Video Advertising: Playable Ads 

The last two decades have seen a significant evolution in advertising techniques. Advertisers are doing everything possible to promote their goods and services. The days of being annoyed or frustrated by advertisements are long gone. In order to prevent you from feeling the urge to click on skip or block, marketers are now concentrating on how to make their advertising interesting and engaging. Playable advertisements are one outcome of such efforts.

Mobile ad spending is projected to reach 446.14 billion U.S. dollars in 2024, so it is imperative for marketers to invest in campaigns through which they can ensure maximum customer engagement. Over the past few years, playables have become increasingly popular in mobile gaming and have captured players’ attention. Playable ads, however, are no longer restricted to mobile games! Brands can now easily create and deliver playable ads to hundreds of millions of consumers, particularly in video advertising, thanks to the introduction of new tools and the adoption of playable ads by many social platforms and ad exchanges.

What are Playable Ads?

In order to allow users to “try before they buy,” you must develop an abridged version of your app’s core features. Playable ads permit the users to test out that sample of your app before installing it and ultimately having access to the full experience.

Playable advertisements are frequently linked to mobile game marketing because they develop the interest of the users by allowing them to test the gameplay before downloading it. Other verticals are, however, also coming up with creative ways to profit from really interesting playable ads. For its brand awareness campaigns, Australian fintech company Lendi, for instance, used playable ads on Facebook. The business increased incremental leads by 30% and decreased cost per lead by 66% by creating a playable refinance calculator.

Users may be persuaded to download your app with just a brief glimpse of how it works; this is especially true if you offer in-app purchases and other incentives that can only be redeemed within your app. The average length of these gameplay snippets is under a minute. Your advertisement should feature a call to action (CTA) after the preview concludes to enable the user to click install.

There are primarily two types of Playable Ads:

HTML Playable App

HTML ads recreate a small portion of a mobile game’s gameplay using the game’s assets and HTML code, giving users a very accurate representation of the app’s functionality.

Interactive Videos

The playable advertisement is made possible by combining HTML with the video from the game. Although interactive video ads are simpler to create, they are not always as interesting as HTML ads.

Elements Involved in Playable Ads

Playable ads are premium, content-rich ad units that typically have three main creative components to inform, engage, and motivate consumer behaviour. They are:

Tutorial Prompt

The tutorial prompt utilizes visual cues to show users how to interact with the advertisement. The placement and length of a tutorial should be determined by the video advertisement or style of the game. A long tutorial may quickly lose the user’s interest and lower retention rates. So, it is recommended to keep the tutorial prompt brief, allowing users to, almost immediately, engage with the playable ad.

The Game/Interactive Experience

When it comes to producing playable advertisements, there are many options. The ultimate objective is to deliver an innately interesting and fun experience that encourages user engagement. If the playable is an advertisement for a mobile game, it will typically give viewers a sneak peek of the actual gameplay that lasts anywhere between 15 to 60 seconds.

Despite the fact that each brand’s playable ads will have a different specific objective, they will typically fall into one of the following three categories:

• To grab consumer’s attention
• To push marketing messages
• To encourage CTA.

End Card

The end card, which can be tailored for any brand and campaign type, is the last component of the playable ad experience. The final card typically contains a call to action that encourages the user to take some sort of action, like, clicking on a learn more button, downloading coupons, making a purchase, etc.

What you can achieve with Playable Ads

• Playable ads are beneficial to both publishers and advertisers who have had to reconsider their advertising campaign strategies as a result of ad-blocking technologies and data tracking restrictions.
• Playable advertisements enable the analysis of each in-ad interaction point for performance and behavioral information. As a result, advertisers can now optimize each creative component for even better targeting without having to rely on conventional tracking techniques to gather crucial first-party data.
• Playable ads are a successful way to engage users because they give them the chance to try your app before downloading it. Additionally, users who choose to download your app will know exactly what to anticipate, which will lower churn and uninstall rates. Your audience’s lifetime value (LTV) will increase by luring customers who are likely to stick around longer, giving you better value for every dollar spent on advertising.

In a nutshell

Engagement dictates the shift in trends these days. With the passage of every year, more avenues open up, enabling customer engagement through gamification. Since ads have already been revolutionized in the digital realm, one can only imagine the next iteration and its impact on the industry. Web3 has spread its influence in the last few years and remains one of the most promising interactive ad spaces for brands and publishers. It won’t be long before we see advertisements being placed in a variety of locations with various features and engagement strategies. Until then, we shall surf alongside the trends of every decade, witnessing the paradigm shifts.