Marketers Nikita Okan and Margarita Nikolaeva, who participated in the promotion of Hustle Castle, Zero City, Tacticool, Love Sick and many other games, prepared an ultimatum guide for setting up advertising campaigns on Facebook. It concerns both the preparation of UA purchases at the early stages, and working with traffic at the global launch of the game.

Nikita Okan and Margarita Nikolaeva

This article is suitable for those who purchase traffic for games with IAP monetization. At the end, you can find a glossary, as the text uses many terms from the field of traffic procurement.

Outline of the article:

  • 1. Preparation for the purchase of traffic
  • 1.1 Technical integration for tracking and analysis of results
  • 1.2 Naming of advertising campaigns
  • 1.3 Ads Reporting — basic report
  • 1.4 Initial preparation of creatives
  • 1.5 Technical procurement
  • 2. Soft launch
  • 2.1 Test of creatives
  • 2.2 Retention test
  • 2.3 Monetization test
  • 3. Go global
  • 3.1 Main guidelines for the evaluation of procurement
  • 3.2 Basic Campaign Settings
  • 3.3 Tips for better purchasing
  • 3.4 Main campaigns for games
  • 4. Glossary

1. Preparation for the purchase of traffic

1.1 Technical integration for tracking and analysis of results

1. Register the application using this link.

Create an application and add the necessary information. Make sure you have accepted the Advanced Mobile App Measurement Agreement.

2. Decide on the way to transfer data to Facebook.

There are three of them in total:

  • receiving events automatically via the Facebook SDK;
  • receiving events via the traffic tracking service (Appsflyer, Adjust);
  • transfer of events manually from the client.

The best way is to implement the third option, and you need to understand that it is important not only to transfer the event, but also to check it, for example, to verify the payment. If you implement a scheme for verifying payments through the server and sending an event to Facebook from the client, then you control the entire process yourself and do not depend on third-party services.

If you do not want to implement this approach, then you can try the second option, but you will have to pay for it. If the second one does not fit, then the first option remains, but then payments from cheaters / testers can get into the statistics.

3. Determine the services for data collection, purchase and product analysis.

It is very important to do this from the very beginning, because if you decide later, then all the old users for some new SDK (service) they will be considered new, then you will not be able to properly analyze the purchase and the product and, as a result, make decisions on changes /improvements.

There are many analytics and tracking schemes for applications, and different market professionals have different preferences. We will describe our own version for marketing needs and initial product needs.

Basic SDK and Tools

Facebook — Facebook collects data for Facebook Analytics, Facebook Ads.

Firebase — collects data for Google (many features are available in Google Ads only with Firebase integration) and helps to conduct product A/B tests.

dev2dev — collects internal data with all gaming events, helps to quickly view product funnels, upload something specific via MySQL and has convenient pre-configured dashboards.

AppsFlyer is a paid tracker of exclusive sources such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat. It is worth integrating initially, but connecting to sources after you realize that you can scale the project.

myTracker is a tracking and analytics system, and it is absolutely free, very flexible and convenient for evaluating purchases. There are their own revenue forecasts in-app, adv, subscription. Other services have similar features that cost a lot of money, but here everything is free.

LTV Engine is a tool that allows you to quickly predict LTV, calculate target payback metrics for traffic purchases and build a business plan.

It is also necessary to initially integrate advertising mediation. Many people in the market have their own preferences, but we recommend connecting ironSource. Its important advantage is that IS sends data to the user: this allows you to quickly analyze efficiency and forecast revenue. There is a simple integration with myTracker.

1.2 Naming of advertising campaigns

Before launching campaigns, decide on naming, this will help in the future, when it will be necessary to quickly find certain campaigns and understand what worked and how.

The standard approach in Facebook:

  • Campaign — platform_geo_auditory_optimization_data
  • Adset platform_geo_auditory_optimization_data_name of the creative (something else unique, if necessary)
  • Creative — the unique name of the creative
  • Example: iOS_US_lal1-5%_AEO_20.10

1.3 Ads Reporting — basic report

A report should be prepared to evaluate advertising campaigns. Facebook has a handy Ads Reporting tool. A template should be assembled in it to make a daily assessment.

