Insights for impact: Unveiling the top-performing mobile and CTV creative trends

Creatives that convert are fundamental to successful advertising on mobile. AppLovin’s in-house creative team, SparkLabs, produces tens of thousands of these creatives every year, making them unmatched experts when it comes to what's performing best now.

Based on data from over 81.2 billion impressions, 33.1 billion clicks, and 412 million installs, their brand new creative trends report Performance-Driven Ad Trends 2024, reveals the top performing ad creatives and explores how you can implement proven strategies, along with generative AI, to supercharge your creative performance in 2024. What’s even more exciting? SparkLabs is completely free to use for Adjust and AppLovin customers, meaning you can start working with them to build high-impact ads that perform right away.

Let’s take a look at some of the report’s key takeaways, a sneak peak at a couple of those winning creative strategies, and dive into AI’s role in driving the success of your next campaign.

Generative AI emerged as a driving force in the marketing landscape in 2023. While most teams are still grappling with the best ways to integrate it into their creative process, SparkLabs is streaks ahead, having scaled their use of AI in creative conception and production by almost 3x compared to 2022.

The key is to keep up with the developments and ensure you adopt a mindset that prioritizes the value and potential of AI as a constantly developing tool.

SparkLabs was able to save thousands of hours of working time that could be reinvested in delivering innovative, new ad concepts—and further AI experimentation.

In short, the report explores the benefits of:

• Building a foundation for AI usage.
• Prioritizing team adoption of AI over individual usage.
• “Genre-bending” or borrowing successful elements from other verticals to implement within your own.
• Creating a personal connection and human presence in creatives.

While each vertical has its own creative trends and styles that perform best, marketers in 2023 also benefited from borrowing from other genres and expanding into new channels like connected TV (CTV).

Among many trends and results-driving creatives identified and explored in the report is the concept of metaplay, a developing ad creative concept that’s increasing in popularity and consequently, variety. The idea is that the ad focuses on gameplay mechanics that aren’t necessarily the actual core gameplay, with the goal of attracting casual players via mini-games.

A great example is Card Shuffle Sort’s creative shown below. The image on the left represents the real gameplay, while the image on the right is the ad creative meta gameplay. The real gameplay and the creative clearly differ from one another, but do tap into the same user motivations. Understanding what motivates potential users is extremely powerful in crafting creatives that convert.

At Adjust, we constantly talk about CTV as an exciting and essential performance channel for app marketers looking to expand their channel mix and meet users where they are. We’re particularly excited to see successful CTV creatives highlighted in this report, demonstrating what top-tier ads on the platform can look like.

The report found that thanks to CTV’s potential as a visual medium for immersive, larger-screen presentations, it’s an excellent channel to explore “storytelling” via live-action, mini-cinematic experiences that resonate with users on a deeper level than mobile creatives.