[FB GAME THREAD] What am I doing wrong (20)
Hi Guys,
A little frustration over here. Here's the case. I don't get any of my 4 tested campaigns profitable, and I think its because of the Facebook CTR.
Here's the case. I tried 4 different game campaigns. Talked with my AM about good campaigns and ran those. Tested around with all €100 each.
** Note: Its all in dutch. I wrote some translations for you guys to understand the angle i'm focussing on.
Latest campaign that ran:
Campaign: Desert Operations NL
FB targetting:
I didn't split it in different age groups because the audience was getting to small < 100k.
Tried also different games like Command and Conquer and Battlefield 4 but all of them sucked..
Landingpage design:
URL: http://desertoperations.gamesvanhetjaar.nl/
The focus of the LP is like: Fight and beat the 100.000 other online players. Added some nice features like: At this moment there are currently 100.000 players online, popup with geo things in it. Autplay video.
Right image ads
The numbers below the images is the CTR of the image.
The images got all around 2k reach each.
I tried the blurred background, sharpen, vibrance, hue saturation thing.
I know I have to test more images but 16 images, but not even 1 got around 0,1 or 0,2 CTR. That demotivated me 
News Feed ads:
The copy is like: Do you like to play MMO's? Desert operations is selected to be the best MMO browsergame of the year. We are looking forward what you think of it. Click here and play the game.
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I'm wondering what i'm doing wrong, is it the offer, my angle, my LP, my images?
I love to get some PRO advice 
First thing that jumps out is your targeting - it's much too broad. I've never been able to get something profitable on the broad targeting options. You've also mixed different genres, which makes it really hard to work out whether all of your targeting is wrong, or whether part of your targeting is working but the whole campaign brought down by the other part.
Targeting makes a huge difference for gaming campaigns. The average social browser game player has a completely different attitude to hardcore MMO raiders, and the ads and offers need to reflect that. The broad categories, or even huge games like WoW and Farmville, are really difficult to target because you're going to get a mix of different gamer types. Lots of people have tried games like WoW at some point just because of how famous they are. Targeting specific games and grouping them according to genre makes it much easier to get high CTRs.
Also your images aren't great. Gamers are naturally drawn towards images that are immediately recognizable as a game, especially if it's the type of game they are interested in. In game images, cut outs of units/characters, "fake" GUIs etc have all worked well for me. Sometimes the simplest images work best though.
Besides low ad ctr.. how's your lp ctr?
How about a few questions?
"Welke van de volgende 3 games speel je nog meer?"
"Speel je vaak op je tablet?"
etc.
Result: "Past deze game bij jou? --> 99% ja - 1% nee"
Worth a try.. maybe for later on but still.
Marketing is not about communicating features (e.g. "At this moment there are currently 100.000 players online".)
It is about communicating benefits.
Firstly, Desert Operations sucks - IMO, as a game. However, I did do OK with it in Turkey for a while - but we're talking 0.01 CPC and 0.03-0.05 EPC. So not exactly an $xxxx daily campaign.
For that I hit a counterstrike angle, can't recall what my ad copy was but I used images that are from CS but pretty generic. Any CS player would recognise them. Here are the ones that gave the highest CTR:
Source images - http://imgur.com/ZKHeOqb,phI0KFP,QG5...ca3g,cg9AqYP#0
Your lander looks OK, not sure if the huge red border on the news feed ads is helpful (makes it look kinda spammy). The ad copy misses the mark - I would avoid using any "MMO of the year" type angles as this has been done to death. Gamers don't care. Everything is apparently MMO of 2014. Also, this isn't really a typical MMO and I wouldn't angle it to MMO players - to browser game players maybe, or people who play shooters (e.g. CS) and want something to fill their boredom-ridden downtime that they pad out with Facebook lurking.
As for your lander, focus on why they should play the game. Or be vague and lure them in. Bored gamers don't really care if there are 100,000 people online right now. It's fine to tell them, but it's not a selling point. Does the game let you crush your friends? Engage in real-time combat with people from your city? Can you amass an army and raid oil pipelines or defend the city from a horde of terrorists? Is it easy to sign up? Any download required? Do I create a soldier, a general, an army or do I take command of an outpost?
Digressing...
Irrelevant of audience size, your targeting is far too broad.
