Paid advertising strategies are one of the best ways to boost downloads and grow interest in your app. Last month we reviewed the Top Advertisers of March 2021. This month, we will be zooming in on the games category of top advertising apps.
What are the top apps? What are their strategies? We will be looking at mobile ad intelligence to see what some of these top 10 apps in advertising are using for mobile ad networks. We will look at their creative strategies as well and hopefully learn something that we can apply to our own app user acquisition.
When examining Games for April, we used our mobile ad intelligence tool. This list was made for both iOS and Play stores showing which mobile apps have the top advertising worldwide. We will be taking a closer look at some of them to see which creative strategies they are using. You can see what these top advertising apps do and maybe learn how to apply this to advertise your app.
How to promote an app like Match Masters
Match Masters has launched a simple but brilliant Ad Campaign for their Player Vs. Player Match-Three game. And it is all in the title! Match games have been around for ages and are notoriously popular and fun to play. Candy Crush is an age-old example of this style of game.
Match Masters can use the well-known iconography of Match-Three games and people will automatically understand and know what it’s all about. Then they add a visual element demonstrating that the game is Player Vs Player and Bam!! A refreshing take on the match-three game in an easy-to-understand creative. Brilliant.
Campaign analysis
Match Masters is 8th overall among the advertisers for the App Store. It is allocating a whopping 53 percent of its advertising to Admob. The app is only using 8 advertising networks, which is very interesting for a top advertiser. They have also clearly decided that Admob and Unity are the two places where their ads will thrive the most for Apple users.
When we move on to the Google Play store we have some equally interesting data. The creative analysis shows us that there is almost a 50/50 split between Admob and Unity, and that once again these are the preferred ad networks for this game.
We can also see that in the Google Play Store, they are second overall in advertising. Though they are using 10 ad networks in this case, and are putting slightly less emphasis on Facebook, the fact that they have so many of their eggs in two baskets, so to speak, shows that they have really done their research on where they get the most bang for their buck.
Creatives Match Master Top Advertiser
Here we have the brilliant creative strategy. Let’s pick apart just what they are doing here.
Firstly, I have chosen to show you a creative that is not in English, because it illustrates that we can understand everything perfectly through the visuals alone.
Match Masters, the logo, is placed between two players with opposing colors demonstrating opposing teams. The lightning iconography says “showdown” without having to say it. Even the dual tone logo demonstrated that this is a Player Vs. Player game. You can understand from the logo alone, “The goal is to match, and I want to be the master.”
Underneath the image we can see the classic match-three tiles, to remind people of a match-three game. Even if they do not associate the word match with this genre of game, the background does an excellent job of reminding them.
Then, right under all of this, we have a call to action. Simple, but effective.
The next ad we have to analyze, is simple again, but this time focuses on the match-three tiling more. They also remind us that you can now play against your friends!
With the isolation that this past year has brought us, finding mobile games that include social interaction is in more demand than ever before, and this integration was a smart move.
Ratings and reviews Match Master Top Advertiser
However, the game currently has mixed reviews.
If Match Master wants to get the success its huge advertising campaign has pushed it towards, then they will have to update and listen to what reviewers are saying.
This type of review comes up quite frequently from people who love the game, but are being matched against players of a much higher rank. We can see with the little blue tags along the timeline that Match Master is updating regularly, so hopefully, they will find a solution that will keep their players happy.
Advertise your app like Lords Mobile Kingdom Wars
Lords Mobile Kingdom Wars is a Strategy Game. We mentioned them in our discussion of creative trends for strategy games post earlier this month. They are also in the top advertisers list in both stores, coming in at number 5 overall in apps for advertising in the App Store and number 2 in the Play Store.
Campaign analysis for Top Advertisers
The game is advertising on 12 networks on the app store, with most of its apps again on Admob and Unity.
The same two networks are at the top for the Play Store but inverted and with a bigger emphasis on Facebook. TikTok and YouTube are also being targeted for Android users but not iOS.
Localization for Top Advertisers
They are currently predominantly targeting Japan in the Apple App Store, and the US first with Japan Second in the play store. However, the vast majority of all their creatives are in English.
This may be, because similarly to Match Master, these ads are not text-focused. However, the ads for this game are a bit more elaborate.
Creatives for Top Advertisers
Where Match Master wanted to say, “Hey, remember match games? Now with friends!”, This game wants to show off how it is different, better, more customizable, exciting and visually pleasing than its competitors.
There are three battle strategy games in the top advertiser games alone. This is a highly competitive subgenre and their creatives need to show off that they offer things that others have done, while showing gameplay, and being accessible to those who have not played the game before… it’s a lot to do.
They use a lot of interactive creatives, showing gameplay, and showing a screen at the end with different castles and levels to scroll through. One of the big sell points of these games is the level upgrades during the game. Therefore it is crucial for them to show as much in one ad as possible.
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