About MARVEL SNAP
MARVEL SNAP is a digital collectible card game (CCG) that lets players unleash the entire Marvel Universe. Each MARVEL character has its own strengths and special abilities, allowing players to assemble their dream team and unleash them in strategic card battles.
After winning numerous Mobile Game of the Year awards, MARVEL SNAP launched for PC in August 2023.
Campaign platform
Twitch, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram
Campaign snapshot
Game on Twitch at launch
Piece of Content
Game Installs
Views (YouTube + Twitter)
Live Stream Concurrent Viewers (CCV)
Avg. Conversion Rate: Top 10 Creators
The big question
How does the Mobile Game of the Year Build New Momentum for a PC Launch?
The background
MARVEL SNAP is a free-to-play game that took the mobile world by Storm, pun fully intended. The collectible card battler won Mobile Game of the Year at the 2023 D.I.C.E. Awards, as well as Best Mobile Game at the 2022 Game Awards and 2023 New York Game Awards.
When launching the PC version of MARVEL SNAP in August, 2023, MARVEL tapped into the AI tools of BENlabs to build a powerful groundswell of creator support, propelling MARVEL SNAP to the top of the Twitch and PC gaming charts.
Launching MARVEL SNAP to PC Gamers
The MARVEL SNAP campaign came out in a big way on PC launch day, Aug 26, 2023, propelling MARVEL SNAP to the top of the Twitch charts. Creators kept the momentum going with ongoing Twitch, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram content through Oct 2023.
Over 220 creators across North America and Europe supported the launch, live streaming gameplay and offering their audiences exclusive in-game content via Twitch Drops. These creators shared their thoughts and insights into the game, and created the content their audiences love to raise awareness for, beyond the MARVEL SNAP core gamer demo.
With BENlabs AI finding the perfect creators to launch and scale the campaign and fine-tuning every step of the way, MARVEL SNAP hit the #1 spot on Twitch, raising awareness and affinity for the game. In addition to fans of the collectible card game (CCG) genre, this affinity was shared among core gamers, variety gamers, and even sports (specifically FIFA) gamers.
Content Creator Mix
The breakdown of activated streaming creator content niches on Twitch shows an approximately even split between the core demo for MARVEL SNAP and the collectible card game (CCG) genre in general, and less exposed but receptive look-alike audiences.
The AI
AI Drives MARVEL SNAP Creator Campaign Strategy
BENlabs’ AI technology continually proves to be the secret weapon for creating more engaging and impactful campaigns for partners.
BENlabs AI models compare and contrast thousands of key data points against general performance across tens of thousands of successful BENlabs creator campaigns. Because BENlabs lead previous creator campaigns for MARVEL SNAP Mobile, specific historical campaign data was also integrated into the deep learning AI model to hone the MARVEL SNAP PC launch campaign.
AI Audience Mapping
With AI driving powerful audience clustering and mapping, BENlabs identified a clear picture of the most receptive audience profiles to target. While these ideal audiences skewed toward the core gamer and collectible card game (CCG) fan, BENlabs AI also identified FIFA audiences as sharing key signals and similarities with the targeted ideal. In addition, BENlabs AI showed not just who the ideal audience was, but also revealed where and how they spend their time online, as well as the content types and creators they follow.
AI Creator Matching
With a proprietary network of more than 14 million qualified, vetted, and verified content creator influencers, ranging from micro to mega, BENlabs AI surfaced and stack ranked creators that had influence with the target audience clusters.
MARVEL SNAP engaged the creator marketing process early, which allowed the extra time needed to collaborate with more cost-effective creators that aligned with campaign goals and brand values.
AI Campaign Optimization
Throughout the MARVEL SNAP PC launch campaign, BENlabs AI continuously tracked performance against KPIs, including the number of participating creators, cost per view (CPV), and cost per concurrent viewer (CPCCV), to measure viewership in real time.
Rather than waiting for weekly or even daily reports, BENlabs AI creates campaigns that are effectively self-healing. AI highlights clear actions to improve campaign performance and benchmark winning creators to drive ever more impressive results.
AI Predictive Analytics
With deep learning systems refined through thousands of successful campaigns, BENlabs AI offers actionable predictive insights before a campaign even begins. Armed with BENlabs proprietary data models and refined with MARVEL SNAP data from previous campaigns, BENlabs AI Predictive Analytics was able to accurately predict the success metrics for any creator activated in the ongoing MARVEL SNAP campaign.
THE CREATIVE
Reaching Audiences Where They Live
The PC launch of the hugely successful MARVEL SNAP game was an anticipated moment on the gaming calendar, but it wasn’t an entirely new game. It was up to creators to build momentum… and build momentum they did.
Twitch is the undisputed king of PC gaming streams, and so Twitch was the primary platform for this creator campaign.
With BENLabs AI identifying international audiences, AI creator matching found the best international creators. These creators included:
● 19 Italian-speaking
● 18 French-speaking
● 11 German-speaking
● Seven Spanish-speaking
● Six Portuguese-speaking
In total, over 220 creators were activated in the campaign. Core community creators were excited to play MARVEL SNAP on the big(ger) screen on launch day. Many, engrossed in the game, extended the length of their streams beyond their contracted timings. In total, creators were contracted for 356 streaming hours and over-delivered, totalling 536 streaming hours: 182 additional streaming hours delivered $460K of added value while adding $0 to the campaign budget.
Twitch Drops, where viewers received rewards for engaging with creator content, kept viewers involved and also helped drive the longer gameplay streaming sessions.
The results
#1 on Twitch
With creators streaming and audiences tuning in for the PC launch of MARVEL SNAP, the game hit #1 in the gaming category on Twitch for the first two hours of the campaign, building incredible momentum. It remained in the top four for eight hours. The game ranked #3 in concurrent viewers (CCV) for all games streamed on Twitch since 2022, driving awareness and positive sentiment.
In all, 221 creators were activated across the three month campaign period. 469 pieces of content drove over 11.5M views and 13,314 product installs. Additionally, the value of creator content extended beyond the campaign measurement period.
With BENlabs algorithms fine-tuning the campaign at every step of the three month engagement, cost per concurrent viewer (CPCCV) dropped by 21.5%. When compared to the MARVEL SNAP mobile launch campaign, the cost per view (CPV) dropped 11.8%.
Twitch Drops and other in-stream tactics, including head-to-head play against favorite streamers, drove engagement and spurred viewers to take action to download the game.
The takeaway
Looking Beyond Mega Creators
Rather than splash out on a handful of mega creators, the MARVEL SNAP PC launch campaign reached over 11.5 million qualified viewers, using BENlabs AI to tap smaller creators and streamers at scale. Not only did this diversify risk, with high-performing creator content more than offsetting any outlying under-performers, but it also created creator and audience diversity.
Where a mega creator counts followers into the tens of millions, individuals in that audience may only have that one creator in common. Conversely, smaller creators unite audiences into communities, aligned around core shared interests.
Tapping smaller creators at scale is the key to reaching mega creator-sized followings to drive engagement and action, not just views.
BENlabs AI is the key.
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