ShenSun
Site Staff
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2018
Mod Note: I will adjust the alignment, titles and triple check the math when I have some more spare time, If i've made any errors anywhere, feel free to let me know and i'll update the thread.
I've been keeping an eye on the latest Shenmue 3 videos and thought i'd throw my 2 cents into the mix of what's going on. Keep in mind this is only my personal perspective and doesn't represent what's actually happening. This is all speculation on my part from doing advertising and marketing here and there.
I also ask that you all keep it civil and respectful. No drama in this thread.
SHENMUE VIDEO ADS
At the start of this month, we all began seeing Shenmue ads appear in various different places. Youtube & Facebook being the main platforms. So far we have the following videos and statistics
30 Second Ad FRANCE
123,000 VIEWS
15 Second Ad GERMANY
84,000 VIEWS
15 Second Ad ENGLISH
323,000 VIEWS
30 Second Ad ENGLISH
100,000 VIEWS
There is however more going on here than meets the eye. Deep Silver usually upload Shenmue trailers to their youtube channel and to be frank, they always perform poorly due to the videos being uploaded long after they've been shown on other channels. Recently all of the Shenmue Videos have seen a massive spike in views. This is due to the videos now being used for advertisements
If you total everything up as it currently stands (facebook + youtube) our views amount to around 2,285,000 (Well over 2 million views).
The Shenmue 3 advertisement campaign has only really begun since the start of November, so we can expect that result to go well up to between 10 million - 20 million views come November 19th
WILL THIS CONVERT INTO SALES?
Yes it will convert into sales, but don't get your hopes up too high just yet. I personally advertise everyday products and services to your regular man/woman. I can tell you that the conversion rate of these ads into sales is usually around 1% - 2%. It can go much higher depending on the season, targeting, virality, etc. For example, the Christmas season is a good period for conversion rates to go higher than normal due to people buying presents and gifts. Fortunately, that's the period Shenmue is being advertised in, so that will work in our favor. Also bear in mind, gamers have higher buying intent during this period, so that will also boost the conversion rate.
For the sake of keep our expectations in check and not to overhype this, im gonna play devils advocate and assume the absolute worse case scenario. We're gonna give Shenmue 3's conversion rate a 1 - 3% during the holiday season.
SIDE NOTE: BARE IN MIND THE FOLLOWING SALES NUMBERS ARE NOT ACCURATE AS WE HAVE NO SALES DATA TO MAKE A 100% CORRECT CONVERSION RATE.
THIS IS ALL SPECULATION AND ASSUMPTION. WE'RE SIMPLY WORKING OUT 1 - 3% OF THE TOTAL VIEWS AND BASING OUR SALES CONVERSIONS ON THAT.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
Currently we have 2,285,000 views on those videos combined. if 1 - 3% of those viewers convert into sales you get the following
Heck no. you see when you market to people. you are given a choice of various marketing algorithms to work with. Each one has lower conversion rates than the others. For example, the most common algorithms used are as follows
Video view algorithm campaign
Engagement algorithm campaign
Conversion algorithm campaign
We have no idea what algorithms Deep Silver are using for their marketing or how much money/budget they are using for each advert. I will say that video views and engagement algorithm campaigns have a much lower conversion rate than the conversion algorithm campaign (less than 0.1%). Conversion algorithm campaigns are the ones that usually convert around 1-3%.
Using the conversion algorithm for your ads is also much, much, MUCH more expensive as its goal is to find people on these social media platforms who are most likely to buy products from your adverts
The engagement algorithm finds people who will leave comments, likes etc and therefore it is cheaper
the video view algorithm finds people who will simply view the video and nothing else.
IS THERE ANY POINT TO THE VIDEO VIEWS AND ENGAGEMENT ADS COMPARED TO THE CONVERSION ADS?
