There is no shortage of stories for Chinese games going overseas. In the past year, the success of several major products such as "Frost Apocalypse" and "Legend of the Mushroom Brave" has aroused heated discussions in the industry.
While discussing these dark horse products, a well-known and unique platform Snapchat "surfaced".
As one of the world's mainstream social platforms, Snapchat has 800 million monthly active users, 422 million daily active users worldwide, and is also home to more than 370 million gamers. With the involution of marketing, the traffic value of Snapchat has become increasingly prominent, and it has become more and more valued by overseas manufacturers, so it is called "a new position for game overseas marketing".
Top 5 platforms in Snapchat
Based on market changes and industry demands, Snapchat continues to improve its game advertising solutions, and several major updates have brought significant improvements to key marketing metrics such as CPI and ROI, and products such as "Legend of the Mushroom Brave" are beneficiaries. This article takes the opportunity to highlight these major updates and how unique the platform is in the world of game marketing.
The explosion is no longer worried, and the acquisition of high-paying users is more worry-free! Snapchat's three major updates target industry pain points
When an industry develops to the point that "the aroma of wine is also afraid of deep alleys", manufacturers naturally pay more attention to marketing, precise transformation, and brand building.
Snapchat's three major optimization updates in the field of game advertising solutions are aimed at the marketing pain points of today's game manufacturers, improve the key indicators in the marketing process, help the explosion, and help manufacturers find high-value users.
First, Snapchat launched a 7/0 optimization window on Android to help advertisers increase ROI.
Specifically, 7/0 refers to the analysis of click-attributed ad users in the last 7 days to find the same group to serve ads and get more conversions.
In a fast, accurate marketing environment, this update is a must-have: using a 7/0 optimization window can reduce cost per install (CPI), increase return on ad spend (ROI), and reduce the data gap between ad performance and mobile measurement platforms (MMPs).
This feature is suitable for any marketing node. Taking the official launch of new products as an example, this function can find target users for manufacturers more quickly, achieve large-scale effects, and seize the golden explosion period of official launches.
预计在 7 月初，App 7/0 将全面支持安卓设备 App Install, App Purchase 及 App Re-Engage Purchase 目标的投放。
The 7/0 optimization window has achieved significant results for many overseas manufacturers. For example, 4399's Legend of the Mushroom Brave, after making its first attempt at a 7/0 optimization window during the official promotion period in the U.S. and European markets, compared it to the standard 28-day click-1-day impression attribution optimization method (28/1), the ROI increased by 110%.
Regarding the overall effect of Snap ads, Simon, Director of Overseas Publishing of 4399 Games, said: "Snap is a 'surprise' channel for us to cooperate this year, and the cooperation with the Snap team has allowed us to obtain high-quality target users in Europe and the United States, especially during the pre-registration period, we have seen very good results, on the Android side, we have adopted the 7/0 optimization window recommended by Snap, the effect has exceeded our expectations, and we will explore more cooperation possibilities and opportunities in the future." ”
In addition, according to Snapchat's official data, in the first quarter of 2024, the purchase conversion rate increased by more than 75% year-on-year thanks to the 7/0 optimization window.
Second, Value Optimization is enabled on Android to find high-value paying users for manufacturers.
What is Value Optimization? This is Snapchat's new bid objective to optimize high-value payments. Specifically, when a game manufacturer uses this objective, the system prioritizes looking for users with high spending levels.
The importance of high-value paying users goes without saying. For these users, manufacturers will not hesitate to pay a high price to obtain. Because they know that once they get these users, they don't have to worry about the return on their own costs.
The question is, how do you get those users? Snapchat's Value Optimization provides a possibility to differentiate user acquisition based on conversion value to make marketing more efficient and precise, and manufacturers no longer rely on luck to acquire "high-value paying users".
Finally, Snapchat optimizes app downloads for iOS, so you don't need to jump out of the platform to download and install.
With this update, iOS users can install the promoted app by clicking the download button on the in-platform ads page without leaving Snapchat.
"Small" update, big energy. This feature makes the process of downloading an app on Snapchat smooth, preventing users from abandoning the app download due to jumping out of the Snapchat page, which can help increase conversion rates, reduce install costs, and increase advertisers' ROI.
As we all know, after the IDFA privacy policy came into effect, the difficulty of user acquisition on iOS has always been a hot topic in the industry, and if you add the long download path, the user conversion rate will inevitably decline accordingly, increasing the difficulty of user acquisition. Therefore, the optimization of Snapchat's iOS app download is good news for game manufacturers and the industry.
The rapid development of the game industry is inseparable from the increasingly sophisticated technology and functions of marketing platforms. They are at the forefront of the industry, have insight into the pain points of the industry, lead the development of the industry, provide a series of solutions for the industry, and promote the development of the industry.
Of course, to explore each marketing platform, you must fully understand its characteristics and uniqueness, so as to better choose the right marketing solution for you.
Favored by overseas manufacturers! Snapchat marketing is unique
Snapchat has become one of the must-have marketing platforms for many overseas manufacturers. In addition to the 4399 mentioned above, there are also miHoYo, Lilith, Diandian Interactive and other manufacturers are Snapchat partners.
So as a "new position for game overseas marketing", what is the uniqueness of Snapchat?
