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KEY HIGHLIGHTS

⚙️What sort of metrics hyper-casual games are able to achieve – and how.

🌎Why broad targeting is effective for hyper-casual games.

🎨What sort of creatives are the best for hyper-casual.

🎬What campaign structure Matej recommends.

👥What the ideal audience size is for each ad set.

🤷🏽‍♂️Matej’s strategy for UAC and non-Facebook channels

✍🏽What strategy works best for UAC, and what is the best way to structure different ad formats within UAC.

KEY QUOTES

The metric of hyper-casual games

The CPIs can be low, but the LTV is the thing we are measuring, and it’s all about the margins between CPIs and LTVs. If your game has, I don’t know, 30 or 40 or 60 cent CPIs, it’s still the LTV that matters, and the margins you can generate.

How creatives factor into UA

But the creatives should be super simple and straightforward, very short and fast-paced, very immersive – obviously, showcasing the gameplay, but in a very important way. I think you already saw these new vs. pro videos for hyper-casuals, and everybody does that.

Ad set structure for campaigns

We can have two ad sets, male versus female, or we can split the ad sets for age groups. So one group is 13 until 24, 25-34. So we have four ad sets for male in one campaign, and then – in one geo, in one campaign. And then, one geo, different gender and the same, actually, age groups.

The strategy for UAC

Let’s take the UAC here, we are actually focusing on events, so I’m setting up the Appsflyer or MMP you have with the events, for example, how many ads were watched, so we are targeting 5 ads per player, 10 ads, 50 ads, 100 ads. 

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Shamanth: I’m very excited to welcome Matej Lancaric to the Mobile User Acquisition Show. Matej, welcome to the show. 

Matej: Thank you very much for having me. I’m glad to be here. 

Shamanth: Excited to have you Matej. You’re someone I look to for some very good advice, someone that’s always shared some very in-depth advice on user acquisition. So definitely excited to have you here. We’re going to talk about user acquisition for hyper-casual games, something that I’m very, very fascinated about because some of the metrics I’ve heard about hyper-casual games have been so astounding. For instance, the CPIs that I’ve heard of are an order of magnitude different from casual games — the IPMs are an order of magnitude different. First of all, can you share the kind of numbers you are able to see and how they contrast with all the other genres? 

Matej: Definitely, I can share that with you. When comparing the hyper-casuals to any other genre, like you said, it’s very different. I can see CPIs around 10 or 12 cents in certain visual designs, let’s say. For example, what I found out is that, for games that have cars or any driving, visual design in the game — for example Drive & Park, Clean Road, Pick Me Up — from all different hyper-casual developers, these games and the CPIs in these games are super low. Then obviously, the CPIs can change and can be around 20 cents, 30 cents, which is still super different than any types of genres out there. But it’s not only about the CPIs, so

the CPIs can be low, but the LTV is the thing we are measuring, and it’s all about the margins between CPIs and LTVs. If your game has, I don’t know, 30 or 40 or 60 cent CPIs, it’s still the LTV that matters, and the margins you can generate.

Shamanth: Yeah, and of course, even if you’re getting 10 to 12-cent CPIs, you are able to achieve the margins and that’s the more important part. I am of course astounded that the 10 to 12-cent CPIs are possible just because a lot of other non-hyper-casual games can’t achieve it. Can you speak to the different elements of the user acquisition strategy that can contribute to these sorts of CPIs which, let’s just say, casual or mid core games cannot achieve? 

Matej: For hyper-casual games, we all know that the hyper-casual games are for the wide-target audience. Basically everything is important, but the creatives are super important, and obviously, comparing the — or tying the — creatives to the target audience, that’s the main thing.

But the creatives should be super simple and straightforward, very short and fast-paced, very immersive – obviously, showcasing the gameplay, but in a very important way. I think you already saw these new vs. pro videos for hyper-casuals, and everybody does that.

But the thing is that when you’re showcasing the gameplay in two different ways for the player, it’s actually working and making them think or making them want to achieve this pro gameplay. It’s not only about the creatives, it’s obviously about the targeting, and hyper-casual targeting works differently, and I could say that because I tried and tested a lot of targetings from precise interest targeting direct competitor games or similar games within the genres or targeting any look-alikes, for example, let’s say targeting people who watched certain amounts of ads, or highly engaged users who are playing the game, or highly retained users with a high retention. Everything comes down to the broad targeting, which means that not using any of those interests or lookalikes because it simply allows you to keep the CPIs as long as possible, and to create higher margins. 