Yes there is. Even though video view and engagement ads have a much lower conversion rate (less than 0.1%), they can still help massively. Deep Silver could throw out a bunch of adverts (engagement, video views, conversions), let it run for a week and then use that data to increase sales and boost the conversion rate massively. I'll illustrate this point using a staged example
STAGE 1 RUN EVERY TRAILER AS AN AD SEPARATELY USING VIDEO VIEWS, ENGAGEMENT AND CONVERSION ALGORITHMS
Run video view ads, engagement ads, and conversion ads for each Shenmue trailer in many different countries (UK, USA, EU, AU, CA, NZ) etc
Do this for a week
STAGE 2 LOOK AT THE DATA
After a week, we can look at the data of the ads and see which ones are performing best, which countries are responding well, what type of people are looking at the ad, and most importantly, who click that shop now button and purchased Shenmue 3
Going back to our earlier picture, we can see the following
Shenmue Spirit of the land Trailer
France 135k views
Germany 10k views
AUS/NZ 8.1k views
USA or UK 90k views
Clearly France and the USA/UK are responding most to this trailer. Therefore we can stop the ads targeting Germany and AUS,NZ and spend that money on the USA/UK and France
Shenmue 3: A Day in Shenmue
Germany - 110k views
USA/UK - 754k views
France - 152k views
Spain - 157k views
NA only - 58k views
AUS/NZ - 148k views
Italy = 51k
All of these are good numbers. I'd keep them all running. You'd definitely want to increase the budget in the USA/UK, AUS, Spain, France and Germany though as they are pulling in some serious high numbers.
The 15 second and 30 second ads on Facebook/Youtube also all have good metrics (I WILL AVENGE MY FATHER AD)
30 second ad FRANCE
123,000 VIEWS
15 second ad GERMANY
84,000 VIEWS
15 second ad ENGLISH
323,000 VIEWS
30 second ad ENGLISH
100,000 VIEWS
Summary of Facebook and Youtube Avenge Father Ad
I'd increase the budget on all of them.
Basically, I'd increase the budget massively on the ads that had the most views and more importantly had the highest conversion rate/sales.
For example
Shenmue Mood trailer may have had a 1.4% conversion (sales)
Shenmue Avenge Father Trailer may have had a 3.4% conversion (sales)
Shenmue A day in Shenmue has 700k views
Shenmue 15 second Avenge father has 300k+ views
etc
etc
Once the budget has been increased on those ads, id leave it for a few days, come back, view the data and then repeat the process.
STAGE 3 - DETAILED TARGETING AND RE TARGETING
Now that we have some data to play around with from stage 1, we can go much deeper.
TARGETED ADS
When you create an ad, you have to set the parameters of the people you're trying to target. In Shenmue's case, that would be gamers. You target them by specifying interests. (video games, playstation 4, PC, RPG gamers etc etc)
You can also target people who have viewed particular videos. Death Stranding videos, Detroit videos, Rpgs, Fighting games videos, etc. Or you can go more broad, Kung Fu, martial arts, UFC, heck you can even put WWE and the simpsons or even coffee if you really wanted to lol.
Once you run your ads for a week and have the data, you can see which interests performed best and led to sales. You can then increase the budget on these interests to drive more sales and kill the interests that led to nothing.
VIDEO RETARGETING ADS
Using our data in stage 1, we can now see how much percent of people viewed 5% of each video ad, 20% of each video ad, 70% of each video ad, 95% of each video ad etc
We can forget about the people who viewed each video 5% or 20% of the time as they most likely clicked skip on the ad or closed it. The ones who viewed 70 - 95% of the video ad means they are potential customers and have shown some interest. Knowing this, we can target all people who viewed and watched each video ad 70 - 90% of the time and show them the ad more frequently. This is why sometimes you see ads of something you're interested in over and over again all over the internet. You're being re targeted because you've shown some interest in the original ad and its now tracking you. Usually, it takes about 7 re targeted ads for a person to convert into a sale.
DEMOGRAPHIC RETARGETING ADS
The data in stage 1 will also show what type of people are responding to the ads. Male/female, age, country, platform they viewed the ad on etc. You can now use the same re targeting method as above to show the demographic of people who have shown interest the ads over and over again. You can also increase your marketing budget in this area and cut out demographics who showed no interest at all
ENGAGEMENT RETARGET ADS
Same principle applies as the two above (The ones who were most engaged, retarget them. The ones who didnt engage, cut them out)
ADD TO CART, INITIATE CHECKOUT & VIEW CONTENT RETARGET ADS
You can also retarget people who have visited the sales page and performed a certain action. These are also potential customers.
