What we set out to test
Can increasing creative assets’ depth and breadth for App Campaigns deliver incremental performance and business impact?
The background
Ourpalm is a leading game developer, publisher, and distributor in China. The Chinese giant had previously been relying on only text and image assets for its app campaigns, and wanted to shake things up for its new, highly anticipated release of the mobile role-playing game "One Punch Man: The Strongest."
Given the excitement surrounding "One Punch Man: The Strongest," the first ever "One Punch Man" mobile game, Ourpalm was keen to attract high quality players for the title. The company decided to explore if adopting creative excellence recommendations in its app campaigns could drive incremental return on ad spend (ROAS) with increased assets coverage and more relevant creative elements.
How we set the experiment up
An A/B test was set up with a geo-split across two comparable markets — Indonesia (ID) and the Philippines (PH), with a market swap also implemented three weeks into the test:
Control:
- Weeks 1–3: App Campaign with tROAS bidding (PH)
Poor Ad Strength with Text & Images only - Weeks 4–6: App Campaign with tROAS bidding (ID)
Poor Ad Strength with Text & Images only
Test:
- Weeks 1–3: App Campaign with tROAS bidding (ID)
Excellent Ad Strength with Text, Images & Videos - Weeks 4–6: App Campaign with tROAS bidding (PH)
Excellent Ad Strength with Text, Images & Videos
The experiment ran for a total of six weeks, with the same budgets and bid settings across both the control and test campaigns. This allowed the brand to measure how its App Campaigns performed differently depending on the creative asset recommendations implemented.
Solutions we used
What we learned
Ourpalm found that the test campaign using assets with Creative Excellence drove incremental ROAS performance compared to the control campaign using text and images only, delivering the following:
Creative Excellence for App Campaigns leverages the power of machine learning to optimize diversified creative assets, driving increased returns on investment and lower cost per app install. The use of text, images, and videos boosts performance and connects with users more effectively.
"One Punch Man: The Strongest" is the ninth top-grossing mobile game in Southeast Asia, demonstrating the effectiveness of Creative Excellence for App Campaigns.
“Creative Excellence helps 'One Punch Man' acquire higher ROAS with a lower CPI in SEA and engage with more users in a more effective way. We’ll adopt this strategy further in our future game publishing,” said Jingwei Liu, marketing director, Ourpalm.
This case study is part of the Experiment with Google Ads program.
