Mobile Heroes Uncensored: Recent Episodes
Liftoff
Mobile marketing insight from user acquisition heroes as you've never heard them before. Featuring world-class pros from brands like Bumble, Sam's Club, Babbel, MoneyHub, Gameloft, Wooga, Playstudios, and more!
We feature the best and brightest in mobile marketing in their best, worst, and funniest moments. We play games, give away Bitcoin (maybe!) and generally have a good time.
Brought to you by Liftoff. Hosted by John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz.
It’s the last dance. For the last time on Mobile Heroes Uncensored, John & Peggy are chatting about mobile growth, mobile success, and mobile challenges.
In this episode, we chat about our favorite episodes, a few of our favorite guests — there’s no way we could talk about all of them — and the places they come from, and the topics they shared.
It’s been 76 shows.
Thank you all for the ride, and see you around social media and on many other podcasts that both Peggy and I still on.
Apologies, but we liked Brazil so much we stayed (virtually, of course). In this Mobile Heroes Uncensored, we chat with Guilherme Braz, Acquisition Senior Director at Mercado Libre, an e-commerce and fintech leader in Latin America.
While he’s got great experience in mobile -- having worked at Wildlife Studios previously -- in another life he was a Bain consultant. And Gui, as he likes to be called, brings the kind of intellectual rigor you might expect from Bain to his marketing.
We discuss Brazil, mobile marketing today, incrementality and media mix modeling, App Tracking Transparency, and so … much … more!
Timestamps
0:00 Guilherme Braz, acquisition at Mercado Libre
7:15 Start with the problem
9:50 Brazil and super apps
13:15 Re-engagement in mobile apps
14:45 Incrementality
19:45 Attribution and incrementality
26:00 Least censored opinion about mobile marketing
If the US Postal Service says “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,” we add appendicitis! While one of our guests was having emergency surgery (and is now much better!) We soldiered on with ROAD TRIP BRAZIL.
In this Mobile Heroes Uncensored, we chat with Christian Gaitan, formerly Performance Lead of Lemon about entering the Brazilian mobile market.
Christian chats about market demographics and psychographics, as well as the most significant features and challenges of marketing mobile apps in Brazil
Timestamps
0:00 Christian Gaitan from Lemon
3:30 The Brazilian mobile market
9:20 Soccer (or football) and marketing in Brazil
12:30 Best ad channels in Brazil
18:10 Trust and marketing for crypto apps
20:20 Creative optimization in Brazil
22:30 Mobile ad targeting
25:00 Least censored opinion about mobile and marketing
How will massive global trends in advertising impact mobile apps and games? In this Mobile Heroes Uncensored, we chat with GroupM global director Kate Scott-Dawkins.
This is not like other MHU sessions. In addition to being a former member of the United States Archery Team, Kate is a big thinker with access to huge amounts of data. She’s currently tracking 62 markets: 31 downgraded, 21 upgraded, and 10 stayed the same. But as the global economic outlook suffers, the digital advertising ecosystem is being impacted, she says.
The good news: it’s still growing. The bad news: it’s not growing quite as fast.
We chat about retail media, ad spend, mobile economies, and how marketers and app publishers should think about changing opportunities in 2023.
Timestamps
0:00 Kate Scott-Dawkins
3:15 Multiple iOS app stores
5:40 6.5% global advertising growth in 2023
8:15 Mobile and CTV are outperforming
10:00 Biggest ad opportunities
13:20 $111 billion in retail media
19:00 TikTok
24:00 Least censored opinion about mobile
How big will streaming TV be for mobile user acquisition in 2023? In this Mobile Heroes Uncensored, we chat with M&C Saatchi managing partner Jonathan Yantz. Our focus: will streaming TV, connected TV, smart TV be a great place to run ads in 2023?
CTV is one of the fastest growing ad markets. But it’s fragmented into multiple platforms and multiple services on each platform. How do you address it? How do you measure it? How do you design for it?
We chat about this and many more questions as hosts John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz dive into CTV with Jonathan Yantz.
Timestamps
0:00 M&C Saatchi’s Jonathan Yantz
3:01 Streaming TV and advertising
4:50 Targeting and CTV
9:30 Strategies for a fragmented market
15:05 Adapting ads for streaming media
20:50 CTV to mobile app ads
25:50 Least censored opinion about CTV advertising
Does reverse psychology work in ads? Sure, sometimes. And sometimes, just plain old psychology.
In this Mobile Heroes Uncensored, we chat with Philippa Layburn, UA manager for Trailmix, the games studio that makes games snackable … yet somehow nourishing. Philippa tells hosts John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz about her background in psychology and how that impacts her marketing and advertising, as well as her focus on science and math.