The basic report consists of two blocks — evaluation of the advertising funnel and evaluation of effectiveness.

Basic breakdown: campaigns, days.

Advertising funnel metrics: Impressions, CTR (Link Click-Through Rate), CR (custom metric: Mobile App installs / Link clicks), IR (custom metric: Mobile App Installs / Impressions), App Installs, CPI, CPM, Frequency.

We evaluate the overall dynamics and efficiency by the following indicators: creatives, store, the overall effectiveness of the funnel by IR, how expensive the audience is redeemed by CPM, whether advertising is shown too often to the same audience.

Performance metrics: Purchases, Unique Purchases, Cost per Purchases, Cost per Unique Purchases, ROAS, Amount Spent.

We estimate the volume of events (purchases), whether we are satisfied with the cost, which ROAS we go to according to the effective payback funnel.

We always remember how many days have passed since the day of the purchase of players, because the events are accumulating and the ROAS is changing.

Additional (but not mandatory) reports

If the project has a small purchase budget (up to $ 15,000 per month) and it is important to reach payback on small volumes as soon as possible, it is worth paying attention to two types of reports.

The first report is built for a period broken down by gender and age. It will help answer questions such as: who installs my game the most, who pays the most, are the same people, should I redistribute traffic to the paying segment.

The second report is being prepared with a breakdown by platforms and by placements. He answers the questions: which placement gets a lot of impressions, but does not give enough payments. Here it is sometimes useful to add a section by days or weeks to track the dynamics of traffic distribution by placements.

If the project is planned to be spent on spending volumes of $ 100 thousand per month, it is better to purchase from the very beginning for a wide audience so that the metrics are immediately relevant.

Examples of campaigns for the cases described above can be found at the end of the article.

1.4 Initial preparation of creatives

During the purchase, creatives will have a big impact on efficiency. This applies to both the advertising source and the store.

Initially, to start, it is worth evaluating your biggest competitors in store and advertising. Write out the best approaches in the store and advertising (via the FB service) and try to do the same.

To purchase at the start, you will need to prepare 5 different creatives (gameplay / features 1-2, mislid 1-2, history).

Formats: 1080 × 1080, 1920 × 1080, 1080 × 1920, 1080 × 1350.

Timing: preferably up to 15 seconds.

1.5 Technical procurement

When you have completed all the technical integration, it is important to understand that the whole scheme works and the data is not duplicated, especially with regard to Facebook statistics.

What we need to check by day, going through all the services:

  1. number of inputs (installations);
  2. number of payments;
  3. the volume of payments.

Important: each service needs to be configured for one time so that the data can be checked by day correctly.

Important: now we will share a nuance that affects the effectiveness of the purchase, so it should be implemented initially. If your game weighs more than 150 MB, then it is necessary that the distribution of the build via CDN works, otherwise the store will request a Wi-Fi connection from the players and some of the traffic will be lost, which will affect the advertising funnel and overall efficiency.

Budget for the technical test: $400.

We buy 4 days for $100.

Countries: Philippines, Czech Republic, Poland. These countries are cheap, they treat English normally, in the Philippines you can even get some first payments.

Sample campaign for the test:

1 campaign — 1 adset — 1-5 ads

Campaign budget optimization

  • Audience: wide (countries only). You can choose the gender depending on your genre
  • Coverage: will be large with a wide audience
  • Daily campaign budget: $100
  • Territory: cheap countries (as an option — Philippines, Czech Republic, Poland)
  • Automatic placements
  • OS version: You can start tests with Android
  • Optimization: App Installs (Lowest Cost)

What to do if the data between Facebook and the tracker /analytics system does not converge. Causes and possible solutions.

