Creative Best Practices for Ads on Casino & Card Games

The Casino and Card categories are amongst the most popular on the Chartboost Network. We receive frequent requests for more information on how to refine advertising within these categories and want to share best practices with you, which is based on the top campaigns with live Chartboost data.

Casino and Cards have incredible retention and monetization rates. The casual gameplay allows users to quickly pick up their devices and play during the few extra minutes of their day. This often results in multiple bootups per day for engaged players, which equates to more opportunities for you to monetize with them.

Knowing what works best with these players can help you navigate the categories and target players in an intuitive way that helps create excitement for your game. Following best practices could make the difference between your creative being fun, versus an interruption to gameplay.

With that, let?s talk about some specifics:

Paint a RainbowHow would one NOT describe Las Vegas? Dull and boring. So don?t do that with your creatives. Use vibrant colors to make them stand out. Focusing on colors from the brighter side of your key color palette can help your creatives ?pop,? creating strong appeal and giving your creative a distinctive appearance when it shows.

Emphasize the WINEspecially with Casino games you can show the rush of a big win and the jackpot that follows. Put that big win front and center to lift interest in your interstitials and entice them to get in and start playing.

Applying this best practice is as simple as focusing on the joy your game inspires in players. This could be done by ?making it rain? with coins or focusing on exciting winnings based messaging such as ?Win Big? to seed the idea of winning a big jackpot.

Show offKeep the focus on art that is easily identifiable. If you have a slots game, at a minimum have the slot machine in the background. If it?s a card game make use of the visuals of your cards. It may sound obvious, but it does help. Gameplay creatives outperform those that are brand heavy in this category so if potential players can clearly identify what your game is, you increase the odds that they?ll engage.

If You?ve Got It, Flaunt It!Most Casino and Card games are re-creations of games that have been around for decades. A common way to differentiate them is through licensed IP. If your game has the proper licensing make sure it finds its way into your creatives in an obvious way.

Test, Test & Test Some MoreTop apps in this category often have dozens of creatives running to test results. Among advertising apps that spent more than $1,000 in May, the median count of active creatives used was 40% higher for Casino apps when compared to all others.

Thorough testing of creatives can help you find the most optimal results. While you?ll have to spend time to make the art for multiple creatives, the opportunity to learn and iterate can help you optimize for the long haul. If you?re willing to go deep, you can hit the proverbial jackpot with your creatives!

Pro TipWe recommend naming all of your creatives so that they?re easily identifiable to you when seeing their name alone. Smart naming allows you to visualize that image while you?re analyzing its performance. We also recommend this same approach when naming advertising and publishing campaigns which is done by inserting some of the settings as the name. For example: ?TBSE_N_Worldwide_HighCPI_CasinoTarget? is a great name for an app called ?The Best Slots Ever,? running a global network advertising campaign that targets the Casino category with higher than normal CPI bids.

Incorporating the above best practices into your campaign strategy can help you open the doors to success by delivering vibrant creatives that showcase the game type, winnings, and your associated brands. Testing and iteration are the key to honing your creatives until they?re at their best.