We chat about creative winners and losers, Super Bowl ads, A/B testing, and how to come up with truly creative ideas for new ad campaigns.
Timestamps
0:00 Philippa Layburn, UA manager for Trailmix
3:30 Merge games
4:45 Art and science in advertising
10:30 Quirky ads: yes or no?
13:00 Hook rate
15:30 Winning vs losing ads
26:00 Least censored opinion about mobile marketing
Mobile marketing intelligence can tell you which are the top apps in a category, where your competitors advertise, how they monetize, what ads are working, and which apps that you’re competing with have the highest LTV. It can also reveal emerging trends.
In this Mobile Heroes Uncensored hosts Peggy Anne Salz and John Koetsier chat with Stan Minasov, VP of Product for AppMagic.
We ask Stan what trend he found first, what trends people have discovered on his platform, and how to use mobile intelligence tools to get an edge on the competition. And, how to avoid what he calls “trap markets.”
We also chat about the emerging trend of fake ads. Yes, literally fake ads.
Timestamps
0:00 Mobile marketing intelligence
2:00 Stan Minasov, from AppMagic
4:15 Best insight and trap markets
8:40 Ad creative trends
15:20 When you need mobile marketing intelligence
20:15 Fake ads
27:00 Least censored opinion about mobile marketing
28:00 Top three tips for mobile marketers
In this Mobile Heroes Uncensored, we chat with Gessica Bicego, the CMO of Paired, an app that helps couples feel more connected. We chat about influencer marketing, about hitting singles and the occasional home run, and about whether you can engineer virality or not.
We also talk about diversification of ad spend, and how Bicego ensures that she is always able to take advantage of opportunities to go viral. We chat about metrics that she uses to keep on track, and we also talk about taking time out — in her case to have a child — and then coming back stronger than ever.
Timestamps
0:00 Gessica Bicego, CMO of Paired
5:45 3 ways to 4X revenue
7:30 User-generated content in ads
11:25 Finding influencers
13:55 How to hit home run ads
16:30 Blended metrics for modern UA
19:20 Taking a year off
24:15 Gimmicky creatives in ads
27:55 Brand marketing for performance marketers
32:00 Most uncensored opinion about mobile marketing
Bootstrapping is great. Especially when you’re getting a suitcase full of awards for your app. In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored, we’re chatting with the founder of Rootd (pronounced “rooted”), Ania Wyshocka.
Rootd is an app for people who suffer from anxiety, stress, and panic attacks, and in a classic entrepreneur story, Ania built a product based on her own experiences. In the process, she’s earned a Developer Spotlight by Apple, a “30 Under 30” win, and a selection to "Canadian Woman in Tech you Should Know."
Now of course, inevitably, she’s looking to paid acquisition to take her app to the next level. Hosts John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz chat with Ania about her journey, her choices, her revenue model, and her approach to personalization and segmentation.
Timestamps
0:00 Meet Ania Wyshocka
2:55 The Rootd app
4:45 Bootstrapping to 2M users
10:50 Revenue model: subscription
15:30 Prioritizing features
17:15 Personalizing your app
21:50 Moving to paid acquisition
25:40 Least censored opinion about mobile
What mobile game literally has a tombstone in one of its promo images? A super-successful one, actually: BitLife, which has tens of millions of installs and millions of reviews.
In this Mobile Heroes Uncensored, we chat with BitLife maker Candywriter. Specifically, with VP Gabby Bradford Pigott. Our focus: mashup games: what drives success, and what works best for ad-based monetization.
We also chat about ad partners, managing waterfalls, and balancing user experience and monetization.
Timestamps
0:00 Sim games
2:05 Gabby Bradford, VP at Candywriter
3:55 BitLife
9:00 What would you change?
10:05 Balancing UX and monetization
14:45 Rewarded video ads
18:20 Good old fashioned banner ads
22:20 Tips for picking ad networks
24:00 Waterfall optimization
If segmentation sparks joy in your life you might need to get fitted for a straitjacket. Or maybe you’re just super passionate about mobile marketing, engagement, monetization, and retention.
We think the latter applies to Geoff Hladik, who leads revenue and growth at FlipaClip. At least we hope so, because this is the second time we’ve chatted with him and we’re almost related now.
In this episode, hosts Peggy Anne Salz and John Koetsier chat with Geoff about:
- Becoming a Mobile Hero
- Audience segmentation (shocking, I know, given the title)
- New paths for revenue and user growth
- Engaging and activating creators
- Flaws in measurement models
- And more …
Timestamps
0:00 Who is Geoff Hladik
2:01 An eternity in mobile marketing
6:07 Audience segmentation
9:27 Understanding your users
14:05 Tweaking user journeys
16:40 Putting revenue and growth together
19:35 Improving user experience
22:45 Least censored opinion
Every mobile marketer needs good ASO. The last thing you want is to acquire users, have them hit your App Store or Google Play listing, and say … nah, maybe not. So getting your app store optimization right is critical.