Retarget everyone who added Shenmue 3 to their online cart
Retarget everyone who click the checkout button
Retarget everyone who viewed the sales page where Shenmue 3 is being sold
This form of retargeting only really works, if the "shop now" button links directly to the sales page and is connected with the social media ad platforms. If the shop now button links to the deep silver website and then you have to select your region and then go to amazon etc, i doubt you'll be able to track these actions. Then again, there might be some more advance ways which im not aware of that can do this.
Here's an example of a retargeting image ad i received from amazon whilst browsing the Era Forum
GOING DEEPER
Here's where things can go crazy. On facebook at least, you can look at your data and build an avatar of all the people who purchased Shenmue 3 through an ad, or viewed a certain percentage of the video. This avatar will consist of the average age, interests, $ex, basically any characteristic of the person who bought the game from the ad.
You can then tell the algorthym to find everyone in its database who match these characteristics and market the ads to them. 1 million users can quickly become 3 million - 5 million users using this method. Since they share the same characteristics and interests as the original set of people who were marketed to, the conversion rate for sales will be much MUCH higher.
Its no secret that all of us share similar characteristics on this forum. The algorithms can find people who are similar to us but have not played shenmue before and advertise to them in hopes of converting them into customers
You can quickly see how powerful this stuff can get and how sales can go to the moon given the right approach. It's no surprise why Deep Silver games sell like hot cakes.
MOVING FORWARD
This info is based on Youtube and Facebook, but there are other platforms out there. Instagram, Twitter, etc. Find those ads and post them. We'll have a much clearer picture of what's going on once we have all the data.
EPIC GAME STORE
I thought it's worth mentioning EGS. We know they have most likely guaranteed at least 200k copies of Shenmue 3 on PC, They've probably given Deep Silver and Ysnet 9 million dollars for exclusive rights. (Similar to Control)
If you go on to the Epic Game Store, you can see on the front page Red Dead 2 is being promoted to every user.
Outer Worlds, Borderlands 3 and Untitled Goose were all pushed to that top spot for about 1.5 - 2 weeks. I have no idea what the conversion rate is from this promotion, but EGS has around 80 million users. Even if 0.5% of those 80 million convert to sales, that would be gold. Off the top of my head, thats like 400k copies sold. Saying that though, remember EGS has guaranteed around 200k copies. As far as i know, and i may be wrong. Ysnet and Deep Silver dont receive anything from EGS sales until that 200k is surpassed. Still if the conversion rate is anywhere near 1% or more, we're good.
Side Note: You'll notice that you may get notifications from EGS on your desktop. From what i can tell, during that two week period, that will be soley Shenmue 3 notifications to every user on the platform, unless they've disabled it via the option menu
COLLECTORS EDITIONS
Deep Silver have been pumping out all sorts of collectors editions and fortunately, they have all sold out. I have no idea what the total sales copies amount to, but lets say a modest 30 - 50k.
Then you have preorders and day one editions. We have amazon and best buy numbers. Although, we can't draw too much from this as it is inconsistent
OTHER RELEVANT INFORMATION
We also have the multiple copies that the community have purchased. We have other marketing methods such as in store promotions, Preview events, billboards, etc etc.
The next stage will be to get decent reviews and that will drive sales by itself.
We also don't know what SONY is doing or planning
Overall i think we're in a good position and I do believe we can easily get 500k sales with relative ease. If we can reach a million, I'll see you in Shenmue 5
Hopefully, this puts things into perspective. Just remember, this is my own perspective and speculation. None of this is certain and the reality is probably far different. I have no idea what the marketing team at deep silver are doing. All i know is, their games tend to sell very well.
Discuss
I've been keeping an eye on the latest Shenmue 3 videos and thought i'd throw my 2 cents into the mix of what's going on. Keep in mind this is only my personal perspective and doesn't represent what's actually happening. This is all speculation on my part from doing advertising and marketing here and there.
