Explore a new world: Games on Facebook (15)
We have just opened another follow along (LINK), and we will still running also that vertical with our 2 employees, but we want to explore the Game vertical on Facebook.
Why?
- I have a solid experience with Facebook (we runned mobile pin submit offers with huge volumes, $4k/day for several months)
- I need a white hat vertical
What?
- mainly desktop MMORPG offers
- in case mobile CPI offers. Not sure about them, is it possible to make profit on Facebook or the CPA is too low to be used on this traffic source?
Network
We will use these networks:
- Affiliaxe
- Glispa
- iQU
- AD4game
We are still waiting for the approval for the last 2 networks. So if someone has a skype contact, feel free to send me a PM. Thanks 
Tools
-
- Adsvantage to spy on FB
Mastermind
If there is some people that is running this vertical, and want to mastermind it, feel free to send to me a PM. To be honest i'm noob with this vertical, but i have a solid experience in AM and Facebook.
At the moment i'm making a lot of research to choose some game offers. I'm using Adsvantage, but i'm not able to find a lot of ads, i guess it's not easy to spy on Facebook. I only found ads from the game owners.
Quick Update:
- offer chosen
- created 7 angles, 3 images each ones (game play and images from the media pack of the game)
- created different groups of similar games, in order to use different audiences
I decided to start from SE/NO/FI as geo's because i guess i can use English language instead of the native language.
At the moment i have spent around 30€ with a -75% roi (5 conversions, the conversions rate seems to be pretty good, around 10% The main problem is the Cost per click, i'm paying around 0,5€) This is my first game campaign, so i have some questions, hoping someone could help me
Using a tool, i'm able to create an infinite number of adset in a few minutes, combining different parameter (e.g. interests, age range and so on). So i created 48 adsets according to:
- 3 countries (Sweden, Finland, Norway)
- 4 Age range (15-18, 19-22, 23-26, 27-30, 31-34)
- 4 Audiences (groups of similar games, or other interest using the audience insight tool)
Unfortunately, these countries aren't too big, so each adsets has around 20k potential people. So the first question is:
1. Should i use bigger adset?
If i want to test 7 angles, i need to create 48 * 7 = 336 adsets. It's not a big deal to do it, and to managed it, because i'm using a tool that makes life easier. My concern is about the simple size. If each adset has around 20k people, and i want to test all the angles, i will take a lot of days to collect a decent amount of impressions.
Other questions:
2. Which campaign object do you suggest?
At the moment i'm using the "click on website" object (optimized by click cost). For other verticals, i often used the page post engagement object (selecting the max cpc i wanted to pay, where clic isn't necessary a click on website), but 2 days ago facebook modified some campaign objects and this option seems to have disappeared.
3. Is it possible to creare a Facebook Page with the name of the Game, or is there some copyright problems? Do you suggest to use a Page with the name of the Game, or a Generic name (e.g. "Best Games" ) in order to use it for other offers?
Thanks
v1r4l4adv, I am a bit of a noob but I can address half of point 3.
You can easily create a different page for each campaign, just go to Business settings > Pages > Add new page - you are then prompted to either claim a page or make a new one then to choose a category. I choose Brand/Product but I don't think it much matters, unless someone knows different.
For the page title you are unlikely to get an exact match for the game as it is likely taken by the company itself so I put a variation such as 'Play World of Tanks' or something similar. As to whether this is a better method than just having a generic name, I don't know because I don't have any hard data. I would imagine it looks more professional, hence why I do it but I have not done a split test on it yet, (although that would be interesting.)
Matt
My 2cents on FB ads, especially having experience running on low audience size.
20k is really low, and with a low audience size, (I'm guessing you're already aware) the CPM is going to go through the roof. It wouldn't be a problem if the epc is justifiable, but since you mentioned your CPC is high and causing some issues, this might be something you want to look at.
Not sure on your niche etc, but try testing targeting a much bigger audience size for a new adset, and see if the CPM/CPC goes down or not. If it does, you can try tweaking according from there.
