Notes on Mobile Video Strategy
It’s true that mobile games can and have grossed billions of dollars on the App Store and Google Play. It’s also a fact that when a free mobile game is launched, millions of downloads translate into roughly zero dollars in revenue.
Of course, money in mobile games is made through purchases that players make within the games after they install them on their phones. Success in this “freemium” marketplace is determined by a tight integration of game design and marketing.
Developers need to build and sustain games that engage players over time so that they will spend in the games. Marketers need to promote game experiences to drive acquisition of new players. Through steady acquisition and engagement, a game can grow as a “live service.”
In mobile, engagement and acquisition are the name of the game. If you only focus on launch, you lose.
At EA Mobile, my job was to get players into the games. How do you achieve successful acquisition and engagement at scale? That was the challenge.
To drive acquisition, we found an answer in video. Our solution was based on a straight-forward strategy: Connect mobile players to mobile games through mobile videos.
At EA, I led the creation of an in-house, scalable, and cost-effective system of production to support the mobile game business.
Through placements on Facebook and network channels within other mobile apps, our Mobile Video Team produced video creative that drove business. Working in coordination with media, insights, product marketing, and various game teams, our results exceeded expectations.
Producing many videos and iterating over time helped us find the sweet spots. The mix of custom cinematics and straight gameplay capture you can see in our work on Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes is a good example of the kind of optimized assets we produced on an almost daily basis. Eventually, our work made video the #1 driver of mobile game acquisition.
Working in the mini ecosystem of mobile video has made me a “post impressionist.”
It might not surprise you to know that in mobile, user data is trackable from a video view from anywhere in the mobile environment to a download on the App Store or Google Play. Therefore, overall conversion (CVR) is the key metric when it comes to evaluating creative performance of a mobile video. Did the video get installs? That’s the question to ask. The data you get in mobile takes you way beyond simple views or even click-thru. With mobile video, it’s not all about impressions.
Mobile makes you rethink video advertising. Sometimes it requires you to be counter-intuitive. Big isn’t alway better. Rough is sometimes more appealing than slick. For example, in mobile games, depending on channel placement, a nicely edited string out of gameplay capture might perform much better than a highly produced cinematic. Often, players enjoy seeing the actual look and feel of the game.
On mobile, video is a primary way people communicate. People not only watch videos on mobile screens, they interact with them. They tap, and scroll, and swipe, and share.
“More than three-fourths of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video by 2021.” (Cisco Visual Network Index)
I think that any brand that wants to reach people where they live should be prepared to communicate in mobile video. If your business is primarily mobile, like a game app, video is how to keep business going. In my experience, all of this requires a sustained commitment to mobile video production.
Beyond that, here are a few more notes on some best practices I’ve gathered from doing day-to-day work on mobile video.
You have to experiment: Exploration is mandatory to avoid viewer fatigue.
Insights inform creative: But data should not dictate.
Quality is whatever gets results: Although there’s utility in mobile video, good creative almost always does the job.
It’s not about one big video: It’s about lots of little videos that sustain the app.
Context is king: Placement often affects performance more than creative.
This is hard to do: Yes it is. But when it works, it’s a beautiful thing.
For more video samples, check out my Top Ten here.