Most marketers still rely too heavily on a small group of high-performing ads. These ads get the bulk of the budget, but this approach limits growth, drives up costs, and ignores the changes in what today’s users respond to.
As these top creative ads are used repeatedly, they lose their impact. User engagement drops, creative fatigue sets in, and money gets wasted on ads that no longer perform. Without new ideas and a deeper understanding of what motivates users, getting installs and keeping users around becomes harder.
This 2025 edition of The State of Creative Optimization shows a better way forward. It focuses on refreshing ad strategies, using real user motivations to guide creative decisions, and applying AI tools to test and scale new ideas faster. You’ll learn to move beyond chasing short-term results and build a system that drives long-term growth.
Q1 2025 Creative Ad Benchmarks
In Q1 2025, analysis of 1.1 million video ad variations across 1,300 apps (with $2.4 billion in ad spend) reveals that top creatives continue to dominate efficiency, but smarter diversity is emerging.
“Install‑to‑Play” performance (using IPM as a proxy) shows platform‑specific swings, from +33% lifts on ad networks to +65% on social, while Day 7 retention gains of up to +17% and +15% underscore the power of targeted hooks.
Meanwhile, cost concentration remains high (the top 2% of creatives capture 53% of gaming spend and 43% of non‑gaming spend), signaling the need to balance spending with variety for sustainable ROAS.
Key Performance Metrics:
Share of Cost (SoC): SoC helps marketers understand how much of the total ad budget is being spent on each creative asset. A rising SoC typically signals that the creative is resonating with audiences, prompting algorithms or manual optimizations to scale delivery. However, it's not just a performance signal; it can also reveal overdependence on a single creative. Monitoring SoC helps diversify spend across multiple high-performing assets, reducing creative fatigue and improving campaign resilience.
IPM (Installs per Mille): IPM is a crucial metric for evaluating creative efficiency. It tells you how many installs are driven per 1,000 impressions, combining both ad appeal and targeting accuracy. A high IPM indicates that the creative captures attention and motivates users to act. Comparing IPMs across creatives allows marketers to identify top performers and spot underperformers that need optimization quickly. It’s especially useful in high-volume testing environments where rapid iteration is key.
Day 7 Retention: This metric goes beyond initial conversion to measure whether users stick with your app after a week, a strong indicator of both creative quality and alignment with user expectations. High Day 7 retention suggests that the creative sets the right tone, messaging, and user intent, resulting in sustained engagement. Creatives with strong Day 7 retention help acquire high-LTV users, making this metric essential for scaling campaigns sustainably and profitably.
How to Use AI and Data to Power Motivation-Based Creative Strategies
Going beyond surface-level analysis, understanding the emotional and psychological triggers embedded within creative assets allows marketers to connect with users on a deeper level.
Key Insights:
1. Motivation Segmentation
Motivations for gaming apps include Excitement, Completion, Challenge, Community, and Competition. Motivations for non-gaming apps include time savings, Customization and Personalization, Casual Dating and New Experiences, Pursuit of a serious relationship, Simplification, Deal-Seeking, Entertainment, Discovery, and Inspiration.
2. Tailored Messaging & Performance
Crafting messages that resonate with specific user motivations can lead to higher conversion and retention rates, although performance varies by category and channel. For instance, 'Challenge' motivation excels at Day 7 retention in Hypercasual gaming, 'Community' and 'Competition' drive the highest Day 7 retention in Mid-Core Gaming despite being underused, 'Finding a Serious Relationship' leads to 15% better Day 7 retention in Dating apps, and 'Entertainment, Discovery, and Inspiration' offers the highest retention in Social Media apps. While some motivations like 'Excitement' might drive higher IPM (Installs per Mille), they may result in lower retention, demonstrating a trade-off between acquisition volume and user quality.
Actionable Strategies:
Utilise data analytics and AI to refine and optimize motivational targeting over time: Advanced AI solutions can decode emotional and psychological triggers at scale, offering unprecedented insights to guide strategy.
Knowing what motivates users is only part of the equation. The next step is building a system to test those insights at scale and adapt quickly when results shift.
The New Creative Testing Framework: Faster Iteration, Smarter Scaling
Continuous testing and optimization ensure that your best-performing hooks, narratives, and formats are surfaced and scaled before they decay.
Iterative Testing
Test → Learn → Scale: Top advertisers build a rapid experimentation cycle, using small-batch tests to identify high-potential variations before scaling their budget. Meta’s internal data shows that campaigns following this model benefit from a 16% lower cost per action (CPA) and 29% higher conversion rates.
Fatigue Mitigation: Fatigue monitoring (e.g., Meta’s creative_fatigue webhook) allows teams to refresh underperforming assets just-in-time, preserving efficiency and extending the lifespan of creative themes
Balance reach and installs (measured by SoC and IPM) with long-term engagement and user quality (measured by Retention).