Although people in the mentioned GEOs have good English, I would still recommend using native languages.
As you are looking to maximize your ROI, the language is an important factor to take in mind. Can get you a higher CR and also (and just as important) higher quality of leads.
Suggestion: rather than launching tons of campaigns with a single offer, I'd recommend taking your best guess on angle and audience for the offer, and launching a few campaigns with it - one in each geo, say.
The biggest moving part in all this will be your chosen offer - check if it's displaying promising numbers of conversions on a small test before you commit to something massive.
If the offer turns out to be a dud, it's better to find that out first.
(Obviously, if this is an offer you've run before and know is good, the above does not apply.)
Thanks to all for the tips
Originally Posted by caurmen
thank you. Your tip is reasonable but i have a question. What do you mean exactly with "displaying promising number" ? For example, this offer seems to have a 7-10% conversion rates (simple size: 10 conversions), our main problem is about the ads: we are paying around 0,5$/click so the overall ROI is around -75%. I guess these are promising numbers, aren't they?
So we decided to split test a lot of audiences to find the ones with a lower cpc:
- split testing different angles and images
- using the native languages (in the initial test we used the English language)
- testing also the right side ads (at the moment we have used only the news feeds)
in order to see if there is any improvement.
@v1r4l4adv - normally when I say "promising" I mean "converts at all". -70% is a lot better than that, obviously, but it's still not quite as good as I'd hope to see from an offer I was testing.
I'd recommend running a few more campaigns - if you're seeing -30% or -40% ROIs then it's worth persisting. If you can't get above -70% after three or four other tests then I'd recommend moving on to another offer unless you KNOW this one is being run at massive volume on the same traffic source, on a network you have access to, by other people.
Here we go again 
Yesterday we started promoting ELOA on FB and more specifically on Germany, by creating two different kinds of campaigns: the first one had the bidding optimized on impressions, the second one on clicks. Both are labeled as "outside traffic".
The first one went way better, but despite having six conversions on that one (CPA 1.78 $) we feel like our CPC on the website link is way too high, since it's close to 1 € 
It's worth noting that (as previously said) on scandinavian countries the CPC was around 0.5 $, so still way too high but not with this proportion.
The good news is that the offer seems to convert resonably well. Despite having a small sample size, on average we convert around 10% of people clicking on the website link. Because of this, as for now we are only using a direct link.
Going more in depth about this test, we selected 5 different groups based on 5 different related gaming interests (like WoW, anime etc.), and then we divided each group in 4 different age groups (14-17/18-24/25-29/30-34), selecting only men.
Then we ran some angles with 3 different images per angle, both in the newsfeed and in the RHS. Below you can see the screenshots of some ads used:
In this particular case, the english copy is:
(Title) "The most powerful class on MMORPGs has been revealed!"
(Text over the image) "Meet the unstoppable Elite Lord Psychics of ELOA."
(Description) "Elite Lord Of Alliance it's a new Hack'n'Slash with an exclusive Triple Action feature."
So, we already though that these ads were a bit "flat", not standing out enough in the newsfeed of a gaming guy, who most likely has a lot of similar images showed on his screen, not only from the ads but also from gaming websites and such.
Do you think those kind of ads are way too bad/standard to work and we should change it completely or not?
Our questions are:
1) Which should be our realistic aimed CPC in a GEO such as Germany?
1b) Is it a CPA of 1.78 $ too low for this kind of offer in this GEO?
2) Which are your general thoughts on these two bidding models? There is one that you choose regardless of the offer based on your previous experience, or it's too GEO/offer dependant to say? Do you have any "favourite"?
3) Newsfeed vs RHS. The CTR of the first group of ads is obviously much higher and so are the conversions, but so is the cost unsurprisingly. As said before, you test both and then decide, or you have some general preference from this point of view?
Of course any suggestion and critic is more than welcome as usual.
We still believe that this product has potential (even though we are not sure to be able to "beat the market" in Germany) so we will keep on testing it. Since our CPC is so high, we feel like this is definitely the first thing to fix
P.
