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The Art and Science of Effective Ad Placement

24 Aug 2020

By Noelia López

View this blog on Medium


Managing ad placements in free-to-play games can feel like a high-wire balancing act. On one hand, ads are a critical revenue driver for most games—but when not managed properly, ads also run the risk of alienating players and causing churn.  

The good news is that with a little research, planning, and experimentation, it’s possible for teams of all sizes to strike the right balance between monetizing their game, and keeping players happy.  

In order to help developers create their own in-game advertising strategy, I’m going to break down a few simple, but powerful things that teams can start doing today in order to create, implement, and optimize their ad placements.

Diving deep to deconstruct your game

While no two games are exactly the same, there are many parallels that developers can draw between games that share the same genre. It’s important for teams to know what kind of game they’re making, and what their players have come to expect from in-game ads based on the other titles they’re playing.

People that play hypercasual games are used to seeing a high volume of ads, while RPG or strategy game fans have a lower tolerance for advertising. For example, if you compare a midcore 4X strategy game like Warhammer: Chaos & Conquest with a casual puzzle game like Languinis, you’ll see a very different ad landscape.  Warhammer serves about 2.6 ads per daily average user, and placements are capped, while Languinis serves 6 ads per daily average user.

Once a team has a good understanding of their game’s genre, they should dive in and play other popular games in the same category. By putting themselves in the player’s shoes, developers can get a strong sense of their customers’ experience, and start to identify what works and what doesn’t.  

Are similar games using rewarded video, interstitials, and banner ads, or combining all three? When are the ads shown?  Do they appear from the very beginning of the player experience, or do they come after players reach a certain level? For example, in hypercasual games like Narcos, ads appear at the very beginning. But in midcore games like Warhammer, ads don’t appear until later in the game once the user is more engaged. The length and difficulty of the tutorial can also impact when ads first show up. 

While there’s no one-size fits all approach to ads, seeing what’s working in the competitive landscape is incredibly helpful in at least pointing teams in the right direction.

Creating value for players

Once a team has a good sense of genre norms and the types of ads that are possible, it’s important for them to consider the value that these ads are offering players when they engage with them.

I’ve found the most effective way to do this is to put yourself in the shoes of a non-paying player in your game to understand what users value the most. Where are the blockers or slow-down points in the experience? What resources do players need and when?  Are they often short on coins or gems?  Maybe there’s a timer that feels painfully long.  When developers understand what is valuable to players in their moment to moment experience, it’s easier to create an ad program that rewards players with what they really want.

A great example of this is in Tilting Point’s recent release SpongeBob: Krusty Cook-Off, which is a cooking game that features timers and coins. There are key moments where players may want to use coins to upgrade their kitchen, and then timers gating when their equipment arrives.  These are great moments to serve reward-based ads that provide players with meaningful rewards, at the moments they want them the most.

I’ve also found it helpful to ask three questions when creating and implementing rewarded ads:

  1. Is the reward useful for the player?
  2. Can players get the reward in any other ad placement, or is it unique?
  3. Is there a similar reward in the shop?

Once a team understands the player experience, it’s much easier to provide rewards that the player can actually use to progress in the game.  By offering the perfect reward and the exact right moment, ads will perform much better than those that offer little utility for the player.

It’s also important to avoid offering the same reward for players in multiple ad placements.  If a user is able to get the same reward in two different places, they will generally choose the one that is easier or faster for them, rendering the other placement useless.

And finally, teams should avoid offering rewards that can be acquired by an in-app purchase, as this runs the risk of cannibalizing sales.  It’s important to offer rewards that can’t be purchased but are still valuable.  A great side effect of this strategy is that payers and non-payers are both incentivized to watch ads, which can increase a team’s overall revenue.

Timing is everything

Developers often ask, “when should we implement the ads?” And the answer is very simple: As soon as it makes sense.

Before turning on ads, developers should make sure everything is working properly. Can players watch ads without the game crashing?  Do they receive the expected reward?  Is the reward safeguarded so players can’t cheat the system? Is there a back up plan when you undoubtedly experience an issue with an ad network that doesn’t work as expected?

Among the best examples we can show are the ads on Zombieland: AFK Survival. We’ve been doing several iterations on the ads before releasing them, and running A/B tests to make sure that everything works out as it should. And once we are confident that the results are good, we roll it out. We’ve witnessed great improvement of the ADS/DAU for Zombieland, as shown in this graph.

This conflation of potential problems is why it’s so important for teams to think about their ad strategy from the very beginning of their design and development process. The more time a developer has to build and test the experience, the better it will perform.  It also allows teams to design good ad placements into the game’s UI/UX, rather than scrambling to implement them late in the process. 

The best teams use added time to do A/B tests, explore different frequencies, caps, and basically try everything they can. Every game has its own system, and the only way to discover it is through lots of trial and error.

So get out there and start experimenting!

Power up your game with us

Ad placement is equal parts art and science.  If your team is looking for a partner to help navigate the fast-moving and critically important landscape of ad monetization, the team at Tilting Point is here to help!  Visit us at www.tiltingpoint.com, or send us an email at hello@tiltingpoint.com.

As Advertising Monetization Manager at Tilting Point Barcelona, Noelia is responsible for maintaining and building relationships with Tilting Point’s various ad providers, as well as overseeing in-game advertising for the company’s portfolio of titles. Prior to joining Tilting Point, Noelia served as the Ad Monetization Manager at ZeptoLab where she handled ad operations, maintenance and management of eight of the company’s games. In addition, she also helped lead genre and projects research forecast for ZeptoLab’s existing and new projects, working side by side with designers, product managers and developers.

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