Actionable Strategies:
Benchmark early engagement via IPM lifts by hook and outcome, then reallocate budget weekly to top performers on each platform.
Prioritize hooks proven to boost Day 7 retention, even if they sit outside your highest‑spend bucket.
Diversify beyond the top 2%. Expand test pools to mitigate fatigue, iterating on the next 10–20% of creatives that show niche high‑IPM or retention signals.
As marketers push for better performance through testing, another trend is gaining traction: expanding creative variety to reach more distinct audience segments without burning out top performers.
Also Read: Creative Analytics Explained: How To Track, Measure, And Improve Ad Performance
Creative Diversification in 2025: Why Volume and Variety Drive ROAS
The report indicates a general trend towards broader creative distribution. The top 2% of creatives attracting slightly less spending in 2025 than 2024 signals a shift towards more creative diversification across user segments.
Key Insights
Segmented Targeting: Gaming marketers maintain a performance-first mindset, focusing on winning creatives and scaling them rapidly, while non-gaming advertisers spread spend more evenly to appeal to diverse audiences, maintain brand consistency, and mitigate fatigue.
Creative Variation: Non-gaming apps with quarterly spending over $7 million now average 2,365 creative variations, 18% YoY growth, compared to 2,743 in gaming. This illustrates that testing more concepts (from hooks to UGC elements) discovers new winners and keeps audiences engaged.
Actionable Strategies:
Monitor segment performance and adjust creatives accordingly: Regularly analyse how creative elements (hooks, motivations, outcomes, UGC types) perform within specific categories and across different media sources using key metrics like Share of Cost, IPM, and Day 7 Retention.
Embrace creative volume and diversification: Build a system of ideas rather than relying on a single "big idea". Increase creative output with variety across formats and messaging types. This allows algorithms (like Meta's) to find the best audience-creative match.
Managing that creative complexity manually is no longer realistic. This is where AI enters, not just to speed up production, but to elevate decision-making.
AI-Powered Creative Optimization
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the creative process, shifting the primary bottleneck from production to measurement and optimization. It enhances human creativity by providing powerful tools and insights.
Key Insights
Predictive Analytics: Advanced AI decodes emotional and psychological triggers (hooks, narratives, motivations) at scale, forecasting which creatives will drive higher IPM and retention before they even go live.
Automated Assistance and Iteration: AI tools empower marketers to generate a high volume of ad variations quickly and efficiently. AI can also aid in tasks like image expansion, background generation, text variation, and audio suggestions. This capability enables rapid adaptation of assets for different placements, formats, and user segments with minimal manual effort. GenAI also plays a role in managing creative fatigue by enabling real-time measurement and more innovative refresh planning.
Actionable Strategies:
Utilize AI to analyze large datasets for actionable insights: Feed your historical and real-time performance data into an AI engine to uncover the “why” behind top-performing creatives, whether it’s a hook type, outcome framing, or user motivation, and let it prioritize tests accordingly.
Implement AI-driven automation for real-time creative adjustments: Deploy tools that automatically shift budget to high-potential variations and pause stale or fatigued creatives based on live performance metrics, ensuring every dollar is spent on the most effective message at that moment.
One example of what AI can do in creative optimization is automating creative tagging. This task is performed by the AI agents from Segwise. The AI automatically tags creative elements across images, videos, and playables. It can also extract tags from your creative names by learning your naming conventions.
These strategies play out differently across app categories. The following section shows how top-performing creatives vary by gaming genre, revealing what’s working and where untapped potential still exists.
Also Read: Generating Successful Ad Creatives with AI
Top Mobile Gaming Creative Trends in 2025
Analyzing top-performing creatives reveals key insights into successful strategies for different gaming genres:
1. Casual Gaming
Creative Focus:
Marketers focus heavily on Excitement and Completion motivations, putting most of their budget behind them. They rely on gameplay as the main creative hook because it’s quick and easy to produce, usually just a screen recording. In User Generated Content (UGC), they spend the most on testimonials across all platforms.
What Top Puzzle Game Creatives Show:
82.5% of the ads are gameplay-based.
51% include hook texts.
42.5% show characters.
68% of those characters are in distress.
27% of the ads use extras like IQ meters or countdown timers to show game depth.
Hook Strategies:
Marketers spend big on bold statements for social ads, but those hooks deliver low installs per mille (IPM), suggesting users don’t find them compelling. On the other hand, humorous skits drive high IPM on ad networks and DSPs, even with less budget behind them. When it comes to hook texts, instructional or challenge-based copy performs best.
Platform-Specific Performance:
Gameplay outcomes work differently depending on where the ad runs:
On ad networks, Pure Success endings lift IPM by 33%.
On Social & Search, Pure Failure outperforms Pure Success with a 65% higher IPM.
