We build the editor behind this site, so we spend a lot of time on one question: what makes somebody stop, tap, and keep going. These are the answers we have found worth writing down.
A complete build of a swap-and-match ad, from an empty canvas to a file a network will take — with the reasoning behind every default, including the ones you should change.
10 min readA complete build of an idle-builder ad — two gestures, three plots, and an economy that has to deliver its second building inside fifteen seconds or lose the viewer.
9 min readSteer, collect, don't crash. The build takes twenty minutes and the tuning takes the rest — because this is the one mechanic where bad numbers produce a crash the player could not have avoided.
11 min readMost beginner guides show you a smooth path to a finished file. This one tells you what actually happens the first time, including the parts where you get stuck.
8 min readA tap and a drag are not two ways of doing the same thing. Each gesture makes a different claim about what the player is to the thing on screen, and picking the wrong one misdescribes the product.
9 min readThe squash, the bounce, the little burst of particles. None of it tells the player anything they did not already know — and removing it makes the same ad feel cheap.
12 min readThe case against fake gameplay is usually made on behalf of the person who was misled. That argument is true and it has not worked. There is a better one, and it is about what the practice does to every studio that refuses to do it.
10 min readWe make a tool for building playable ads, and we think a significant share of the people considering one should not build it. Here is how to tell whether you are one of them, before you spend the money.
8 min readNearly every playable ad has a pointing hand, and almost nobody will argue for one. That combination is the interesting part — it suggests the hand is not a design decision but a symptom of one made earlier.
8 min readWatch enough interactive advertising and the same skeleton appears everywhere. The interesting part is the short list of things that show up only in the ones that hold together.
10 min readYou install a free game. You never pay anything. Somebody is still getting paid. Here is the whole chain, in order, with no jargon left standing.
9 min readA phone screen is not a small canvas. It is a surface with a curved reachable region, a blind spot that moves, and a corner almost nobody can comfortably touch.
11 min readEight seconds is not enough time to tell a story. It is more than enough to imply one that is already happening and let the player finish it themselves.
8 min readA response to a tap is not decoration. It is the only proof the player has that they caused something — and if it arrives late enough, they stop believing they did.
8 min readEveryone repeats that you have five seconds. The number is roughly right and the model behind it is wrong — attention in a feed is not a countdown, it is a short series of separate decisions, each of which can end the ad.
9 min readWatching an ad is not really passive — sitting through one takes effort. The difference is what kind of decision you are offered: endure this, or do something. Those two produce very different people at the end.
8 min readEffort makes people value things — but only sometimes. Push slightly too hard and the same mechanism that creates wanting produces irritation instead. The useful question is where that line sits.
9 min readInterrupted tasks stay active in the mind in a way completed ones do not. The useful part for advertising is not the ad itself — it is what survives the walk to the store.
9 min readOpen a gap between what someone knows and what they want to know, and they will move to close it. The trick is a century old, the web wore it out, and touch changes it in one specific way.
10 min readMost advertising asks you to watch. A playable ad asks you to do something. That single difference changes what a person remembers, what they trust, and whether they act.
9 min readPeople value what they had a hand in, remember what they did more reliably than what they saw, and believe their own conclusions over anyone else's. Interactive advertising runs on all three.
10 min readSkipping is not usually a judgement about your ad. It is a habit that fires before anyone has looked properly — which is why making the ad better so rarely changes the number.
9 min readIt is one of the most repeated claims in this industry and one of the least examined. The effect is real in slot machines. Whether it transfers to an ad depends on something the slot research had no reason to measure.
10 min readPeople consistently report that playable ads feel less like advertising. They are right, and the reason is structural. The harder question is what follows when the defences people built against persuasion never switch on.
10 min read