Creative Optimization. Part 1: The Process of Setting up Ad Creatives


The process of setting up creatives

In today’s digital world, ads are everywhere. Using the right ad creative is crucial for a successful app marketing campaign. In fact, creatives can make or break your campaign. If they are catchy, relevant, and based on the user’s app experience, they will grab the user's attention and drive installs. Otherwise, they will most likely be ignored by users, along with all the other ads they see every day.  

This 3-part blog series will give you a clear perspective on how Aarki views the importance of ad creatives in mobile app marketing and will walk you through how our creative team operates. In this first part of the blog series, we describe the process of setting up the creatives.

Learn From Experience

Through a streamlined iterative process, Aarki’s creative team ensures that published ads always perform at their best. Every new campaign starts out with reviewing lessons learned from both app specific initiatives and industry-wide experience. experience

So how does it all work?

The advertiser provides us with best performing ad creatives from previous campaigns and directs us to what has worked in the past. These insights can be varied. For example, which games within their apps are used more often or, for instance, for social casino games if 5-reels prove to be better than 3-reel slots, etc. With this information, we come up with industry-wide strategies. 

In our recent user acquisition campaign for Lynx Games, we combined the client’s insights with our knowledge of what works best for this genre and registered incredible results within a short period of time, keeping the return on investment consistently above the goal.

Consider App Specific Features

While composing the ad creatives, we consider features that are app specific, such as ad layout. For example, Match-3 games have a grid layout that is familiar to their users and resonates well when translated into an ad layout. Social casinos, on the other hand, may want to use references to Las Vegas slot machines.

For the campaign for Lynx Games, we used creative elements from the app, focusing onapp features the full-screen reels. We also depicted multipliers and high-paying icons. This proved to be one of our most successful strategies ever. From there, our creative team used animation to preview how the slot machines work so the viewer could understand what the app is about. Messaging (welcome bonus) and images of opulence were used to create a feeling of wealth and prosperity.

We also take into consideration where the ads will be placed. This helps us pinpoint ad formats and strategies that work within that app or publisher. This will differ from each campaign, so it is good to understand the environment and learn from past campaigns.

Identify The Best Performing Creative

Right from the start, we optimize creative performance through multivariate testing. Wecreative select several ad creatives for the campaign and iterate based on performance to determine the “champion” creative. In the wake of this, when the champion creative from the variants stands out, we continue iteration on that creative and add a “challenger” creative. We use the same format but with a slight difference in the components: be it a different background or background color, etc. And lastly, after testing and comparing the performance of these two creatives, we increase media and budget allocation to the best performing (champion) creative.

Check out our creative capabilities in the video below: 

Have a Specific Approach for iOS14.5 Users

Ad creative is now important more than ever. With Apple's privacy changes already being implemented, mobile marketers must focus on leveraging their ad creative to acquire and retain their target users, despite the lack of the IDFA. Read our latest article for several tips you should consider while composing your ad creative. 

To learn more about creative optimization solutions, keep an eye out for the second part of this blog series which will focus on the process of testing and tracking the creatives as well as the optimization process. In the meantime, if you have any questions on how to level up your ad creative and make it the backbone of your app marketing campaign, shoot us a message here

Topics: Creative Insights