It seems like if what you’re showing is what you understand they find appealing and fun, then surely that’s what should be in the game. You give them that.
But instead, you give them something else that is unrelated to what they’ve seen on the ad? A gem matching candy crush clone they’ve seen a thousand times?
How is that model working? How is that holding up as a marketing technique???
Some of the responses here dance around the truth, but none of them hit the nail on the head. This is a bit of an artifact of how the mobile industry works and the success rate vs profitability vs the way ads work on mobile.
Yes, hands down, this is not an effective advertising strategy. Many of these game companies are very successful so it’s not because they’re stupid. It’s because these ads aren’t advertising campaigns.
These ads are market research. The point isn’t to get you to download their game. At all. The point is to figure out what people will engage with.
These ads are all game ideas. Mobile game ideas are a dime a dozen million. They’re easy to come up with, cost a lot to build, and many don’t monetize well and therefore aren’t profitable. Because of that, it’s very expensive and unsustainable to build games and test them and see what succeeds.
Instead, companies come up with ideas, build a simple video demonstrating the idea, and put up ads with those videos. They then see how many people engage with the ads to determine how many people would even visit the download page for that game. Building a quick video is much much much cheaper than building a game. This is the first step in fast failing their ideas and weeding out bad ones.
Essentially the companies have lots of ideas, build lots of simple videos, advertise them all, and see which ones get enough engagement to be worth pursuing further, while the rest get dropped entirely.
But those ads need to link somewhere. So they link to the companies existing games. Because they’re already paying for it. So why not.
But building a whole new game is also expensive. Dynamics in mobile gaming are very odd because of the way “the algorithm” works. It is actually extremely expensive to get advertising in front of enough people that enough download it that you have any meaningfully large player base to analyze at all.
So the next trick is these companies will take the successful videos, build “mini games” of those ads as a prototype, and then put that in their existing game. This means they can leverage their existing user base to test how much people will engage with the game, and more importantly, eventually test how well it monetizes. Their existing users have already accepted permissions, likely already get push notifications, and often already have their payment info linked to the app. It also means they don’t have to pay for and build up a new store presence to get eyeballs on it. Many of the hurdles of the mobile space have already been crossed by their existing players, and the new ones who clicked the ads have demonstrated interest in the test subject. This is why many of the ads link to seemingly different games that have a small snippet of what you actually clicked on.
If these mini games then become successful enough, they will be made into their own standalone game. But this is extremely rare in mobile. The way the store algorithms and ads work make it pretty fucking expensive to get new games moving, so they really have to prove it to be worthwhile in the long run.
So yeah, most people look at this the wrong way - it does actually go against common sense advertising, but that’s because it’s not actually advertising. It’s essentially the cheapest way for companies to get feedback from people that actually play mobile games about what kinds of games they would play.
It’s not advertising. It’s market analysis.
If true it’s kind of a dumb idea. I downloaded one of these that looked good many years ago, didn’t end up being the game, I deleted it immediately and haven’t clicked on a single one of these since. A few of them even looked like fun concepts but fuck it, it’s probably not real. Seems like their market research is going to be heavily skewed by people once bitten, twice (or forever) shy.
They’re not market researching the gameplay. They’re market researching the visual elements, the animations, the artstyle, the sounds, the indicators…
It’s also illegal (False Advertising)
Is it though? IANAL, but I feel like this is, at the very least, a gray area.
You can’t purchase anything. The ad didn’t say anything except maybe “play now”, and there is a game and it may even contain a mini game of sorts that’s kinda the ad… The “harm” is like 3 seconds of your time. The “product” doesn’t not do what it says because… It doesn’t exist…
I dunno. Maybe it is. I feel like this is one of those things where “we all know it is” but “legally they probably wiggle their way out of the legal definition, and what are people going to do? Sue them for 5$?”
Not that I agree with it, don’t get me wrong. I think we all know it’s fucking scummy bullshit. But I’m not sure you’d win a court case over it and what harm you could argue it caused you etc.
These guys are doing agile better than any team I’ve ever worked with…
Do you think this will eventually poison the well? Eventually if you have the market research data with a really strong positive signal so much so that you actually want to make a standalone game, could you end up with a boy who cried wolf scenario? Like if you try to market your new game that actually has the cool mechanics and features you dreamt up, would you eventually have no one believing it any more?
