goal. By nature, humans are goal-oriented, so make sure to feed this need. 2. Multi-platform Engagement: Use Facebook as a multi-platform communication tool. Many gamers are multi-platform users. Facebook is an amazing tool that lets you engage with your players on multiple devices, even if they are not playing the game at that moment. Recommended Strategy: Instead of thinking about a mobile strategy, focus on having an engagement strategy that will reach your players in their natural environments. 3. In-game Monetization: Leverage CRM data to offer timely promotions. The more money your players invest in a game, the more connected they will be. The recency of the purchase will be a powerful force to get them to play over and over again. 4. Be Social: Let your players share their achievements. A great game is one that enables players to feel a sense of accomplishment. Foster this feeling by letting your players share their success with others on Facebook. - 11 -
Takeaways Facebook is the most effective and comprehensive platform for new acquisition and player/user retention. By using the various features offered in Facebook, such as targeting a custom audience, in-game monetization, or creating a Sponsored Story, you will exponentially expand your reach and promote your game. In order to leverage the full power of Facebook you need to find your perfect target audiences, use the right messaging, and make sure that you have chosen the right delivery format. Here is a recap of our recommended best practices for using Facebook to drive new players and users to your games and apps. If you would like to learn more or would like to improve your player and user acquisition performance please reach out to us at contact@adquant.com. Use your CRM Data: App developers can use custom audiences as a tool to push messages to existing users. Let old users know about your latest features and updates. You can also encourage users who have uninstalled your app to come back and give it a second try. Test your messages: Use a mix of call to actions to test which ones are most effective for your product. Aim for Quality Users: Instead of thinking about a mobile strategy, focus on having an engagement strategy that will reach your players in their natural environments. - 12 -
About Adquant We know games and mobile at Adquant. As a former performance agency, our platform was originally built to serve the social advertising needs of game and app developers. Now, Adquant has over 50 apps with one million-plus users each. We have managed hundreds of millions of dollars in online advertising budgets, and belong to an elite group of social advertising companies that have been qualified as Facebook Preferred Marketing Developers (PMDs). www.adquant.com - 13 -