UA Bites #4 — Great Copy Goes a Long Way
Welcome to UA Bites, a series where we analyze the creatives apps and games use to acquire more users, and catalyst growth.
We’re taking ad creatives under the microscope to understand what works and what doesn’t when it comes to paid performance.
1. Remente: Self Help & Wellbeing
Overall it’s a good idea and could be a well-performing concept however it might need a bit of fine-tuning.
First off, at the very beginning of the video, it refers to 2020 which we obviously passed already. I’ve seen it numerous times that advertisers simply forget the ad is no longer relevant and they keep running them.
This is something, one can solve quickly: if it’s a good performer then simply create a new ad updated & refreshed and test — it will likely be a good performer too.
As I said, the concept is great: it contains several elements of the product. But you somehow get the feeling that it’s just too fast-paced for this type of content and you don’t really have time to consume any of it as a viewer.
Here’s what I’d do: I’d create a slightly longer version & insert the woman’s voice when speaking. Definitely worth testing!
2. Emjoy — Stories & Wellness
Emjoy running this on Unity and I gotta tell you it’s some pretty powerful stuff. The script (on screen) says it all, really.
As far as the graphic goes, it wasn’t necessarily clear for me in terms of meaning at first. BUT this is a short video (only 5 sec or so) and well, in that 5secs I’m pretty sure you’re gonna only pay attention to the script as that one really got meaning.
One more thing I noticed is that they don’t use the official Store Badges at the bottom half of the creative which I highly recommend to change. The official ones can be found here: for Google Play & App Store.
Overall, great stuff!
3. Rise: Sleep & Energy Tracker
Rise ran this on YouTube recently. Though I couldn’t find their YouTube channel, it’s possible they promoted this one on a player’s (hence @Striped) channel.
Obviously, they’re targeting other gamers with a quite well-targeted pain point they certainly have. It all gets the feeling of typical gamer content so it blends in well.
Pretty low product costs and really can speak to Gen Z with all the graphics.
Not sure about its performance though but great idea overall. If it’s a winner, I’d test a lot more like this on other channels too.
4. Hapi: Talk, Vent, Be Happy
I like this one as it’s simple but still can do the job. Brands usually use graphic designs in their creative materials when the product itself heavily relies on graphics.
I’ve seen this work like a charm a couple of times for apps with a spectacular UI/UX. The key here is to offer the same experience as in the app.
Otherwise, ads like these are just going to fade.
Getting back to the creative, it’s a nice design — colors and background show the overall emotions of the person.
Showing a button on the imagery is quite thin ice but completely do-able. Facebook says do not use non-existent functionality on the imagery (eg. fake search bar, A/B options, etc.). However, you can use buttons if it’s obvious where it will direct.
Nice and simple creative overall.
5. Dr. Kegel: For Men’s Health
This bad boy earned almost 7 Million views for Dr. Kegel on YouTube. Now, calculating with an avg. CPV (Cost-Per-View) that accounts for a hefty 343k USD ad spend over the course of 7+ months. Not bad from one ad, huh?
We usually say to our clients it’s better to start off on Facebook and Google if you haven’t really done any paid User Acquisition in the past. It’s just easier to optimize, figure out your messaging, align value props than on any other channels. Oh, and it’s scalable no matter what industry you’re in.
YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, and others are great for scaling. It’s the time when you’re ready to allocate ad spend and spread it on several different Ad platforms. You already have the core pillars of your communication in place. And now it’s time to explore new platforms.
Seems like Dr. Kegel however made YouTube work for them earlier than Facebook for instance. So well yeah, they proved me wrong. This is the beauty of UA — just about everyone does it slightly differently.
Getting back to the creative — it works great because it seemingly tells a story. BTS (behind the scenes) they outlined a very well put together script that resembles some of the tactics used in Direct Marketing. We love to use these elements too whenever we can.
Quick outline of what they’ve done here:
- Tapping on the biggest pain point
- Supported by scientific stats — giving a sense of credibility
- Offering a solution to their problems
- Intro of their method (that makes the bridge between their Hell and Heaven). Again, scientifically!
- Intro of their product specifically
Notice how time is split between the above outlined sections: Pain point (aka Hell) lasts about 20s, intro of the solution is about 1m 10s and then the last 10s is about the product itself.
It has a low production cost — you will only need a good copywriter on your team and a motion designer. Great job on this one overall!
Tools we used
I did this entire analysis relying on our 21-point Creative Checklist, the same one our team uses every time creating new ads.
If you want to give some tweaks to your ads on your own then go ahead and download our checklist.
If you’d like our direct help planning and implementing these strategies for your app, then click here 👈💰
Also, if you found the information in this article useful, sharing it or giving us a 👏 below really helps us keep producing more content like this. Without the shares, we just couldn’t afford to keep producing free content like this.
