Playable Ads for Brands: Interactive Ads Beyond Gaming

Playable ads grew up in mobile games, but the idea behind them is not about games. It is about letting people try something instead of being told about it. That works for any product with a simple, tactile choice at its heart: building an order, picking a flavour, seeing what a savings habit adds up to, choosing a destination.

A brand playable is a short interaction, usually well under 30 seconds, built around your product and ending on your offer. The IAB's playbook on playables for brands describes the format as covering attention, education and action in one unit. In practice, the interaction earns the attention, the product is the thing being played with, and the end card is where the offer lands.

What a brand playable is, and what it is not

A brand playable is not an advergame. Nobody needs levels, scores or a leaderboard. It is one product-centred interaction that a stranger understands in two seconds and finishes in a few more.

The product is the toy. The player handles the burger, the can, the card or the suitcase, not a mascot running through an unrelated world.
The interaction makes a point. Building an order shows choice. Picking a flavour shows range. A slider shows savings. Every gesture should say something true about the product.
The offer is the ending. The end card carries one concrete reason to act now: a first-order discount, free delivery, a sign-up bonus, a launch price.

Our two brand concepts, which you can play under Brand Playables, follow that pattern. In Brava Burger, the player taps ingredient cards to build a burger and the top bun lands by itself; the end card offers free delivery on the first order with an Order now button. In Tidewell, the player taps a flavour and the can spins into it; they can try all three or go straight to Shop now.

Mechanics that fit each vertical

Food delivery and quick service

Build-your-order is the natural fit: stack a burger, top a pizza, fill a bowl. It shows choice, it makes people hungry, and it ends naturally on "order this". Speed-based variants, such as finishing the order before a timer runs out, add tension without adding explanation.

Beverages and consumer goods

Choice and transformation work well: pick a flavour, a colour or a scent and watch the product change. The interaction is short, so the visual payoff has to be strong. Tidewell's spinning can is an example of a small action with a satisfying response.

Retail and e-commerce

Style pickers, outfit builders, room planners and "find the item" hunts all let the shopper handle the range. The end card should land on a specific product or collection, not a home page.

Fintech

Interactive calculators are the strongest fit: a round-up simulator, a savings slider, a "split the bill" moment, a budget sorter. Make the interaction illustrate how the product works, and keep any numbers clearly illustrative. Financial promotions are regulated in many markets; in the UK, the FCA requires them to be fair, clear and not misleading, whatever the media.

Travel

Pick a destination on a map, pack a bag against a weight limit, build a weekend itinerary. Travel playables work best when the end card shows a real route or a real price window your team can honour across markets.

Consumer apps

For non-game apps, demonstrate the core feature directly: a before and after slider for a photo editor, a one-question quiz for a language app, a one-tap habit check for a wellness app. The playable is a two-second preview of the first session.

Design around the offer, not the other way round

Many brand playables fail because the interaction was designed first and the offer bolted on. Reverse the order:

Decide the offer. One offer, specific and current. "Free delivery on your first order" beats "Great food, delivered".
Find the gesture that leads to it. If the offer is about choice, let the player choose. If it is about saving money, let them see money add up.
Make the payoff the product. The final moment of the interaction should show the product at its best: the finished burger, the full can, the packed suitcase.
End on one button. One verb that matches the offer: Order now, Shop now, Get the app, Book now.

Brand guidelines apply as they would in any campaign: colours, type, logo clear space, tone of voice. They need adapting to a small, moving canvas, so agree early which elements are fixed and which can flex.

A worked example in five frames

Here is how a food delivery playable like Brava Burger breaks down on a one-page storyboard. The same structure works for most verticals.

Opening frame. An empty bottom bun on a plate, with four ingredient cards below it. The question is obvious before anything moves: what goes on this burger?
Instruction. A hand points at the first card, the patty. Two words on screen: "Build it".
Player action. The player taps the four ingredients in any order. Each layer lands on the stack with a small bounce, and a sound once audio is unlocked. There is no wrong order, so there is no way to fail.
Payoff. The top bun drops by itself and the finished burger gets a moment on its own. This is the product shot, earned by the player.
End card. Brand, burger, one line, "Free delivery on your first order", and a single Order now button.

The whole interaction takes a few seconds. Variants for testing come almost free: a different opening (a half-built burger), a different offer line, a timer for urgency, or a second product in place of the burger. Each one is a question your media data can answer.

Where brand playables run

Most playable inventory sits on in-app networks such as AppLovin, Unity Ads, Mintegral, Moloco and Liftoff, which show interstitial and rewarded ads inside other apps, many of them games. That audience is broad, and rewarded placements in particular give an engaged moment of attention.

Check the destination before you choose the network. On Meta, playables run under the app promotion objective; on Google Ads, they are a format of App campaigns. In-app networks are also built around app installs. If your goal is a website order rather than an app install, confirm with each network that your account can send playable traffic to a web destination before you brief the build.

Technically, a brand playable follows the same rules as a game playable: a self-contained HTML5 file per network, the network's own store or click call, no automatic redirects, sound only after a tap. Our specs checklist covers each network.

Measuring a brand playable

Agree the metric before the build, because it shapes the design:

App installs or first orders for delivery, retail and fintech apps, through your attribution partner, ideally with first-purchase or sign-up events.
Click-through to the offer as a diagnostic, not a goal; a confusing playable can earn accidental clicks.
Engagement and completion from in-ad events: how many players made the first move, finished the interaction and saw the end card.
Offer redemptions where you use a specific code or landing page, which gives a clean read on whether the playable's audience actually converts.

Keep personal data out of the ad itself. Playables should not collect form entries; networks forbid outside requests during play in any case. Let the store page or your own landing page handle sign-up.

Compliance and brand safety

Prices and offers must be accurate in every market and language version, with any conditions where people can see them before they act.
Prize mechanics need care. Spin-to-win, scratch cards and instant prizes can fall under promotion or lottery rules that vary by country. Check with your legal team before a "win a reward" mechanic goes live.
Regulated categories such as finance, alcohol and age-restricted products carry extra rules on every network and in most markets. Build the required wording into the end card from the start rather than squeezing it in later.
Illustrative numbers must look illustrative. A savings slider should not read like a promise.
Accessibility matters on a small screen. Strong contrast, large tap targets and nothing that relies on sound alone.

What to send for a brand playable brief

Your brand guide, logo files and fonts.
The offer, its conditions and the markets it applies to.
The destination: store link or landing page URL.
The networks you plan to run on.
Product images or packshots, and any legal lines that must appear.
The deadline and the languages you need.

From that we can storyboard an interaction within a day. For a sense of what the build involves, read our guide to making a playable ad, and for budgets, how much a playable ad costs.

Start a playable with us

Send us your brand guide, the offer you want to push and your markets. Within a day you get a storyboard for an interaction that ends on that offer, and a fixed quote. Write to info@zerind.com or use the form on our homepage.

Start a project Play our concepts

Sources

Checked on 8 October 2026. Networks update their specs; always confirm against the current page before you upload.

IAB, Playable ads: capturing the attention of consumers, brands and agencies alike: https://www.iab.com/playables/
Financial Conduct Authority, Financial promotions and adverts: https://www.fca.org.uk/firms/financial-promotions-adverts
Meta Business Help Centre, Playable ad specifications: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/412951382532338
Google Ads Help, HTML5 and playable asset requirements for App campaigns: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9981650

Playable ads for brands: interactive ads beyond gaming