Articles
November 11, 2024

Seasonal UA campaigns: best practices & creative testing

When the holidays come, seasonal campaigns come into play, bringing heat to the campaign management game. And it’s not just about Halloween and Christmas; there’s Diwali, Black Friday, Thanksgiving, New Year, Lunar New Year, and so on. Visuals are more important than ever. In this article, we’ll explore the specifics of seasonal campaigns, how to approach planning correctly, and, most importantly, when it’s less damaging for existing studios’ pipelines to integrate Sensemitter creative tests into workflows.

Creatives: the same old performers or seasonal visuals?

The first question to ask is: how do seasonal campaigns differ from regular ones? At first glance, it seems like the same process: you brainstorm an ad, check out competitors, create adsets, make a campaign, and that’s it. But it’s a bit more complex.

In terms of production, seasonal creatives aren’t much different. It’s the same process: idea generation, adapting successful formats, and regular testing. However, there’s one detail — holidays offer more freedom for experimenting with characters and atmosphere. Christmas and New Year, for example, allow you to play on viewers’ emotions, creating a warmer and more positive atmosphere.

Top performers always work, even during holidays

It often happens that top-performing creatives outperform specially prepared holiday ads during regular times.

The popularity of top performers can be attributed to the fact that they are already “warmed up” by ad networks and tested over time. Sure, you can create new Halloween-themed creatives every year, but what if an old Christmas ad still works? Marketing leaders sometimes say, “It’s like throwing away a Christmas tree — seems like it’s time, but it’s hard to do when it still looks great.”

Tip: Don’t be afraid to reuse successful creatives from the previous year. Include them in your new campaign with minor updates — it can save time and money.

When is it time to refresh creatives?

Any UA manager will tell you their daily job is micro-monitoring metrics and rotating creatives. This is the backbone of any campaign. Every day, you need to check what works, what doesn’t, where to boost performance, and when to switch off a creative that has stopped delivering results. This isn’t limited to seasonal campaigns — it’s a constant routine.

Creatives can start to “die” just a couple of weeks after launch, but that doesn’t mean they’re immediately useless. Some top-performing ads can run successfully for years. There are even examples of creatives delivering results for five years straight without losing their effectiveness. But, unfortunately, there are opposite cases where an ad quickly loses its magic and stops performing, even after two or three iterations.

Tip: Test creatives in small batches (3-6 creatives) to avoid overwhelming ad networks and to get more accurate results. Be ready to quickly replace creatives that start losing their effectiveness.

Planning seasonal campaigns is an art of balance. If you have a top-performing creative that consistently works, it’s tempting to keep it running and not invest in something new. But over time, all creatives can “burn out.” Ad network algorithms change, and no one can predict when a creative will stop performing. That’s why it’s crucial to continuously refresh creatives and test new ideas.

Our team’s experience shows that a good creative “takes off” immediately and across all key networks. If an ad performs well on one platform, there’s a high chance it will deliver results on others. This is the sign of a true top performer.

Tip: If you notice a top creative’s performance declining, try re-uploading it with minor changes — such as adjusting the opening frames. This can retrain algorithms and restore its effectiveness.

How much to spend on testing?

One of the main questions is how much money to allocate for creative testing. Every new idea requires investment, and the results don’t always meet expectations. On average, companies set aside specific budgets for tests, knowing that for every top performer, there are several failures. But that’s normal. Without testing, a company will stagnate, and eventually, all creatives will stop delivering results.

Tip: Aim for 75-100 installs per creative to gather statistically significant data. This will help you determine which creative to scale and which to turn off.

When to integrate Sensemitter for ad creatives analysis

By analyzing players' emotions with Sensemitter’s eye tracking and facial coding technologies, we provide valuable insights that can help you increas conversion rate into instal and click-trough rates. But in order not to brake an established workflows within user acquisition departments, with all our clients we usually discuss when it’s teh most effective to integrate us. 

1. During the creative brainstorming phase: to support ideation with data. We provide additional data and analysis to back up your creative brainstorming, enabling your team to make more informed decisions and generate ideas based on evidence.

2. Before adding new creatives to existing campaigns: we streamline ad testing by evaluating creative concepts in batches, reducing guesswork, and enabling data-driven iterations instead of relying solely on trial and error. This way, you’ll identify the most effective version before A/B testing with traffic.

3. When you need to optimize underperforming creatives or campaigns: If a creative is nearly hitting the mark, we help pinpoint areas for improvement, turning a “good” creative into a top performer without starting from scratch. 4. Anytime you need the knowledge to build a best-practices playbook: Over time, we help build a library of best practices and insights tailored to your games and audience, allowing your team to learn from previous experiences and apply those insights to future projects.

Seasonal campaigns are a great opportunity for experimentation. Although top-performing creatives might outperform new themed ones, don’t hesitate to try new things. It’s important to remember that the market and audience are constantly changing, and what worked yesterday might not deliver the same results tomorrow.

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