As competition in the mobile gaming market becomes increasingly fierce, game developers are looking for innovative ways to attract users. Among them, a new type of ad creative that has attracted much attention – “failure challenge ads” are gradually becoming an effective strategy for game acquisition. This type of ad stimulates the audience’s desire to download by showing the player’s failed operations in the game, becoming one of the biggest trends in ad creatives.
1. Challenge failure to win attention
“Failure challenge ads” are mainly based on showing players’ failures due to poor decisions during the game. These ads not only show how to play the game, but also stimulate the audience’s desire to win or lose through the player’s wrong operations. When the audience sees other players fail, they feel intellectually superior and want to download the game themselves to prove that they can complete the task correctly.
2. Key elements: creating a successful failure challenge ad
To create a successful “failure challenge ad”, game developers should consider the following key elements:
Clear goals and storytelling: The ad should contain clear goals so that the audience understands the criteria for success and the reasons for failure. At the same time, adding a simple storytelling can increase the emotional resonance between the audience and the ad content.
Create a sense of urgency and fun: Create a sense of urgency in the ad to ensure that the audience continues to pay attention. At the same time, use humor or unexpected ways to make failure more interesting and attract the audience’s attention.
Call to action and ending: Guide the audience to take action at the end of the ad, such as inviting them to download the app. Through the call to action, the audience’s interest is converted into actual action to achieve the goal of acquiring customers.
3. Success Case Analysis
Take Dream Games’ “Royal Match” as an example. The game used “failure challenge ads” to become the third most downloaded and second most profitable iPhone game in the United States in the third quarter of 2023. The ad shows the player’s failed operations in the game, which inspires the audience’s desire to download the game.
4. Diversified application scenarios
“Failure challenge ads” are not only used in types such as match-3 games and 4X strategy games, but other types of games are also trying similar advertising materials to achieve effective customer acquisition. By showing failure challenges in different types of games, game developers can attract a wider user base.
As a new trend in game customer acquisition, “failure challenge ads” provide game developers with an innovative advertising strategy. By showing players’ failed operations, this type of ad successfully aroused the audience’s desire to download and became one of the effective types of material to attract users. With the continuous development of the mobile game market, we can expect to see more innovative advertising forms bring new development opportunities to the game industry.