Mike Kanarek, General Manager of mobile game consultancy firm Mobile Game Doctor, opened up about some of the secrets in planning mobile game ads.

In a blog post on AppMagic, he explained how important market research was to designing optimal mobile game ads.

“Marketing visuals, videos, and text often get created based on a gut feeling, with little to no research into the target audience, location, competitor’s methods, or market trends”, he says. “This approach can result in a higher budget and lower results, which might discourage the team from investing more time into ad creative in the future. However, when used correctly, this advertisement tool can actually be very helpful”.

He also highlighted the common trend of mobile games having bespoke ads, often with custom animations to sell the game as being a risky move, due to the cost of producing the ads.

“If you can’t afford it, despite its proven success for competitors, you’ll need to identify other strategies. This requires a broad view of the entire genre”, he says.

While Kanarek stressed the importance of keeping up with your competitors, he also highlighted the downsides of simply trying to mimic what works.

“I’d say, first of all, cloning ads is still a bit of a gray zone. Studios often mimic successful ads when conducting competitive ad analysis. It’s a decent strategy as long as the quality matches or surpasses the original. However, be prepared to compete in a bidding war with the original ad’s creator, since you’re targeting the same game audience via the same channels”.

Mobile game ads are practically their own ecosystem when it comes to the greater industry- the many methods used by developers to gain attention is often discussed online when an ad goes viral.