Shamanth: So, you’re using completely broad audiences, how do you structure those, let’s say, in Facebook…do you just have one ad set per advertiser with worldwide broad audiences or do you have multiple ad sets? What does the campaign structure look like in Facebook? 

Matej: Basically, it looked a bit differently when the campaign budget optimization was introduced. But let’s say, it looks like this, it’s one campaign for one geo. Then I have multiple ways how to structure the campaign and the ad sets. Let’s say, we have a campaign budget optimizer on, so I do ad sets based on the genders.

We can have two ad sets, male versus female, or we can split the ad sets for age groups. So one group is 13 until 24, 25-34. So we have four ad sets for male in one campaign, and then – in one geo, in one campaign. And then, one geo, different gender and the same, actually, age groups.

This is the setup, and the campaigns are based on the geo. 

Shamanth: When you’re doing that – and you’re still keeping it broad, is there a minimum audience size that you’re aiming to reach per ad set? 

Matej: It’s in millions actually, as wide as possible, but I am aiming for 20 million plus. When I’m targeting small countries, it’s obviously smaller, but let’s say 20 mil plus. There’s not a golden rule, it is just my experience. 

Shamanth: Right, so you’re targeting 20 million plus per ad set, is that what you’re doing when you are breaking it up? 

Matej: Yeah.

Shamanth: Gotcha, which is possible for the larger countries, but it sounds like for smaller countries you club the similar countries together. 

Matej: Exactly. Not only clubbing it into one campaign according to the size, but also according to the LTV. So if we have very similar LTVs in a couple of countries, we can mix them up, and then Facebook algo will kick in. 

Shamanth: Right, and you spoke briefly about how creatives are important and how important the immersive creatives can be. Can you give us an example of a creative that worked really well and speak to why that may have worked well? 

Matej: Of course. The thing is that we tested a lot of variants with my colleague, motion designer. And it all came down to the headline of only 4% of these people can park for example. So only 4% of people can park, and we showed the gameplay there. But not just any gameplay of the game, we specifically took one part of the gameplay that shows, for example, the finish line and everything that players can achieve. And based on that, because we tested a lot of other parts of the gameplay and this one worked well, but also what we looked at was the color palette. So we chose blue and green and obviously tested a lot other colors as well as yellow and red, but the blue one, for this specific game I’m talking about, worked best with this 4% headline. We tested 1% free to whatever number you can think of, but only the 4% actually worked well.

Shamanth: Yeah, which goes on to show you just have to test, there’s no way to tell beforehand. 

Matej: Of course, exactly.

Shamanth: Interesting, and how does this strategy change for non-Facebook channels – because when you say, you want to go broad, you want to have super compelling creatives. How, if at all, does it change for non-Facebook? 

Matej: For non-Facebook, it’s obviously all other networks, and then UAC is a special case. Let’s say we’re starting with UAC because the thing is that I always start with Facebook and then moving to UAC and other networks based on the LTV and based on the budget as well.

Let’s take the UAC here, we are actually focusing on events, so I’m setting up the Appsflyer or MMP you have with the events, for example, how many ads were watched, so we are targeting 5 ads per player, 10 ads, 50 ads, 100 ads. 

Basically, looking at the value of the player in terms of ad revenue, and this is strategy on a country level. Then, obviously with non-Facebook UA channels, the creative is even more important because the creative is actually the thing that works on that level, and for a non-Facebook UA channel, playables are super important for hyper-casual games. 

Shamanth: Yeah, so just to dig into UAC, you said the creatives have to be immersive, and video lends itself well. Like you said, playables lend themselves well – so on UAC, are you testing display ads at all? 

Matej: Yes, we’re testing display ads as well, but it depends on the bid we can actually have because of the LTV. There is this difference – for search, you can have a small bid, and then you will get a lot of traction there. Then when you have a higher bid, and you have playables, then obviously the playables have more traction. We have the display ads always in campaign, but it depends on the bid which actual placement is getting the most traffic. 

Shamanth: That makes a lot of sense. Matej, this has been super instructive, just like every time I’ve talked to you before. So thank you so much for being on the Mobile User Acquisition Show. 

Matej: Thank you very much for having me again. Looking forward to speaking to you again. 

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