Brutally Honest #142

Hey, FAM! What’s up?

🥃 Drink talk

Last few days in Santa Barbara before going home. I’ve enjoyed it here. It’s quiet time, but I’ve met lots of interesting people here and in San Francisco. See you next year.

🦩Tip of the week

I’ve often talked about identifying trends in creatives, but what about structuring your creative team and output requirements based on your UA budget?

IMHO, You need five motion designers for 1 UA person in the team. Period!

Ideal scenario:

1 Motion Designer (for animations and video creatives)

2 Illustrators (to craft unique assets and maintain visual consistency)

3 Graphic Designers (to adapt, iterate, and tweak creatives for scale)

4 Flying Unicorns 🦄 (because, let’s face it, magic helps)

Jokes aside. In the era of AI where, UA managers can do almost everything by themselves. It would be best if you mainly had motion designers.

Of course, every team is different, and your specific needs might vary depending on the complexity of your creatives, the platforms you’re targeting, and your audience.

💡 Pro Tip: With the AI Video emerging, focus on quantity over quality, especially for smaller budgets. This is a bit contrarian but think about it. It’s the same logic as with static images. Test hundreds of 5-10 sec. AI videos, find the winner, connect to your best-performing videos or other trends, and voila!

​ Cornelius: The Suspicious Investi-gator

True detective-like exploration of creative trends and historical influences. Delving deep into the world of creatives to uncover hidden patterns and inspirations:

𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐝𝐢𝐝 𝐢𝐭 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭? Today, we dive into an intriguing case involving the latest mega-trend: AI Creatives. 👇

Two games—Dark War (Rivergame) and Sea of Conquest (FunPlus)—have produced strikingly similar creatives, both in concept and execution.

Getting inspired by other games is a cornerstone of creative production, but there’s always a fine line between drawing inspiration and copy-pasting. Why reinvent the wheel, right?

Here’s the twist: 𝘁𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝘄𝗼 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀 𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗹𝗮𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗱 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗮 𝗳𝗲𝘄 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸𝘀 𝗮𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁. Coincidence? Parallel evolution? Or maybe a bit of “heavy inspiration”?

The big question remains: Who launched this creative first? 👀

Yours truly, Cornelius.

💀 Dr. Doom is not amused

One of my industry friends amused me with his direct and honest TL;DRs, so we agreed to share it here, too! My friend remains anonymous as Dr.Doom!

“In another week of the latest adventures of gaming’s eccentric CEOs, we got the Borderlands trailer four announcement from its CEO, who said, “I’m not supposed to talk about it yet, but idgaf. I have been FREAKING OUT, yo.” The best part was the retweet of this post by the company’s official account with the text, “Looks like we’ll see a new trailer real soon!” Trying to save face, are we? Too late, Mr. Gearbox social media manager” Sincerely, Doom (https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/gearbox-ceo-randy-pitchford-gets-lost-in-the-sauce-again-posts-about-an-imminent-borderlands-4-trailer-he-wasnt-supposed-to-talk-about-however-idgaf/)

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🎉  “Ha-ha” moment

Because life is too short to be serious.

🎮 two & a half gamers – Admon trends November 2024

𝗨𝗔 𝗶𝘀 𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗱. 𝗛𝘆𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗶𝘀 𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗱. 𝗔𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗲-𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗱. Yet somehow, they’re still making 🚀 millions $$$ per month. How? 🤔👇

In this episode, Felix takes a deep dive into the latest trends in ad monetization within the gaming industry.

Key Highlights:

• We uncover how games with low in-app purchase (IAP) revenue are thriving with ad-based models, proving there’s still massive potential in “dead” categories.

• Ultra-casual games are rising, with a surge in innovation from regions like Vietnam, reshaping what’s possible in ad-driven games.

• Detailed breakdowns of gameplay mechanics, ad strategies, and the secret sauce behind their continued success.

Tune in to learn how “dead” games are alive and kicking—and making millions.

📺 Watch on Youtube

🎧 Listen on Spotify

🦄​ Diary of a Dancing Unicorn

Today was a good day.

Hey, this is the global launch strategy. Lets discuss it on the call.

Yeah! Looks great. Thanks.

Okay, so what do you think? These are the ROAS benchmarks, UA channel mix and budgets.

Yeah, again. It looks great, but we want to focus mainly on installs because we have install targets. 250k installs for the first month.

Okay, how about ROAS? What are the goals there?

No goals for ROAS. Just the number of installs.

???

Today was a good day.

🤺​ Quote of the week

“Is the wall of text ad “trending,” or did you start this trend? A customer referenced your ad and wanted to test something like this” – Kate, DM

Admon Trends November 2024

🧙 Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter!

Please do me a favor and share this with someone in your network who you think would benefit from the insights and brutal honesty. It would mean a lot to me!

Take care, everyone! See you next Monday!

Give me some love (or hate) & Subscribe everywhere! ♥️

💡The latest UA & marketing jobs for you prepared by Gamigion:

Regional Director Marketing EMEA Scopely
Performance Manager – Monopoly GO! Scopely
Product Marketing, Clash Royale Supercell
Live Ops Manager, Live and New Games Supercell
Advertisement Monetization Manager Playtika
Marketing Systems Analyst Playtika
Director of Growth PLAYSTUDIOS
User Acquisition Manager Lotum
Influencer Content Associate Voodoo
User Acquisition Manager Voodoo
ASO Manager Gameloft
Live Ops Specialist (Associate) Gameloft
ASO Manager Gameloft Vietnam
Product Marketing Manager Gameloft Brisbane
Marketing Data Analyst Metacore
Head of User Acquisition Huuuge Games
Growth Specialist (User Acquisition) Fugo Games
Social Media Manager Hyper Hippo Entertainment
Growth Associate, eCommerce AppLovin
Marketing Manager AppsFlyer
Product Marketing Manager AppsFlyer
Marketing Operations Manager AppsFlyer
Field Marketing Manager Sensor Tower
Monetization Manager Gamelight
Senior User Acquisition Manager Gamelight
Product Marketing Manager Verve
Non-Gaming Growth Lead Almedia
Influencer Marketing Manager Almedia
Growth Partnership Manager Unity
Social Media Manager Xsolla
Solutions Product Marketing Manager Taboola
Manager, Business Marketing Liftoff Mobile
Senior Client Growth Manager Nativex
Product Manager, Growth Amplitude
Senior Content Marketing Manager AppTweak
Mobile Growth Manager – ASO Phiture
Senior Product Marketing Manager OneSignal
Publisher/ Monetization Manager (Gaming) TyrAds
Head of Marketing (Global) iion
Growth Manager Moloco

Find out more here