Discrepancies due to nuances in attribution:

  1. Attribution to another traffic source. Facebook always sees only its last click, while your tracker sees the real picture, taking into account all available purchase channels, which leads to the fact that the installation is attributed to another channel. This is the standard scheme of operation of all trackers according to the last click model.
    *1 — Facebook attributes traffic to itself
    *2 — tracker attributes traffic to Google Ads
  2. Different attribution windows. You can set up your own attribution windows for Facebook and tracker. If they do not match, there may be discrepancies. By default, Facebook costs 28 days after a click and 1 day after a view.
  3. Different time zones. Check that Facebook and tracker have the same time zones.
  4. Display/click time vs event time. Facebook attributes the installation by the date of the impression/click. Trackers attribute the installation by the installation date (in this case, the first opening of the application is meant).
  5. Attribution of in-game events. Facebook sees events for a maximum of 28 days from the moment the ad is shown/clicked, while trackers may have a larger “tail” of events (for example, 180 days or more from the moment the app is installed).

Discrepancies due to incorrect Facebook and tracker integration settings.

  1. If you don’t see the data in the tracker, check if the Facebook App ID is specified correctly.
  2. Relevant if events are not transmitted directly via the FB SDK. If you don’t see in-game events, check the event settings in the tracker. Sending events in tracker is enabled. The correct event is transmitted from the tracker to the cabinet (for example, purchases are included in purchases, and not the passage of the tutorial). The setting for sending money (revenue, value) is enabled.
  3. Duplication of statistics on in-game events. It happens if events are sent through both the FB SDK and the tracker.
  4. Incorrect triggering of events. It is important that payments in all SDKs are sent at the same moment (for example, after a transaction has passed) after their validation.
  5. Not signed by TOS.

Discrepancies due to technical problems/bugs on the tracker or Facebook side. As a rule, if such cases happen, they affect all advertisers and are corrected fairly quickly.

2. Soft launch

The very concept of “soft-launch” is quite conditional. Games are constantly being updated, and, in fact, each update is a testing package similar to what is done during a soft launch.

The main task of the soft launch is to determine how close you are to finding a balance for scaling the project.

Balance for purchase:

If you make the formula shorter:

To come to an understanding of how close you are to balance, you need to conduct 3 tests:

  1. test of creatives;
  2. retention test;
  3. monetization test.

2.1 Test of creatives

The whole purchase strongly depends on the creative, which is used both in the advertising source and in the store. Therefore, initially it is very important to make the most effective advertising funnel and systematically update it to maintain efficiency.

You will be doing a test of creatives all the time both in the soft launcher and in the global launcher. The approach to testing will depend on the number of creatives in production, your purchasing structure and budgets.

  1. If the volume of the spread is $ 1,000-50,000 and 1-2 creatives come in a week, then the test can be carried out within the framework of standard campaigns, adding creatives to work campaigns.
  2. If the volume of the spread is more than $50,000 and more than 3 creatives come in a week, then it is better to set up a testing process to weed out the worst creatives (-50% efficiency by IR* from the benchmark).

* IR — Install Rate — conversion from impression to installation.

With large volumes, the whole process can be divided into 2 stages:

  1. purchasing MAI on cheap countries for IR evaluation;
  2. purchase of AEO in tir-1 countries for evaluation of IR, CPPU, CPP.

As a result, you need to find 2-3 creatives with the best IR.

Benchmarks

Required IR Tier 1 by category for MAI campaigns:

  • casual games with advertising monetization — 1,2-1,8 %
  • casual games with inaps — 1-1,6 %
  • midcore — 0.5-1 %
  • hardcore — 0.3-0.5 %

What we evaluate

We estimate the IR after reaching 10,000 impressions per creative and one day.

Important: remember that FB accumulates data on your creatives: if you have several creatives in the adset, then initially priority is given to those for which there is data, so to reset the “knowledge about the old creative”, add 1 pixel to the video.

Sample campaign for the test

1 campaign — 1 adset per creative — 1 creative

Budget optimization at the adset level is presented below.

