The Way to Advertise Hyper-Casual Games: Fashion, Life, Or Funny, Which Style Is the Most Effective?
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Over the past years, hyper-casual games have become a hot field in the game market. Its characteristics of immediate play, simple operation, and addictive content have been welcomed by a large number of players. Nowadays, Hyper-casual games often appear in the major game lists.
In App Growing Global’s recently released “ Advertising Analysis of Mobile Games in May ”, hyper-casual games occupy 5 seats in the Top 20 Mobile Games with Advertisement rankings.
On the other hand, from the perspective of developers, the entry barrier for hyper-casual games is low, and developers can make more attempts through lower production costs to quickly verify the quality of game ideas. Although the profit of a single player in hyper-casual games is relatively small, the huge player coverage and number of players make up for a lot of advertising revenue. The ability of Hyper-casual games to “attract money” is still considerable.
Based on the mobile advertising intelligence tracked for last 30 days, App Growing Global released the ranking list and analysis. The statistical area covers 42 countries/regions and the data covers 19 global mobile advertising platforms.
01
Overall Gaming Advertising Trends
After ranking according to the number of advertisements captured by App Growing Global in the past 30 days, it can be seen that the themes and gameplay of hyper-casual games on the head are very rich.
“ High Heels! ”, “ Hair Challenge ” and “ Catwalk Beauty ”all feature the theme of “ Runway + Fashion ”. This category of games can be said to be the most successful hyper-casual games in the first half of this year, frequently appearing on iOS and Google Play free lists in various regions.
“ Make It Fly! ”, “ Towing Race”, and “ Farm Land ”are more based on real life, forming game ideas through simplified simulation of trailers, aircraft assembly, farm management, and other scenes.
“ Bounce and collect ” and “ Fit and Squeeze ” are closer to traditional hyper-casual games. They simulate collision, ejection, stacking, squeezing, and other physical scenes, and add mechanisms like points, leaderboards, explosive growth. It can quickly bring players a “ cool feeling “ and gain popularity.
02
Advertising Strategy
2.1 “ Hair Challenge ”
After the great success of “ High Heels! ”, Rollic Games took advantage of the momentum and launched “ Hair Challenge ” in April. The two games use similar gameplay mechanisms, and fashion themes that can better cover female users, detonate online topics, and improve communication effects.
According to the data from App Growing Global, for the last 30 days, the advertising trend of “ Hair Challenge ” remained the same on both iOS and Google Play end. The peak appears in late May, Google Play end reaches over 500 ads in a single day, the iOS end also has a maximum volume of 400+ groups a day. In recent days, the volume has rebounded, and there is a tendency to hit a new one-day high.
Taking Google Play end as an example, more than half of the traffic purchasing of “ Hair Challenge ” went to the Facebook platform, while Applovin (17.68%), Unity Ads (10.28%), and Audience Network (4.74%) also had a certain percentage.
“ Hair Challenge ” puts in-feed (63.85%) and rewarded video (31.96%) advertising as the focus of delivery, and a large proportion of advertising materials tend to be video-type materials.
2.2 “ Bounce and Collect ”
“ Bounce and Collect ” is a popular game recently released by VooDoo, a well-known casual game manufacturer. The gameplay is to pass the game by pouring the ball into different channels to obtain different growth magnifications, and to obtain higher scores as much as possible to pass the challenge.
The iOS end of “ Bounce and Collect ” was launched in February this year, and then a small amount of traffic test was carried out. It was not until the Google Play end was also launched in April that both ends began to purchase on a large scale.
Observing the double-end advertising trend chart for the past 30 days, it can be found that the changes in the double-end trend are almost the same. Moreover, usually advertisers will purchase more traffic for the Google Play end, but “ Bounce and the Collect ” showed the opposite trend. In late May, the number of ads on iOS is slightly higher than that on the Google Play side. It seems to indicate that the focus of growth during this period has shifted to the iOS side.
“ Bounce and Collect ” uses Facebook (55.48%) as the main distribution channel, and also has considerable investment in Applovin (27.06%).
Regarding the choice of advertising form, although in-feed (54.69%) and rewarded video (36.61%) ads still occupy the bulk, “ Bounce and Collect ” also used in interstitial ads (5.7%), in-stream ads (1.2%), and playable ads (0.98%). The creatives are also video-based, and video materials of various sizes are used.
2.3 “ Save them all ”
“ Save them all ” comes from Japanese developer FTY. In the game, players need to draw obstacles of various shapes to protect the game characters. Each level has a variety of ways to pass. And the extremely high degree of freedom allows players to give full play to their creativity.
The advertising trend of “ Save them all ” presents to be “in pulse”, and the interval between each peak period is very stable. Google Play end in late May reached nearly 600 per day and then down to a low level, while iOS end rose to 200 + level, showing the growing focus also seems to incline to iOS end.
“ Save them all ”, which focuses on East Asia, is also different from other similar games in the choice of distribution channels. More than 50 % of the ads are placed on the Applovin platform. At the same time, Facebook’s various social media or advertising networks also have A certain number of ads.
“ Save them all ” chose to use rewarded video (82.63%) as the main advertising format, and the supporting full-screen video (69.21%) material has become the first material choice.
03
Analysis of Top-advertising Gaming Creatives
Since the gameplay of hyper-casual games is very simple, advertisements usually use screenshots and in-game videos to quickly express the content of the game, so that users can quickly generate interest and play immediately. The advertising style also follows the minimalist characteristics of the game, usually bright and highly saturated colors with simple geometric shapes, making the overall ad concise and easy to spread.
3.1 “ Fit and Squeeze ”
The advertisement enhances the user’s sense of substitution by cross-editing real-life scenes and game screens. The one-sentence copy at the top of the video further stimulates the user’s desire to win. The full-size video creatives can better adapt to various ads.
3.2 “ Make It Fly! ”
The advertising content is also mainly to show the gameplay. Deliberately showing the failed ending in the video to induce users to download and try it out. The creatives with good effect will be dubbed, and then used for advertising again. The creatives reuse rate is very high.
3.3 “ Catwalk Beauty ”
Compared to “ High Heels! “, released in late April, “ Catwalk Beauty “ is not simply replicated, but with a lot of innovation.
“ Catwalk Beauty “ replaces the traditional collection and stacking elements with dress-up gameplay that is more popular with female players. At the same time, the player’s perspective is also shifted from behind the character to the front of the character, which can better show that the character is “ walking catwalk “. These elements are all shown in the advertising videos, which brings a lot of growth in a short period of time.
The above is “The Way to Advertise Hyper-Casual Games: Fashion, Life, Or Funny, Which Style Is the Most Effective?”, log in App Growing Global now to get more mobile advertising information.
*The above-related advertising creatives are sourced from App Growing Global, which are only used for research and analysis. All Rights Reserved.
