It seems like if what you’re showing is what you understand they find appealing and fun, then surely that’s what should be in the game. You give them that.
But instead, you give them something else that is unrelated to what they’ve seen on the ad? A gem matching candy crush clone they’ve seen a thousand times?
How is that model working? How is that holding up as a marketing technique???
Don’t know if the others are correct about the reasons, but here’s what I felt to be a reason when I once installed such a scam. They do whatever they can to make you run the game and then try to hook you up by using every trick possible to increase engagement. Then they sell you worthless in-game resources for real money. The game I played didn’t even have ads aside from ads of purchasing in-game stuff everywhere
While all these “tricks” and “engagement” chasing things are true, that’s just mobile gaming in general these days. It has nothing to do with whether they ran “fake ads” or not. Most successful mobile games are stuffed full of loss aversion, fomo, “time saving”, and “fake sale” monetization.
They’re not making fake ads to get you into those systems. The games just do that and the ad you clicked was trying to see if you were interested in the game in the ad. Even if the game you were linked to doesn’t match.
Well, that’s crappy wrapping for crappy content then, unfortunately
Thanks for your thorough explanations here