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How to assemble a media mix for a brand from the gaming industry in the absence of market benchmarks

A new brand has appeared on the Russian gaming market, which has launched a federal campaign. Igronic Group became his media partner. The agency's team was given the following tasks: Image task: to build brand knowledge from scratch, to announce the entry of a new player. Build trust in the brand. Business objective: to gain market share, increase the number of new unique players. 

Dates: from 2022 to 2023. 

How to build a media return model without data. To evaluate the effectiveness of the media, the Igronic team used the Tamburin platform. Based on the data, Tamburin calculates the contribution of each advertising channel to business results and generates an optimal media mix. 

Data was used to build the model: 

The number of new users of the application. 

The promo. 

The advertising activity of competitors. 

Seasonality.

The output of each new creative. 

Distribution (offline). 

Day of the week. 

 

What difficulties are we facing?: 

  1. Benchmarks are difficult to achieve in a niche.
  2. The key competitor has a high influence, it has formed a modern market in this gaming niche and is dominant in top of mind. It is important for a new brand to differentiate itself from it at the level of creativity, so that it is not perceived in conjunction with a competitor. In this regard, the Tamburin model was influenced by new creatives.
  3. The competitor has a better offer.
  4. The limited capacity on the part of users in this gaming niche reduces the correlation between knowledge growth and sales.
  5. Without historical data, it is impossible to build a model before the campaign is launched, so it was built by the day.

The Igronic agency team has launched econometric modeling based on sales data since 2022.

The first model was built by day, which gave the required number of observations. In two months, enough data has been accumulated to optimize the media mix.

The model is regularly enriched with new data and becomes more accurate, which constantly optimizes the media mix.

Results

The Tamburin model revealed the contribution of advertising in terms of media and distribution development, as well as the impact of competitor activity on sales.

Decomposition of ticket sales

1. The contribution of media to sales was more than 40%, of which the contribution of TV placement was 17%. At the same time, competitor's TV activity negatively affects sales (-30%);

2. Seasonality and days of the week make a big contribution to sales — 70%.

1. Changing the role of online and offline

In the beginning, the most conversion channel for sales was activation at the offline partner's points of sale: at the time of purchase, the warm audience converted first of all. It took longer to attract Internet users due to limitations in the cost of the client (CAC) and in the level of organic traffic. The competitor's score was several times higher due to the high level of knowledge and a large percentage of the loyal audience.

2. Increased brand queries, organic traffic and reduced CAS with increased brand awareness and trust

As a result, online sales increased by 25 percentage points. Tools for working with an online audience began to show a greater share of the impact on sales — it exceeded 30%.

3. High season impact

It is important to separate the contribution of seasonality from the contribution of promotion (especially in high season). Promotion in high season and the rest of the time should be different in communication, the audience profile is different: age, segment capacity, frequency of play — the influence of the day of the week is significantly higher than when a person uses the product "impulsively".

4. The days of the week affect sales dynamics, especially offline

There is a relationship between the day of the week and sales, especially offline.

We included the day of the week in the model as a separate factor. This helped to better understand the contribution of weekends and calculate the required level of media support on weekdays/weekends.

 

«The main challenge in forming a strategy for launching a new brand is to find a basis for confirming or refuting hypotheses. Modeling has become an effective support for us. We look at the brand funnel from different angles: we use both non-standard approaches, new ideas, and historical data, which we gradually enrich. Following the 360-degree approach from the very beginning allows you to comprehensively determine the vector of movement for the brand».

Aida Saidova

Director of the Department of Insights and Strategic Solutions, Igronic Group

Conclusions

Increased investments in TV advertising (direct advertising and sponsored screensavers) and brand awareness are slowly affecting the growth of the online audience, but they are forming a more loyal user base (those who play more often and make more repeat purchases).

TV and performance are used as the main media in the strategy.

A competitor's TV campaign makes a negative contribution to sales, so it is necessary to comply with SOV.

The days of the week affect sales: a different support strategy has been developed by day. It is necessary to detach from the competitor with the help of creativity, it has a separate impact on sales, which was digitized using the model.

«Igronic Group's team is distinguished by its analytical and innovative approach to campaign planning and focus on customer business performance. Igronic has been working with Tamburin for several years and uses our tool specifically to optimize business performance through media.The case shows that even with minimal proprietary data and analytics from just one competitor, it is possible to build a high-accuracy model and obtain useful information about the course of a campaign in order to eventually take its market share with optimal media investments».

Natalia Ivanovskaya

CEO Tamburin