Best Practices for Ad Creative Testing: Key Components, Methods, Analysis and Optimization

In the ever-evolving world of digital marketing, what worked last week may not work today. Game and app marketers need to stay agile and proactive by implementing creative testing frameworks that generate quick, effective results. In this article, we will outline the key steps and strategies to build a creative testing framework, empowering you to maximize the performance of your ad creative.

But before we start, here are some key terms to remember:

• Creative concept: The approach you use to achieve your business goals. This shapes the tone, messaging, and visual execution of your ad creatives.
• Creative optimization levers: The external elements of your creative concept that you adjust to improve performance. These include formats, colors, fonts, ad placements, and more.
• Creative variation: Different iterations of a single creative concept.
• Iteration: The process of refining and adjusting the creative to identify the most effective version.

The Importance of Ad Creative Testing

Creative testing offers several critical benefits:

1. Prevents creative fatigue: Repeatedly showing the same ad can lead to audience fatigue, reducing engagement. Testing new creatives keeps your audience interested.

2. Improves audience understanding: Testing different creatives provides valuable insights into which messages resonate with your audience, revealing the copy and visuals that drive engagement and purchase intent.

3. Enhances ad performance: By testing creatives, you can launch more relevant and effective campaigns, helping your audience make informed decisions while streamlining your creative process.

4. Optimizes budget: Creative testing allows you to identify the most efficient creatives, reducing costs per conversion and improving overall campaign ROI.

5. Informs future campaigns: A strong creative testing framework provides long-term insights into customer behavior, simplifying future market research and decision-making.

Creative testing is essential for growth marketers. It reveals what resonates with your target audience, leading to higher-quality creatives and improved campaign performance. The first step in any creative test is to establish a clear framework, following a methodical approach to ensure actionable results.

Key Components of a Creative Testing Framework

Developing Creative Variants for Testing

Creating diverse creative variants is critical to an effective ad testing strategy. This involves crafting multiple versions of ad elements such as headlines, visuals, and copy to test their impact on audience engagement.

To foster creativity while maintaining brand consistency, consider the following:

• Establish and share clear brand guidelines: Define your brand’s personality, voice, tone, colors, fonts, and logos. Ensure you team adheres to your brand standards.
• Monitor trends: Stay updated on trends to maintain relevance of your creative.
• Define your target audience: read more about the audience targeting here.
• Focus on solving key challenges: Identify critical issues and develop solutions during creative development.
• Use creative tools: Leverage formats, colors, fonts, and placements to enhance your ad creatives.
• Iterate based on insights: Continuously refine your creatives based on testing results.

Creative Considerations

Creative performance is only as effective as its setup. To ensure your creative performs at its full potential, it’s important to follow best practices, keeping all variables consistent.

• Focus on one change per ad – keep it focused and single-minded.
• Ads with shorter scenes tend to perform better. Think of the structure as a series of short clips.
• Start with a moment that clearly represents the main motivation.
• Highlight the brand early, within the first three seconds.
• Showcase the key feature.
• Weave the message into the story through supers or integrated copy.
• Finish with a Call-to-Action that directly connects with the desired action.

Choosing the Right Testing Methods

Selecting the appropriate testing method is crucial to refining your marketing strategy. The most popular testing techniques include:

• A/B Testing: This method compares two versions of a creative asset to determine which is more effective, allowing you to assess the impact of individual changes (e.g., headlines, visuals, CTAs).
• Multivariate Testing: This approach tests multiple variables simultaneously to understand how different elements interact, providing insights into the combined effects of creative components.
• Lift Testing: Also known as conversion lift tests, this method is used for assessing significant changes, such as comparing images versus videos or different audience segments.

By understanding the nuances of each method, you can align your testing approach with your campaign goals, leading to impactful, data-driven decisions.

Optimizing for Creative Conversions

A strong testing strategy naturally leads to creative optimization. By leveraging insights from your tests, you can fine-tune design elements, creative formats, messaging, and CTAs to drive better conversions. This data-driven approach ensures that your ads are continuously optimized for maximum performance.

Sample Ad Campaign Results and Analysis

• UGC creatives outperformed 2D (original assets) on Facebook.
• All UGC creatives had higher IPMs compared to the original assets (though only by around 1%), with a 100% increase in efficiency for UGC ads. In other words, UGC ads are twice as efficient as 2D.
• UGC creatives overall had higher CTIs than the original 2D assets.
• The baseline CTR for Facebook is 1%, so while UGC creatives improved performance (9% CTR over the original assets), there is still potential for further optimization of CTRs overall.

What’s next?

Creative testing is indispensable for improving ad performance and audience engagement. By implementing a robust testing framework, we help game developers and publishers unlock valuable insights, create and optimize ad creatives that convert, and make informed decisions for future campaigns.

Need help with your creative testing strategy? Reach out to our team for their expert advice.