A Guide to creating post-IDFA User Acquisition Strategy for Small Game Studios

The cost of user acquisition has continued to rise in the last two years, with many struggling to understand how to shift their UA strategies that were deeply rooted in paid social ads and direct conversion metrics. While it’s tempting to focus the conversation entirely on the iOS changes – it’s much larger than just that. It’s a combination of what happens when cheap ad creative meets ample ad inventory with loose data privacy, resulting in a market saturated with quantity over quality.

What began as an exciting democratization of access to audiences (the ability for small companies to reach audiences with much smaller budgets) turned into everyone trying to game the system. Entire industries were built around digital ad optimization, measurement partners, distribution channels, and more. As we get into what the next round of user acquisition strategies in Web3 look like, we need to understand why the ones we’ve been addicted to using weren’t doing as much for us as we thought.

Hyper-Targeted vs Creating Intent

Before the digital ad era, marketing was focused on both acquiring users with high intent and identifying users that may be enticed. Ads were shown to a swath of users and even those outside the exact target audience were exposed to brands. This meant measuring was more difficult, but wider audiences were reached and there was a need to create an intent to purchase.  In the height of the digital ad era, this shift to focus on the middle and bottom of the purchase funnel: those with high interest that could easily be converted.

The hyper-targeting capabilities offered by Meta (Facebook) and other social ad networks were built on their ability to track user behavior on multiple devices.  Within any app on your phone, your behavior, choices, and interests could be collected to build a profile of what you are interested in buying, playing, and doing. What this often left out was the second layer of users – those that may not be interested in your game now, but could be if you helped create the intent. It left out a large swatch of potential customers without a second thought.

Now, the hyper-targeted data is missing, leaving direct conversion campaigns at a loss because they cannot identify users with a direct interest in their brand.

The New Opportunity: Exposing more users to your game and giving them an opportunity to get immersed in what you are building, even if it’s not something they would have considered otherwise.

Think about the stressed-out employee facing burnout. This user has expressed zero interest in games, their online history shows only shopping for shoes, bags, and wellness tools. But if that user is exposed to a game that can refocus their attention into an immersive game experience, they would become a loyal user and shift spend into the game. There are audiences ripe for introduction to your game – but it requires an effort in understanding human beings and the current market climate. After all, how many good songs do you miss out on because Spotify doesn’t think they match your taste?

Money in, Money Out

The acquisition-focused model often places an emphasis on getting new users, rather than keeping existing ones. While LTV (lifetime value) of a user was important, it was at times dwarfed by the need to grow. It was fine at the time because acquiring new users was cheaper than keeping existing ones happy (this is why customer service took a dive in the last decade).  

As ad targeting began to shift, conversations began to focus on how do we get more value out of current customers. But the mentality was still stuck in the transactional model of ad-based user acquisition. Communities were started to get users to spend more – but it often turned users into speculators instead of brand champions. They weren’t touting how great the game was, but what they could get out of the game.

In the post-IDFA era, acquisition costs are high and everyone is realizing that communities don’t like to be talked to – they like to be talked with.

The New Opportunity: Create interoperability within your ecosystem and start thinking about it with partners as well.

Identify who your community is and how you can help them, and facilitate an environment where they can help each other. Think of it like this: if your game is a neighborhood where you want people to move in and stay, what type of neighborhood perks would help? How can you create not just a great game but experiences around the game that makes people want to be involved. Create evangelists that rave about the community. Give them ownership in the game. And then give them more.

Attribution Conundrum

With deep targeting came direct conversion metrics. Metrics became the end-all, be-all of “Growth Marketing.” Cost per acquired user was built on direct conversions, even though we all knew that the direct conversion was likely based on multiple impressions and exposure. But the focus on CPA, LTV, and ROAS became extreme.

This created a false reliance on data to understand user behavior in terms of purchasing or staying within a product. At large companies, it’s understood that attribution is a model based on several factors, and this is not always accurate. At smaller companies without data science resources, attribution was simplified because it felt simple, especially with last click tracking.

There are many other daily factors a user is exposed to.  How many billboards have  they seen since the last click? What conversations have they had?? Was the purchase from a place of genuine interest? Or was it an impulsive purchase?

The simplified attribution and growth marketing tool out the interpretation of user behavior. Now, without the data and targeting, it’s time to think about whether all those conversions were just from ads, or was it because you had a great game.

The New Opportunity: Create a great game people want to play and creative incentives within a game to keep players engaged.

This increases the amount earned per player and decreases the constant need for acquisition. It feels simple, and a little ridiculous, but it’s true. Much like a well-fitting shirt users will go back and buy over and over again, gameplay is about the experience of a product that makes users happy. A great game creates evangelists, word-of-mouth marketing, earned reviews, and longer in-game time for players. A great game knows how to integrate monetization seamlessly so it enhances the user’s experience, rather than hindering it. That’s the real opportunity now.

But: how do we know if we have a great game? Test your creative with your community – even if it’s 5 people at first. Get their reactions, and think about how to make it better. Include them in the process. Bring in people who don’t care about games, and see if you can get them excited- because they need a lot of convincing. See if your critics get riled up – a strong emotional response means you’re on to something, it just needs to be refined. Then build. Iterate. And build again.

While the iOS changes have broken the system of the last decade or so, they may have inadvertently fixed what hyper-targeting broke in the first place: the need for user-first marketing, creating, and building. Now we have the opportunity to bring it back.

About Stardust

Stardust is a SaaS, blockchain agnostic, platform that offers a seamless “low code” integration of NFTs for game studios. To learn more, you can schedule time with our sales team here.

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