In this Mobile Heroes Uncensored, we chat with AppTweak’s head of ASO Simon Thillay. He chats with hosts John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz about custom product pages, in-app events — the kind that people participate in, not the kind you track for KPIs — and how he sees ASO evolving.
Check this episode out to make sure no marketing dollar gets wasted at the very last step in the funnel. And why endurance skating and mobile marketing are similar!
Timestamps
0:00 App Store Optimization
3:30 Custom product pages
7:35 In-app events and live ops
9:30 AppTweak head of ASO Simon Thillay
13:05 ASO trends
19:30 Galaxies of apps
22:10 The most frustrating thing about ASO
25:01 Least censored opinion about mobile marketing
It’s never been tougher to make it in user acquisition and growth, but Huuuge Games director of marketing creatives Misha Syrotiuk makes it work in two diverging ways: more automation, and more human connection.
In this Mobile Heroes Uncensored, we chat with Misha about the amount of automation needed to remove some of the drudgery and grunt work from creative creation and campaign optimization. But we also chat about the advice he’d give his younger self: investing in the human relationships that make business run and enable needed growth.
In addition, hosts Peggy Anne Salz and John Koetsier discuss how Misha feels about Android vs iOS, creative testing, AI-enabled art workflows, and the best career advice he can offer.
Timestamps
0:00 Huuuge Games
1:45 Misha Syrotiuk
5:55 Innovation in mobile games
8:15 Structuring mobile growth teams
11:10 Challenge: manual operational work
14:00 Android is my favorite playground
18:05 Top tip for personal growth
20:05 AI art creation tools
23:15 Advice to my younger self
25:20 Least censored mobile marketing opinion
Blockchain and gaming? Check
IDFA, ATT, and Privacy Sandbox on Android? Check
Influencer advertising on TikTok? Check
Today is agency day on Mobile Heroes Uncensored, and we’re chatting with three all-stars. Jonathan Yantz at M&C Saatchi Performance, Dave Riggs from Apex Growth (used to be Customer Acquisition), and Eddie Yoon at NP Digital (yeah, that’s Neil Patel’s company) join Peggy Anne Salz and John Koetsier to talk about all the hot stuff.
From multi-million dollar monthly budgets to startups just beginning to scale, there’s something for everyone. And … we get each mobile hero's hot take on their most uncensored opinion in mobile marketing.
Timestamps
0:00 Super special MHU day
3:15 Ad performance in the age of privacy
12:55 Blockchain in gaming
16:15 Privacy Sandbox on Android
19:01 Why you need a higher converting app
20:50 Influencer marketing on TikTok
23:50 Video ad micro KPIs
33:01 Least censored opinions on mobile marketing
Is data-driven marketing actually impossible today? Do we have too much data … so much we have to shift to AI-driven marketing?
In this Mobile Heroes Uncensored we chat with Agustin Ochoa, a former Googler and now Performance Senior Manager at Winclap, a growth marketing consulting partner. Ochoa chats with hosts John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz about events to pay attention too — hint: far more than most do now — and how AI is better than humans at certain things like that.
We also chat about when sacrificing marketing efficiency for growth makes sense, the “event stack” he evangelizes, and the kinds of data you need to be collecting for optimal effectiveness.
Timestamps
0:00 Meet Agustin Ochoa
5:50 From data driven marketing to AI driven marketing
11:00 What app events to pay attention to
17:30 Omnichannel and focusing on your user
21:30 3 trends challenging mobile performance advertisers
24:30 Best advice for mobile marketers
3 billion app downloads is no small feat. Wildlife Studios, however, has achieved that and has very quietly become a top 10 games studio on the planet, beginning from Brazil and expanding across the globe.
In this Mobile Heroes Uncensored, we chat with Carolina Guimarães, Senior Director of Performance Marketing, and Anel Ceman, VP of Ad Monetization, about the twin challenges of UA and monetization.
- Get more quality users as cheaply as possible
- Monetize them without destroying the game experience
And … we get both Carolina’s and Anel’s uncensored opinions about ATT and privacy, as well as their biggest hacks for automating the more annoying and mundane aspects of user acquisition and monetization. We also get Anel’s take on what to measure in a mobile game – pretty much everything – and Carolina’s identification of the single most important KPI.
