Neasa Bannon, Industry Manager, Facebook Gaming, Europe the Middle East and Africa, offers four key tactics for maximising the impact of your next ad campaign.

There are 3.7 billion users across the Meta platform and 2.96 billion of them engage with Facebook every month. By offering players a single space for multiple gaming behaviours - playing, watching and connecting, there’s an opportunity to build, grow and monetise your games and affiliated businesses with ease.

But out of everyone’s control are the changing winds of the global advertising ecosystem. Privacy, policy and regulatory updates have had an industry-wide effect, and app advertisers are seeing online performance decline and costs rise as a result.

This changed landscape calls for advanced practices to drive performance, and tactical approaches to help advertisers like you adapt successfully to a privacy-first landscape. Using any one of these four tactics will bring about positive results, but using them all together achieves a multiplier effect.

1. Automation and liquidity using Advantage+ App Campaigns

Sustaining performance for mobile app campaigns can be complex, time-consuming and require manual management of multiple campaigns. To streamline this process, we created Advantage+ App Campaigns (A+ACs); a product that uses machine learning and automation to drive valued results for advertisers.

A+ACs deliver high-performing creative variations to the most relevant audience, at placements where they’ll be the most effective. They offer “campaign liquidity” through algorithms that optimize campaigns against KPIs, audiences, geos and creatives. With the ad budget flowing unconstrained between applicable metrics, advertisers can hit their goals with less effort.

2. Measurement and attribution

Adapting to a new advertising environment means embracing a new measurement solution - one that’s multifaceted and rooted in driving incremental business results. This is achieved using a holistic approach that leverages all three dimensions of measurement: modelling, experimentation and attribution.

Working in tandem as one collaborative system gives an accurate source of truth, and from this, marketers can better understand the consumer journey and make more informed, efficient decisions moving forward. The three pillars of effective measurement are:

Experiments

Advertisers can utilise our Private Lift and Geo Lift products to run comprehensive tests that capture vital information such as the true return on ad-spend (ROAS) driven by an ad. The gold standard of incremental measurement, experiments are the closest an advertiser can get to measuring true incremental value and are essential for measuring business outcomes.

Market Mix Modeling (MMM)

MMM attempts to estimate the incremental impact of marketing and non-marketing activities. It’s built to consider the complexities of app performance including media synergies, attention saturation, organic cannibalisation, trends, seasonality and promotions. MMM ensures that credit for the same conversion isn’t given to multiple channels across different tools.

Attribution

“Last Touch” has always had its flaws but was an industry staple. Now, the picture attribution provides isn’t complete, and if used alone, it throws measurement into disarray. However, it still serves a valuable purpose for gaming advertisers by continuing to deliver a real-time view of performance. Although it no longer provides the same level of insight as in the past, attribution still holds a firm position in the measurement mix.

3. Conversion schema set-up

In the wake of Apple’s ATT rollout, conversion schema is the only means of capturing events (such as a purchase) from opted-out iOS users. As such, both the quantity and quality of conversion schema setups matter for advertisers to realise the full potential of iOS optimisation and measurement.

To set up an effective schema consider the following:

• Conversion windows are usually set to 24 hours for faster and more predictable feedback cycles, but can limit the opportunity for lower funnel events. Therefore, including upper and mid-funnel events should balance postback volume and purchase propensity.
• Prioritize the apps most relevant events.
• Avoid bundling events (unless necessary) as this requires a user to complete all actions in that bundle in order to be counted.
• Consider coupling conversion schema with A+ACs for an even greater result.

Purchases in an iOS game can originate from a variety of motivations. A conversion schema for SKAdNetwork needs to measure both breadth of actions across various game elements and the depth of player engagement

4. Creative diversification and differentiation.

The previous three focus areas happen in the backend of a campaign but ad creative is the only area that matters to consumers. It’s the first offering players see from a brand and so significantly impacts performance. In light of this—and in an era where reaching players is increasingly difficult - creative strategy has never been more important.

In a recent study, we learned that gamers don’t habitually visit an app store for discovery. They go to download a game they’ve seen or heard about already. This is why in a highly saturated market, visual diversification and differentiation are key. From a creative standpoint, it’s important to avoid creative fatigue and so dynamic, highly engaging, motivation-led creative is the way of the future.

To dive deeper into the focus areas discussed, consider exploring Creative Catalyst and Creative Prototyping solutions. Creative Catalyst lays out an easy-to-follow process of how to meet the recommended input maximum of 50 assets plus it will help you unlock new audiences and discover winning creative executions via motivation-based creative exploration. Creative Prototyping will help you systematically manoeuvre through the test-and-learn stage. For more on Creative Catalyst and Creative Prototyping, head to the Facebook Gaming Creative Hub.

Nailing performance

Focusing on how to optimise your campaigns through the four areas outlined above will ensure longevity, ROI and ensure optimal performance that puts privacy front and centre.