Today, there are a vast number of mobile apps competing for user attention. Making eye-catching, creative and effective ads is essential for grabbing focus, bringing in new users, and getting people to take in-app action.

At Smadex, we’re not just about delivering ads; we’re all about creating experiences that connect with your audience. We have an exclusive team of experts responsible for designing a wide range of incredible creatives that are made just for your campaign to succeed.

With all this said, we welcome you to the ultimate guide to mastering the art of mobile advertising with our Creative Studio. You will learn about our most effective strategies, unique insights, and top tips that will equip you with the knowledge and tools to elevate your advertising game, helping your ads shine and drive impactful results. Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or a newcomer to digital advertising, you’ll discover invaluable advice to unlock the full potential of your mobile ads.

We will start with the basics so you can get the most out of the rest of this guide. If you need more information, we invite you to read our exclusive Creatives Guide “Maximizing Creatives Impact: Analysis and Insights for Creative Optimization Guide“, which will explain it more deeply. If you are already a guru of the mobile app creative realm, feel free to jump into the “Smadex’s Innovative Process” section.

Video ads are engaging and lively clips that convey the heart and worth of a product or service.

Also, there are Endcards. These are the final part of a video ad, designed to keep users engaged and drive action:

• Static Endcards: Simple, call-to-action images like “Download Now.”
• Dynamic Endcards: Interactive elements such as buttons or swipeable galleries for more engagement.
• Playable Endcards: Mini demos for gaming or app ads, letting users try before downloading.

Playable ads allow users to try out an interactive experience of the advertised app. It’s like getting a test run before making a purchase.

Native ads blend seamlessly with the app’s content, ensuring they don’t disrupt the user experience.

Static ads are non-moving banners or animated ads that usually appear at the top or bottom of mobile app screens.

Native | Static
These formats are usually cheaper but have a lower impact on users. Banners are good, but advertisers should try more interesting ad formats.

Static | Video | Playable
They get higher CPMs and IPMs vs banners as they impact users more. Since users can skip them, it might take more time to grab their attention and get them to take action.

Static | Video | Playable
Rewarded placements are effective as the ads are non-skippable, requiring users to view the entire ad to receive a reward in the app. This approach ensures a more engaging ad experience and attracts high-quality users, enhancing the campaign’s effectiveness.

Let’s get down to what brought you here: our unique process and a behind-the-scenes look at how our creative team works to meet our clients’ needs and support them in meeting their campaign goals. The method includes five steps: Briefing, Strategy, Production, Testing, and, last but not least, Reporting and Optimization. Let’s take a closer look at each step!

First, we want to know about our client’s app and its objectives, so we arrange a kickoff meeting to set goals and share creatives and themes. With that set, our creatives’ team can start making their magic and planning the next steps.

This step involves defining the elements that will drive your campaign’s success. Before any ad creation or production begins, we must plan the campaign’s direction, including understanding the exchange requirements and establishing our creative approach.

We need to define the specifications for the ad creatives. This includes defining ad sizes, durations of the videos, dynamic endcards specifications and functionalities, and additional features required for the creatives.

Different exchanges have unique rendering capabilities and limitations. To ensure optimal performance, we must tailor our strategies and creative specifications to align with these exchange-specific rendering requirements.

To develop a unique and adaptable creative strategy, we have a differentiative approach:

• Labeling: We analyze each creative and divide them into different elements. These elements will be labeled to make it easy to test creatives and optimize them afterward.
• Themes: We define themes that will help us as concepts for our creatives. We then explore various ways to implement these themes, developing different creative ads and messaging strategies.

Thanks to all this, we can do continuous testing and iterations to maximize campaign performance in Step 4.

Our team enjoys this step the most: the production one! They can apply all the information analyzed in the previous steps to a real ad. We are always in the loop, updating and creating new creatives to adapt to our clients’ needs. Let us show you all the options we can create at Smadex:

We design engaging playable ads from the ground up that allow users to experience a mini-version of the app before downloading. We can also craft a new experience for new and lapsed users. These can be used as a standalone format or as an interactive endcard, after or before a video, to boost engagement.