Although marketers pour most of their UGC spend into testimonials, gameplay reviews actually deliver better IPM and retention, especially on ad networks. They also hit the highest Day 7 retention rate (22%) despite taking up less than 5% of the spend.
Excitement vs. Completion
Both the Excitement and Completion hooks drive installs at similar rates. However, excitement consistently leads to higher Day 7 retention, showing that players stick around longer when they feel like they’re making progress, not just chasing adrenaline.
Malpa Games' Sudoku Master.mp4
Malpa Games Sudoku Master ,,.mp4
For example, Malpa Games' Sudoku Master (Hook: Bold Statement or Claim, Motivation: Challenge, Outcome: Transition from Failure to Success) and Word Pizza (Hook: Bold Statement or Claim, Motivation: Completion, Outcome: Unqualified Success).
2. Hypercasual Gaming
Challenges:
Marketers often misalign investment with impact. They spend 72% of the Social and search budget on Immediate Gameplay Showcases, yet humorous skits and problem-solution scenarios deliver higher IPM on Ad Networks.
On Ad Networks, they put 80%+ of UGC spend into testimonials, but gameplay reviews deliver 88% higher IPM.
Although testimonials help with retention (63% higher Day 7 retention), they don’t perform as well on immediate installs.
Creative outcomes show a clear tradeoff:
Failure-to-success outcomes drive over 4x higher IPM on Ad Networks and nearly 2x higher IPM on Social and search, but marketers rarely invest in them.
Meanwhile, Pure Success outcomes almost double the Day 7 retention of Failure-to-Success on Ad Networks.
Regarding motivation, Excitement drives the highest IPM, but Challenge delivers much better retention.
Creative Strategies:
If marketers want to keep players engaged, they must lean into Challenge motivation.
On Ad Networks, Challenge leads to 2.2x higher Day 7 retention than Excitement.
On Social & Search, it’s 2.5x higher.
They don’t need to spend more to get better results. They can boost installs by shifting just 10–15% of the budget from Immediate Gameplay to Humorous Skits and Problem-Solution hooks.
To balance retention and installs, blend Testimonials (for retention) with Gameplay Reviews (for IPM) in UGC campaigns.
In playable ads, successful strategies include:
Adding guiding elements like a hovering hand (used in 100% of tested playable ads).
Using instructional hook texts (found in 70% of playable ads).
Ending abruptly to trigger curiosity and downloads (seen in 56% of ads).
Want to explore these insights in depth? Download Segwise’s Winning Patterns Report to unlock 2025’s top mobile gaming creative trends.
Creative Narrative Impact:
Excitement grabs quick attention, but it fades fast. Challenge keeps players coming back and sustains long-term engagement.
Narratives matter too:
Stories built on Failure-to-Success arcs hook users early.
But Pure Success endings are more effective at keeping them around.
For example, Supersonic’s Bridge Race uses a bold statement or claim as its hook, motivating players through completion, with a user-generated content narrative centered around gameplay reviews, resulting in pure success. Going Balls takes an immediate gameplay approach, tapping into the motivation of competition. Meanwhile, Screw Master also relies on immediate gameplay, but its motivation is rooted in the challenge it presents to players.
3. Mid-Core Gaming
Underrated Motivations:
Marketers spend 55–60% of their budgets on creatives driven by Excitement. These ads perform well on Ad Networks, delivering strong IPM.
However, they struggle with Day 7 retention and only produce average results on DSPs and Social & Search. So while Excitement grabs quick attention, it doesn’t hold players long enough, especially in the mid-core gaming space.
Conversely, marketers barely invest in community and competition, which are social motivations. They account for just 8% of the spend on social and search, and they’re almost completely absent on ad networks.
That’s a miss because these motivations deliver the highest Day 7 retention (24.5%). Retention-focused advertisers aren’t tapping into a powerful opportunity.
Platform Differences:
Marketers still rely heavily on Immediate Gameplay hooks because they’re familiar and easy to produce. But Social & Search platforms open the door to more creative variation. On these platforms, marketers experiment more, especially with UGC formats.
Here’s how UGC spend breaks down on Social & Search:
44% goes to Gameplay Reviews
39% to Testimonials
18% to Reaction Videos
Reaction Videos are entirely missing from Ad Networks.
Even though Reaction Videos on Social & Search generate a modest IPM (0.8), they stand out by delivering the highest Day 7 retention (13%) of any UGC format on that channel.
Examples include Nekki's Shadow Fight 3 (Hook type: Mystery or Tease, Motivation: Excitement, Outcome: Pure Success), Nekki's Shadow Fight 4 (Hook type: Immediate Gameplay, Motivation: Excitement, Outcome: Failure to Success), and Kefir's Last Day on Earth (Hook type: Humorous Skit, Motivation: Completion, Outcome: Failure to Success).
