Find out why the ads just keep getting weirder.
It happens to me, dear reader, once or twice a week.
Reallyweirdads for mobile games.
The action you see in these Top War ads suggests it’s a simple two-lane runner-bang out game.
I cant stop playing this game!
There’s history here.
More on that later.)
The reason misleading ads have persisted all this time is very simple: they work.
You really need to know your RPD from your ARPDAU in the jargon-filled world of mobile games.
Never fear, though: I’ll have a go at explain all this without using too much lingo.
I don’t think they exist.
Picture the scene: a mobile game developer works out the average player’s lifetime spend in its game.
The really vital part of this high stakes, big money gamble is that the ads have to actuallywork.
And so of course these ads are relentlessly A/B tested to just get that install.
The most addictive game of 2022!
And some of them will end up spending enough money for the developer to profit, eventually.
Let’s pause here.
Would you like a sip of water?
Let’s go again.
These UA ads tend to go in cycles.
For a while, it was the ones where characters and items were locked away in little rooms.
Evony is one of the games running ads like this today.
while I actually FOUND this game.
Lately, it’s been these runner-punch in ads.
There’s a wilder, more brazen example: a game called X-Hero, an auto card battler.
It’s gone back to the Doge thing most recently.
It’s kind of amazing, really.
And so some corners of the mobile games business are a bit of a wild west as a result.
Neil Long is a former App Store editor who runsmobilegamer.biz, a website for the mobile games industry.
