Scaling
Playable Ads

What global studios do differently

Khuc Moc Thao · UA & Monetization Summit

The state of playables

Lifts measured vs the same campaigns' non-playable (video / static) creative. IPM = installs per 1,000 ad impressions.

Playables lift the downstream numbers too

Each bar is a different metric's % lift vs non-playable creative — read the labels, not the bar lengths. ARPU = revenue per user · ROAS = return on ad spend · Day-0/7/14 = days after install.

The creative is the
new targeting

Networks automated bidding & targeting — your old edge moved into the creative.

Privacy (ATT · SKAN · Privacy Sandbox) killed the signal — the creative now carries the weight.

A playable doesn't describe your game.
It is your game.

Making one is easy.
Scaling is a system.

One playable: brief, build, ship, decent number. Easy.

Every week · dozens of variants · measured properly · feeding back into UA and the game — and getting better over time.

That's not a creative task. It's a system.

First — how big has this already gotten?

Playables took over the top of the charts

Share of the top-30 creatives by spend that are playables — nearly doubled in a year.

Average studio: the playable is the last thing that happens — handed off, shipped, done.

Global studio: a product with a roadmap, versions, a backlog of hypotheses — always thinking 3 iterations ahead.

A deliverable is finished.
A product is never finished.

Almost everyone drops off in the opening. Your funnel is decided before the user reaches your "real" gameplay.

Don't design the hook — engineer it. Test 10–15 different openings, same game, let data pick.

Amateurs explain the game. Experts give the user something they can't resist doing.

📌 If you write down one thing — write this.

Concept velocity — many different ideas/week. Kill losers without sentiment, scale winners. Refresh cadence > batch size.

Delivery speed — idea → live in days, not weeks. The studio that completes more loops wins.

Always-on. A Friday-night idea is live Monday.

They're not making these by hand. They run a platform.

Building the engine is harder than making the playables — which is why the smartest studios run on one that already exists.

Misleading playables win on installs and collapse on Day-7 retention. You buy a spike, not a business.

A playable measures every tap, every drop-off, every choice. That's not just creative data — it's product data.

Playable → data → game design → playable

When a mechanic out-converts, that's the market telling you something about your game, not just your ad.

The highest-leverage difference — and almost nobody does it.

File caps differ — 5 MB (Meta/Google/AppLovin) vs 10 MB (Unity/ironSource). Miss the wrong one → rebuild per network.

Channels aren't equal — AppLovin ≈ 59% of playable traffic; Mintegral strong on Android; TikTok wants a different shape.

Then × thousands of devices — a 60-fps flagship build can crawl on the $60 Android that is most of your installs here.

This knowledge doesn't close with effort. It closes with volume.

IPM by genre — 2025

IPM = installs per 1,000 ad impressions. Higher = the format converts views to installs faster.

Measure the install,
not the impression

Installs (IPM) × Retention × ROAS
— measured per creative, not per campaign · ROAS = return on ad spend

Installs alone (IPM) tell you the playable gets users. They say nothing about whether those users were worth getting.

Measure at the creative level → you know which hook to scale, which mechanic to feed back, and killing a loser becomes obvious instead of political.

You don't need to build the factory.
You need to be running on one.

Free Monday moves: rebuild your first 3 seconds 10 ways · tag installs by creative, watch Day-7 retention · velocity target not quality target · treat the playable as a window into your game.

But the engine — tooling, always-on production, cross-network/device knowledge, measurement — is a full-time craft ($5k–$80k and weeks per custom playable). Rent it and you still keep the data: a good partner ships you instrumented creatives and creative-level results, so the read on your own game stays in-house.

Own the learning. Rent the hands.

Stop making playables.
Start scaling them.

The format that converts best, qualifies best, and survives privacy best — treated as one of the most important products you build.

The gap isn't budget. It's mindset — and you can close it this afternoon.

Key figures

IPM = installs per 1,000 impressions · ROAS = return on ad spend · ARPU = revenue per user · D0/D7/D14 = days after install. Full confidence tiers + source URLs in stats-pack-2025-2026.md.