Chapter #7. Conquering Brazil Market. How a Casual Game Catalog Reached >200% in Metrics with UGC ads Against non-UGC

Hi everyone! ?? My name is Andrew Shemet. I'm the founder and CEO of UGC Ninja We have been creating cutting-edge UGC-style creatives in various languages for over 3 years.

We have over 300 happy clients worldwide, a monthly production capacity of 3000+ UGC creatives, and native researchers in 60+ countries managing our database of 24,000+ creators globally. So yeah, I know what I'm talking about when it comes to UGC-style ads! ??

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Synopsis of chapter #7. Today we are going to cover:

• where to start with UGC ads for User Acquisition
• what to focus on while producing
• research & production phase
• the results & insights

Total reading time is: 5 min. Hold tight! Let's goooo ??

Reaching a?relevant audience?is one of the?most challenging objectives?of the UA race. Here we share our successful case of creating?UGC?ads for?Ya Games?in Brazil. You’ll find inspiration to?generate some ideas?and?where to start thinking?of making UGC ads on your own.

UGC ADS FOR USER ACQUISITION: WHERE TO START?

When we started working on the project, Ya Games’ only successful case was an?intro video ?with the main USPs.

UGC Ninja ‘s approach is based on a detailed analysis of the market and applying best practices from the market. It was different at that time because the product by Ya Games – a web catalog of casual games is unique and?has only a couple of competitors.

Our research gave us an?exciting result?– no UGC ads in the niche were used. So we changed the direction and went to the niche of casual games we knew very well. The problem we solved was to?show the audience?that Ya Games has a wide range of games to?suit any taste.

The starting point was to see?what types of ads are popular?in the gaming niche in Brazil and?what organic patterns are used?at the moment and combine this knowledge to represent the product benefits.

UGC ADS AS A METRICS IMPROVEMENT TOOL: WHAT TO FOCUS ON?

UGC Ninja uses?creative ideas to solve clients’ challenges. In the case of Ya Games, there were two main goals: improve the click-through rate and day seven retention rate. Translating it into the UGC language means that videos should have?catchy intros?to engage viewers and show the actual product to form realistic expectations.

There are also three standard rules to be remembered:

• mention your product not later than the 5th second
• show the product’s appearance (screencast, phone-in-the-hands footage, etc.)
• stick to the pattern problem → solution

RESEARCH STAGE: HOW TO DEFINE BEST PRACTICES?

While performing research, we discovered that just a?few companiesare operating in this niche of online game catalogs. And none of them had successful UGC creatives. Mostly motion videos or banners were used in performance campaigns.

At that point,?we decided to imply?our knowledge of the closest vertical – gaming. For the test, we chose three typical UGC ad patterns for games:

• let’s play
• review
• sketch

These types always work well and quickly show the gameplay in combination with real emotions.

Armed with another insight that good ideas work in different markets, we made a list of best references from the US market to base our opinions on.

So there were three criteria to reach success with the?1st pack of UGCads:

• best mechanics from the gaming vertical
• authentic Brazilian creators
• dynamic & attractive gameplay

PRODUCTION & BONUS

I will cut the production details, but I want to tell you about the bonus concept we decided to add while writing the ideas. We knew that?memes always work well?and?speak the same language?as the audience.

So we created an additional?video ?with just gameplay combined with copyright-free video memes.

RESULTS & BEST PERFORMERS

While the whole pack performed at the level of benchmark or outperformed it,?the best performers?of the group were?let’s play & review? videos:

They?combined?several factors:

• easy-to-get hook part
• highlighting product benefits
• gameplay parts showing the main USPs: the variety of games and the fun of playing

Conclusion

Whether you like it or not,?UGC-like ads?are the?best way?to engage your audience and alienate from straightforward ad patterns users are already allergic to.

If you’re about to try UGC for your product,?do not hesitate?to stick to the basic and well-tried patterns combined with your best-performing non-UGC ads.

Book a free 30 min call on your UGC strategy with our experts!