I also ask that you all keep it civil and respectful. No drama in this thread.
SHENMUE VIDEO ADS
At the start of this month, we all began seeing Shenmue ads appear in various different places. Youtube & Facebook being the main platforms. So far we have the following videos and statistics
30 Second Ad FRANCE
123,000 VIEWS
15 Second Ad GERMANY
84,000 VIEWS
15 Second Ad ENGLISH
323,000 VIEWS
30 Second Ad ENGLISH
100,000 VIEWS
There is however more going on here than meets the eye. Deep Silver usually upload Shenmue trailers to their youtube channel and to be frank, they always perform poorly due to the videos being uploaded long after they've been shown on other channels. Recently all of the Shenmue Videos have seen a massive spike in views. This is due to the videos now being used for advertisements
If you total everything up as it currently stands (facebook + youtube) our views amount to around 2,285,000 (Well over 2 million views).
The Shenmue 3 advertisement campaign has only really begun since the start of November, so we can expect that result to go well up to between 10 million - 20 million views come November 19th
WILL THIS CONVERT INTO SALES?
Yes it will convert into sales, but don't get your hopes up too high just yet. I personally advertise everyday products and services to your regular man/woman. I can tell you that the conversion rate of these ads into sales is usually around 1% - 2%. It can go much higher depending on the season, targeting, virality, etc. For example, the Christmas season is a good period for conversion rates to go higher than normal due to people buying presents and gifts. Fortunately, that's the period Shenmue is being advertised in, so that will work in our favor. Also bear in mind, gamers have higher buying intent during this period, so that will also boost the conversion rate.
For the sake of keep our expectations in check and not to overhype this, im gonna play devils advocate and assume the absolute worse case scenario. We're gonna give Shenmue 3's conversion rate a 1 - 3% during the holiday season.
SIDE NOTE: BARE IN MIND THE FOLLOWING SALES NUMBERS ARE NOT ACCURATE AS WE HAVE NO SALES DATA TO MAKE A 100% CORRECT CONVERSION RATE.
THIS IS ALL SPECULATION AND ASSUMPTION. WE'RE SIMPLY WORKING OUT 1 - 3% OF THE TOTAL VIEWS AND BASING OUR SALES CONVERSIONS ON THAT.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
Currently we have 2,285,000 views on those videos combined. if 1 - 3% of those viewers convert into sales you get the following
- 1% sales of 2,285,000 views = 22,850 copies sold
- 2% sales of 2,285,000 views = 45,700 copies sold
- 3% sales of 2,285, 000 views = 68,550 copies sold
- etc
- 1% sales of 10,000,000 views = 100,000 copies sold
- 2% sales of 20,000,000 views = 200,000 copies sold
- etc
Heck no. you see when you market to people. you are given a choice of various marketing algorithms to work with. Each one has lower conversion rates than the others. For example, the most common algorithms used are as follows
Video view algorithm campaign
Engagement algorithm campaign
Conversion algorithm campaign
We have no idea what algorithms Deep Silver are using for their marketing or how much money/budget they are using for each advert. I will say that video views and engagement algorithm campaigns have a much lower conversion rate than the conversion algorithm campaign (less than 0.1%). Conversion algorithm campaigns are the ones that usually convert around 1-3%.
Using the conversion algorithm for your ads is also much, much, MUCH more expensive as its goal is to find people on these social media platforms who are most likely to buy products from your adverts
The engagement algorithm finds people who will leave comments, likes etc and therefore it is cheaper
the video view algorithm finds people who will simply view the video and nothing else.
IS THERE ANY POINT TO THE VIDEO VIEWS AND ENGAGEMENT ADS COMPARED TO THE CONVERSION ADS?
