Navigating UA in a Competitive and Ever-Changing Market

What is UA and why does it matter to Netspeak?

UA (or User Acquisition) is the business of finding new players for a game, mainly through paid marketing. It’s an integral part of game publishing, but with such a competitive and ever changing landscape it can be challenging to find the right strategy. Here at Netspeak the UA team’s focus is very much on both creativity and data analysis.

So what do we do to maintain good performance and keep up with the competition?

We test a lot! We test new creative concepts as well as multiple variations of our best performers. We continuously iterate and analyse data to understand what works well and what doesn’t for each network, platform and geo, for a tailored approach. Through our rigorous testing we have collected many interesting and useful learnings. For example, for Sunshine Days we find that funny meme-style ads work well on TikTok and other social media networks, whereas ads that feature more gameplay or cinematic styles tend to perform well on Unity. We have also learned that certain aspects of the game works better in UA creatives than others, that voice overs can increase performance, and that people just really like frogs at the moment.

We test different audience, interest and event campaign targeting for the best possible KPI results. As the game is further developed and new features are added, we also add new events that we test as a part of our quest to find players who are most likely to enjoy the game and spend the most time playing it.

Where does the team get their inspiration?

To find inspiration for new creative concepts we research our competitors’ ads, keep an eye on the current trends in mobile game UA and social media as well as music, TV/films, other games and general pop culture references that we hope will appeal to our audience. We also work closely with our Social & Community Manager on any overlap between social posts and UA, particularly on TikTok.

We also look at our existing players. It’s important to understand who our key audience is, what their interests are, and what motivates them as players, to discover the reason they like the game. Then we utilise those insights in our efforts to find new players who will hopefully enjoy the game just as much as the ones we already have.