What We Stopped Doing in 2025 (And Won’t be Bringing into 2026)

Going all-in on one type of Creative

Ads that are all flash can get boring after a while, and pure gameplay can struggle to stand out. While both CGI  and gameplay only elements have their individual strengths and weaknesses, we’ve found that ads with a combination of both perform significantly better:

Comparison of ad performance using Motion Graphics, 3D, and a hybrid model. Source: Artstash Creative

A former client provided ad performance metrics for us to analyze and the results speak for themselves: a hybrid ad, using a combination of CGI and gameplay elements, provided nearly double the conversion rate of CGI or gameplay only ads. The synergy of a flashy, attention-grabbing CGI hook followed by compelling gameplay footage makes hybrid ads a guaranteed knockout.

One-size-fits-all global ads

Different countries have different cultures and you can’t expect the same ad to perform identically across the world. Localizing your creative to specific regions can help with performance, but here’s how we took it further last year: with a layer of culturalization on top of basic localization, potential users get an ad that’s hyper focused to them. For example, there is a market uptick in action game downloads during cultural moments like Ramadan in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia:

App Downloads (in millions) over one year in UAE and Saudi Arabia. Source: Artstash Creative

When Garena came to us looking to increase downloads for Free Fire in the MENA region, we took full advantage of this trend. We worked with local Egyptian artist Ahmed Santa to recreate localized and culturalized versions of existing ads with updated music and visuals, as well as a brand new ad campaign that included viral GIFs and hashtags. The results? The international version of the ad hit 130k views, the culturalized version reached nearly 1 million, and in just a few days it was the #2 trending app, and reach had increased by 80%. By customizing our ads per region, we can maximize user acquisition with ads that feel relevant to everyone.

Testing variations instead of net-new concepts

Variations on a concept are helpful once an idea has been proven to perform, but testing is the time to be creative and think outside the box. This year, we’ll be iterating and scaling many different ideas and formats to determine what works, then fine-tune them into the best version they can be.

We’ve seen this prove true in 2025. Uken Games reached out with the challenge to differentiate their narrative-focussed Ava’s Manor, from similar titles in the market. We tested several variations of ads – some with gameplay elements, some with story only, some even adopting a sinister horror theme and we were able to test them all. In the end, the horror variant saw a nearly 20% increase in IPM compared to other variants.

For 2026 we’ve adopted Meta’s Andromedasystem to take our testing even further, scaling faster, more volume and increasing iteration diversity, while maintaining costs and continuously testing alongside net-new creative.

Overusing AI for novelty instead of speed

The rise of AI in past years is undeniable, and while many were eager to adopt it, the pressure to drop tried and true methods for a shiny new toy was too powerful to resist for some. And that did include us at first! We started 2025 using Manus to analyze trends in the ad landscape. But we’ve taken the year to identify AI as a tool that can boost and accelerate existing talent rather than replace it outright. In the case of Manus, we tried to build a scraper to analyze new ads, but more often than not it failed to find the correct titles or the analysis wasn’t as insightful as we’d have liked. Its credit system also felt rather clunky, so we ended up having to do it manually anyway.

Manus will surely improve in time, and we’ll be ready to try it again when it does, but for now we’re sticking with what we know best. Right now that includes Kling, Nano Banana, Midjourney, Claude Code and VEO3

Conclusion: Sometimes, less is more

Putting all your eggs into the basket of CGI or gameplay only is less of a winning strategy than it seems, given the performance of hybrid ads. Adjusting spending on global ads can free more budget for localization and culturalization to give an even bigger boost in reach. High iteration diversity can allow for your hybrid, culturalized ads to shine by testing over a wide range of concepts and hooks. And all of this works in perfect synergy with AI tools that enhance our team’s productivity, not hinder it. By cutting back on what held us back, we can stay flexible for any new trends that emerge in 2026, and make it our most performant year.

Works Cited

Evocalize. “National vs Local Ads – Why Localized Campaigns Outperform.” Evocalize, 16 Apr. 2024, evocalize.com/blog/national-vs-local-ads-why-localized-outperform/.

Loomer, Jon. “Meta Andromeda: What It Means for Your Ad Strategy.” Jon Loomer Digital, 19 Aug. 2025, www.jonloomer.com/meta-andromeda/. Accessed 8 Jan. 2026.

Mancini, Andrew. “Reviewing the Pros and Cons of AI in Marketing & Advertising.” Impactmybiz.com, 2025, www.impactmybiz.com/blog/pros-cons-ai-marketing/.

SOCi. “What Are the Benefits of Localized Advertising over National Campaigns?” SOCi, 24 Feb. 2025, www.soci.ai/knowledge-articles/what-are-the-benefits-of-localized-advertising-over-national-campaigns/.

Tom. “Reflect Digital.” Reflect Digital, 19 Apr. 2025, www.reflectdigital.co.uk/blog/geo-targeting-and-localised-ads-reach-your-customers-where-it-matters-most.