This approach effectively showcases the app, encourages more installs, and increases engagement. Additionally, we optimize the playables by different levels of difficulty, gameplay features, or visuals, ensuring everyone has fun.

Double Endcard

It’s a combination of a playable and a simple endcard. The user needs to skip the playable and close the simple endcard, giving more opportunities to redirect the user to the app store.

Slider

We put two similar images on top of each other so users can play with a slider. After they’ve had some fun with it, the slider redirects them to the app store. Plus, it’s customizable to make it more personal for the user.

Slots

Like in casinos, there is a way of simulating playable slots with the possibility of customizing all the icons and elements. When players click once, the slot will spin, and with a second click, they’ll be taken to the app store.

Memory

It catches the users’ attention with a fast memory test, letting them win or lose in just a few seconds. After a few clicks or winning/losing, it redirects the user to the app store.

Blur Remove

It allows the users to remove the blur from the image in the background by using an eraser and moving it around the screen. Once they complete the challenge, they will be taken to the app store by tapping the banner or waiting for two seconds.

A/B Choose

This interactive ad offers two choices. One tap lets users select their preferred option, which is then highlighted. A second tap on the banner redirects them to the app store related to that choice. It’s a two-tap process for selecting a path and then reaching the app. This works for any ad with a simple choice.

Simple

You can fully customize how the app is shown on the endcard in a simple but unique way. We can make it fit your app and choices perfectly!

Animation GIF

It’s a simple animation with short and easy-to-understand visuals, making it lightweight and suitable for publication on almost any platform.

Animation HTML

HTML allows us to create more complex animations, reduce the file’s weight, be more creative, and create longer and more stunning ads.

Dynamic

These banners dynamically adjust based on factors such as geolocation, time of day, user behavior, and personal preferences. This ensures viewers receive the most relevant content tailored to their unique context. It’s an ideal solution for apps like crypto, weather, or news, where timely, personalized updates make all the difference.

Store

Did you know you can upload a portrait video as an endcard? Yes, this endcard can show information about the app, such as its name, company, rating, and icon.

MiniStore

It’s the same as the Store creative we explained before, but we upload a landscape video instead of a portrait one as an endcard.

Trooper

It’s similar to Store and MiniStore, but with the difference that no video is displayed, just an animation with a background, logo, and a simple asset.

Add-ons

You can add extras to any of the carousels that will be mentioned below. It’s not required, but it’s a good idea because it helps grab the user’s attention. For example, you can customize it to seasonal events, adding some leaves falling for autumn or snowflakes for winter.

Carousel Video

It’s a way of showing a landscape video and store cards at the same time.

Carousel Blur

It’s a carousel that attractively displays store cards on the endcard with a blurred background. It can be fully customized, and the user is redirected to the app store with just a click.

Carousel Vertical

It’s the same as Carousel Blur, but vertically. It’s also fully customizable and redirects users to the app store with just a click.

Carousel Scroller

Users can swipe through these banners to view all the content, similar to the popular reels in other apps. They will be redirected to the App Store either by clicking on it or after multiple interactions.

Carousel Character

This is an excellent way to simulate character selection and let the user interact with the app. We can adapt it to any type of content.

Carousel Cards

It’s a card carousel with a library showing a few cards. The animation is smooth and catchy for the user.

Carousel App Store

It’s a carousel with images from the App Store displayed as cards. The best part is that we automatically generate the images using the resources available in the App Store. This ensures a simple, safe design that aligns with official guidelines.

Carousel Slider

It’s like Carousel Cards, but this time the cards overlap. There’s an initial animation to let the user know the template is interactive.

Carousel Stories

These are like the typical “stories” of some apps. The user can click on the slides to navigate, wait 5 seconds, click on the last slide, or the app info to be redirected to the App Store.

