What is the meaning behind the word “vertical” when it comes to mobile marketing, and also why it is important to understand which vertical the project belongs to, — Mobio company told under the heading “Promotion School“.
Evgeny Oseev, Mobio Traffic Manager
Vertical is a sphere or category of a mobile application.
The vertical for the advertiser determines the method of working with the product, the approach to creating creatives and advertising strategy, as well as the key indicators that are most important for the vertical application.
Each vertical is a small market with its own audience. It is important to understand your vertical when promoting. This helps to get better results during the advertising campaign.
Each vertical has its own “standards”, KPIs, as well as all kinds of LT, LTV, RR, RRR, ARPU, ARPPU, MAU, DAU and eCPI, which you need to focus on. Their understanding allows you to better understand the funnel, monetization of the application, and may also indicate inappropriate traffic.
Games are one of the most unique verticals in mobile marketing. There are a lot of them, they are all divided into different genres and subgenres with their own specific economic models and key indicators.
Accordingly, the game vertical is divided into additional types of verticals. For example, we highlight, among other things, such verticals as king style puzzle, strategy and action with progress.
King style puzzle
This is what we call the vertical, which includes classic games in the genre of three-in-a-row. They are usually promoted by demonstrating gameplay. For example, this is what the authors of Toy Blast do. But the authors of Gardenscapes have a different approach. Playrix focuses on history in its videos.
When creating creatives, it should be remembered that images of a game action are well clicked and converted, for example, a screenshot or just a playing field with elements and a “Play” button. With this approach, it is easier for the user to understand the essence of the game and he will make a decision faster — whether to play the project or not.
Strategy
Today, this genre is very popular on the market. One of the main players in the market is the American MZ. Within this genre, the game is promoted through interactive advertising, in which the user must build towers to protect the castle from waves of enemies. Other players in the market, for example, ICC, are betting on emotions. They launch videos in which streamers emotionally play their project.
Approaches to creating creatives to promote this vertical are very diverse. You can also use screenshots of the game, but this is not as catchy as in other verticals, because in most cases it is the gameplay that is important in strategies, and not a beautiful picture. Therefore, it will be advantageous to show the features and capabilities of the game on creatives. For example, the development levels of the base and fortresses (1, 10, 20 lvl), characters. Approaches with comparison and the possibility of choosing game fractions work well, as well as various combinations of these approaches.
Action with progress
In this vertical we include a large number of fighting games, races and shooters, which are characterized by simple gameplay with short game sessions and a pumping tree with several branches. Traffic for such projects is bought more carefully, often in addition to video, they prefer standard full-screen advertising.
One of the features of such games is the improvement of a game character or things from his inventory. For example, you can show the evolution of the hero’s level from a village guy to an invincible knight in heavy armor, or the visual difference between the starting gun and the one that the user can get after dozens of hours of play. It will also be appropriate to use screenshots of the game, mock-up devices with gameplay on the screen and game video.
Regardless of which vertical we are talking about, it is recommended to show fragments of gameplay in creatives. This way you will bring potentially loyal players into your game who consciously clicked on the advertisement.
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