Paid ads: buying players

Can we just buy players?

Kai has an idea: "What if we pay for ads, so more people find Garden Defense?" Paying to get new players is called user acquisition, or UA. Players who find us on their own, through search, creators or friends, are organic. Players who arrive through ads are paid.

Ad platforms like Google Ads, Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and TikTok sell space in front of their users. Paid ads can work, but they can also burn money fast. This lesson is about telling the difference.

Three ways to pay

• CPM: per 1,000 viewsCost per mille, Latin for thousand. Google charges for viewable impressions: at least half the ad on screen for 1 second or more.
• CPC: per clickCost per click. We pay only when someone clicks. We set a maximum, and the actual price is often lower.
• CPI: per installCost per install: ad spend divided by installs. Google's App campaigns can aim for a target cost per install for phone games like Garden Defense.

When we buy ads, we choose what we pay for. (How ads pay, in Stage 6, shows the same auction from the other side, when our game shows ads.)

ROAS: did the ads pay back?

ROAS (return on ad spend) compares the money ads brought in with what they cost: revenue from ad players, divided by ad spend, times 100%. Google's own example: $5 of sales from $1 of ads is a ROAS of 500%.

• Under 100%: the ads brought in less than they cost.
• 100%: we got the ad money back, and nothing more.
• Over 100%: the ads earned more than they cost.

ROAS is not profit. Store fees, servers and our time cost money too, so 100% still loses money overall.

Lifetime value, and test small

A free game earns slowly, a few cents at a time, so we also need LTV (lifetime value): all the money one player brings in over their whole time playing. The golden rule: LTV must be higher than what a player costs. Unit economics, in Stage 10, works through LTV, CPI and payback in detail.

So we test small first: a small daily budget, one country, a few ads. Google advises letting a new App campaign run 7 to 14 days before judging it, and changing the budget or bid by no more than about 20% at a time.

Targeting, creatives, landing page

• TargetingWho sees the ad: countries, languages, devices, and people interested in similar games. Platforms limit targeting for younger users, as we'll see.
• CreativesThe ad itself, usually a few seconds of real gameplay with a hook, cut from the trailer. Studios test several and keep the winners.
• The landing pageWhere a tap lands: the store page or our website. A weak store page wastes every click we paid for (see A store page that sells).

Three things decide whether an ad works.

Ads, kids and who holds the card

Many Garden Defense players are young, and ad platforms protect children and teens. Google Ads says users under 18 are not eligible for personalised ads of any kind. In 2023, Meta said it would use only a teen's age and location to show them ads. So a studio makes honest, age-appropriate ads, and often speaks to parents instead.

An ad account is a contract with a payment card attached, and Google Ads requires users to be 18 or older. So a parent owns the account and the card, sets the budget and approves every campaign with the team.

Why many indies spend little

Big mobile studios spend huge sums on UA because they measure their LTV closely and know which players pay back. A small studio usually doesn't know that yet, and every test costs real money.

So many indie studios spend little or nothing on ads at first. They grow through things that cost time instead of money: a strong store page, demos and festivals, press, creators, Discord and a newsletter. Paid ads come later, as a careful test, once the numbers show a player is worth more than they cost.

Bolt says: Not every player has to be bought. Next: Search Console, and the players who find us by searching on Google.