Yes there is. Even though video view and engagement ads have a much lower conversion rate (less than 0.1%), they can still help massively. Deep Silver could throw out a bunch of adverts (engagement, video views, conversions), let it run for a week and then use that data to increase sales and boost the conversion rate massively. I'll illustrate this point using a staged example
STAGE 1 RUN EVERY TRAILER AS AN AD SEPARATELY USING VIDEO VIEWS, ENGAGEMENT AND CONVERSION ALGORITHMS
Run video view ads, engagement ads, and conversion ads for each Shenmue trailer in many different countries (UK, USA, EU, AU, CA, NZ) etc
Do this for a week
STAGE 2 LOOK AT THE DATA
After a week, we can look at the data of the ads and see which ones are performing best, which countries are responding well, what type of people are looking at the ad, and most importantly, who click that shop now button and purchased Shenmue 3
Going back to our earlier picture, we can see the following
Shenmue Spirit of the land Trailer
France 135k views
Germany 10k views
AUS/NZ 8.1k views
USA or UK 90k views
Clearly France and the USA/UK are responding most to this trailer. Therefore we can stop the ads targeting Germany and AUS,NZ and spend that money on the USA/UK and France
Shenmue 3: A Day in Shenmue
Germany - 110k views
USA/UK - 754k views
France - 152k views
Spain - 157k views
NA only - 58k views
AUS/NZ - 148k views
Italy = 51k
All of these are good numbers. I'd keep them all running. You'd definitely want to increase the budget in the USA/UK, AUS, Spain, France and Germany though as they are pulling in some serious high numbers.
The 15 second and 30 second ads on Facebook/Youtube also all have good metrics (I WILL AVENGE MY FATHER AD)
30 second ad FRANCE
123,000 VIEWS
15 second ad GERMANY
84,000 VIEWS
15 second ad ENGLISH
323,000 VIEWS
30 second ad ENGLISH
100,000 VIEWS
Summary of Facebook and Youtube Avenge Father Ad
Video Ad | Video Views | Country |
---|---|---|
30 Second Avenge Father Ad | 123,000 VIEWS | France |
15 Second Avenge Father Ad | 84,000 VIEWS | Germany |
15 Second Avenge Father Ad (Youtube) | 323,000 VIEWS | UK/USA |
30 Second Avenge Father Ad | 100,000 VIEWS | USA/UK |
Basically, I'd increase the budget massively on the ads that had the most views and more importantly had the highest conversion rate/sales.
For example
Shenmue Mood trailer may have had a 1.4% conversion (sales)
Shenmue Avenge Father Trailer may have had a 3.4% conversion (sales)
Shenmue A day in Shenmue has 700k views
Shenmue 15 second Avenge father has 300k+ views
etc
etc
Once the budget has been increased on those ads, id leave it for a few days, come back, view the data and then repeat the process.
STAGE 3 - DETAILED TARGETING AND RE TARGETING
Now that we have some data to play around with from stage 1, we can go much deeper.
TARGETED ADS
When you create an ad, you have to set the parameters of the people you're trying to target. In Shenmue's case, that would be gamers. You target them by specifying interests. (video games, playstation 4, PC, RPG gamers etc etc)
You can also target people who have viewed particular videos. Death Stranding videos, Detroit videos, Rpgs, Fighting games videos, etc. Or you can go more broad, Kung Fu, martial arts, UFC, heck you can even put WWE and the simpsons or even coffee if you really wanted to lol.
Once you run your ads for a week and have the data, you can see which interests performed best and led to sales. You can then increase the budget on these interests to drive more sales and kill the interests that led to nothing.
VIDEO RETARGETING ADS
Using our data in stage 1, we can now see how much percent of people viewed 5% of each video ad, 20% of each video ad, 70% of each video ad, 95% of each video ad etc
We can forget about the people who viewed each video 5% or 20% of the time as they most likely clicked skip on the ad or closed it. The ones who viewed 70 - 95% of the video ad means they are potential customers and have shown some interest. Knowing this, we can target all people who viewed and watched each video ad 70 - 90% of the time and show them the ad more frequently. This is why sometimes you see ads of something you're interested in over and over again all over the internet. You're being re targeted because you've shown some interest in the original ad and its now tracking you. Usually, it takes about 7 re targeted ads for a person to convert into a sale.
