Thinking · Case Study
Racing creative: speed is not a hook
Every racing ad has fast cars, which is exactly why fast cars stopped working as an opening.
This piece is now part of a longer guide: Mobile game ad creative by genre.
If every ad in a category opens the same way, that opening is no longer a hook. Racing is the clearest case of this in mobile.
The saturation problem
Speed, engine noise, a corner taken well. It is the obvious material and it is what everyone has. A viewer scrolling past four racing ads cannot tell them apart, which means the opening is doing none of the work it is credited with.
What differentiates
The thing around the racing. Ownership, customisation, rivalry, the specific car someone wants. These are the reasons people play racing games and they are underused in the creative because they are less exciting to shoot.
The counter-intuitive finding
Slower openings often hold longer in this genre. A static hero shot of a desirable car outperforms a chase sequence more often than teams expect, because it is the only frame in the feed that is not moving.
What we would test
One ad where nothing moves for the first second. It is uncomfortable to ship and it is the cheapest differentiation available in a category this saturated.