Timestamps
0:00 Success has a thousand fathers
3:30 Wildlife Studios
6:50 Performance marketing vs product
9:40 UA vs ad monetization
13:30 The biggest challenge
14:30 Automation save times
15:35 KPIs to measure in mobile games
17:30 One metric to rule them all
19:10 Ad partners
22:40 Superheroes of mobile
26:40 Carolina’s nightmare
Apple’s app tracking transparency was great … if you were primarily monetizing via ads on Android. In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored hosts John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz chat with long-time SmartNews marketing leader Fabien-Pierre Nicolas, now an advisor.
We chat about ad monetization, using old-fashioned linear TV for mobile user acquisition ads, and automating hyperlocal organic and paid reach on Facebook. And, of course, as always, much, much more!
Timestamps
0:00 Unicorn apps
2:30 19 different jobs on LinkedIn
5:35 The TikTok of learning
9:00 SmartNews user acquisition strategy
13:30 Consumer-driven growth
15:30 Borrowing from big tech
18:40 No good ad campaign survives contact with the enemy
20:20 Top 3 tips for mobile marketers
What can 250M users and 30 billion games played reveal about mobile games, winning IP, and monetization?
In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored we chat with Amy Huang, the CEO of Mattel163. She’s led the company to take iconic games like UNO and Skip-Bo mobile, leading to a quarter of a billion users and 30 billion games played. If that’s not enough, she’s also an accomplished rock climber.
Hosts Peggy Anne Salz and John Koetsier chat with Amy about focus, growth, hybrid monetization models, and going global via localization.
Timestamps
0:00 250 million users
2:46 Mattel163
5:35 CEO Amy Huang
7:00 Big IP for mobile games
9:30 Mobile app launches
12:00 Mobile monetization: IAP, IAA
15:43 UNO and eSports?
19:54 Globalization is localization
Apple’s SKAdNetwork has accelerated 10 years worth of CPM growth in just a year, according to our guest, Giulia Porter, VP of Marketing at RoboKiller.
In this episode, we dig into what that means, how marketing a utility is different from marketing a game, and a new approach to both channels and attribution in the age of privacy. Plus, hosts John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz chat with Giulia about the TikTok video on her app that got 20 million views, kickstarted a huge number of app installs, and that they didn’t even know about until they saw the avalanche of new users.
Timestamps
0:00 Voice spam utility
2:40 Marketing a utility vs a game or fintech app
4:45 Growth tactics in the age of SKAN
8:55 A mobile approach to more traditional methods of advertising
12:54 Uncomplicating mobile attribution
17:32 Going viral on TikTok
23:34 Focus on first party data
24:59 Least censored opinion about mobile marketing
How do you get to 8 million monthly average users with $0 in marketing spend? That’s the core question we ask Geoff Hladik, Head of Revenue & Growth at Visual Blasters. Part of the answer: product-led growth.
Hosts John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz also chat about getting featured by Apple, the pros and cons of building an app for kids, and when Hladik plans to turn the paid user acquisition on.
Timestamps
0:00 8M MAU with no spend?
2:00 Visual Blasters
2:40 Organic growth
5:25 App for kids
10:33 Product-led growth
14:50 K Factor and virality
19:34 When to start paid acquisition
21:25 Kick off in-app subscriptions
24:10 Segmenting your app users
Can you make better games by understanding player psychology? By knowing what people’s primary (and secondary) motivations are in mobile games? According to GameRefinery’s Joel Julkunen, absolutely. And understanding these motivations has led, he says, to multiple hit games over the past few years.
In this Mobile Heroes Uncensored we chat with Julkunen. He’s played over 500 games, and that’s a core part of his work, believe it or not. From that and a huge amount of data from thousands of games, he’s found 12 key player motivations that determine what kinds of games we like and which we don’t.
And that can help game marketers and designers build and market the right games to the right people.
Timestamps
0:00 Playing games for a living
2:44 Player motivation framework
4:57 The 12 core mobile game player motivations
10:23 Matching motivations to personas
13:18 Crossover games
17:16 Predicting the next big mobile games hit
21:47 Be bold and brave
Why stick with a potential audience of millions if you could have billions?
It’s not the right move for every app, but for apps that don’t rely on geographical boots-on-the-ground in terms of inventory, warehouses, or fulfillment, going global can unlock runaway growth. But there are a few things to keep in mind, says Bessie Byeon, Senior Director of Global Marketing at Liftoff.
In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored, we chat about her recent guide to scaling mobile apps overseas.
Timestamps
0:00 Why not go global?
