从开发者使用角度浅谈可玩式广告的优势和注意事项

原文作者：Linh Le 译者：Megan Shieh

如果你希望通过“付费广告”来扩大你的用户群，那你应该知道标准格式的广告已经越来越激不起用户的兴趣了。环顾四周，你会发现新的广告类型不断涌现，尤其是在过去几年里，市场越来越偏爱视频广告，但要说到革新，就不得不提起迄今为止最具创新性的广告类型——可玩式广告（Playable Ads）。

作为一家游戏公司，多年来我们已经尝试过了各种各样的广告类型，而这几年积累的经验告诉我们：作为开发者，如果你还没有尝试过将可玩式广告作为用户获取（UA）战略的一部分，那你很有可能正在错失一个巨大的增长机遇。

可玩式广告可以创造出一种以玩家为中心的新型广告体验——感觉不像是广告的广告、会受玩家欢迎的广告。

以下是我们总结出来的“可玩式广告的优势”：

自然的用户体验：这是一个让用户在安装APP之前体验游戏的好方法。这些广告进一步向用户展现了游戏的趣味、亮点和玩法，模糊了应用程序和广告之间的界限，提供丰富的体验，促使用户与广告互动，从而为用户的宝贵时间提供更多价值。

更高质量的用户：如果用户在与广告交互后决定下载APP，那就证明他们预先决定好了要参与到游戏当中。在购买之前已经试用过产品了，因此知道这款游戏会带来什么样的体验。

additional requirements(from gamasutra)

提高转化率——与其他类广告相比，可玩式广告提供更高的转化率，因为用户在打开游戏界面之前就已经对游戏内容有了较为深入的了解。

提高留存率——通过可玩式广告获取的用户更有可能会长期参与到游戏中，因为他们是在玩过游戏后才决定下载APP的。

较高的生命周期总值（LTV）——因为可玩式广告提供更深层次的体验，所以在用户看到广告之前，开发者就已经对他们进行了过滤；与那些从其他广告渠道（比如本地广告和展示类广告）获取的用户相比，这些用户的参与度会更高。

可追踪性：开发者们可以从广告中的互动点击量看出玩家对他们的游戏感不感兴趣，从而去改进、完善他们的游戏，这是普通视频广告无法做到的。

可见性100%：用户必须进入可玩式广告页面并与之交互，才能算是看过了一次广告。

提高透明度：通过提高产品广告的透明度来强化品牌。

为了证明这类广告有多有效，我们参考了旗下一款优秀游戏的表现结果：可玩式广告的千人展示安装率远远超出了其他类型的广告，这是因为它的转化率比平均值高出了近40%，使得eCPM（游戏邦注：每一千次展示可以获得的广告收入）提升到了非常有竞争力的水平，从而在广告网络中赢得更多优势。平均而言，可玩式广告的效果比其他格式(包括插屏广告、本地广告和视频广告)高出3倍。

如果你哪天决定尝试这类广告，下面有一些小技巧可以使你的可玩式广告更有效。

保持简单：向用户展示游戏的最佳功能和特性，但尽量不要让可玩式广告中的游戏机制显得太过复杂，一个复杂的可玩式广告会把玩家吓跑。

镜像游戏体验：尽量使用真正的游戏引擎，维持游戏的保真度，否则你吸引过来的用户可能会有种被欺骗的感觉。

结合不同的长度：尝试15秒或30秒，但整个广告长度最好不要超过60秒。

清晰的召唤按钮：类似于首次用户体验，确保可玩式广告带有一个指令清晰的教程，以免用户感到毫无头绪，不知该从何下手。

测试垂直和横向格式：虽然你的游戏可能只采用一种格式，但是广告通常采用两种格式,所以一定要做两种版本，以最大限度地适配玩家机型。

缩小广告文件大小，以便下载：可玩式广告需要大量的开发工作，因此可能会变得很难加载，确保你的文件维持在一个合适的大小。

检查用户体验的质量：确保广告中所有元素的格式都是正确的，这点极其重要。

总结一下：在移动APP的推广方面，可玩式广告一直都非常有效，我们觉得这只是一个开始。展望未来，可玩式广告将会入驻更多领域，并像视频和展示类广告一样成为一种标准广告。我们期望可玩式广告变得更加成熟，并与其他广告格式（比如视频广告）结合，创造出一种既好看又好玩的动感体验。如果你还没有尝试过可玩式广告，那我建议你现在就行动起来，对这类广告做些了解和调查。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

