This week I decided to stop wasting time randomly dropping Wherio into Reddit threads, and try actually paying for an ad campaign to see what Wherio usage might look like from a larger cohort of strangers. I went with Reddit ads as the first platform, and spent some time setting up the account under the wrong profile only to have to blow it away and start over again with the one I wanted to post from. Lesson learned!
My ads started running on July 29th, with a very low daily budget. So far I'm at an average CTR of roughly 2% which I'm learning is actually fairly high for Reddit ads. Maybe because it's a game?
Of the users who clicked through to the game, the vast majority dropped immediately. I have a one screen onboarding modal with a play button, which I could spend time trying to optimize, but at this point I'm going to focus my energy on those who actually started playing.
The good news is: they're still finishing the game at roughly the same rate (78%) as the friends and family cohorts I was testing with a few weeks back. A small number of them are coming back to play the next day, and I'm even getting strangers emailing with feedback and questions. This is exciting!
I'm also learning a little more about Reddit ads and realizing that it's a good idea to bookmark the link for each one because your posting account will never see comments otherwise. I was watching my account's notifications for a while post-launch and then stopped when there was nothing. Looks like they were just buried in the ad links themselves. You can get to each URL by opening the ad URL in the previews.
The link behind URL here is where your comments live.
Just came across some with good feedback by finally finding these threads: some of the clues are too vague. Very true! This is another way to get some non biased feedback.
I tested three headlines with the same creative:
a) Read a historical event. Tap the country where it happened. ~2.2% CTR
b) Like Wordle, if Wordle handed you a world map. ~1.9% CTR
c) You don't need to know the answer. You need to reason your way to it. ~1.3% CTR
I just disabled (c) and will see what the impact is there over the next few days.
I set the campaign to run for just a week so I can re-evaluate if it's worth continuing to spend money. I already know there's a few notable product gaps (some missing countries, difficulty in general is still a problem)...so I may hold off on spending more ad money until I address/improve those.
Overall, it's exciting to cross new usage milestones even if I paid a little money for them. It's at least validating that it's not just my friends and family who enjoy this, others seem to as well, enough to finish a game or two at least.