4:05 The first criteria
5:10 What app marketers need to know about their apps
9:35 Localizing apps
14:40 Puzzling creatives
17:30 Predicting the future
23:05 Elements of success
From crazy success to favorite flops, we chat with veteran DoubleDown Interactive marketer Faith Price. Price tells us about soft launches, MVPs, app store featuring, and advice for a younger self, and talks about how getting the “grand tour” in marketing gigs was the perfect set-up for what she’s doing now … and maybe our privacy-safe future.
Hosts Peggy Anne Salz and John Koetsier also quiz Price on one of her favorite success stories in mobile marketing: a declining game turned around by smart product development and smart marketing.
Timestamps
0:00 Gaming at the forefront
2:40 The grand tour of tech
6:20 Origin story
8:50 Advice for a younger you
10:20 Favorite success story in mobile
13:40 Favorite flop in mobile marketing
17:50 Soft launches
20:20 App store featuring
22:40 Different strategies in soft launches
26:50 MVPs for soft launches
Scaling ad spend seems easy: boost buys, increase bids, add partners. But it’s really easy to lose massive amounts of efficiency and instead of driving results, simply increase ad blindness.
In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored we chat with mobile growth marketer and consultant Alper Taner, who has worked with over 50 apps in 10 verticals and helped brands scale users 5X to 50X.
We chat about:
- How to scale quickly
- When to add new channels
- Which channels work best
- Typical scaling mistakes
- What marketers underestimate about scaling
- Creative optimization
- Creative fatigue
- And much more …
Timestamps
0:00 Scaling ad spend to 8 digits
2:05 What brands want
3:15 Making the right decisions when scaling ad spend
6:05 Do you always lose efficiency when scaling?
10:50 The best ad channels
13:14 Biggest surprise in scaling ad spend?
15:40 Biggest mistakes in scaling ad spend?
20:10 Creatives and ad fatigue
25:10 Creatives and personas
28:30 SKAN 4 is “great”
32:15 Top tip for mobile marketers who are looking to scale ad spend
More granularity! More data over time! But … still plenty of uncertainty over timing, transition, implementation, and so much more.
Apple’s announced SKAN 4, and in this Mobile Heroes Uncensored we dive deep into it with mobile growth expert and consultant Thomas Petit, who participates while being down with Covid (!!!). We chat about what we know and what we don’t know, and especially about the new areas of complexity that, he says, are great job security for consultants :-)
We also discuss:
- Creative optimization in SKAN 4
- Multiple postbacks and subscription apps
- Using SKAN 4’s coarse conversion values
- Whether SKAN 4 privileges high-volume advertisers
- Fraud in SKAN 4
- And much more …
Timestamps
0:00 SKAN 4
2:05 Best parts of the new SKAN 4
3:35 Worst parts of the new SKAN 4
5:20 The SKAN 4 transition is going to be tough
9:20 From 1 postback to 3
9:20 From Campaign ID to Source ID
10:20 Creative optimization in SKAN 4
13:45 Cohorts (sorta) but no customer journey
15:30 SKAN 4 and subscription apps
17:45 Coarse and fine values in SKAN 4
24:05 Fraud and SKAN 4
25:35 SKAN 4 and web
30:30 SKAN 4 launch date
Can you run user acquisition at scale without app store optimization? Probably not without wasting a lot of money, according to Taha Karsli from MobileAction.
In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored, we chat with Karsli about key ranking factors on Google Play and the App Store, reviews, fitting ASO into an overall mobile growth strategy, and how frequently you should update your app listings.
We also get insight into
- The most misunderstood thing about ASA
- The least utilized tactic that could be big
- The most common mistake
- And the biggest opportunities
Timestamps
0:00 App store optimization
3:15 ASO and paid user acquisition
5:15 How much differentiation good ASO makes
7:45 Key ASO ranking factors
10:45 Key ASO ranking factors for Google Play
14:20 App reviews and ASO
19:20 App images and screenshots
21:45 5 quick ASO questions
26:10 Merging organic and paid datasets
Does your creative drive targeting? Does your creative answer questions? Do you offer video ads like cinematic trailers for the CTR and gameplay videos for the retention?
In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored we chat with Activision’s senior manager of growth strategy Thanasi Chalkiadakis, who shares how he drives growth for one of the most iconic game franchises of all time, Call of Duty.
With hosts John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz, we dive into:
- Mobile growth at Activision
- Working on Call of Duty
- Lifecycle marketing
- Creative strategy
- Targeting in an age of privacy
- Top tips for growing games in 2022
Timestamps
0:00 What UA pros need to know
1:01 Mobile growth from 1979
5:45 From Greece to Call of Duty
7:40 What working in a restaurant teaches you about UA
9:30 Lifecycle marketing in mobile
11:05 UA and product
14:55 Ad creative: 2 kinds
20:20 How creative drives targeting
24:05 Getting a job in user acquisition
26:40 Create ads that answer questions
Have you ever been review-bombed by an unscrupulous competitor?
