Marketing application platform appsFlyer has just released the 2025 Creative Optimization status Report, detailing creative trends in mobile advertising, while highlighting the role of emotional factors in improving campaign effectiveness.
Based on data from 1.1 million promotional videos from 1,300 applications of both Game and Non-Game from the first quarter of 2024 to the first quarter of 2025, the report shows that, in general, creative advertising continues to play an important role, however, marketers are increasingly diversifying their creative strategies.
In the gaming industry, the top 2% of creative advertising models still account for 53% of total advertising spending, while this figure in the Non-game segment is only 43%.
This 10% gap reflects the trend of expanding creative experimentation to reduce the boredom of advertising viewers and differentiate content according to specific user groups.
However, leading gaming apps are still leading in the number with 2,743 variants per quarter. Meanwhile, mid-range gaming has seen a decline in production compared to last year - which could put them at a disadvantage in the context of increasingly fierce competition.
The report also pointed out some interesting points. For example, celebrities in the fields of television and music bring higher efficiency than film actors, but receive less attention.
In the gaming segment, TV characters create IPM (setups over 1,000 times displayed) that is twice as high as film actors.
However, more than 80% of the celebrity budget is still spent on film actors. In addition, influencer content also shows outstanding user retention, reaching a rate of up to 28% after the 7th day, compared to 19,9% of the group using film actors.
Emotional stories are highly effective but have not been properly exploited. In the hyper-casual game category, scripts that tell the journey "from failure to success" help increase IPM index by more than 78% compared to pure success stories.
Review and review content generated by users is more effective than customer-centricated content. In areas such as finance, social networks and GenAI (artificial intelligence), formatting educational and evaluative content brings high IPM and outstanding retention rates, even though the investment budget is significantly lower.
In the GenAI field, the front - back comparison format attracts attention but the user retention rate is low. The before-after models have an IPM of 3.68, accounting for 40% of the budget but have the lowest retention rate after the 7th day.
user-generated authenticated content helps improve retention rates up to 36%, showing the important role of creative strategies focusing on long-term value rather than just at the initial setup.