Celebrity Trends in Gaming (applicable to Mid-Core and other genres)
Marketers spend over 90% of their celebrity budgets on movie stars, but the performance story tells a different tale. TV Personalities deliver 2x the IPM of movie stars on Ad Networks. Music Artists lead in Day 7 retention. Social Media Influencers outperform movie stars in IPM across all channels and lead retention on DSPs (28% vs. 18%).
Even though movie stars dominate budgets (80–90% share across channels), they don’t deliver the best performance.
On Social & Search: Music Artists drive the highest Day 7 retention (21%), beating movie stars by over 50%. Female celebrities achieve slightly higher retention and similar IPMs compared to male celebrities.
When we look at role types in ads:
Brief Appearances generate the highest IPM on Ad Networks, nearly 10, which is 4x higher than Main Focus roles. Yet marketers give them less than 10% of the budget.
Main Focus roles win on retention, especially on DSPs and Social, where they reach 18%+ Day 7 retention.
4. Social Casino
Creative Formats:
Marketers heavily rely on Completion motivation for social casino ads. They allocate over 80% of Ad Network spend and around 70% of Social & Search spend to Completion.
They dominate with Gameplay hooks, using them in 55%–78% of creatives, because they want to show value fast. Bold Statements hold a steady share (±10%) across all platforms.
When it comes to outcomes:
Almost every ad ends in Pure Fantasy big wins, jackpots, progress, and rewards.
Not a single ad fails without recovery, showing a clear bias toward positive outcomes.
Content Diversity:
Completion works well on Ad Networks, delivering the highest Day 7 retention (11.5%). However, on Social & Search, it ranks lowest in retention (12.5%) among all motivations.
Marketers can boost post-install engagement on Social & Search by reallocating budget toward Excitement or Competition, both of which drive stronger long-term retention.
Even though Bold Statements maintains a stable presence, they stand out on scroll-heavy platforms. On Social & Search and DSPs, Bold Statement creatives deliver 60% higher Day 7 retention. That performance signals untapped potential in environments where users quickly skim content.
Marketers can further improve diversity by introducing new story arcs:
For example, Failure-to-Success narratives could add emotional tension and payoff.
They’d still preserve the genre’s upbeat tone while making content more engaging.
The provided example features a Surprise Element hook, Excitement motivation, and Pure Success outcome.
Also Read: Emerging Trends in Creative Strategy: What’s Shaping the Future of Advertising
Conclusion
As you’ve seen, leaning into your top 2% of high-impact ads can boost efficiency. However, spreading the budget across the next tier of promising creatives helps prevent fatigue and uncover hidden gems.
Combine IPM for early traction, Day 7 retention for long-term value, and Share of Cost for scalable reach with user-motivation insights (for example, Challenge hooks in hypercasual) and let AI continually optimize those emotional triggers. Then run a weekly Test → Learn → Scale cycle shifting spend to your best hooks, refreshing tired assets just in time, and diversifying across motivations, formats, and segments.
Drawing on insights from Segwise’s Winning Patterns Report and AppsFlyer’s State of Creative Optimization, this approach ensures you boost installs and acquire loyal users who stay well beyond Day 7.
Start using Segwise’s AI Agents today and see how quickly you can boost ROAS with smarter, automated creative optimization. Sign up now for a 14-day free trial!
FAQs
1. What is Share of Cost (SoC), and why does it matter?
Share of Cost measures the proportion of total ad spend allocated to a specific creative. A higher SoC indicates that platforms increasingly invest in that creative, reflecting strong audience engagement. Balancing SoC across top and rising creatives prevents overconcentration and reduces fatigue.
2. How is IPM (Installs per Mille) calculated, and what insights does it provide?
IPM calculates the number of installs generated per 1,000 impressions, serving as a proxy for a creative’s efficiency in converting interest into action. High IPM signals an ad’s strong ability to drive immediate installs, though it must be paired with retention metrics to gauge user quality.
3. Why focus on Day 7 retention alongside early engagement metrics?
Day 7 retention assesses whether new users stay one week after installation, indicating that the ad’s promise matched the in-app experience. Combining retention with IPM and SoC reveals trade-offs; for example, a high-IPM creative that underdelivers on retention may be driving low-quality installs.
4. How can marketers combat creative fatigue effectively?
By implementing a rapid Test → Learn → Scale loop and leveraging fatigue-monitoring tools (like Meta’s creative_fatigue webhook), teams can refresh or pause underperforming assets just in time. Diversifying spend into the next tier of promising creatives (beyond the top 2%) also mitigates fatigue and uncovers hidden winners.
5. What role does AI play in modern creative optimization?
AI decodes emotional and psychological triggers at scale, predicting which hooks and narratives will drive higher IPM and retention before launch. It also automates the generation of high-volume ad variations, real-time budget shifts toward top performers, and timely pauses of stale creatives, ensuring every dollar targets the most effective message.