To be honest, I’m not entirely sure. What I’ve gathered is that while they may be dumping lumps of money at these campaigns over the analysis’ lifetime (like, hundreds of thousands to a few million dollars), they’re not spending nearly as much as they would on the actual released product and it’s lifetime (likely millions or tens of millions). Because of this, even if they do, they’re only “poisoning” a fraction of their end-target player base… The mobile market is fucking huge. And a lot of these companies are gargantuan.
The other thing is I don’t think most people understand what’s really happening. Many people will be like “I clicked an ad and it went to the wrong thing” and move on. They also may not even remember the game by the time it releases. Except for some of the heavily heavily repeated ones. And even if so… Would you try again eventually? If they repackage the same idea in different art assets and theming or names, would you even know?
I think this also points to something else that I’ve thought a bunch about that is semi related… Are they just poisoning mobile game ads in general? Have people run into this so much that they don’t even trust ads anymore? I know that at this point I just generally don’t believe any of them and I click things less than I did before… Are other people following this same trend? Is that aversion uniformly distributed or is it going to start clogging up the data and undermine the actual purpose of these ad streams?
Damn
They’re not wrong, they’re just assholes.
True. Entirely agree.
I never click on these, but I feel like if they made it explicit that this ad is to determine whether this kind of game is wanted, I’d feel much better clicking on it.
Your whole guess is incredibly well written and it’s also entirely wrong. Wanna know why? You’re about to feel really foolish.
You see the picture OP posted? Most will recognise it because regardless of theme (sometimes a long soldier fighting army other times it’s a person against a horde of undead etc) it’s an archetype that many of these ads use (others are the puzzle game with water, the rpg where you outfight or outfuck etc). Those archetypical fake games have been doing the rounds for literal years, some close to a decade. If they were prototypes or seeking audience interest they would exist by now or they would be much more varied. They don’t and they aren’t.
No, what you’re actually seeing is an artifact of the financial rewards a lack of interest and imagination can render if your audience is large enough - these ads aren’t selling the games they portray, they are the central player to a bait and switch strategy to farm people into generic games that harvest clicks, user data and money from the unsuspecting tech ilterate. These ads are not market research because those who publish already know their markets extremely well and they know down to the second what enough of the audience will do when faced with these bait and switch games.
That you attribute such grandiose cleverness to this scam is pretty sad.
Yeah, I don’t feel foolish at all. I’ve explained this in other comments.
In summary:
I’m not claiming literally every instance is exactly what I’m describing, but it is a very common pattern.
Many of these ads are slight variations to test which performs better.
Many of the “which performs better” are run against long standing ads they’ve had to learn about how to advertise. They may never intend to release the games being advertised. They may know the ad does well, but they built a prototype game and it didn’t monetize, so they’ll never finish it or already killed it. But that doesn’t stop them from running the same ad but with a different visual theme to see which visual theme is more popular right now.
Some of these ads are not run by dev studios but by advertisers or publishers.
Markets are not static - interest in themes, visual styles, and game genres are all extremely “seasonal” and keep changing. They do not “know their market extremely well” because interest keeps shifting. Companies will constantly run ads just to gauge what genres they should be thinking about and to track trends over time. IE, they may run the same exact strategy game ad for many years straight to determine the long term stability of strategy games. Without caring about the specific game idea in the ad itself.
I don’t feel foolish, nor do I think it’s “clever”. I just know from first hand experience that this is how the market works.
Now who’s dancing around the point? The same half dozen vertical slices or renders have existed for years so why have exactly 0 been realised as games?
Because they aren’t games they are bait and switch adverts. There’s no market research campaigns and you’ve provided no fucking evidence for your claims at all. Your thesis is bunk and I think so are your claims to be a dev too.
Already covered above. They likely prototyped it and it didn’t monetize well or something so they axed it.
Or they’re neither, and they’re just trying to gauge the market. But sure, you can believe whatever you want.
You haven’t either. You’re just assuming a) the worst and b) something that makes objectively less sense - if your whole premise is they’re advertising something fake, how would this even work as bait and switch if people see that’s not what the ad links to?
And your thesis is “I feel like it’s bait and switch, so it is” and you have no claims of credibility. Nothing I say will prove to you that I’ve worked for some of the largest corporations in the US, so I can’t change your mind.
The ad is for a single player mobile game - it has not been realised and in no way would there be ongoing costs that require it to be axed should a It sell poorly.
Honestly, you’re full of shit and should stop this bs about working in the industry. Here’s what a real mobile advertising company has to say on the matter - note that none of your bullshit is referenced at all.