18-65+ is too wide. Expect gamers to vary in their response rates to ads and backend conversion rates in segments as tight as 13-17, 18-21, 22-25, 26-30, 31-40, 40-65. I'm not advising splitting that finely in all scenarios but be aware that an 18-21 year old gamer is usually very different to the corresponding 32 year old.
Similarly, your interests are too broad and overlapping. I would target strategy genre games independently. I would also target browser games such as evony, travian, etc. separately. MMOs are the easiest to target - don't just use "Massively Multiplayer...". Target actual games. Aion. Rift. Guild Wars. Tera. Lineage. Runescape. WoW will generally have the biggest audience but I try to target it on it's own if the audience isn't tiny.
Note that even if your audience is small, i.e. 10 k, you can still do well in the news feed.
For this kind of offer I would completely change up your targeting and choose several targeting clusters/angles to test. Hit people who play shitty browser games - easily spotted as those that have done volume through affiliate networks. Evony is the prime example. Travian as well. Here's a short list that might be useful (not sure if every one is ideal but it gets my points across): Blood Wars, The Settlers, Lord of Ultima, Travian Games, OGame, ERepublik, Illyriad, Stronghold Kingdoms, Pardus (browser game), Pirate Galaxy, Evony, War of Legends, official evony page, Cyber Nations, Ikariam, evony bonuses, Travian
Lastly, be careful with your news feed ad images - they technically should be <20% text by area. The second one is likely non-compliant on those grounds (logo text counts). Hasn't been much of a problem for me but occasionally one will get blocked and the image hash gets blacklisted. Too much text is non-ideal anyway - from an advertising point of view. Gamers are visual creatures.
Ad copy hint: learn the lingo for a particular game and slide it in. E.g. find out what terms CS gamers use and throw those in there if hitting a CS angle.
Try using Sex Angle. A chick upside down. Similar to Hot coffee mode. I am running a ad on Facebook.
Targetting GTA Hardcore Fans:
Ad : Better than Hot Coffee Mode
Now, anyone who played GTA knows what i am taking about. I promote Adult Dating for a while and doing gaming now. But there is no thing as sex mode in that game. But still its converting like crazy. I have yet to receive advertiser's complaint. Campaign is only $x,xxx. Can't even scam it to 10K.
Soldier fucking chick is also good one.
THX zeno for your reply ... I can adopt almost everything for my mobile gaming campainges that are showing really bad numbers @the mom
Back when I used to push gaming heavily with Adotomi, shooting other players images worked best. The "Better than CounterStrike" stuff works but they will harass you.
Originally Posted by zeno
I think a lot of people overlook "vague" with their campaigns...
Being vague can definitely spark the right interested or at least enough to make them sign-up.
Same counts for so many other niches.
Reminds me of the marketing that was done for the shitty movie: Paranormal Activity, the entire trailer and movie posters where just a few lines of text which showed pretty much nothing about the movie except for it being horror.
Yet everyone around me wanted to see it...
I'm not a gamer but if I was I would be interested in the latest game and not something from 2012
Those ctr's are bad, as mentioned.
Did you say how you were bidding? I'd do CPC or Ocpm. Regular CPM is just the worst.
See if removing language targeting helps for reach, it might.
I'd also target younger demo's as well (under 18)- they're generally worse quality for the advertiser, but if you mix them in it usually helps ROI.
Split Browser games from MMO's.
Mixing RTS's and MMO's can be okay, as they are usually somewhat the same sort of gamer.
But a person who plays farmville is usually not the same kind of gamer who plays a Starcraft or Warcraft.
I don't think your targeting is too broad, you just need to work on your angle which encompasses your images and landing page.
Think less gaming, more shocking/interesting.
Why not have sexy gamer girls as the landing page / images? Etc.. Try more angles to icnrease ctr/cvr!
Originally Posted by alexpte
I think I have to do more research on the target audience and maybe get a lower estimated reach
The problem with the images I was facing is that the ingame images are not the best ones.. But i'm going to try to make some and test.
Sometimes the simplest images work best though. Didn't try that one yet, but definitely going to do!