If you’re looking to paid advertising to grow your user base, you probably already know that it’s getting harder and harder to engage users with standard ad formats. Look around and you’ll notice that new ad types keep popping up, and while during the last few years the market has continued to move toward video ads, this year we’ve seen the growth of playable and game-simulation ads to be the most innovative ad type yet.

Admittedly, we’ve tested a lot of different ads, and we’re here to proclaim that if you’ve not tried playable ads as part of your UA creative tool set, you may be missing out on some big growth opportunities. Playable ads create an entirely new ad experience built around the player — an ad that doesn’t feel like an ad and is actually welcomed by users.

Here are a few advantages of playables that we like from our experience:

Natural User Experience: It’s a great way to allow users to experience the game before installing an app. They offer the meat of the game, showcasing the app’s main highlights and gameplay. These ads blur the boundary between app and ads, offering rich experiences where users can spend more valuable minutes interacting with ads.

Higher Quality Users: It brings higher-quality users into the app because users are pre-qualifying themselves as an “engaged” user if they download after interacting with the ad. Users have basically already tried before buying and know what to expect from the app.

Increase Conversion: It offers a higher conversion rate because users understand what they’re downloading before getting to the landing page.

Increase Retention: It improves the retention rate because users are more likely to engage within the game because they already know the gameplay before downloading.

Higher LTV: They pre-qualify users before they reach the advertiser, as they offer deeper experiences; these users engage at an increased rate than those received from other ad channels like native and display.

Trackability: It provides solutions for keeping track of creatives, since there are tools that can measure engagement and drop-offs within the playable, something less applicable in video.
100% Viewability: Users have to opt into the playable and interact with it in order for it to count as a view.

Increases Transparency: It strengthens the brand that is advertised by being more transparent in product advertising.

And to prove how effective this type of ad is, here are our performance results from a creative test we ran for a top title in our portfolio. As you can see, the playable outperformed all other ad types by a large degree when it comes to installs per 1000 impressions (IMP). The key factor is the much higher conversion than average (up to 40% percent) that pushes up eCPMs to very competitive levels and helps win more volume in ad networks. On average, we’ve seen playable ads perform up to 3x more effectively than other formats, including interstitials, native, and video.

Now are you interested in getting your playable game on? Here are some tips to make your playable ad more effective.

Keep it simple: Show users the best features of the game, but try not to complicate game mechanics with a playable. A complicated playable will turn users away.

Mirror game experience: Try your best to use the real game engine and retain game fidelity or else you may bait and switch users.

Incorporate different lengths: Try 15 seconds or 30 seconds, but refrain from ads longer than 60 seconds.

Clear call-to-action: Similar to the first-time game experience, make sure the playable has a tutorial feel with clear messaging so users don’t get confused.

Test vertical & landscape formats: Your game may be in one format, but ads will often be in both. Be sure to make both versions to maximize inventory availability.

Reduce ad file size for easy download: Playables take a lot a of development work and could become very hard to load. Networks will want you to keep it to a manageable size.

Quality check user experience: Remember to QA your playable. It is extremely important to make sure that all elements generated in the playable are formatted correctly. Sometimes a playable can break, and you leave users trapped and confused.

Final thoughts: playable ads have been very effective for advertising our mobile apps, and we feel that this is just the beginning. Looking ahead, we’re seeing playables incorporated into large networks from Facebook and Google to exchanges, and becoming an advertising standard just like videos and display. We expect playables to become more sophisticated and get paired with other ad units, such as video, to create a more contextual experience of “seeing” and “playing” together. If you haven’t tried playables, now is a good time to explore and invest in this ad type. （Source: gamasutra.com ）