In order for mobile app platforms to survive, it’s critical to continue achieving profitable user acquisition. However, mobile advertising is a constantly changing landscape.

What works for you today might not work for you tomorrow. 95% of your direct response creative advertising fails to outperform the best-performing assets in your portfolio. You are constantly working to find those 5% of successful creatives.

Over the past few years, machine learning on platforms like Facebook and Google has reduced the level of effort by advertisers to manage their ad targeting, bids, and budgets. Automation has leveled the playing field for advertisers, so much so that creative has now become the key differentiator.

Here are some of the latest creative techniques and best practices to keep your mobile advertising creative performing, and continuing to drive user acquisition and growth:

  • Do you have a creative brand ‘bible’?
  • How strict are you with that ‘bible’?
  • What’s your tone?
  • Who’s your audience?

It’s surprising how few companies have thought about these questions that ultimately set the stage for creative development.

Brand vs. Direct Marketing

Are you a brand or are you doing direct response advertising? CMOs often want to run brand campaigns and adhere to their brand bible with guidelines and restrictions. On the other hand, the UA team is incentivized by performance and will lean toward direct response. There is a way to meet in the middle and get the best of both worlds. It is important to consider that most of the videos and images in your creative will die in less than 10,000 impressions.

If the winning creative happens to be one of the 5% of successful creatives, you can always revisit the creative and iterate to make it brand compliant. Through this process, you will also see the impact of making your mobile advertising creative brand compliant.

Types of Assets to Test

There’s a known approach to asset development of concepts versus variations and why you need one or the other. Concepts are brand new ideas, out-of-the-box thinking to develop something that hasn’t been tried before. It’s very difficult to develop fresh, new concepts. With variations, we’re taking that one in 5% successful creative winner. We know the creative is going to work, so instead, you will tear it apart like Legos and develop new creative assets, which often have a higher propensity to be successful.

Extend the Life of Your Mobile Advertising

There’s a lot that you can do to extend the shelf life of your creative. Here are just some of the ways you can keep your creative fresh through testing variations:

  • Image Formats and Layouts: Showcase your product or service in several layouts.
  • Video Length and CTAs:Your video ads need to be in the rage of eight seconds or less. Your call to action should be in the first three seconds and it needs to be strong.
  • Types of Images: Consider taking your own photos or degrading the quality of the images and videos to make them appear user-generated (more authentic).
  • Color Uses in Images and Headers:Test simple and plain backgrounds with soft or blurred out colors or gradients. Allow the viewer’s eyes to focus on bright vibrant foreground colors. Test soft background colors vs bold colors, strong texture vs muted texture, and simple vs clean vs busy and cluttered backgrounds.