3 reasons you should outsource production of your playable ad

IronSource's Daniel Herman discusses the benefits

• 1 Save time and resources

  Today, there are dozens of tools that automate app trailer production - just throw in a pre-recorded video of your gameplay, and you’re good to go. But developing a playable ad is much more complicated.

  First, it requires a different coding language than C#, Objective-C, or Java. Of course, there’s no doubt you could take the time to learn and master HTML5 and Javascript.

  Time to learn

  But that’s exactly the problem - time. It would take you away from your main role for weeks, if not months to first learn the language and then actually build the interactive gameplay.

  Remember, after you create a playable ad and release it into the wild, the hard part is just beginning. You still need to optimise the ad over and over again so that it fulfills your goals.

  Second, there’s no such thing as one-size-fits-all when it comes to running playable ads on ad networks today. If you want to serve your playable ad across multiple ad networks, you’d need to add special integrations for each one.

  
  

• 2 Leverage experience and best practices

  The best part about working with a specialist is leveraging what they’ve already spent months, if not years, perfecting. They’ve worked with apps and brands across a range of categories - from gaming to shopping.

  They’ve done all the dirty work for you, having learned through trial and error what copy, colours, game difficulty, gameplay, and timing work best for particular app categories. In other words, your tech partners have playable ads down to a science.

  Diving in

  If you’re afraid a tech partner might not understand your game as deeply as you, I have two things to say. First, you’re right, but that’s okay.

  Often the playable ads that perform best are a simplified version of the app’s gameplay, not exact reproductions of the game.

  They utilise game assets like characters and theme and then repackage them into a mini-experience that is proven to work well - like a missing letter game for a crossword puzzle app.

  Second, you always have a say in the process. Of course, trust that your partner knows what they’re doing. But you are encouraged to give suggestions. After all, you know your target audience better than anyone else.

  
  

• 3 Ad networks can optimise based on their supply

  There’s a handful of mobile ad networks today that offer playable ad creation and production services for you.

  Why is this tempting? Because they know how to optimise the playable ads so that they perform well on their proprietary traffic. They can customise the design, the gameplay, the length, and many other variables based on the preferences and behaviours of the users they have access to.

  Instead of shooting in the dark, the ad network would be able to create and optimise a playable ad that is guaranteed to perform well, using historical user conversion data. After all, numbers don’t lie.

  This is extremely important. Great playable ads combine a deep understanding of gameplay and an equally deep understanding of campaign performance data.

  Inside outsourcing

  Often, this combination is only something than an outside partner like an ad network would be able to offer, as accessing, analysing and acting on this kind of information can be overwhelming for a smaller developer with limited resources.

  If you do use to an ad network, it’s true that the playable ad would only be running on one traffic source. But you’d be safe in knowing that it’s running to perfection - one highly customised ad is better than several generic, low-performing ones.

  There are only benefits to outsourcing production of your playable ad to an outside vendor.

  By saving time and resources on your end, you can open up your schedule to focus on other more pressing development tasks; and by leveraging others’ expertise and experience, you can be sure that the end result is impressive and high-performing.

  There are many companies, from ad networks to creative services, who can help produce your playable ad. All you need to do is choose.