Playable ads: how they are built

The short answer

A playable ad is a short interactive slice of a game, usually 15 to 60 seconds, delivered as an offline HTML5 file of about 5 MB or less that runs inside the ad network's player and ends with an install button. Building the mini-game is the easy part. The real work is fitting it into each network's size limit and packaging, wiring each network's own call-to-action code, and producing enough variations to test. Third-party estimates put a single externally produced playable at a few thousand dollars and complex ones at tens of thousands.

Why UA teams use them

Players who install after trying the game know what they are getting, which tends to improve post-install quality. Liftoff's 2025 Mobile Ad Creative Index reported that playables converted impressions to installs at many times the rate of non-playable formats in its data, and that top-spending game advertisers put more of their budget into playables. Treat those as one vendor's figures, but the direction is consistent across the industry: playables have become a standard part of mobile game creative testing.

Three shapes of playable

• Standalone playable: the whole ad is interactive, with an end card and install button.
• Video plus playable end card: a short video followed by a playable end screen.
• Lead-in video: on Meta and TikTok a video plays first and invites people to try the game.

What each network requires

Common rules across networks: no external network requests, everything embedded in the file, sound muted until the player interacts, support for portrait and landscape, and an install button that is always reachable. Networks also moderate creatives; Unity, for example, checks for console errors, orientation handling and whether the playable is too hard.

One 2026 change matters: Unity sunset the ironSource Ads network on 30 April 2026, so new campaigns and creative uploads moved to Unity Ads. ironSource Exchange and LevelPlay mediation continue.

How playables are built

• From an existing Unity game. Unity Playworks converts a Unity project into playables for many networks without using the WebGL build target. Its Lite tier is free but downloads only for Unity Ads; the Pro tier for all networks is priced for large advertisers. A standard Unity WebGL build is usually far too large: developers on Unity's forum report struggling to get even simple builds under 5 MB.
• Lightweight HTML5 engines. Phaser, PlayCanvas and similar engines produce small files. Phaser offers a playable template for many networks, and PlayCanvas documents an export for Meta's format. Base64 embedding adds about a third to asset sizes, so art budgets are tight.
• Hand-built HTML5 and JavaScript for the smallest, fastest files, at the cost of rebuilding the game's feel from scratch.

Design rules that convert

• Show the core mechanic in the first second. No menus, no loading wait beyond a brief splash.
• Make the first win easy, then hint at depth: a harder level, an upgrade, a locked area.
• End at the right moment, on a success or a near miss, with the install button front and centre.
• Represent the real game. The UK Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that mobile game ads must reflect actual gameplay, and that "not representative of gameplay" small print does not fix a misleading ad.
• Test variations, not just one playable: difficulty, length, first scene and end card.

Testing before launch

Every network has a preview tool: AppLovin's Playable Preview app, Unity's Ad Testing app and Meta's Playable Preview Tool all let you check behaviour on a real device from a QR code or upload. Test on low-end Android phones, with the mute switch on and off, rotating the screen, and locking and unlocking the phone. Rejections usually come from the call-to-action code or file size, not the gameplay.

What playables cost

There is no standard price. AppAgent, a UA agency, says external production typically costs $3,000 to $5,000 per creative with a two to four week turnaround. Other vendors quote $5,000 to $30,000 or more for playables with complex art and several scenes. The main cost drivers are art reuse from the game, the number of networks, the number of variants, and whether the game is rebuilt in HTML5 or converted from Unity.

If you are still validating a game, playables pair naturally with prototype testing: our hyper-casual development service produces the playable and video creatives used for early install tests. For the bigger picture on testing ideas cheaply, see our game prototyping guide.

Sources: Unity: user acquisition creatives · Unity: sunsetting ironSource Ads · IAB Tech Lab: MRAID · Mintegral: creative asset specs · Unity Playworks developer docs · AppAgent: state of playable ads 2025 · Liftoff: 2025 Mobile Ad Creative Index · UK ASA: mobile game ads. Checked October 14, 2026.

Related: Hyper-casual games · Mobile game development · Hyper-casual vs hybrid-casual