🖊️ Why ad copy is critical for mobile UA campaigns – with Erich Detert, Senior Performance Marketing Manager at InnoGames 🏃🏽‍♀️

Our guest today is Erich Detert, senior performance marketing manager at InnoGames.

Copy is often overlooked because of the great focus on visual creatives, and therefore becomes a missed opportunity for marketers to connect with and persuade potential users. In our conversation today, Erich underlines the critical importance of ad copy in performance marketing, and shares his observations of how his experiments have impacted key metrics and lead to more qualified users and stronger ROAS.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

🧪 What inspired Erich to start testing ad copy.

🔮 What sort of results you can expect from each type of ad copy.

🖱️ Why more clicky or sensational copy may not always be the best performer.

✨ Why high quality, representative ad copy can be even more important with iOS 14.

📏 How length makes a difference to performance of ad copy.

🌱 What early stage startups should do with ad copy tests.

🎥 How important ad copy is for video as compared to display or image ads.

🎞️ How important video thumbnails are in driving performance.

📱 What channels the ad copy matters in.

KEY QUOTES

3 types of ad copy

I’ve essentially broken down the types of ad copies that I use into three types: clicky, representative, which would be on the opposite end of the spectrum of clicky, and balanced ad copy, which would be a mix of the two.

There are use cases of all types of copy

Ad copy that is often more clicky has shown higher CTRs for us, average to lower CVRs, and less engaged users and early churners. But most notably, I’ve seen up to about 20% higher CTRs for clicky texts in relation to text that is more representative.

It is important to consider down-the-funnel metrics too

With ad copy that is more representative of the product, we do tend to see lower CTRs, however higher CVRs, and higher engagement rates post-conversion, as these leads generated are more or less pre-qualified leads.

The ad copy rule of thumb

In my experience, the more wordy the text, the lower the clickthrough rates and higher the cost per acquisition.

Longer ad copy has its place

One of the longer ad texts that I use is 18 words long, but it has one of the lowest clickthrough rates, and we generally see significantly higher CPAs: like upwards of 30% more. But we do see good ROAS with these ads as well, because these texts are a kind of like a pre-qualifier for us.

Different types of copy, different results

Generally, I would say clicky copy, you know, will help you generate more awareness for your product, drive more traffic, whereas representative copy will help you deliver more on the pre-qualified leads.

Video ads are a different ballgame

Ad copy in video ads, in my experience, hasn’t shown as significant of a difference, as it has with still images unfortunately. In tests that I’ve run, I’ve seen up to about a maximum of 5% higher clickthrough rates of using more clicky language, and less than 5% higher conversion rates when using more product representative but still persuasive language.

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW

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

Erich: Hi, Shamanth. Thank you very much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be on.

Shamanth: Thrilled to have you because you certainly come very highly recommended. And also because you propose that we talk about something that’s very under-appreciated in performance marketing. I’m thrilled to dive into the importance of ad copy, which is oftentimes underrated and under-appreciated by the vast majority of marketers. So we could start at the beginning, of course; so what inspired you to start testing ad copy? And why did you think this was important at the time?

Erich: I kind of got my start actually in the marketing profession, primarily focusing on content marketing. And since working as a marketing professional, I’ve had a deep interest in the psychology of advertising, as well as consumer behaviour in general. However, I’d say the use of language as a tool to persuade and convince goes back even further for me, during my time as a legal professional. I would say that I’ve heard it expressed on numerous occasions that ad copy didn’t really matter much. And while I do agree that a marketing asset itself, like still image or video, is the most important aspect of an advertisement, I was convinced that good ad copy would be like the cherry on top.

Shamanth: What might be the different types of ad copy that are available for a marketer to test? What might be some examples of these?

Erich: For me,

—as balanced would suggest. I can share a few examples for ad copy, which I’ve used for our company’s most renowned game.

Clicky ad copy, for instance, would be: “Try this game for three minutes and see why everyone is hooked!” or “The must-play game of the year.” So those are clicky ad copies I would use.

Representative ad copies would include something like: “Journey through the ages in this award-winning, city-building game.” So this is often one that I use for the game that’s advertised for.

And finally, a balanced good mix for the two. One of the ones I use most often is: “The must-play, city-building game of the year.“

Shamanth: Right. So one of those is almost urgent—you could call it sensational. One of those is more matter of fact, and there’s more balance. You would think that the most sensational one is obviously going to win but sounds like that’s not always the case. So can you tell us what are the typical results you would see from each of these?

Erich: Definitely. So I’ve run a lot of tests; most of them with regards to still images. And I’ve done multiple ad copy tests where the corresponding marketing asset that was used was either slightly ambiguous with regards to what the product actually is. And also using ones where it was much easier to infer from the image as to what the main USP of the product is.

What I’ve seen is that, with balanced ad copy, it has really been a good middle ground, as you would assume, in terms of clickthrough rate, conversion rate and lead quality.

So this is quite astonishing. You wouldn’t actually think maybe that sometimes the clicky ad copy would perform so well, but it does, especially if your CTR is important for you.

So finally,

with ad copy that is more representative of the product, we do tend to see lower CTRs, however higher CVRs, and higher engagement rates post-conversion, as these leads generated are more or less pre-qualified leads.

So with regards to conversion rates, I’ve seen at least 10% higher conversion rates compared to the more clicky ad text, as well as a positive correlation with more engaged and higher value users. I’d also say that we’ve even had cases where people would positively comment on our advertisements, especially on Facebook that the ad copy was very spot on when representative of the product. So I feel that the representative text also has the advantage of appealing to a lot of the disaffected viewers who often see misleading ads, which have been more and more prevalent these days.

Shamanth: Yeah, it’s interesting that all three of those could work in different situations. And the results you get can very much vary by product or the way you’re executing, implementing each of these strategies. That’s very interesting.

Erich: Yeah, I was actually also just recently thinking about the implementation of iOS 14 coming up, and how this would be affecting campaigns. And honestly, I was thinking how high quality, representative ad copy actually could be even more important now, as it helps kind of combat some of the uncertainty surrounding some of the optimization efforts. For instance, if you have focused more budgets on mobile app install campaigns and move some of your budget away from app event optimization and value-opt campaigns, which it seems like a lot of marketers might have to do with the implementation of iOS 14.

Shamanth: Yeah, definitely right? And the other aspect of ad copy that I’m very curious about is the length itself. How do you think that makes a difference?

Erich: The short answer would be that, in my experience,

more wordy the text, the lower the clickthrough rates and higher the cost per acquisition.

For instance, like on Facebook, your ad text will get truncated, if it’s longer than three lines of text in the feed. But I still see some advertisers doing this. I mean, I understand the reasoning, obviously, the more you can explain about your product, the better it is in order to convince someone, but I feel like there has to be a balance.

So, for example,

one of the longer ad texts that I use is 18 words long, but it has one of the lowest clickthrough rates, and we generally see significantly higher CPAs: like upwards of 30% more. But we do see good ROAS with these ads as well, because these texts are a kind of like a pre-qualifier for us.

I would also say that for the matter of mobile acquisition, there’s often an app behind the advertisement. So your ad can often be seen more about getting the customer intrigued and in the door. And the App Store is where the final sale takes place. So it can also be quite important to have an alignment or an affinity between your ads and the App Store descriptions or landing pages, if you want to increase your conversion rate.

Shamanth: Which also suggests that just the top of funnel metrics aren’t always the only metrics to look at, because an ad text might be longer, but it’s longer because it needs to qualify the right kinds of users that will convert downstream.

Let’s just say a company is in the relatively early stages of their acquisition; they don’t have a lot of volumes. Is there a specific way you would recommend that they think about this?

Erich: That’s a very good question. Honestly, I would test as many variations of ad text as possible, to see what works best for you and what your business goals are ultimately. For myself, I’ve definitely tested over 100 different ad copy variations and iterations to find what works best. So you certainly aren’t limited to anything specific.

But I would also say that it’s even more important to invest in good ad copy for startup companies looking to grow their user base, for instance, because they don’t often have the budgets for large scale video ad productions, instead, almost exclusively, using still images. So when this is the case, and because I’ve seen ad copy make more of an impact with images than it does with videos, this is what I would recommend focusing on. But just

generally, I would say clicky copy, you know, will help you generate more awareness for your product, drive more traffic, whereas representative copy will help you deliver more on the pre-qualified leads.

Shamanth: How important is ad copy for video as compared to display or image ads?

Erich: Another great question.

So ad copy in video ads, in my experience, hasn’t shown as significant of a difference, as it has with still images unfortunately. In tests that I’ve run, I’ve seen up to about a maximum of 5% higher clickthrough rates of using more clicky language, and less than 5% higher conversion rates when using more product representative but still persuasive language.

One very interesting thing though that I noticed is an increase in clickthrough rates, conversion rates and leads per thousands of impressions of up to 6% for each respective KPI, when using shorter, ad text length with videos. So essentially, text length under 10 words.

Shamanth: So it’s almost like, with a video, you want the user to pay attention to the video, so the less distraction you have in the text, the better it is. Speaking of videos, the thumbnails of the videos obviously matter. And you could add text on top of the thumbnails. Do you find that to be an important factor in any manner?

Erich: Another great question because, yeah, thumbnails definitely have shown importance in my experience. They clearly provide thumb-stopping ability, and could probably be the discussion for another entire podcast episode for you, I’m sure. So from the limited testing that I’ve done, which hasn’t been statistically significant unfortunately, I did see some trends. I saw ad copy having low, single-digit percentage differences in relation to one another, with regards to the ad copy. I would say the more interesting data was really the clickthrough rates related to the different thumbnails, again, showing how significant they really can be.

Shamanth: Right. Certainly, right, because that is the first impression a user does get—the thumbnail itself. So certainly it’s understandable as to what sort of impact it can have. What channels would you say that ad copy is the most important variable in?

Erich: In my opinion, ad copy matters in all channels you may be using; be it paid social search or native ad networks. Often as marketers, especially in medium- to large-sized companies, we don’t have full control over the creative assets that are produced for the marketing channels. So ad copy can certainly be a campaign manager’s creative outlet. So basically, it’s your opportunity to be creative. So embrace it, put effort into it and have fun with it. And whatever your marketing goal may be, I would say that using text that builds a sense of urgency, or that elicits an emotional response definitely should be the focal point.

Shamanth: Certainly, certainly. And I think that’s so critical, especially since a lot of marketers look at videos and display ads and images, right, the actual communication, the messaging, tends to take a backseat. But it is ever so critical in driving significant improvements to creatives.

Erich, this has been very insightful. And as I said, this is something that not a lot of people think about but it is an absolutely critical variable for every marketer to test. Thank you for sharing all of your insight today. This is perhaps a good place for us to start to wrap. But before we do that, can you tell folks how they can find out more about you and everything you do?

Erich: Yeah, sure. I work at InnoGames, located in beautiful Hamburg, Germany. We are Germany’s leading developer and publisher of mobile and online games. You can find me personally on LinkedIn where I’m more than happy to discuss further the importance of ad copy, and marketing campaign optimization and strategy in general.

Shamanth: Wonderful, we will link to all of that in the show notes. And of course, we will have detailed notes just as well. For now, Erich is a great place for us to wrap. Thank you so much for being on the Mobile User Acquisition Show.

Erich: Thank you very much for having me. It was a pleasure. Thanks again.

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