  • Audience: wide (countries only). You can choose the gender depending on your genre.
  • Coverage: will be large with a wide audience.
  • Daily budget for adset: if you run a campaign in cheap countries, you can bet $10-50.
  • Territory: depends on the creative (for example, it may be for a specific territory) or the target country (for example, if the target is US, then it is worth testing on CA or in cheaper European countries).
  • Automatic placements.
  • OS version: You can start tests with Android.
  • Optimization: App Installs (Lowest Cost).

2.2 Retention test

The first question to which it is important to get an answer to the project is: are players interested in playing our game at all? To do this, you need to bring players and evaluate their retention.

Benchmarks

Retention can be viewed in the GameAnalytics reports. It is already quite old, but the figures for retension in genres do not change much.

What we evaluate

Calendar retention of the 1st day, 7th day, 14th day, 28th day.

Important: we evaluate the calendar retention, this is the standard for comparison.

Attracting players

To evaluate, you need to buy a wide audience of ordinary players. The purchase should last 4 days evenly. You need to buy about 300-1000 players per day.

Countries

If your main localization is English, then you can buy cheap traffic from Eastern Europe and the Philippines. Retention is likely to be slightly lower than that of the Tier-1 English-speaking countries. Or, if you are confident in the advertising funnel and the budget allows, then the countries of Scandinavia and Canada.

Budget for 1 test: $400-700

Sample campaign for the test:

1 campaign — 1 adset per country (countries must be of the same range) — 3-5 ads

Budget optimization at the campaign level below.

  • Audience: wide (countries only). You can choose the gender depending on your genre.
  • Coverage: will be large with a wide audience.
  • Daily campaign budget: if you run campaigns in cheap countries, you can set a budget from $30-200, it all depends on your advertising funnel and genre.
  • Territory: what you need (Canada + Scandinavia or cheap countries — Philippines, Poland, Czech Republic).
  • Automatic placements.
  • OS version: You can start the tests with Android.
  • Optimization: App Installs (Lowest Cost).

Additionally. Try to estimate the rolling retention of day 1 with a cutoff for day 7. If it is about 30%, then there is a high probability of forming a core of players that will give good dynamics of payments in the long term.

2.3 Monetization test

In fact, any project is just a funnel into which a player comes, and at the exit we get a paying player with some kind of check. And we need to evaluate the funnel, but it’s not as easy as it seems.

It is important to always understand that the funnel is unstable, it changes both from changes in the project itself and depending on the quality of the players. Therefore, it is precisely for monetization that any average metrics taken for some geo and with some traffic mix cannot be compared with another project. For comparison, it is necessary that the traffic source is the same, preferably organic.

Benchmarks

You will not be able to allocate benchmarks yourself even when using services that evaluate the profitability of projects from the store.

There is only one sure way: start purchasing, calculate LTV and find a balance between CPPU and LTV that matches your business plan, goals and capabilities.

Relative benchmarks for evaluating monetization

CPPU is very dependent on IR. IR = CR × CTR: a high IR will allow you to receive a payer for less money on a large volume of traffic.

LTV can be viewed from the other side — indirectly from ARPDAU.

Our experience has allowed us to identify the distinct boundaries of projects for which you can see a possible hit. IR balance when purchasing at value optimization in tir-1 and ARPDAU countries of tir-1 organics.

  • IR (FB VO Tier 1) = 0,2 % vs ARPDAU inapp (Tier 1 Org Net) = $0,3
  • IR (FB VO Tier 1) = 0,4 % vs ARPDAU inapp (Tier 1 Org Net) = $0,2

What we evaluate

It is worth asking the question — can we recoup traffic on any horizon on the existing monetization with the existing advertising funnel? To do this, you need to buy paying players and evaluate their LTV, comparing it with the advertising funnel and the final CPPU.

We would not advise trying to evaluate monetization metrics from commercial traffic in different periods, because the quality can change very seriously, and it depends not only on the project, but also on market conditions, creatives, moderation loyalty, campaign learning, and auction entry.