Originally Posted by h0mp
Originally Posted by cmdeal
Originally Posted by zeno
For that I hit a counterstrike angle, can't recall what my ad copy was but I used images that are from CS but pretty generic. Any CS player would recognise them. Here are the ones that gave the highest CTR:
Source images - http://imgur.com/ZKHeOqb,phI0KFP,QG5...ca3g,cg9AqYP#0
Your lander looks OK, not sure if the huge red border on the news feed ads is helpful (makes it look kinda spammy). The ad copy misses the mark - I would avoid using any "MMO of the year" type angles as this has been done to death. Gamers don't care. Everything is apparently MMO of 2014. Also, this isn't really a typical MMO and I wouldn't angle it to MMO players - to browser game players maybe, or people who play shooters (e.g. CS) and want something to fill their boredom-ridden downtime that they pad out with Facebook lurking.
As for your lander, focus on why they should play the game. Or be vague and lure them in. Bored gamers don't really care if there are 100,000 people online right now. It's fine to tell them, but it's not a selling point. Does the game let you crush your friends? Engage in real-time combat with people from your city? Can you amass an army and raid oil pipelines or defend the city from a horde of terrorists? Is it easy to sign up? Any download required? Do I create a soldier, a general, an army or do I take command of an outpost?
Digressing...
Irrelevant of audience size, your targeting is far too broad.
Similarly, your interests are too broad and overlapping. I would target strategy genre games independently. I would also target browser games such as evony, travian, etc. separately. MMOs are the easiest to target - don't just use "Massively Multiplayer...". Target actual games. Aion. Rift. Guild Wars. Tera. Lineage. Runescape. WoW will generally have the biggest audience but I try to target it on it's own if the audience isn't tiny.
Note that even if your audience is small, i.e. 10 k, you can still do well in the news feed.
For this kind of offer I would completely change up your targeting and choose several targeting clusters/angles to test. Hit people who play shitty browser games - easily spotted as those that have done volume through affiliate networks. Evony is the prime example. Travian as well. Here's a short list that might be useful (not sure if every one is ideal but it gets my points across): Blood Wars, The Settlers, Lord of Ultima, Travian Games, OGame, ERepublik, Illyriad, Stronghold Kingdoms, Pardus (browser game), Pirate Galaxy, Evony, War of Legends, official evony page, Cyber Nations, Ikariam, evony bonuses, Travian
Ad copy hint: learn the lingo for a particular game and slide it in. E.g. find out what terms CS gamers use and throw those in there if hitting a CS angle.
I would avoid using any "MMO of the year" type angles as this has been done to death Got it! You're totally right ;-)
As for your lander, focus on why they should play the game Definitely going to adapt that on my new landers and campaigns.
Hit people who play shitty browser games Why choose those players? Because they are already familiar with browser games and maybe want to try something new?
Ad copy hint: learn the lingo for a particular game and slide it in. E.g. find out what terms CS gamers use and throw those in there if hitting a CS angle. Love this one! ;-)
Originally Posted by pain2k
Originally Posted by mvaneijk
Originally Posted by dingdong
Originally Posted by radgzc
See if removing language targeting helps for reach, it might. Worth a try, but I have my concerns. In the Netherlands there alot of people (specialy the big cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Maastricht, Utrecht where alot of people from other countries are living. For those people the dutch language is pretty hard to understand so I thought it will drop my CTR. But my CTR sucks anyway, so worth to test that!
Originally Posted by stackman
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So, all thanks for your comments! Just love it and gives me some nice insights to test different angles.
What i'm going to do is: Search where the MMO / browser people hang out, search for different kind of game genres around, target more specific and test different angles.
This offer isn't that great in general. I would ditch Desert Operations, it's a waste of time. Western European countries are good for gaming. Out of many offers I tested Desert Operations is one of the worst.
Originally Posted by cmdeal
Originally Posted by mikeyboy
Most F2P browser games and MMOs look crap. No offense to the developers, but they are often clunky, have a horrible UI and graphics and are often cluttered with so much Freemium it makes your eyes hurt.
So, if people already play these types of games you at least know that they can put up with this and may be willing to try out another game from a similar vein.
For the people who run gaming, have you found that your offers convert better with an LP or going direct to offer?
Depends on the angle.
Test both, but I think gaming niche needs landers less than others, at least imo.
Ideally the advertiser has a pimpin lander that converts for you but this is not always the case (always split test advertiser landers if available).
As radgzc said it really depends... no rule of thumb, some angles/demos/offers do better with a lander, some don't.
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