Testing is an essential part of the process, as, depending on what we do here, the insights we gain will help us make decisions in the future about optimizing the campaigns. This step is repeated continuously to ensure we always run the best possible combination of creatives. At this phase, we can let our imagination fly. Any combination is possible; sometimes, the more out-of-the-box options are the best.

So, how do we do it? Here’s a simple example to illustrate our workflow for testing client assets alongside our studio’s creations:

1. Client Assets: The client provides the assets we’ll use as the base ones.

2. Creative Studio: We design engaging endcards and playable ads to boost performance.

3. Best Assets Selection: This is where the magic happens. We put different elements to the test:

• Budget-Friendly: We often start testing in countries with lower advertising costs (lower CPM) to efficiently explore without overspending.
• Geo-Specific: Once we know which countries work, we apply these learnings by testing directly in our main target countries to confirm what truly drives results for our target audience.
• Playables: We create and test different playable ads with various themes and gameplay to see what users enjoy most and what attracts the right audience.
• A/B Testing: We run tests that mix your initial ads with our different endcards to see which pairings deliver the best performance.
• MRAID: We test small but impactful details within the ads, like adding a countdown timer, a mute button, or changing the video progress bar. This helps us understand what visually grabs the user’s attention.

4. Optimization: The ad combinations that perform best in testing are launched live to reach your audience. Underperforming ones are either refined based on what we learned or replaced with better assets.

5. Continuous Improvement: We don’t stop there. We constantly analyze the performance of live ads and use that information to create new endcards, playable ads, and variations to test. This ensures we’re always pushing for even better results.

6. Feedback: We keep you in the loop, sharing what we’re learning from our tests and how it’s helping us optimize your campaigns.

But what happens to the assets week by week during the testing phase?

Think of it as a continuous competition: live ads are constantly challenged by new, potentially better creatives. The weaker ones are replaced, ensuring only the highest-performing assets remain active.

Our testing also helps us understand why certain ads work. By using custom labels and analyzing the results, we can identify trends like which color schemes, gameplay styles, or even user-generated content elements resonate most with your audience.

Optimizing our ads is essential for achieving top performance for your campaigns. By continuously refining and fine-tuning our approach, we can better align with your audience’s preferences, boost engagement, identify the most effective creatives, and drive success across all campaigns. Here are our top-notch reporting and optimization strategies that will help you succeed:

At Smadex, we leverage MMP data for real-time user engagement and performance tracking. This enables us to personalize content, optimize our all-in-one platform, and proactively combat creative fatigue by refreshing assets based on performance analysis across different ad positions.

To help our clients fully leverage their creative potential, our ‘Custom Labels’ offer a fully personalized solution with customizable tags tailored to their specific needs. By strategically applying these labels, we unlock deeper insights, add valuable context, and spark fresh ideas for production.

Our platform has all the standard analysis metrics and rates, along with our newest features:

• Engagement Rate for endcards
• Completion Rate for each non-static creative
• Hold Rate for overall performance evaluation

These metrics provide us with better optimization results that are more comprehensive and accurate.

Our proprietary algorithms optimize spend, targeting, and creative selection in real time to ensure top campaign performance. Additionally, with our ‘Creative Selector,’ spending is automatically directed to the best-performing creative based on IPM, keeping content fresh and maximizing engagement.

We can fully customize the product pages based on the type of users we’re targeting and the app. We can also experiment with different themes and variations to see which works best.

We’ve reached the end, and now it’s safe to say you’ve learned our most effective strategies, unique insights, and the best tips to up your advertising game, from mastering the basics to exploring advanced formats and placements.

As you may have read, our fantastic team of experts is dedicated to creating distinctive and compelling ads for your campaigns. Through our unique process, you will be well-equipped to achieve and surpass your campaign goals and ensure your ads are seen and remembered.

Your journey to mastering the art of mobile advertising starts here. Go from ‘Meh’ to ‘Wow’ with Smadex Creative Studio!