Tencent Advertising Game Preferred Program Helps Developers "Make It to the Top" with Frequent Pop-ups

During the National Day of 2020, Tencent Advertising Game Preferred Program (Game Preferred for short) signed a game called "Internet Cafe Simulator", which was ranked TOP1 on the iOS free list, and its cumulative water flow has already exceeded 100 million so far.

During the past New Year's Day, Game Preferred has achieved great results on the App side and the small game side: on the App side, Game Preferred's contracted game I Want to Go to the Toilet has stayed in the TOP4 of the iOS free game list for three consecutive days; the ranking of You Come Over Here, which entered the iOS list on December 30th, has risen from more than 900 to 25 within three days; on the WeChat side of the small game side, the genuine IP-authorized small game The plant tower defense zombies" and placed small game "three all-stars" have reached the high point of advertising revenue flow, on-line more than a year of "animal restaurant" cumulative flow of more than 200 million.

I. Plowing into the simulation management category, "I want to go to the toilet" has become a hit in the beginning of the year

In IAA games, simulation management category has relatively moderate playing experience, user stickiness and high cash flow efficiency. Based on this insight, GameUp has continued to work hard on simulation and management casual games. During the New Year's Day period, the simulation game "I want to go to the toilet" signed by Game Preferred occupied a high position in the list for several days, and its incentive video cash eCPM in iOS was close to 400 RMB.

1. Selection of products and projects: Starting from the target users, we chose the popular and life-oriented theme of "sense of experience"

In order to expand the scope of the game audience, GameUp and the developers chose the popular and life-oriented theme of "Toilet" to attract more pan-game people and attract more people. In addition, the game adopts a colorful LowPoly art style, combined with a numerical value-heavy, medium-strategy, and light-operation simulation experience, which is more conducive to improving players' immersion.

With the theme of extensive personal experience and light, easy-to-use gameplay, I want to go to the toilet in the ROI test phase of CPA performance reached the same period of the test game Top 3, natural user incremental accounted for nearly 50% at one time.

2, game tuning: user feedback and data analysis combined, there is retention before commercialization

_Art tuning

Game Preferred found that when analyzing the game's art sensory experience, I want to go to the toilet's visual feedback related to the initial construction and upgrading process was weak. Subsequently, both teams made several rounds of targeted adjustments to the structure and visual style of the UI to improve the overall adaptability of the game, which in turn significantly enhanced the game's sensory experience.

Six iterations, from the initial version to the final version of the architectural upgrade interface

_Retention tuning

Game Preferences has continuously tuned several key aspects of I Want to Go to the Bathroom, so as to grasp the pace of the game's exploration, and to enable players to constantly establish new goals and increase their willingness to continue playing.

①Newbie guide optimization

In the newbie guide, the design of masking shadows attracts players to focus on key information, and with the camera switching allows players to understand the core revenue scenarios, which helps players to quickly complete the core cycle from establishing values to numerical output. After several task tuning, the overall newbie guide pass rate is maintained at more than 95%.

The bottom left corner of the guidance task

②Enhance the sense of purpose of the game

In the game evolution logic, the game through the setting of new scenes and new content to continue to increase the interest of players to explore, for example, set up a 24 hours after the opening of the special area "hot dog store", with the hot dog store revenue description, enhance the player's sense of purpose, make the hot dog store, the player's sense of purpose, so that the player's income is not only the best, but also the best. For example, a special area called "Hot Dog Shop" which opens after 24 hours, together with a description of the benefits of the Hot Dog Shop, has increased players' sense of purpose and boosted their retention to over 50%.

The game also features a starred alert on the main screen, "Preview of the next map", which, combined with different color schemes in the new scenes and an endless stream of special events, keeps players fresh and brings a new 7-day retention rate of 14% to the game.

③Increase interesting content

The addition of a large number of interesting and interactive content gives "I Want to Go to the Bathroom" a more differentiated and fresh experience. For example, the game incorporates emerging elements such as "Netflix" and party gimmicks, adds a large number of unexpected character interaction tasks, and adds fun eggs in the scene buildings.

The continuous addition of these fun elements ultimately resulted in more than 60% of users participating in the game's special events. The exposure ratio of "Netflix earnings" reached 33.86%, becoming the incentive video point with the highest exposure ratio in the game.

"Netflix Profits" Scene

_Commercialization Tuning

Game Preferred takes players' core demand for numerical growth as a breakthrough, and attracts users with "faster profits" and "more profits". Get more revenue" to attract users to click on advertisements, and through special event scenes in the game, "Netflix revenue", "double rewards", "more guests" and "more guests" are put into the game. The ads are inserted through special event scenarios in the game, taking "Netflix Profit", "Double Reward", "More Guests" and "Guest Acceleration" as the main ad insertion points, with remarkable interactive effects.

In terms of commercialized information display, the game has conducted multiple versions of tests before and after the game to better highlight the timing of ad clicks. For example, the advertisement scene was placed in the upper right corner to attract players' attention, and the revenue was clearly informed in the advertisement interface to stimulate players to actively watch the incentive video. In the end, the iOS version of the incentivized video ads were shown more than 20 times per capita.