First and foremost, the user base is large and high-quality.
According to public data, Snapchat's 800 million monthly active users are all over the world, and the core region is the key area for domestic mobile games to go overseas, including the United States, Europe, the Middle East and other regions. What's more, Snapchat's main user base is younger — it reaches 90% of 13-24-year-olds and 75% of 13-34-year-olds in 25 countries and territories around the world.
For example, Snapchat covers nearly half of smartphone users in the United States, with 94.2 million mobile game players, and 80% of mobile game and casual gamers aged 18+; Snapchat is also the top social app in the Middle East, with 72.8 million mobile gamers, including more than 84% of mobile and casual gamers aged 18+.
Source: "Snapchat Global Marketing" official account
Young users are characterized by being active on social media, sharing and being curious about new things and having the courage to create. And one of the major entertainment for young users is games, so they are generally more receptive to game content. This is supported by actual data. According to official Snapchat data, Snapchatters are 1.5 times more likely to browse games and 1.4 times more likely to search for and buy games.
On the other hand, the age of Snapchatter users is also growing with the platform, with almost a quarter of Snapchatters currently aged 35 and above, which means that users' purchasing power is also increasing.
According to officially disclosed data, Snapchat users have $4.4 trillion in global purchasing power, and more than half of the 370 million gamers are paying users. Research shows that Snapchatters have low cross-page with other traditional social platforms: 69% of daily active Snapchatters over the age of 16 in the U.S. don't use Twitter (X) every day, 53% don't use YouTube every day, 43% don't use TikTok every day, and 39% don't use Facebook every day. This means that Snapchat is a "new" user pool, which avoids duplication of targeting the same user and reduces advertisers' marketing losses to a certain extent.
Based on the advantages of users and unique platform features, Snapchat has built a variety of creative advertising forms.
Looking at the world's mainstream social platforms, most of them focus on one or two functions, such as chat-based, image-based, and video-based. Snapchat integrates five tier-1 taps, including Map, Chat, Camera, Stories, and Spotlight.
Snapchat's comprehensive platform features provide a variety of creative forms for its advertising and marketing, such as Snap ads, story ads, commercials, boutique ads, and AR lenses.
The AR experience is a unique differentiator for users and advertisers alike. Powered by industry-leading AR technology, Snapchat can provide game makers with creative AR filters that enhance their game's playability, interactivity, and conversion rates.
AR filters have become a daily routine for Snapchatter. According to relevant data, more than 300 million users on the Snapchat platform use AR every day, and users use AR filters more than 6 billion times a day. AR brings almost 2x more visual attention than non-AR content, and Snapchat is 1.7x more immersive than other platforms.
Therefore, AR filters are the first choice for many Chinese manufacturers to cooperate with the platform for branding. AR filters can help brands break the barriers between reality and virtuality and provide immersive experiences, such as allowing users to play game characters and immersively feel game characters and scenes, or allowing users to experience the core gameplay of games through some simple interactions, or creating an avant-garde, fun, and black-tech marketing experience for game brands.
For example, Genshin Impact used AR filters to highly restore the in-game virtual scene, allowing users to immerse themselves in the scene and create the effect of traveling through time and space.
In addition, the full portrait and immersive format of Snap ads and commercials is perfect for showcasing the gameplay or recreating a unique scene from the game world, and a strong CTA can further drive conversions.
Story Ads is a form of advertising that can be freely combined with 3-20 different images/videos, which can fully explain the game brand or product features, and is also suitable for the presentation of a variety of game experiences, and can also test the effects of different game experiences, providing valuable references for game product design, pricing, marketing strategies, etc.
For example, the key gameplay of "Frost Apocalypse" has been perfectly represented in Snap ads and story ads.
Not only that, Snapchat also provides game manufacturers with a full-link solution that integrates quality and efficiency, and solves the marketing problems of manufacturers in one stop.
Snapchat's full-link solution covers different product stages from pre-launch warm-up to game release to in-depth operation: from pre-warm-up to build Snapchat users' understanding of the brand, and enhance the discussion of related topics on the platform; to game publishing with a focus on increasing downloads and increasing market penetration; and then to in-depth operation to improve user LTV and brand loyalty, with different marketing focuses at different stages, and different marketing strategies and budget allocation.
The marketing solutions offered by Snapchat are not only comprehensive, but also detailed.
For example, in response to the problems and challenges encountered in the overseas expansion of products in different tracks, whether it is hyper-casual games, casual games, or medium-core games, Snapchat can meet the demands of manufacturers at different stages from a series of complete solutions such as advertising creativity, advertising strategy, and targeting.
For example, Snapchat can also provide customized marketing strategies and solutions for different types of specific needs such as new game releases, released games/new storylines, mobile games, etc., and can also cooperate with game manufacturers to discuss, create, and test ad creatives.
With a variety of advertising formats and differentiated marketing strategies and creatives, Snapchat can maximize the marketing effect for different game manufacturers.
epilogue
Snapchat can be said to be a "treasure" overseas marketing platform, which not only has a large number of high-value young users, but also its full-link marketing solutions and continuously upgraded marketing technologies and functions to help manufacturers acquire customers on a large scale, enhance brand power, and achieve breakthrough in the environment of involution.