What result should you optimise for when you're testing creative?

Question

Should you optimise for installs? CTR? Registrations (by that I mean creating an account, i.e. further down the funnel than install), or some event further down, such as playing a first game? I've heard varied responses to this in the past, some have said CTR for initial low-cost testing.

Answer 1

Most teams just optimize for installs since it can be hard to get reliable ROAS data in a test setting. CTR seems too up-funnel to me; I'm not sure you'd get meaningful indicators of success in a live setting by just testing for CTR.

Comments

To elaborate a bit further on the installs part: Specifically you'd be looking at IPM (installs per 1000 impressions).

CTR is indeed too up funnel, and certain ads will have much higher CTR but lower IR. A CG ad will almost always have a high CTR but not necessarily the best IR. Ultimately IPM unifies both those metrics and helps you understand what's working best

Answer 2

In my experience, it's ideal to have your optimization as close to the desired business results as possible. It sounds like in your case that's account creation of first game play. I consider that my default. That said, I've had two kinds of situations pull me away from the default.

The first is scale. If you're doing an ongoing campaign the default is fine, but short-burst campaigns may need a higher-funnel conversion like an install.

The second is incrementality. I've had situations where optimizing for the business result directly was cannibalizing organic conversions. But when we optimized to a discovery-related event, it wasn't. Examples of discovery related events might be searches in the site/app, or reads of deep informational pages.

So, default to what's closest to your business result unless scale or incrementality suggest otherwise.

Answer 3

I run couple of creative test for better ROI:

1. IPM test in mobile app install campaign on FB with only FB newsfeed placement in 1 geo to gain ~ 100 installs

2. IPM Winners move to ROAS test in VO campaign with all placements in 1 geo.

3. ROAS winner move to the main VO campaign to compete with old best perfroming creatives