Can’t find the other comment you made about this anymore, but this is an advertising company that’s helping devs advertise their games, so yeah, it’s not going to talk about advertising non existent apps for market analysis. Instead it talks about twisting games to advertise them with exaggeration and weird hooks to try to convince people to download them… Which is another shitty advertising practice in mobile gaming (yeah, there are a lot of them, shocker) and not really pertinent to the topic/OP.
I also find it funny you left the highlight showing you probably searched exactly for something that proved your point, but it’s listed “exaggeration” in the heading which is entirely different.
The title of the article is literally: “Fake Mobile Game Ads: Why Do Advertisers Use Them?”
It covers many of the methods fake games are used as bait and switch marketing including hyperbole. You would know this if you actually read the article instead you searched for something in it to try and dissuade from the point of the article. If you’re a developer of any experience I’m a billionaire. Keep lying liar.
What are you going on about this is not a hard game to make and it’s been advertised forever now so the market research has been done.
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Incorrect. If you even slow down scrolling to look at the ad you’ve already given them feedback; how long you looked, if you scrolled back after passing it, how long did you look, did the camera track your eye movements/where do you look; did you play the ad’s audio, did you click, did you download, how long did you look for the mini version of the game, did you play the game your downloaded instead; how long, did you delete it afterwards….and once their app is on your phone: who are you, where are you, what apps do you use, how many contacts are in your phone, how often do you text, how often do you. Use data, what is your WiFi called, what websites do you visit, do you have and phone customizations like an enhanced keyboard; based on browser tracking they can get from other companies associated with your tracking profile : age, gender, behavioral analysis as of late.m; favorite shows favorite animals, do you have any pets, do you have children, are you pregnant, how much do you spend a month online or on FB marketplace or Play store or Amazon
And what kind of clues can they sus out based on the million of data points they got JUST BECAUSE YOU SCROLLED PAST AN AD in order for them to make a product that will be directly addictive to you and people like you, in order to extract money from your obsession; to exploit the dopamine backdoor in your monkey brains in order to take the value you generate for yourself and take it for themselves.
Just. Because. You. Scrolled.
For anyone who is wondering, this is why online ads are SO much worse than TV commercials.
Yeah, pretty much this exactly. I can confirm almost everything listed here does get tracked and thrown in the mix, but in some ways it is a little more complicated. For example, eye tracking is a bit tin foil hat, but I’m sure some companies go that far.
For most game devs, the rabbit hole isn’t that deep because of ad mediation networks.
For example, most company posting the ads really only see “how many people saw my ad” and “how many people clicked my ad” and “how many people downloaded the game after clicking”. They often also have a say in “target demographics” etc but the data they get back usually doesn’t dig much deeper unless they build tracking of your in game behavior etc. That’s not to say the other stuff isn’t tracked, but most of the other bits are not tracked by them. T
This stuff is all outsourced. There are entire advertising networks built around this stuff. Google has their own. Facebook has one. Unity has one. And there are plenty of others. Those companies are definitely looking more closely at things like individual user behavior and which ads get interaction etc and then make profiles of their users and decide what ads to serve them next based on their behavior with the ads they’ve been shown.
And because this is such a huge industry, there are then mediation networks built on top of that. Things like AppLovin/Ironsource and AdMob then build “mediators” that hook into advertising networks so that a game dev just asks to show a video ad, the mediator software asks all the advertising networks to bid on a the opportunity, and then it sells the game devs slot to the highest bidder. And THESE pieces of software are also tracking how the player interacts in order to justify their own pricing on the slots.
This shit is literally a fucking behemoth. Unity made a huge acquisition/merger with IronSource who’s sole purpose is to bid out advertising slots. They were a multi billion dollar company just playing fucking middle man to other middle men. That’s how insanely large this business is.
This is way worse than TV. It’s way more fine grained. And not only do the advertisers get more data out of you, but these ad brokers get even more data out of you, and then these ad bidding mediators get even more data out of you.
This is why you should install an adblocker on the network as well as your machine + browser & browse with JavaScript in allowlisted mode (enable remote code execution if & only if it is required—which it often is for web apps, but web pages should work without via progressive enhancement).
That’s not true. Ads are covered in tracking data. For every one person who posts a negative review because a game misled them, there are literally tens or hundreds of thousands who clicked on it, saw it was not the same game, and never posted anything. For every one person who clicked, there are literally hundreds or thousands of people who didn’t. And they have all this data.
One data point posting a negative review on a game is much less impactful or meaningful to them then the literally hundreds of thousands of data points telling them whether their idea is going to be downloaded and successful or not. The complaining reviews are tiny drops in the bucket relative to the troves of engagement data they get on the ads being run.