Delivered at Casual Connect Tel Aviv 2016 | Partnering with high profile celebrities can do wonders for your mobile User Acquisition strategy. Barak Levanon explains how today's performance driven culture is ideal for this strategy, sharing tips and lessons learned from Plarium's recent partnership with Hollywood actress, Megan Fox.
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Leveraging Mobile User Acquisition with High Profile Celebrities | Barak Levanon
1. Leveraging Mobile User Acquisition
with high profile celebrities
Barak Levanon
Mobile UA Team Leader
2. Who we are
Plarium Global is one of the world’s
fastest growing developers of mobile,
social and web-based games with over
250 million users worldwide
Founded in
2009
HQ in
Israel 8Offices & Development
Studios
Across Europe and the US
3. Everyone has a smartphone!
“U.S. smartphone penetration is now
approaching 80% and finally showing signs of
slowing growth as the market nears
saturation.” – comScore
Most smartphone users download zero
apps per month.
Facebook owns 3 out of the top 4 apps in the
app store!
Apps
UA isn’t getting easier
4. Acquisition chanels don’t change that fast
UA Marketing Mix
35%
35%
25%
5%
Video Social Disaply Search
7. Consumer preference does not exist in mobile games
5,220,000
5,420,000
5,620,000
5,820,000
6,020,000
6,220,000
6,420,000
IGG SUPERCELL
6,250,546
6,296,935
IGG vs. Supercell installs
11. How to choose your celebrity?
Male or Female?
From which industry?
Immersion in the game
Relevant to the game
12. data helps you make the right decision
Emilia Clarke Megan Fox Liam Neeson Jason Statham
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
1.9
55 54
Facebook Subscribers (M)
0
10
20
30
40
19 32
8
23
Google Trends
13. Popularity on a global scale
Emilia Clarke
Megan Fox
Liam Neeson
Jason Statham
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Asia Austrlia E.Europe LATAM Middle
East
N.America Russia &
CIS
South
East Asia
W.Europe
15. why Megan?
She’s massively popular in Europe and the US –
55M subscribers on Facebook, 3.4M on Instagram
She is relevant to our target audience
She is not a newcomer
Relatable Gaming image – she is a gamer herself
She resembles the game’s most popular character, Amelia!
21. Increased volume of installs
CR
Megan Fox Game Play
0
100,000
200,000
300,000
400,000
500,000
600,000
700,000
Feb Mar April May June July Aug Sep Oct
Installs
23. What we have learned
You are not necessarily
targeting your core users -
many were drawn by
Megan Fox, but did not take
to the game in the long run
Target Audience Media Channels
The media is
important as the
celebrity, offline
channels can have a
huge impact (e.g. TV)
The campaign did not have
a significant impact on
Conversion Rate as
expected
Impact
Let’s break the ice questions –
How many advertisers are in the room?
How many ad network/agencies?
How many spend more than 20M on UA?
How many of you feel stuck with their UA efforts?
This is the intro of why celebrities are needed to promote mobile games
The UA isn’t moving that fast. The average game developer who spends more than 20M/year to promote it’s games will probably have the mix that is described in the slide. Channels remain the same, biggest ad networks don’t change
But the competition is getting herded. Game developers are more aggressive to get more installs for their games and for us the
CPI increase in Facebook for US users VK and SF combined by 38% in 1 year.
1. Apple and Google control the app market.
2. They set the rules for how apps will appear and be downloaded from their stores (100MB warning limit for example).
3. With free 2 play games it’s even more difficult for apps to stand out from the crowed – Can you really tell the difference between Lords Mobile and Clash of Clans?
IGG install vs Supercell exhibits just that. IGG apps were released at least a year after Clash of Clan has gain it’s popularity with game play
that was much influenced by the Supercell’s hit.
Mobile games are not brands. They don’t have a legacy of known attributes or emotions that
are associated with them like console games for instance. There are people who play call of duty and will not play counter strike.
It’s hard to find users who will clash of clans but not lords mobile
So we’ve decided to reach out and get somebody to help us promote our games – Megan Fox!
This is an intro that leads to the questions and findings we’ve had along the way on the path – this slides discuss the high level decision we had to take
Once decided on the profile – how do you choose between so many – we went to find data on their popularity . The next slides will compare Kate Upton and Megan Fox across different
data points
This is geo comparison between Kate Upton and Megan fox taken from Google Trends for the past 12 months.
Celebrities popularity is very dynamic. Megan fox popularity has been declining for the past few years but
Prior to the launch 2 major events happen that spiked here popularity – she got a role in the new girl and a leading part in Teenage mutant ninja turtles 2
She’s very popular
Megan has been around for years. Our 25+ male users know her for quite some time and remember her from her movies unlike the latest
More on the next slides – she dropped in popularity but when we aired her she got a lot of coverage from the new girl and Teenage mutant ninja Turtles
That made her less expensive
Explain for 1 minute the process of going and shooting her in LA.
We’ve hired a production and creative agency to help us through the process
The shooting were in LA for one day
and We’ve ended up with more than 1000+ pics and video content to produce 3 video ads.
It took us a month to create the first video and images. It was important for us the she’ll blend in with our creative outline
so our designers took some of our best performing banners to use with our footage.
We’ve decide to put Megan within the tutorial instead of another character we’ve used
Despite the good results, IAP purchase didn’t go up, the quality of the users who saw MF ads was less better than our standard game play ads
This is the intro to the work we’ve done with Megan and key findings from the experience we’ve had
We saw our install volume spike 2X
We got our app featured by Google
Our CVR on Megan ads was up to 30% higher than our usual game play
Despite the good results, IAP purchase didn’t go up, the quality of the users who saw MF ads was less better than our standard game play ads