Whether it be on Facebook or less traditional platforms like Pinterest, InnoGames is always looking for new ways to experiment with social campaigns.
As part of this experimentation, the MTG-owned game developer partnered with Adglow to promote the Forge of Empires mobile game on Snapchat using the install feature, which produced very impressive results.
According to the study published by the two companies, the Snapchat app—with the install feature in beta in the UK at the time—brought in 166 percent more post view installs than any other video platform. This may be an early indicator of greater success on the platform as it grows and InnoGames explores further uses with it.
“We ran the campaigns for three months, targeting males 21 or older and gamers with a focus on our game, Forge of Empires,” InnoGames performance marketing manager Marcus Burke told AListDaily. “The campaign showed users a snippet of our TV commercial and prompted them to ‘play free now.’ They would then have the opportunity to swipe up and were conveniently redirected to our App Store listing so they could directly download the game.”
Burke explained that InnoGames tries to be first movers when it comes to new marketing activity.
“Snapchat gave us the opportunity to be the first advertiser using their app install product in the UK,” he said.
“The campaign was used for user acquisition, and we mainly engaged with players through the app afterward,” explained Burke. “There’s no engagement activity running on Snapchat so far.”
Despite the successful test campaign, Burke noted that Snapchat’s ad products are still in its early phases in terms of sophistication when compared to other social channels. InnoGames helped test the platform’s capabilities to target a broad range of gamers in hopes of finding a profitable audience. But that begs the question of whether this early success can be replicated on other video platforms.
“One of our biggest strengths [we have] at InnoGames is our marketing assets,” said Burke. “Whether it is Snapchat or another social media platform, a campaign needs to be visually appealing to catch the attention of our target audience. In this case, we saw the success through the combination of the video and the app feature. In this sense, replicating success in other social media channels is about matching the correct asset to the needs of the platform.”
As InnoGames continues to experiment with social media campaigns, Burke—who said that Snapchat was “growing up” in terms of its ad products—shared his thoughts about whether the install boost seen on Snapchat could be sustained or grown over the long-term, or if it had more to do with the novelty of the feature.
“We are constantly trying new features with our partners to be ahead of the marketing trends,” he said. “We will continue to test Snapchat and its features to see whether we can scale our results long-term and to other markets.”
