Our Creative Trends episode dives into the wildest UA creative trends of July 2025. We dissect the latest ad formats, AI breakthroughs, and genre crossovers reshaping mobile game marketing.

Key highlights:

Golden Goblins still dominating: Physics + slicing + gem/gold mechanics continue to scale across genres.

AI everywhere: From fully AI-generated creatives to lip-synced fake influencers and medieval AI drama ads, VEO3 and other tools are powering cheap, fast, and diverse iterations.

Clash Royale’s bizarre UA: Gameplay with random AI gorillas and corpses – questionable hooks, but they still scale.

Celebrity & influencer hooks: Jonas Brothers cameo in Travel Town ads, Kevin Hart still pushing, street interview actors turning into professional creative talent.

Rising stars: Vita Mayong scaling with bizarre money-plinko-style creatives, Carnival Tycoon adopting 4XUA funnels, Dark War Survival flooding with pixel-art AI creatives.

Legal risks ignored: LEGO blocks, Gucci logos, celebrity likenesses - Chinese publishers are pushing boundaries regardless.

Creative of the year contender: AI-powered medieval skits with bad dialogue, compared to Viva La Dirt League, hailed as the funniest + most viral format so far.

Takeaway

2025 creatives = AI hooks + genre mashups + zero morality. The only rule: “Does it scale?”

Get our MERCH NOW: 25gamers.com/shop

--------------------------------------

PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.

Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/

They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.

- Scale fast

- Keep your shares

- Drawdown only as needed

- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you

+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors

---------------------------------------

For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.

Our sponsor FastSpring:

Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 years

They power top mobile publishers around the world

Launch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.

---------------------------------------

This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.

Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric

Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-2um8eguhf-c~H9idcxM271mnPzdWbipg

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Creative Trends

03:52 Analyzing Current Creative Trends

17:44 The Ethics of Creative Production in Gaming

26:48 Ad Creatives and Performance Insights

30:48 Game Concepts and Genre Adaptation

31:48 Scaling Strategies in Game Development

32:49 Emerging Game Creatives and Market Competition

33:51 The Impact of AI on Game Creatives

40:48 Trends in Game Design and User Engagement

41:54 The Evolution of Game Creatives

42:49 Legal Challenges in Game Development

47:01 Innovations in Game Marketing Strategies

---------------------------------------

Matej Lancaric

User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant

⁠https://lancaric.me

Felix Braberg

Ad monetization consultant

⁠https://www.felixbraberg.com

Jakub Remiar

Game design consultant

⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar

---------------------------------------

Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!

Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!

Please share feedback and comments - matej@lancaric.me