Things about online game advertising | Insights into information flow advertising data

The game advertising market is large and has a high user reach rate.

With the continuous development of online games , especially the strong rise of the mobile game market in recent years, the popularity of game advertisements has also increased. Data shows that in the 2016 survey on mobile advertising exposure among mobile Internet users, the user reach rate of gaming ads was as high as 40.0%, ranking second in the industry, second only to e-commerce ads.

In the information flow advertising with Tencent News and Tiantian Kuaibao as the main platforms, online games surpassed other industries and ranked first, accounting for one-third. It can be seen that in information flow advertising, online game advertising has a considerable volume, which is particularly evident in performance advertising.

Advertising spending in the online gaming industry has generally increased, with the growth rate slowing in the second half of the year, but still higher than the broader market.

In the past 2016, the advertising volume in the online gaming industry has generally shown an upward trend. Since the second half of the year, the month-on-month growth rate of the overall industry has declined, but the growth rate of online game advertising is still higher than the overall market, maintaining a relatively stable growth trend.

The growth momentum of three-small-picture advertising in the online gaming industry is particularly prominent.

From the perspective of different forms of information flow advertising, unlike the clothing industry which is dominated by native advertising , in the online game industry, three-small-picture advertising shows obvious advantages. Since May 2016, the number of small-image ads has increased dramatically, far exceeding large-image, native and download ads.

The information flow advertising in the online gaming industry is mainly performance-based advertising, which results in a wide variety of games and uneven advertising effects. Among them, there are obvious differences in the advertising performance of Tencent News and Tiantian Kuaibao on different news APP platforms.

Therefore, we will start with the user portraits of the two APPs to analyze the specific performance of online game performance advertising.

Compared with Tiantian Kuaibao, Tencent News users are older and more educated.

Judging from the user base of Tencent News and Tiantian Kuaibao, both platforms have a majority of male users (66% of Tencent News users are male, and 62% of Tiantian Kuaibao users are male), and most of them are young people aged 20-30.

In terms of user age , Tencent News has a higher proportion of people over 25 years old, with the overall average age reaching 26 years old, while the average age of Tiantian Kuaibao users is 23 years old.

In terms of educational level , Tencent News users are more educated than Tiantian Kuaibao, with the majority having a bachelor's degree. People with a bachelor's degree or above account for as high as 49%, while Tiantian Kuai only has 27%, and most have a high school degree, accounting for 46%.

Among online game performance ads, massively multiplayer online and casual games account for the largest share.

In terms of game types, the advertising situation of Tencent News and Tiantian Kuaibao is roughly the same, with the advertising share mainly concentrated in massively multiplayer online games and casual games, with nearly half concentrated in massively multiplayer online games (46% for Tencent News and 44% for Tiantian Kuaibao).

Massively multiplayer online game ads performed better on Tencent News, while casual game ads were more popular on Tiantian Kuaibao.

In terms of advertising performance for different game types, Tencent News and Tiantian Kuaibao performed differently.

Tencent News’ better results are concentrated in web games, massively multiplayer online games and stand-alone games. The best effects of Tiantian Kuaibao are reflected in corporate image, casual games and web games.

Due to differences in user groups, Tencent News has a higher education and age group, so massively multiplayer online game ads perform better, while casual game ads are more popular on Tiantian Kuaibao.

The overall advantages of the three small pictures in performance advertising are prominent, and native advertising is more effective on Tiantian Kuaibao.

In terms of the share of different advertising formats, three small pictures have an absolute advantage in performance advertising, accounting for 71%. Large images and native ads are ranked second and third, with download ads having the smallest volume, accounting for only 4%.

In terms of advertising effectiveness, the two clients performed slightly differently. The three-picture advertisement on Tencent News has obvious advantages, while the native information flow advertisement on Tiantian Kuaibao is better than the three-picture advertisement.

If we look into the reasons, we find that the difference between native and three-picture ads on the two clients is related to the types of games being launched.

In general, the three small pictures are mainly concentrated on "massively multiplayer online games", while the native advertising form is mainly concentrated on "casual games"; the advertising effect of "massively multiplayer online games" on Tencent News is better, while that of "casual games" on Tiantian Kuaibao is better.

The final result is that the three small pictures on Tencent News are the best, while the native advertising of Tiantian Kuaibao is more effective.

There are obvious differences between the specific performance and effectiveness of online game brand advertising in various sub-industries and advertising forms. Since online game brand advertising has more dimensions and characteristics in terms of selling points, we will further break it down for analysis.

RPG game ads performed best in terms of both placement share and advertising effectiveness.

Looking at brand advertising by game classification, role-playing (RPG) and strategy tower defense ads accounted for 80% of the advertising share (RPG 53%, strategy tower defense 29%).

Of the two game categories with the largest advertising share, RPG has the better ad click-through rate . Therefore, RPG games perform most prominently in brand advertising.

In online game brand advertisements, large pictures have the best overall performance, while download-related advertisements have the weakest effect.

Different from performance-based advertising, large images account for nearly 60% of online game brand advertising, and the click-through effect is also good, second only to native advertising, with the best overall performance.

In addition, the share of information flow download ads ranks second, but the click effect is significantly lower than that of native ads. This shows that online game download ads have no advantage.

Among the five major advertising selling points, game brand advertisements that highlight celebrity endorsements and activities have more advantages

Based on the purpose of placement, we divide online game brand advertisements into five major selling points :

Elements (game characters, props, etc.)

Activities (limited time offers, holiday benefits, etc.)

Scene (HD quality, grand scene)

IP (celebrity endorsements, official games for TV series and movies)

How to play (special game play)

Among them, 60% of the advertisements are concentrated on game elements and activities. However, from the perspective of click-through effect, advertisements with IP and game activities as selling points have a higher CTR . Therefore, we recommend that game brand advertisers should highlight celebrity endorsements and event benefits to improve advertising effectiveness.