If you want to understand whether there are positive changes in monetization, then it is best to conduct an A/ B test through Firebase or the Google console, here you can already evaluate standard metrics for payments, since the quality of traffic is the same.

You can evaluate LTV through the LTV Engine service.

Attracting players

It is necessary to buy about 200 payers so that they make about 500 payments in 3-4 weeks. This is necessary to build an LTV of satisfactory quality. And here both the volume and the lifetime of paying players are important.

Countries: TIR-1

Budget for 1 test: $5,000-20,000

Important! The monetization test can be costly, so before you start the test, make sure that you purchase through the most effective advertising funnel IR = CTR × CR. That is, you have 2-3 maximally converting videos and an ideal store.

Sample campaign for the test

1 campaign with a certain optimization — 1 adset for the fastest exit from the learning phase — 3-5 best creatives with optimized formats for placements — or use the “Dynamic creative” option.

  • Audience: interests competitors / value audience.
  • Coverage: from 4 million to optimize for events.
  • Daily campaign budget: it is necessary to receive about 10 events within the optimization window per day in order to achieve 50 events as quickly as possible within the first 7 days of the adset’s life.
  • Territory: TIR-1 countries (USA, UK, Canada, Scandinavia, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia, France).
  • Placements: Feed FB, Inst + Stories FB, Inst + AN.
  • Optimization: App Event Optimization (Purchase, Lowest Cost, 1 day).

*Placement Asset Customization allows you to choose your video format for each placement (for example, 1:1 in the Instagram feed and 9:16 in Stories). It is enabled at the ad level. You can read more about this in the help.

*Dynamic Ads allows you to select up to 10 creatives (videos or static), 5 texts, 5 titles and 5 call to action in one ad, after which Facebook itself will choose the most successful combination. It is enabled at the adset level.

3. Go Global

We can say that we are moving to this stage of the global launch, that is, to the scaling of the project, when we are sure of the following:

  1. all analytics and tracking tools work correctly;
  2. our game is being played, there are no critical bugs;
  3. pop-ups with the necessary legal documents work (GDPR, CCPA, Terms of Use, Privacy Policy);
  4. you can download from the store without Wi-Fi, distribution of the build via CDN works in all territories;
  5. the game is open in stores worldwide, there is a basic localization (English, German, French, Russian, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese);
  6. if there is matchmaking, then we are sure that everything is fine with servers in all key territories, ping is at the right level for a good game;
  7. the advertising funnel has been tested, and its effectiveness is maximum. We have an ideal converting store, and there are about 5 very well performing creatives;
  8. The LTV model has been built and we have chosen a satisfactory payback point for growth within our business plan.

Before launching the main purchase, we must clearly fix what good traffic is.

3.1 Main guidelines for the evaluation of procurement

  1. The effective cost of the paying player for the countries of the shooting range-1 on day 1, day 3, day 7 (shooting range-1 will give the main volumes of revenue, so you can work with the average price tag for the payer, but for other shooting ranges the effective cost of the payer will be less, because the solvency is less).
  2. The effective cost of payment for TIR-1 countries on day 1, Day 3, day 7.
  3. Effective ROI funnel for Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 7.
  4. Multipliers of income (n) of the day to the desired payback day.

It is important to count each indicator. Initially, points 3 and 4 are important, they are identical. But, suppose there are cases that payments have not accumulated yet, but you have a low cost of the paying player: then you can safely buy as much traffic as possible, because the payments will reach. Or a top paying person comes and makes a lot of money, you immediately have good indicators for the 3rd and 4th points, but in fact the cost of paying and payment is high and it is dangerous to scale.

