Shadowverse Ad
8% ROI
Refreshes drove traffic and convert new users.
Renewed Contract
Successful refresh lead client to extend its contract.
My Role
KManga have been prospering in advertisement until recently where a lot of their ads have been flag for braking the ad platform’s rules and regulations.
I was appointed to audit the current advertising ecosystem, identifying technical bottlenecks and performance leaks to develop a comprehensive recovery plan.
Modular Ads
The new design made it easy to adjust for new assets to be inserted.
Creative Performance Refresh
Revamping the creative to give new life to an old ad campaign.
Background
Creative Director / Visual Designer
Tools
Google Slides • Photoshop
A/B Testing • Google Sheet
Timeline
January 2025 ~ February 2026
The Challenge
Following a high-volume media campaign for Shadowverse: Worlds Beyond, existing ad creatives hit a performance plateau. Audience overexposure to redundant visual themes led to severe creative fatigue, driving down click-through rates (CTR) and inflating customer acquisition costs (CAC). The campaign required an immediate strategic pivot to cut through platform noise, re-engage core card-game audiences, and capture broader gaming demographics.
02
Strategy
To pivot Shadowverse: Worlds Beyond away from redundant ad concepts and reverse performance decay, I led a strategic audit to identify visual fatigue triggers and uncaptured market opportunities:
Thematic Deconstruction: Cataloged two years of campaign data to map asset fatigue cycles. The audit revealed that standard card frames and UI-heavy battle screens had hit severe audience saturation, driving down click-through rates (CTR) and inflating customer acquisition costs (CAC).
Gap Analysis & Trend Forecasting: Analyzed high-performing gaming marketing trends, identifying that audiences responded strongly to interactive visual hooks, character contrast, and clear tactical showcases rather than generic gameplay loops.
Conceptual Pivoting: I established three distinct creative pillars that broke away from traditional TCG layout conventions:
Arcade Character Select Screen: Borrowing from fighting-game UI, this concept showcased roster depth and character personalities in a fast-paced, interactive format before diving into action.
Specific Card Strategy Deep-Dives: Focused on single, high-impact card combos, breaking down turn-by-turn tactical plays to engage competitive and strategy-minded players.
Cute vs. Badass Roster Contrast: Paired adorable, wholesome card artwork directly against menacing, dark fantasy bosses to highlight the game's unique aesthetic contrast and appeal to broader anime demographics.
03
Execution
I led the transition from tired gameplay assets to these three new creative pillars, acting as the bridge between strategy and execution:
The "New Horizon" Showcase: Hosted a hands-on workshop with the design team, presenting high-fidelity mood boards and motion references for fighting-game character select screens, tactical card breakdown overlays, and side-by-side character contrast edits.
Style Archetyping: Defined concrete visual benchmarks for each pillar—building arcade-inspired roster boxes with character selection sound effects, clear step-by-step strategy callout graphics, and split-screen "Cute vs. Badass" visual framing.
Creative Pilot Program: Supervised the production of a pilot set of video ads testing all three concepts in live ad auctions, analyzing real-time performance data to refine animation pacing, character selection loops, and end-card CTAs.
04
Results
Validating the Creative Pivot & Scaling Performance
Initial Market Validation: Launching the pilot set featuring the Arcade Character Select and Card Strategy concepts halted the ongoing performance decline caused by creative fatigue within the first week. Immediate engagement lifts gave the strategic green light to scale production across all three new visual pillars.
Tripled Impression Reach (200% Surge): By the second week, the new creative concepts achieved a major breakthrough in campaign reach. Ad impressions surged from a 3% baseline to 9%—a 200% increase in impression scale within 14 days—driven by higher hook rates on the fighting-game style character selection intros.
Measurable ROI Lift & Contract Renewal: The new creative direction generated an 8% ROI increase, proving that character-centric storytelling and tactical card showcases converted higher-quality players more efficiently than generic gameplay footage. This sustained turn-around led the client to extend and renew their campaign contract.
Takeaways
What I learned
I can be creative with the ads and make one thats outside of its app assets.
There can be many ways to showcase a product other than the product itself.
Showing the characters are sometimes more important than the gameplay itself.
Next project
Strength Camp Redesign Proposal
Let’s Collaborate on Amazing Together!
Jose Federico De Jesus