Alright, alright, alright!
We took some other test in the last few days: short long story, it didn't end well
Basically we tried again on FB two different offers:
1) ELOA on Germany (desktop MMO game)
2) MU Origin in Thailand and Vietnam (CPI MMO game)
Looking at numbers of the first test we already mentioned of ELOA, we noticed that 6 out of 7 conversions came from a single group of interests, for a promising ROI of -56%, but with a low spending. Knowing that in these situations numbers need to be more consistent in order to be meaningful, we tried another test targeting only that group. Although the CPC decreased significantly (dropping at around 0.6 €) we had a lower CVR than expected, meaning that at least for this GEO we feel like it's unlikely for us to be profitable with this offer. Below, one of the best performing ads: we are likely to give one last shot to this offer in another GEO.
Meanwhile, as already mentioned we tried MU Origin, and there we failed for a different reason: we had a pretty high CTR and a promising CPC, but unfortunately we had basically no conversions, both in Thailand and in Vietnam, which was quite disappointing to be honest.
We messed up with the targeted audiences? The game is already too popular there? I guess in similar cases there is not only one reason to explain such a poor result, however we had no choices but to let it go, despite thinking that the offer had potential before the test.
Anyway, we still have to clearly understand how to get a decent CPC: we feel like we should try something pretty different when it comes to the kind of images and posts we promote, but we don't know exactly what/how. Other than that, we are not sure which is the best bidding model we should use to reach this goal.
As usual, any hint is appreciated
P.
Hi Christian,
Nice follow along, what sort of ad ctrs are you getting at the moment? I was thinking about trying a nordic sweeps campaign on FB, but not at $0.5 cpc
Have you tried using angles that challenge gamer's competitive nature?
1) Thousand's of players are fighting for Victory! Try Your Luck!
2) This Game Was Designed To Defeat Players! Can You Overcome?
3) Terrible creatures have escaped in the World of Azelol - Will you dare to fight them?
Hello there!
In the newsfeed the CTR in Germany was around 2-3%, while it was higher in Thailand, reaching 3-5%. Different story for the RHS, where in Germany it was an embarassing 0.2% or lower (depending on the targeted group).
As for the angles, we started with some generic ones (such as "The most powerful class on MMORPGs has been revealed!" as a title, and then in the same post "Meet the unstoppable Elite Lord Psychics of ELOA"), and then in our second test (since we were targetting the "anime" group, which was the best performer in Germany in the first test) we tried something more specific, like for instance: "The anime MMORPG everyone went nuts for in Asia" and then in the same post "ELOA is the #1 MMO in Korea and Japan").
We prepared many different angles, even similar to the ones that you mentioned, but we aimed to test it for different groups of interest then the anime one.
In Thailand and Vietnam the angles where something like: "Will you be a warlock, an elf or a warrior? - Choose your hero and make it invincible - MU brings you in a world where only the strongest survives" or "You may be the only one not playing MU Origin (yet) - If you are looking for a new MMORPG, look no further - A spectacular game directly on your smartphone".
As already mentioned I suspect that the images we used so far were all a bit too "mainstream" to really stand out: we will try something a bit different today and see what happens. Here you can see a couple of other ones we used.
Today we will launch a new campaign for ELOA in at least another GEO, while I think we will not try again MU Origin, since the non-existent CVR despite a pretty high CTR in both Thailand and Vietnam was a bit of a mistery for us.
P.
We weren't able to launch our campaigns yesterday because FB decided so
We had a similar problem last year with another vertical always during this period. We think it's because everyone wants to launch campaigns when Christmas it's approaching, and so our priority becomes low (the account we are using it's pretty new). Anyone experienced similar issues?
Anyway, we will see if today we will be more lucky from that point of view
P.
Cool Follow Along, looking forward to the next update!
Originally Posted by v1r4l4adv
Home > Facebook & Instagram > Follow-along Campaigns