In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored we chat with Natalie Drozd, User Acquisition Lead at Fabulous. She’s an app store optimization expert as well as a user acquisition expert, and she chats about good ASO, bad ASO, and toxic ASO.
We also chat about being featured by Apple as an Editor’s Choice app, learning from Reforge, winning in the wellness, fitness, and health categories, and the biggest challenges to achieving and sustaining organic growth.
Timestamps
0:00 From the trenches to Everest
2:05 Getting featured by Apple
6:01 What I learned from Reforge
9:20 Winning in fitness and health
12:55 Dan Ariely and Predictably Irrational
16:57 Holistic mobile marketing
20:30 Achieving and sustaining organic growth
22:15 App Store Optimization
27:25 Black Hat ASO
30:05 3 tips for mobile marketers in fitness
Can it be possible that 99% of ads for midcore games fail to address one of the most important factors in drawing new players in?
In this Mobile Heroes Uncensored we dive into Liftoff’s creative index report. Based on analysis of 805 billion ad impressions -- yes you got that number right -- the report highlights what works and doesn’t work in mobile advertising.
Our guests:
- James Haslam, Senior Marketing Insights Manager, Liftoff
- Justin Nield, Associate Manager, Brand Creative, Liftoff
What we learn: far too many ads ignore key user motivations, one very old and much-maligned ad unit is actually an all-star, what hooks new users in fintech, and much, much more …
Timestamps
0:00 What 99% of mobile ads miss
2:30 805 billion ad impressions
4:40 Banner ads don’t suck
5:35 Most surprising insight
8:00 Banner ads actually rock
12:07 Creative strategy in 2022
14:30 12 user motivations for gamers
22:42 E-commerce creatives
24:00 The makeup-applying robot
25:00 Top tips for ad creative
Is it possible to have privacy that doesn’t suck for marketers? While SKAdNetwork and iOS 14.5 might not fit that billing, Privacy Sandbox on Android just might.
What does it include? What will change? What will get worse, and what will get better. In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored, we interview three experts to get their insights:
- Gadi Eliashiv, CEO of Singular
- Sergio Serra, head of product at InMobi
- Matt Ellinwood, director of product management at Liftoff
They tell us what Privacy Sandboxes’ most pleasant surprises are, what the biggest concerns about losing GAID are, and whether Topics API is robust enough for accurate targeting. All that and more …
Timestamps
0:00 Privacy Sandbox on Android
4:01 Best surprise about Privacy Sandbox
8:30 Multi-touch attribution?
13:10 Losing GAID
17:50 Topics API and targeting
24:00 How does this change ad networks?
27:55 How does this change marketing?
34:50 Campaign optimization
38:50 Top tips for marketers
This may come as a shock but not every massive, successful, money-making app is in gaming, fintech, ride-hailing, or the metaverse. Today we chat with the CMO of a very different type of app: one that builds a digital layer to connect a pre-existing community and offers tools and commerce that make what they do better.
What is it?
Fishbrain connects 14 million fishers across the planet with tools, maps, social features, recommendations, and shopping. We chat with Lisa Kennelly, the CMO, who is building something amazing in a nontraditional (for mobile!) space.
Lisa talks about acquisition channels, what’s delivering uplift, how Fishbrain keeps its marketing and ads fresh, and how they engage their users. Plus, we also get into Fishbrains expansion into commerce.
Timestamps
0:00 Fish on the brain?
3:20 Growing a massive mobile community
4:40 Top channels for mobile growth
7:40 Adding social to your app
10:45 Mobile user retention
12:50 Adding mobile commerce to your app
18:20 Managing global growth from the USA
20:10 Cross-cultural growth teams
22:00 Top 3 tips for marketers in unconventional verticals
Why has Zynga bought no fewer than 5 Turkish game companies? Why are there so many significant success stories coming out of the Turkish game community?
In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored, Peggy Anne Salz and John Koetsier talk to 2 leading experts in Turkey’s emerging mobile gaming ecosystem. Batuhan Avucan, Founder & Managing Director at Mobidictum and Utku Altunkiran, User Acquisition Manager at Kidly talk about what’s happening, why Turkey’s gaming space is growing, and what publishers need to know about the Turkish scene.
We also chat about moving from hyper-casual games to a subscription model, influencer marketing, monetization, AR/VR, and creative strategies that deliver big upside.
Timestamps
0:00 Turkey … the new Silicon Valley of gaming?