3.2 Basic Campaign Settings

  1. Audiences — different LAL, interests, gender (with priority by genre), age (if there is an urgent need).
  2. Geo — USA, Shooting range-1 (France, Germany, Great Britain, Canada, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand), shooting range-2 (Russia, Brazil, Turkey, Singapore, China, Austria, Eastern Europe), shooting range-3 (everything else, Asian countries).
  3. Optimization of MAI, AEO, VO and conversion window 1 day / 7 days.
  4. Campaign types — App Ads, Automated App Ads.
  5. If necessary — devices, if you do not have tablet support or the game does not work on some OS versions.
  6. In rare cases, limit placements.
  7. In extreme cases, limit the target cost per action.
  8. Creatives, formats, texts.

When creating campaigns on FB, it is important to remember that there is no perfect campaign that guarantees the best performance. There are rules by which campaigns should be created so that they can learn and work for a long time. Some bundles of campaigns have a slightly higher chance of a good performance, but this does not mean that other bundles will be less effective.

3.3 Tips for better purchasing

  1. The required audience reach for the normal long—term operation of AEO campaigns is 4 million, VO— 6 million (minimum). In some cases, you can work with coverage of AEO— 1.5 million, VO— 3, but you should not expect long-term effective operation of such campaigns.
  2. From 1 to 5 top creatives should work in the adset, otherwise the budget will be sprayed on bad creatives or for some reason it will not go to the best creative for some time.
  3. For normal FB optimization, you need to dial 50 conversions within the conversion window in 7 days, based on this, plan your budget.
  4. We exclude those who have installed the application, so as not to drain the budget on them: this is done in Connections— Advanced combinations. Do not forget that FB considers new users who have not logged into the game for more than 90 days. If you want to exclude older users from the purchase, it should be done through Custom Audience by uploading a csv file to FB with the IDs of the users who installed the game during the desired period.
  5. Value-optimization works best with value-based LALs.
  6. It is not necessary to limit the LAL audience to interests.
  7. If for the entire lifetime of the adset its frequency value is in the region of 2.5–3, its indicators may fall, because Facebook targets the same users every day.
  8. The main changes in the work campaign should be made only within the framework of budgets, bids and creatives. If you want to make other changes, then recreate the campaign.
  9. Don’t make drastic decisions when working with AEO/VO, type at least 200 installs, evaluate the dynamics of changes in the campaign by day. If you are not sure about the project, then calculate the budgets for the test campaign in such a way that you can train it in a short time — in a week, during this time you will be able to assess the dynamics and gather a volume of data to decide what to do next.
  10. The effectiveness of a campaign can fall for many reasons. If the effectiveness drops after training and does not recover within 3 days, look for the reason and recreate the campaign if you want to make changes.
  11. Remember that paying players do not like advertising and the advertising funnel is 2-3 times worse for IR with AEO/VO than if you buy ordinary players using MAI, this affects CTR and CR, so do not panic.
  12. For games, it is important to get to Value Optimization in order to buy out the highest quality audience, for this you need to dial 100-300 payments in an advertising account within a week, and it is very important that payments have different values, then FB will be able to identify different groups of paying players.
  13. Creatives may receive a Low Quality label for various reasons. This is not a critical situation and if the campaign works with it, then you can leave it, but it is better not to use it further in new campaigns. Because of this label, you are not getting the best traffic within the budget. There is a chance that after some time the creative will be banned. The main reasons for getting a label: 1. Buttons that are pressed by themselves (it is better to use cursors or hands that are pressed), 2. Straightforward instructions or exaggerations in the text. (you should just avoid any direct instructions to the user and talk more about the product, without exaggeration, “You won’t believe it, this is the BEST GAME IN THE WORLD! Download it faster!“). If you want to avoid such a label, then try to negotiate with some big agencies or publishers to open an account under partner conditions. It was noticed that large Facebook customers may never have such labels on creatives, regardless of the quality of the creative.
  14. The best time to purchase traffic is January. Many players from the market are reducing their budgets, since the New Year holidays have passed, people have more time for games, all this leads us to more revenue from players and less CPM in the market. The worst is November-December, as e-commerce buys huge volumes of traffic and CPM is growing.

