AppLovin today released its second annual report on Performance-Driven Advertising Trends, highlighting the most successful advertising strategies and trends for 2023. Generative AI shows promise as a creative tool, and effective advertising trends include genre, according to the report. -A bend towards mobile games, creative metaplay, and gamification (even for non-video game products).
SparkLabs, AppLovin's in-house creative team, suggests that generative AI could have a place in ambitious advertising campaigns, making development more efficient and scaling creative work. The team itself has increased its use of generative AI across a variety of workflows.
Jessica Dolan, Creative Director at SparkLabs, said in an interview with GamesBeat: “For SparkLabs, integrating a variety of AI tools into our production workflow has been a game-changer. “These tools have helped us become more efficient at creative concepting, asset creation, and video editing, but we still need a human perspective to determine how to connect with our customers in an authentic way.”
SparkLabs' findings in the report show that Gen AI is best explored on a team basis rather than at an individual creative level. “It’s important to have open discussions about AI tools,” Dolan said. The SparkLabs team encourages you to discover and test new tools that help you unleash your creative potential and streamline production. A great motivator is being able to creatively do things that were previously impossible. Innovation like this is the hallmark of what we do.”
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Successful Advertising Strategies of Last Year
As part of its report, AppLovin also covers trends in successful advertising campaigns over the past year. 2023 will involve 'genre bending', i.e. borrowing gameplay mechanics from other genres to create new material for your own game. AppLovin has also found that gamification of ads drives higher engagement even in ads for non-gaming products.
“It’s important to understand what motivates users,” Jerome Turnball, general manager of games at AppLovin, told GamesBeat. This helps inform how your app can potentially be gamified through interactive, playable ads that serve as a basic description of what the app is. For non-game assets, gamification allows marketers to engage users in fun and non-traditional ways.”
Another strategy that AppLovin reports is effective is metaplay. This is the practice of offering a simplified version of an in-game mechanic in an interactive ad to attract the attention of casual players. These ads have received some criticism for not being fully representative of the product, but Turnball says this criticism doesn't make them less effective.
“What people think about advertising and what they do in response are different. The mobile game ads you see often with metaplay indicate they are effective. Through our ads, we try to talk about the motivation behind playing that game. “How much meta gameplay is used in advertising depends on the complexity of the game.”
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