5:20 Reasons for gaming growth
6:40 Demographics and dynamics in Turkey
14:10 From hypercasual games to subscriptions
18:45 Virtual influencers
23:45 Top 3 tips for mobile marketers in Turkey
Are people predictably irrational? Pretty much, and some game marketers have learned exactly how and used that knowledge to grow. One, with over 1.4 billion game installs, is our guest Mert Ersöz, Head of Marketing at MagicLab Game Technologies.
Mert started his career in -- you guessed it -- behavior economics, and has been growing hit games like Fidget Trading, Text and Drive, Run Race 3D, and more over the past few years.
We ask him:
- How have you had a string of top-ranked games?
- What tactics made the biggest difference to your performance?
- What growth hacks can you share?
- How are you boosting retention?
We also learn more about how MagicLab is transitioning from hyper-casual to casual games, and how their marketing is changing too …
Timestamps
0:00 Predictably irrational?
2:30 From behavioral economics to marketing
3:30 Growing top-ranked games
7:30 Acquisition is great; retention is essential
9:45 From hyper-casual to mid-core mobile games
13:15 Growth in the age of privacy
16:45 Balancing self-publishing and working with studios
20:40 Top 3 tips for mobile marketers
Times Internet is a global behemoth with over 550 million users. Now the company is extending its reach globally from its home base in India.
In this episode, we chat with Machine Zone alum Vivek Girotra, who is building a fintech app for the Indian diaspora: tens of millions who live in the U.S., in Europe, in Asia, and elsewhere around the world. He gets deep into psychographics and demographics as well as the nuts and bolts of mobile growth.
We chat about:
- Growing fintech apps
- Understanding your users
- Filling the funnel
- Understanding when you have a winner
- Using content to grow
- Top 3 tips for fintech marketers
Timestamps
0:00 550 million users
2:54 What is Times Internet?
4:05 Diversifying into fintech
6:34 Psychographics for mobile growth
12:10 From gaming to fintech
15:25 Understanding your app users
18:20 Best predictor of future success
21:30 Educating mobile app users
23:54 Top 3 tips for mobile marketers in FinTech
Is it happy days for location-based apps again? We’re getting back to some kind of normal and apps for places, travel, restaurants, hikes, flights, hotels, beaches, and bookshops are back in action.
Today we chat with a super-interesting location-based app called Bimble, which is “counter-mapping” the planet … finding all the cool places that aren’t big on Google Maps and highlighting the small wonders of the world. In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored we chat with Julia Mallaby and Fatima Zaidi of Bimble. They launched 3 weeks before lockdown … but survived COVID! And now they’re doing better than ever.
We chat about:
- Building the ‘Spotify of Travel’
- Filling the upper funnel of app users
- Engaging existing users
- Building buzz via TikTok influencers
- Creating emotional connection that drives retention
- Building real community
Enjoy!
Timestamps
0:00 Happy days for location-based apps?
2:30 Sharing the places you love
3:50 Starting a location app during Covid
5:30 Post-Covid growth
7:57 Sharing playlists of places
9:36 Brand ambassadors via TikTok influencers
12:00 Two classes of users
14:30 Connecting to influencers
17:04 Attracting creators to your app
18:30 ‘Counter-mapping’ the world … via Ukraine
23:30 Growth via emotional connection
Scaling to 220 million users is a pretty massive achievement. Helping over 30 million women get pregnant: also massive. And driving growth via content and curation is a pretty unique way to do it.
In this Mobile Heroes Uncensored, hosts John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz chat with Aurelie Genet, who is VP Product and Engagement Marketing at Flo, the app that’s all about periods, ovulation, and pregnancy on the surface … but even more about wellness, health, and being your best self.
Genet shares the gold on how product, user acquisition, and retention need to align and collaborate to win, how customer experience determines success, and how Flo uses content as both a competitive differentiator and community creator.
In addition, we chat metrics (always fun), her biggest accomplishment, and Genet’s top three tips for mobile marketers in the health & wellness space.
Timestamps
0:00 Scaling apps for hypergrowth
2:30 The growth triangle: product, acquisition, retention
4:40 Bringing marketing and product together
9:15 Customer app experience and growth
12:45 Content, community, and mobile marketing
20:30 Metrics that matter
23:50 Personal accomplishments
26:10 Top 3 tips for mobile marketers in health and wellness apps
It sounds insane but one of the top ad monetization specialists in the world is confident that ad monetization is not dead … and that a blast-from-the-past ad unit with super-high CPIs is one of the ways to make it happen.
In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored we chat with Kelly Kang, currently a senior director at Pixel United (think Product Madness, Big Fish, and Plarium) and has held roles at both Zynga and Glu. She tells co-hosts Peggy Anne Salz and John Koetsier how ad monetization is far from dead and how monetization pros can still get a great return from app users … even without ad identifiers like IDFA or GAID.