Comparison of advertising revenue (version 1, 2 and 3)

3. All-area placement: output materials and targeting with a scientific program to quickly explode the volume

While working with developers to polish the game's content, Game Preferred also creates a full flow of fine-tuned placement solutions within Tencent's advertising ecosystem based on the game's marketing differences at different stages, helping the game to reach the top of the charts.

Taking the optimization of materials as an example, Gaming Preferred combines the characteristics of the game with the exploration of the differentiated behaviors of the target group to optimize the direction of creativity and materials.

On the material creativity of "I want to go to the toilet", the game preferred to use the "growth" material of simulation management, such as "the comparison of the results of toilet management" and "the business is booming after upgrading the old and dilapidated toilets". "material as the main force to bring the amount of material, with the "toilet business after the closure of help" and other strong sense of immersion material as a supplement,*** output more than a hundred sets of material to help the game to quickly increase the amount of the game, and ultimately in the game at the same time as the amount of the game, but also to ensure a higher performance of the user eCPM, for the commercialization of the game to provide a key foundation.

Second, a number of game growth breakthrough, the game preferred layout of the multi-category track

1, multi-category track in tandem with the good results

In the simulation category continue to create good results at the same time, the game preferred project of small and medium-sized games are also actively exploring other breakthrough opportunities in niche categories, and to promote the WeChat small game in a number of categories of the track to achieve good results.

Taking the Three Kingdoms-themed tower defense game "You Come Here" as an example, it has made a breakthrough in adopting the synchronized launch of the App and WeChat small game versions to realize the virtuous cycle of dual-end linkage and mutual guidance of users.

During the game testing and tuning phase, both teams optimized the funnel model and designed an innovative "free VIP system", which increased the game's retention rate from 45% to 55%, and boosted the number of advertisements exposed by 50%.

Through the dual-end traffic diversion and efficient marketing and promotion, the App version of "Come Here" jumped from the 975th to the 25th position on the iOS free game list in just a few days.

Another game, "Three Kingdoms All-Stars", which was launched a short time ago, ranked first on the New Year's Day in terms of water consumption for the same kind of game.

Three Kingdoms All-Stars added the highlight of "drawing blind boxes" to its traditional gameplay by adopting a mixed cash model, and extended the design of new incentive points. During the testing period, Game Preferred focused on the research of precise crowd packs and high conversion materials, and continuously covered high-value crowds from the audience of Three Kingdoms category to the high-cash audience of small games, realizing the ROI of the first day's advertisements to be more than 50%, and laying the foundation for the scale of the game.

Combined with the mixed cash flow characteristics of Three Kingdoms All-Stars, Game Preferred analyzed the characteristics of the paying population in depth, and enhanced the depth of users' payment through several version iterations, so as to enable the game to continuously explore a greater potential for growth in the flow of water.

2. Sub-category placement strategy to boost game growth

Game Preferred, based on the different needs of the game from the testing stage to the scale growth stage, combined with the characteristics of the target users of different categories of small games, gave full play to Tencent's advantage of advertisement coverage of the entire region, explored core crowd targeting in conjunction with the game's characteristics, and combined placements based on different volume release strategies.

During the testing phase of "Come Over Here" and "Three Kingdoms All-Stars", Game Preferences formulated corresponding targeting and traffic strategies based on the "Three Kingdoms-themed" game portraits of the two games to boost the game's volume and stabilize the ARPU value, and explored the core volume materials during the big push.

Taking "Three Kingdoms All-Stars" as an example, by exploring the crowd on the attributes of Three Kingdoms theme, casual ads and high sharing, we put in a combination of the core crowd and the highly active sharing crowd during the promotion period, and realized a new high consumption of the game on a single day.

Currently, on the basis of Tencent Advertising's high-quality traffic resources, Game Preferred has initially explored differentiated placement solutions for games in different categories, helping the game achieve rapid user and scale growth.

In 2020, through close collaboration with developer partners, Game Preferences will, on the one hand, put a number of games such as "Internet Cafe Simulator" and "I Want to Go to the Toilet" on the top of the list, and on the other hand, it is also exploring the potential of the ecosystem of small games, and keeping up with its efforts in the new mode of dual-end development of "App+Small Games".

In terms of platform policy, in 2021, Game Preferences will firmly lay out the casual game track and plan to invest more than 3 billion resources to provide a better development environment for our partners. At the same time, the share policy is more friendly, the highest support for 30% of the water share, and plans to launch a maximum of 1 million prepaid incentives to help developers to improve the realization of income.

In the future, Game Preferred will continue to provide professional services in the whole chain of project selection, game tuning and placement of cash, escorting the layout of casual games for the majority of developers.

Finally, the official release of a colorful egg: game preferred Spring Festival push high-quality game reserves have been opened, and we invite the majority of developer partners to enroll, together to create the next explosion!