Rejected creatives

Quite often you may encounter bans of your creatives. Recently, Facebook has been constantly updating its advertising policy and the wording can be interpreted in different ways. This allows moderators to safely ban any creatives. Materials in new accounts that have not yet received a credit of trust are especially harshly banned.

Sometimes moderators strongly doubt their decisions and it turns out the following:

The ban is affected by: the creative itself, the text of the creative, the name of the community from which the advertisement comes, the store itself (name and screenshots). In rare cases, you may not even like the game itself. Therefore, initially it is worth starting with standard approaches, without risky phrases, in order to gain credibility.

A method that will maximize the chance of creative approval after the ban.

  1. As soon as you get banned, go to support and enter the chat with support, describe the situation that you have perfect creatives and you don’t understand why you got banned. If everything is fine with the creative, then the support will send the application for consideration to the managers responsible for checking the advertising. As a result, there may be two outcomes: you will be unban creatives or they will say that they do not pass through the policy.
  2. As soon as you see the letter that will not be broken, go to Ads Manager, find the creative and send it for consideration through the appeal button. Here you have a second chance to get to another manager who will miss your creative.

If your creative is banned again, then, most likely, the functionality of re-sending for verification through your account will be closed. In this case, write to support if you are sure that everything is fine with your creative. They will be able to send it again for verification.

The learning phase of the adset

Before you increase the budget for the adset, you need to make sure that it has left the training stage.

After creating the adset, it enters the training stage until it receives enough data (about 50 optimization events, maybe more or less, depending on the situation at the auction) to produce a stable result (complete training).

Every major change to the adset resets the training.

What will 100% reset the training:

  • targeting changes;
  • changing an ad;
  • adding a new ad;
  • stopping the adset for 7 days or more;
  • strong budget change, bid cap.

How to change campaigns and avoid resetting the training stage (relevant for regular campaigns, not AAA)

The golden rule: no more than 20% of changes at a time (you can make changes once an hour no more than once an hour, but preferably less often).

  • A budget change of more than 20% (a change from $100 to $120 will not affect training, and from $100 to $1,000 will reset it, unless we have a Target cost set, in which case it will not be considered a big change and will not affect training).
  • Changing the bid cap or target cost. Here is the same recommendation: once an hour, a change of no more than 20% is possible.

If after training we are satisfied with the effectiveness of the adset, we can start raising the budget. If we are not satisfied with the result, then the adset should be turned off, copied, made changes and run.

Status of Learning Limited. Sometimes the adset can get into the learning limited status, which means that the system believes that you are not getting enough conversions for optimization. Do not be afraid of this status, it disappears as soon as the adset collects enough data.

3.4 Main campaigns for games

It is better to open the table in a new tab

Additional comments to the table:

  • most of the campaigns are presented with VO-optimization. Nevertheless, all these bundles are relevant for AEO optimization (App Event Optimization – Purchase). AEO will give a cheaper CPI than VO, and sometimes a cheaper cost of payment (but ARPPU at the same time, as a rule, will also be lower);
  • conversion window: day 1 and day 7? If day 7 shows good results for your project, then you should not switch to day 1. In AAA, the default conversion window is day 7, there is no choice.

4. Glossary

CPPU — cost per paying user

CPM — cost per 1000 ad impressions

CTR — conversion from impression to click

CR — conversion from click to install

%pu — percentage of paying

ARPPU — average check per paying user

inapp (IAP) — payments from in-app purchases

adv — advertising revenue

sub — revenue from subscriptions

n — any day from the day of installation

IR (Install Rate) — conversion from impression to installation.

MAI (Mobile App Install) — optimization for installations.

AEO (App Event Optimization) — optimization for app events, which implies a purchase.

VO (Value Optimization) — optimization for the value of users.

WW — Worldwide.

AAA — Automated App Ads.

LAL — look-a-like audience, that is, similar users to yours on some basis.

Thank you very much for paying attention to our article. We hope that it will help you earn millions!

Facebook If you have any questions, be sure to contact us on Facebook (Nikita Okan and Margarita Nikolaeva) or right here in the comments.

Tags: