February 2015
Level Up
The Game Developer’s Guide
to Global Advertising
Advertising Automation Software
Level Up: The Game Developer’s Guide to Global Advertising
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................... 3
Level 1 – Set Up............................................ 5
Level 2 – Monitor.......................................... 9
Level 3 – Optimize and Scale...................10
Level 4 – Creative Refresh........................12
Bonus Level..................................................14
Insert CoiN
To Play
Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software
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Level Up: The Game Developer’s Guide to Global Advertising
Introduction
According to a report released by App Annie and
IDC, the freemium business model has driven a
disproportionate volume of app revenue across
both the iOS App Store and Google Play. While most
game developers compete for cheap installs, savvy
marketers know the truth: in-app purchasers are
worth the investment.
Most apps have a 1-2% average conversion rate.
Even the most addictive, time-swallowing games
generally hit a conversion ceiling of 10% for getting
users to take a specific action like an in-app
purchase, level played or achievement earned.
Data from mobile analytics firm Flurry shows that
average US users spend 2 hours and 42 minutes
per day on their mobile devices; 86% of which is
spent in apps. Of that time, 32% is spent in gaming
apps; in comparison, social and messaging apps take
up 28%. While user acquisition is of course the key
to gaining a fan base, don’t forget that retention is
crucial to monetization (and survival).
Mobile app install ad campaigns are crucial to
the success of your game launch, and when
approximately two weeks are all that stands
between you and App Store oblivion, every minute
counts. Need to scale your audience, fast, without
sacrificing ROI? You’d better go global. Facebook®’s
international reach allows you to tap into a much
larger pool of potential gamers.
Global domination
eMarketer has been covering the global growth and
popularity of social networking and its implications
for mobile marketers.
Facebook Flies High in Finland
Facebook Rules Australia’s Social Network Space
This Sounds Familiar: Facebook Is No. 1 for
India’s Social Networkers
Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software
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Level Up: The Game Developer’s Guide to Global Advertising
Old school approaches
International game launches typically require a ton
of data uploads and downloads, not to mention
methodical creative testing. But the good news is,
you’re alive in 2015, and tech can take on all that
manual labor. Ad automation software delivers not
just your highest value customers, but also:
Cost savings of up to 40% over middleman
advertising markups
Extra time to focus on strategy
Granular-level data in real-time
Scaled spend and reach
Bidding automation means you only have to set things up right the first time. Once launched, campaign settings
are flexible; you are free to start out with a CPI goal and then switch to Revenue Optimization (RevOpt) once
you’ve gathered sufficient data — all with the click of a button. Hundreds of creative combinations can be tested
while you sleep, with the best performers advancing and the worst shut off automatically.
This guide will help you set up and deploy a two-week, geotargeted, large-scale game launch using Facebook and
mobile RTB — without crashing any servers or driving your campaign manager crazy.
A little bit about us
Our customers marketed 250+ games around the world using Nanigans software in
2014 alone.
Nanigans provides Software as a Service to leading gaming companies, allowing
in-house advertisers to scale ad spend and automate optimization across live
campaigns. Increased cost efficiency, near real-time data, custom metrics and
spend visibility are just a few of the reasons why app developers use Nanigans for
user acquisition and retention. While our platform does the heavy lifting, you can
focus on what’s important: monetization.
Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software
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Level Up: The Game Developer’s Guide to Global Advertising
Level 1 Set Up
Successful mobile campaigns are built on a solid
strategic blueprint. When we kick off with a new
client, we have a detailed discussion around business
objectives and identify the Nanigans functionality
that will pave the way. When it comes to international
game launches, our clients often have a Cost Per
Install (CPI) target by country in mind as an initial
metric, so we’ll base our examples on that premise.
Pro Tip: Before setting up your first campaign, make
sure your app developer has linked your game up
with our native mobile app SDK. This will allow you to
close the attribution loop, automatically feed mobile
tracking data back into your campaign optimization,
and get full insight into customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
by monitoring app installs, purchases, time of click,
time of conversion, and other in-app events with API
calls on the hour.
If you’ve been using Facebook’s Power Editor for
previous campaigns, you should also take advantage
of Nanigans Facebook account import tool, which
will allow you to leverage creative assets, media, and
performance data in any new campaigns. With the
click of a button you can import all of your ad data
from the Facebook Open Graph, and it will continue
to sync over time.
Storm8 uses the Nanigans platform to create,
optimize, and scale our social acquisition
efforts beyond our existing network of more
than 400 million users. The Nanigans family
is insightful, diligent, and supportive much
like the excellent platform they’ve built, and
their ‘pay-it-forward’ approach continues to
drive our shared success in mobile marketing.
Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software
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Level Up: The Game Developer’s Guide to Global Advertising
Here is the checklist for setting up a CPI-based international ad campaign using Nanigans:
1
Decide what actions you’re looking to track and optimize on
Nanigans can optimize up to 7 actions, tracking and reporting on up to 15. Try to place an action or
event at each point in the user flow (e.g. track daily active users, people who have made it through
your app’s tutorial, bonus level completion; not just install and purchase events). Set up those actions
within our easy to use Conversions interface, keeping in mind that monitoring early activity will allow
you to pinpoint specific user segments for retargeting.
2
Create a Budget Pool
This sets constraints so that ads will pause down or (re)activate once they’ve crossed a set threshold
such as Daily Spend. It also allows you to keep campaign data separate. For example, you could create
one budget pool for desktop and one for mobile, or one budget pool for user acquisition and another
for retargeting. Once you get to the Strategy Group setup, you can further segment your campaign by
device (Android vs. iOS).
3
Set up a Strategy Group
Strategy Groups is the brain behind Nanigans; it’s where you put controls and rules in place, set up
pacing, and adjust for optimization. After you’ve tied your Strategy Group to a Budget Pool, set an
explicit target for your campaign in the Goals section (choose from Maximize Yield, Maximize Volume,
or Minimize CPA). Additional performance guidelines like Daily Spend Target, Cost Criteria, and Yield
can be set in the Rules section, whereas the Bidding tab allows you to select automated bidding
strategies. For a CPI-based campaign goal, we suggest oCPM as your ideal bid type. Our optimized
budgeting algorithms allow you to dynamically set spend levels for each one of your individual
Facebook ads. You may also provide instructions to our algorithm on what customer actions you
consider to be strong indications of potential value.
Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software
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Level Up: The Game Developer’s Guide to Global Advertising
4
Enable the Stop-Loss algorithm in Strategy Groups
This will automatically pause ads that exceed CPA limits on a daily and/or lifetime basis. The Nanigans
algorithm will also identify high-performing ads (i.e. low CPI, high lifetime value customers) and
increase budget accordingly via automated bidding.
5
Use Creative Tester to identify your best ad combinations
The Nanigans Creative Tester tool is an easy way to narrow down dozens (or even hundreds) of
creative combinations to the ones that attract the highest value customers. Load your copy and
creative in, and our software will automatically ramp up, pause down, and swap in ads based on data
it gathers about their performance. We recommend that you test out 5 to 10 creative sets per ad.
6
Generate Lookalike Audiences
based on existing customers
When you feed existing customer data
like emails, phone numbers, or website
browsing behavior into Nanigans, you can
ask Facebook to target other people who
have similar characteristics to those who
have indicated interest in your games (and
are therefore more likely to be interested
in downloading an app from you). You can
generate Lookalike Audiences for either
reach or similarity audiences directly within
the Nanigans user interface.
7
Create your Ad Plan
This is your ad workshop, and the place to set creative and targeting parameters for your initial ad
campaigns. As you set up a global ad push, restriction dialogues will be one of your most powerful
assets; they allow you to assign languages to specific countries (e.g. Restrict copy in French to France)
and restrict genders to certain ads (e.g. You would most likely want to restrict a Sex in the City themed
slot game to women). In Ad Plan, you can also target a cluster of countries by language spoken (e.g.
EFIGS — English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish). See Level 4 for suggestions on images and ad
copy.
Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software
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Level Up: The Game Developer’s Guide to Global Advertising
8
Segment ads by device
Marketing is a science, and science means
testing variables. Segmenting and comparing
your campaign results by device will give you
deeper insight into your mobile conversion
funnel. For example, you may consider
retargeting customers who haven’t logged in
to one of your games on iPhone in the last 30
days vs. retargeting customers who haven’t
logged in to one of your games on Android in
the last 30 days
9
Identify country targets and set value-based bidding parameters
How much is an install worth to you? When kicking off a campaign in Nanigans, ask yourself what
you’re willing to bid to acquire a new user. Keep in mind that you can target people with a history
of response to mobile app install ads, and even zero in on customers who have downloaded other
titles you’ve released. With granular settings like our Audience Override Table, you can assign multiple
countries to one Strategy Group and set exceptions on what you’re willing to bid based on cost per
install for each country, gender, or age range.
For example 18 to 24 year olds may have a lower propensity for spend in the UK than in the US. Or,
women in France may have a lower CPI than men in comparison to Spain. There are a number of
ways you can structure overrides, so ask your Account Manager about this advanced tool.
Once you’ve set your campaign structure in place, it
generally takes about 20 minutes to clone and modify
settings for a new country, which means you only
have to complete Level 1 once. Remember: You can
download, modify, and upload campaign settings
from the dashboard, and also make adjustments
directly within Nanigans from the Reporting tab and
share data with your colleagues.
Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software
Next Level
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Level Up: The Game Developer’s Guide to Global Advertising
Level 2 Monitor
During a game launch, your mobile app install
campaign success is often determined in the first
15 days. You’ll need to build hype quickly, so your
biggest spend push should fall in the first 5 to 6
days — ideally within the $50-200K a day range. With
automated tools like Nanigans Exploration Boost and
Optimized Budgeting at your fingertips, new ads can
be pushed quickly and confidently.
Remember: Your ultimate mission is to identify the
most qualified app installers and in-app purchasers.
The idea is not to blindly spend buckets of money;
as you push your ads, you will get revenue data
in real time and be able to adjust your approach
accordingly. A week should be enough time to
understand performance and see if it varies from,
say, a Monday to a Sunday (which it often does).
Nanigans’ business intelligence tools are a very
valuable addition to the product, allowing us
to easily review performance of our campaigns
and take action all in the same view. This
means we are able to manage our campaigns
much more efficiently. It’s been great to see
Nanigans software evolve into the amazing
tool that it is today.
Even with low CPI as your goal, keep in mind that
you’re not just gaining installs with the money;
you’re getting the word out about your game and
attracting organic traffic. Once you’ve built a solid
foundation of users and captured gamers’ attention,
your high rank in the app store will help you gain
additional (free) publicity.
Nanigans is a one-stop dashboard for all your
company’s sites and titles, providing high-level stats
on performance and a deeper dive into data at the
site or app level. It provides near real-time (data
refreshes every 15 minutes) visibility into live ads,
allowing you to quickly access the data needed to
make a business decision without waiting for your
analytics team to pull it. From the Reporting tab
you can see how Nanigans’ automated bidding
algorithms are adjusting your ad performance and
get full transparency into the logic behind these
decisions.
Next Level
Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software
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Level Up: The Game Developer’s Guide to Global Advertising
Level 3 Optimize and Scale
If you’ve hit a plateau in CPI or spend, you can use Precise Interest Targeting or Facebook’s Behavior Targeting
to expand your audience. You can also leverage our newest channel, Mobile RTB, to reach additional eyeballs via
CPM bids.
Mobile RTB (real-time bidding)
Maximize your campaign reach with programmatic access to mobile
web and in-app ads via our first mobile ad exchange partner,
MoPub, while maintaining the same level of control over bidding and
budgeting as our Facebook advertisers.
CPM bidding is a smart choice when you’re targeting a specific
audience of your known best customers. Using a Custom Audience
of previous high-value game downloaders, CPM bidding is an
efficient, cost-effective way to drive more installs.
Going global
Whether your game (or your gaming company) has been around for
years or months, testing new markets is a smart way to boost user
acquisition and build momentum on high-value audiences. In two
clicks and 20 minutes you can launch thousands of ads to additional
countries by editing the existing ad plan.
Pro Tip: Don’t forget to contextualize your
creative with translations and image changes
appropriate to each new country. If you’re
not sure how to approach expansion to
APAC or EMEA, the knowledgeable account
managers in our Singapore, Sydney, and UK
offices can help you localize your messaging.
With over 50 million monthly players across Wooga’s portfolio
of games on Facebook, Android and iOS, we’re excited to
take advantage of all the performance benefits, control and
transparency Nanigans software provides our in-house
marketing team to reach and re-engage players effectively—
now across multiple inventory sources and publisher channels.
Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software
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Level Up: The Game Developer’s Guide to Global Advertising
How To
Efficiently Scale Your Ad Spend
Clone campaign settings from one country, change the target audience and language of copy, and launch
ads in a new country. You can also use Strategy Groups to separate countries and audiences into tiers.
For example:
Tier 1
English speaking, affluent, historic Facebook usage: EFIGS and Nordic countries. This is a
saturated market.
Tier 2
Emerging markets, moderate Facebook adoption: APAC, South America (Brazil, Argentina, Chile),
South Africa, and Benelux.
Tier 3
Slow to adopt Facebook but shows promise: Nigeria, Russia, New Zealand (try layering in Broad
Categories like “engaged gamers” to pre-qualify lower monetizing users)
Use data from the Mobile SDK to optimize for high-value users. Leverage insight on not only when
someone made a purchase, but who they are, what cohort they came from, what ad drove a click on what
device, where they clicked in-app, what level they made a purchase on, and whether they came back and
bought more credit.
Target more audiences via keyword groups (a plug-and-play into your existing Ad Plans).
Ask your Account Manager to leverage our Affinity Analysis tool to identify additional targeting segments.
Pro Tip: You may find that your casino game resonates most with Midwestern housewives.
Affinity Analysis uncovers “off the beaten path” targeting opportunities based on this kind of
observation; rather than solely focusing on game-related keyword sets like “slots” or “Vegas,” you
can turn your attention to types of users and their interests (like “Michelle Obama” or “Oprah”).
Identify new opportunities based on top performers by country, age, gender, device, and creative.
Next Level
Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software
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Level Up: The Game Developer’s Guide to Global Advertising
Level 4
CreaTive
Refresh
As a best practice, our graphic designers recommend
adding new creative to the campaign mix to maintain
high click and action rates. Nanigans software allows
you to swap in images without recreating the campaign
from scratch, while Shared Views make it easy to ask a
graphic designer or in-house marketer to create similar
ad copy and images based on positive data.
Pro Tip: Mix in some iteration on Custom
Audiences — segments based on the
users you already have and the users you
acquire at the beginning of your campaign.
Examples of lists you could build and
retarget with new creative include:
Top in-app spenders
Lapsed users (and/or lapsed users
over X days)
Lapsed spenders (and/or lapsed
spenders over Y days)
Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software
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Level Up: The Game Developer’s Guide to Global Advertising
Quick Tips
By Game Genre
Action
Hype up the thrilling aspect of battling enemies and forging alliances. Feature cool
weapons, new spells, or especially challenging levels. If your game is part of a series,
players will recognize key characters (particularly fan favorites), so use them in images.
Turn-based
Competition is the name of the game. Call attention to the fun of challenging friends and
strangers to solve puzzles quickly. Encourage active users to loop their networks into the
action; it will keep them logging in and encourage widespread adoption.
Casino/slots
Invoke the sights and sounds of Vegas with bright colors and glittery backgrounds,
emphasizing luck and winnings. Carry across the themes of your app in the copy and
images. For example, if it’s an Egyptian slots game, feature a sphinx or pyramids.
Strategy
Strategy games are a welcome break from routine. Everyone likes to tune out while they’re
waiting in line at the grocery store and commuting on the subway. Keep your mass appeal
by keeping ads age and gender neutral.
Next Level
Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software
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Level Up: The Game Developer’s Guide to Global Advertising
Bonus Level
Once you’ve identified winning creative
combinations, gotten to know your most valuable
audiences, and spread the word to multiple
countries, it’s time to advance your goals beyond
low CPI to where the real money is made: high ROI.
Nanigans software is built around the concept of
lifetime value for a reason — we’ve found that loyal
customers are well worth the extra budget. Ask
yourself: Do you want to target cheap installs or
repeat in-app purchasers?
Our algorithms want to find you high LTV customers
that will spend money in your app. Cohort Analysis
allows you to track revenue and pinpoint which ads
are bringing in positive ROI at a glance. With easy
access to historical performance, you can identify
which target audiences are the most valuable over
time, building out similar campaigns with the added
benefit of predictive revenue data.
Busted!
In conclusion
As we’re sure you’re well aware, mobile gaming
apps pose a huge opportunity for monetization
and recognition. Unfortunately, competition for
downloads and in-app purchases is fierce, and only
getting fiercer. Using ad automation software inhouse allows you to:
Easily launch your game beyond an initial
geographic market
Turn the volume up on ad spend, fast
Make on the fly campaign edits
Share the data that drives decisions with those
who need to see it
Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software
You know all about your business goals and acquisition
targets; we know the ins and outs of mobile marketing
and have five years of experience in the gaming vertical.
With Nanigans, you get the freedom to seize control
of your data and run with what works, while retaining
access to a team of analysts and account managers that
have run multinational, large-scale campaigns.
With Nanigans...
You Win!
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Up Your Advertising Game
Nanigans multichannel advertising automation software powers the world’s
most successful in-house performance marketing teams. A leading Facebook
Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer (sPMD), Nanigans is chosen by today’s top
ecommerce, gaming, and other internet companies such as eBay, Wayfair and Wooga.
Take control of your digital advertising.
Contact Us
nanigans.com
60 State Street | 12th Floor | Boston, MA 02109
[email protected]
888-507-4456
© 2015, Nanigans. All Rights Reserved.
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