DEMOGRAPHIC RETARGETING ADS
The data in stage 1 will also show what type of people are responding to the ads. Male/female, age, country, platform they viewed the ad on etc. You can now use the same re targeting method as above to show the demographic of people who have shown interest the ads over and over again. You can also increase your marketing budget in this area and cut out demographics who showed no interest at all
ENGAGEMENT RETARGET ADS
Same principle applies as the two above (The ones who were most engaged, retarget them. The ones who didnt engage, cut them out)
ADD TO CART, INITIATE CHECKOUT & VIEW CONTENT RETARGET ADS
You can also retarget people who have visited the sales page and performed a certain action. These are also potential customers.
Retarget everyone who added Shenmue 3 to their online cart
Retarget everyone who click the checkout button
Retarget everyone who viewed the sales page where Shenmue 3 is being sold
This form of retargeting only really works, if the "shop now" button links directly to the sales page and is connected with the social media ad platforms. If the shop now button links to the deep silver website and then you have to select your region and then go to amazon etc, i doubt you'll be able to track these actions. Then again, there might be some more advance ways which im not aware of that can do this.
Here's an example of a retargeting image ad i received from amazon whilst browsing the Era Forum
GOING DEEPER
Here's where things can go crazy. On facebook at least, you can look at your data and build an avatar of all the people who purchased Shenmue 3 through an ad, or viewed a certain percentage of the video. This avatar will consist of the average age, interests, $ex, basically any characteristic of the person who bought the game from the ad.
You can then tell the algorthym to find everyone in its database who match these characteristics and market the ads to them. 1 million users can quickly become 3 million - 5 million users using this method. Since they share the same characteristics and interests as the original set of people who were marketed to, the conversion rate for sales will be much MUCH higher.
Its no secret that all of us share similar characteristics on this forum. The algorithms can find people who are similar to us but have not played shenmue before and advertise to them in hopes of converting them into customers
You can quickly see how powerful this stuff can get and how sales can go to the moon given the right approach. It's no surprise why Deep Silver games sell like hot cakes.
MOVING FORWARD
This info is based on Youtube and Facebook, but there are other platforms out there. Instagram, Twitter, etc. Find those ads and post them. We'll have a much clearer picture of what's going on once we have all the data.
EPIC GAME STORE
I thought it's worth mentioning EGS. We know they have most likely guaranteed at least 200k copies of Shenmue 3 on PC, They've probably given Deep Silver and Ysnet 9 million dollars for exclusive rights. (Similar to Control)
If you go on to the Epic Game Store, you can see on the front page Red Dead 2 is being promoted to every user.
Outer Worlds, Borderlands 3 and Untitled Goose were all pushed to that top spot for about 1.5 - 2 weeks. I have no idea what the conversion rate is from this promotion, but EGS has around 80 million users. Even if 0.5% of those 80 million convert to sales, that would be gold. Off the top of my head, thats like 400k copies sold. Saying that though, remember EGS has guaranteed around 200k copies. As far as i know, and i may be wrong. Ysnet and Deep Silver dont receive anything from EGS sales until that 200k is surpassed. Still if the conversion rate is anywhere near 1% or more, we're good.
Side Note: You'll notice that you may get notifications from EGS on your desktop. From what i can tell, during that two week period, that will be soley Shenmue 3 notifications to every user on the platform, unless they've disabled it via the option menu
COLLECTORS EDITIONS
Deep Silver have been pumping out all sorts of collectors editions and fortunately, they have all sold out. I have no idea what the total sales copies amount to, but lets say a modest 30 - 50k.
Then you have preorders and day one editions. We have amazon and best buy numbers. Although, we can't draw too much from this as it is inconsistent
OTHER RELEVANT INFORMATION
We also have the multiple copies that the community have purchased. We have other marketing methods such as in store promotions, Preview events, billboards, etc etc.
The next stage will be to get decent reviews and that will drive sales by itself.
We also don't know what SONY is doing or planning
Overall i think we're in a good position and I do believe we can easily get 500k sales with relative ease. If we can reach a million, I'll see you in Shenmue 5
Hopefully, this puts things into perspective. Just remember, this is my own perspective and speculation. None of this is certain and the reality is probably far different. I have no idea what the marketing team at deep silver are doing. All i know is, their games tend to sell very well.
Discuss
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