Continuous development and optimization are the keys to success in the app business. This includes ASO, your advertisement campaign, and most importantly your product. Providing the app that users demand will help you to increase your revenue. Game developers especially should pay close attention to this matter considering the dynamic nature of their category. Ad Intelligence can come in very useful in such situations.
There are many ways to approach product development. Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, conducting market research can save you both time and trouble. There is much to learn from already successful apps in your category. As the saying goes: “keep your friends close, but enemies closer!” The actions of your competitors can provide hints about the successful trends in the category, allowing you to implement them in your app.
Of course, this does not mean that you should copy every single move you see. However, modifying your game in a way that seems to be popular in the marketplace can help your game to become more popular. Take the good, leave the bad behind.
In this post, we will be showing you how our Ad Intelligence tool can be utilized to enhance your product development. By increasing your awareness of the trends and successful strategies, these tools will give you the edge over your competitors.
This post will have a practical approach so product managers can directly observe how our products can help their efforts. For the rest of the article, assume that we are the product managers of a bubble-popping game. We aim to improve our product and increase our popularity along with our revenue.
Top Charts
There is no better place than the Top Charts to begin our research. After all, they had to do something right to get there. Our ultimate goal is to improve our product. That is why successful apps can act as role models and guide our actions.
By applying filters, we can specify our target market and category to see if similar games to our product made it to the top charts.
This product benefits the gaming category perhaps even more than others. Some categories have dominating apps that are always in the top charts. However, the charts for the gaming category can change in the blink of an eye. This creates even more opportunities to find similar apps.
Ranking 41 in the puzzle category, we can see that “Bubble Pop Origin!” is a potential competitor. We can take a look at the App Profile to make sure that we are on the right track.
The app profile page provides us with a snapshot of the game and its current analytics. We can see that Bubble Pop Origin! received overwhelmingly positive reviews recently. Its category rankings also improved over time. It would not be wrong to assume that the game is doing something right. Based on its high user rating score (green) it has managed to connect with the users. However, we still need to make sure that the game has similar content compared to our product.
When we take a look at the screenshots, we can see that the User Interface is similar to our game. Taking a quick look at their gameplay, many features of the app are revealed.
It looks like we found our first competitor!
Biggest Movers
Let’s try to add one more competitor to our tracking list. Our Biggest Movers list can reveal sudden movements in the charts. If we can locate an app that is similar to ours which increased its rankings suddenly, perhaps we can implement some of their features in our app.
We can see that Bubble Shooter increased its ranking by 163. If you go further down the page, it is most likely that you will encounter even more apps related to your product. For this article, let’s take a look at the App Profile page of Bubble Shooter.
Great! We have found one more trendy bubble shooting app. Let’s add Bubble Shooter to our competitor list and see if we can draw any insights from the app.
Campaign Analysis
Campaign Analysis is an indispensable tool for User Acquisition managers. However, product managers can also take advantage of this tool, especially when researching competitors.
Today we won’t be going into detail about the features of this product. If you are interested, you can take a look at our Ad Analysis posts to get a deeper understanding of Campaign Analysis and its uses.
We can use the campaign analysis tab to add our competitors to our Favorite Apps list. This feature comes in handy when you want to track many apps at the same time.
We have created the list “Ad Intelligence” and added our first competitor to it.
The process will be repeated for Bubble Shooter as well. This list will allow us to track competitors related to the app we’re working on.
Top Creatives
Now that we have done our preliminary research, it is time to gather data. The Top Creatives tool is our best friend for this part of the process. Let’s start by filtering our data.
This tool is very powerful thanks to the millions of creatives it includes. By using the filters you can specify the type of content you want to target. As you can see in the top right corner, the ads will be sorted by impressions. We can also specify the platform, country, and even ad networks.
For our application, we have chosen iOS creatives that are used in the United States regardless of the ad network.
The next two filters greatly enhance our ability to conduct market research. First of all; the app name filter. Here we can either use specific app names such as our competitors’. Or, we can use more generic keywords related to our category. To increase our sample size, I have chosen the word “bubble”. I could have also directly searched for our competitors by using their brand names.
Our Media Filter allows us to choose the formats of the creatives that are to be displayed. Interactive creatives that allow you to play the game will help us get an understanding of the User Interface and features of our competitors.
Creative Collection
Now we are ready to add some of these creatives to our creative collection. We have named the list “Ad Intelligence”. The next step is gathering interesting creatives and creating a pool. When you think you have enough creatives to work with, you can start analyzing them to extract features.
Before moving on to analyzing the creatives, we should touch on an important feature MobileAction provides. As mentioned before, you have to keep up with the trends in the app store. The sooner you are aware of new creatives and features, the better. That is why the Top Creatives section also allows you to subscribe to your creative collections.
You can specify the frequency of notifications. Depending on your preference, either the top-performing creatives or the newest creatives will be delivered to you via email. We know that product managers have busy schedules, that is why Ad Intelligence is designed to make your job a whole lot easier!
Analyzing Creatives
We located our competitors, researched the category, chose some creatives to give us insights, and now we are ready to implement some new features in our game. The number of inferences you can make from creatives are endless. Let’s go over a few examples to clarify the applications.
Colors are crucial for the appearance and attractiveness of your game. They should capture the users’ attention and satisfy their visual cravings.
It appears that bright colors are frequently used for bubble shooting games. We should also use such colors in our bubble design so we can appeal to the visual part of the brain.
Another element we can focus on is the environment. Are there specific kinds of backgrounds being used in our category? What kind of contexts are the games based on?
The games in our category do not use plain backgrounds. We can see that jungles or deserts are used as background images. Perhaps we could also use a more realistic background in our game such as a naturalistic environment.
Different types of camera angles are frequently used in games. Even though Bubble Popping games are primarily 2D, some new camera angles draw our attention.
We can see that two of the apps are experimenting with new angles. One of these apps is our direct competitor, Bubble Pop Origin!. Even though it is not exactly 3D, the games are providing a sense of depth.
Perhaps we can create some bonus levels for our game where there is a 3D angle. These levels can be less challenging and more satisfying with lots of points, providing the user with a sense of gratification.
Other Features
For other kinds of games, user interfaces are usually more varied, allowing for more experimentation. Seeing that bubble shooting games have less complex interfaces, we can look for any additional features that we can add to our game.
One trend seems to be getting popular.
Rather than just using random groups of bubbles, some games are creating popular or seasonal shapes with them to increase interaction. On the right-hand side, we can see the face of Daffy Duck.
Some seasonal imagery is also used. As we are approaching Christmas, our direct competitor Bubble Pop Origin! Created a present with bubbles. Another app used a Christmas tree.
We can also use some shapes in our game. For example, on Halloween, we can use a pumpkin. You can read more about seasonal marketing on our blog.
For Thanksgiving, we can use a turkey. Considering we are experiencing a pandemic, why not create a mask from bubbles! By using seasonal images on our game we can increase our app’s relevance while also giving the impression that the game is continuously being attended to.
Let’s Improve Your Product with Ad Intelligence
To all the product managers out there, we would be more than happy to help develop your product. As you can see, Ad Intelligence allows us to conduct extensive research to discover the popular trends in our category. By implementing such features in your game, you can increase your popularity and revenue. We will also keep you updated with subscription-based solutions for creative tracking.
If you are not a product manager, do your company’s PM a favor by sending them this post. They will thank you for making their lives easier! If you want to learn more, sign up for a free demo and let us introduce you to the world of MobileAction!