Plus, Kang gives us her top tips in monetization and the one thing she’d change about her career if she could go back in time.
Timestamps
0:00 Post-IDFA advertising
1:10 Kelly Kang from Pixel United
3:40 A career on a computer!
5:50 What would you tell your younger self?
7:40 Making ad monetization work without ad identifiers
12:30 Mobile app ad monetization and product
15:25 Segmenting users via AI
18:00 Finding the best mobile ad network
23:10 The most important things admon pros need to know
How do you get ads that outperform native content? There’s only one way today’s guest has achieved that, and it’s via influencer marketing on social platforms.
“The best thing about TikTok is that you can get massive algorithmic distribution on ads, which I haven't been able to achieve in the same way on other platforms,” says today’s guest Aidan Quest. “So we'll have ads that will perform better than an influencer's content sometimes if the ad is interesting enough.”
Quest leads JetFuel’s creator operations and business development. He spent 30 minutes with John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz chatting about what’s new in influencer marketing, what’s changing, and how to make influencer marketing a steady-state growth engine for new mobile app users.
And: why influencer marketing is still the only channel where you can actually get on-platform algorithmic distribution IF your ad is good enough.
The funny thing about good enough? Often it’s the opposite of what you’d expect. Get all the details in this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored.
Timestamps
0:00 Sustainable influencer marketing campaigns
2:01 Recent growth in influencer marketing
3:40 Scaling influencer marketing
7:20 Kicking off influencer campaigns
9:50 Winning TikTok ads
12:40 Going viral on TikTok
16:00 Influencer marketing in the age of privacy
17:50 Working with influencers
20:10 What’s working on TikTok now
21:50 3 top tips for TikTok advertising
March is women’s history month and includes International Women’s Day, so of course we’re chatting with two incredible leaders in mobile growth and user acquisition who just happen to be women.
One is currently a user acquisition manager at Voodoo and has led growth at other top games studios like Jam City. She’s Radostina Zhekova, and she tells us what she’s learned and how she’s grown in a traditionally male-dominated space. The other leads product at Drest, “the world’s first interactive luxury styling game.” She’s Johanna Vuorela, and she’s led growth, built games studios, co-founded companies, and built dream teams.
In this episode we get their best advice, top tips, and opinions about how to grow in the game of growth.
Timestamps
0:00 Women in mobile
3:00 50% of mobile gamers are women
4:50 Fish out of water?
7:10 Mentors in mobile
11:15 Best career advice?
16:00 Interview red flags
18:15 Stereotypes and challenges for women in mobile
21:15 Overcoming imposter syndrome
27:05 Advice for women starting out in mobile
Games with insects are super-hot right now. So are fashion games. And so are games with 2D cartoony graphics. So maybe it’s time to make a game about fashion choices for beetles in 2D?
If you want to grab a place on the Top Grossing charts for games, it pays to pay attention to Sensor Tower’s data on what’s working and what’s hot. In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored, we chat with Sensor Tower mobile insights strategist Craig Chapple. Chapple, who used to play games for a living at PocketGamer, shares what’s working, what’s hot, what’s new, and what’s trending in mobile game subjects, styles, and genres.
We also chat about paying players, profitability, and the controversial new part of so many games: NFTs and crypto.
Timestamps
0:00 Winning with data
1:45 Journalism to analyzing game data
4:50 Key drivers of mobile game success now
7:25 A taxonomy of mobile games
10:50 Games > Animal > Insect
12:45 Art styles that are hot in mobile games right now
15:50 Neon bug games, with zombies
16:45 Winners and losers in mobile games now
20:15 Hypercasual games ARE NOT DEAD YET
25:10 Top 3 tips for mobile gaming marketers in 2022
In-app bidding, waterfall, privacy, ATT … maximizing in-app ad monetization has probably never been harder. In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored we chat with GSN Games (Scopely) VP Brian Truman about boosting admon and scaling revenue without negatively impacting user experience.
In this episode:
- ATT and ads: how to still get top dollar
- Waterfall to in-app bidding: why and how
- Biggest factors impacting ad monetization performance
- The massive problem with test culture that no-one’s talking about
- Understanding and segmenting users
- The biggest mistake apps make in monetization
- 3 top tips to maximizing ad-based mobile monetization
Hosts John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz chat with Brian about how he got his start in mobile marketing (by knowing the right Excel shortcuts, of all things), ads that cause app crashes, and how hands-on experience makes a massive difference.
Timestamps
0:00 Ads and privacy
1:40 Excel shortcuts to a job offer
3:50 ATT and ad monetization
6:45 Privacy Sandbox for Android
9:45 Boosting ad-based app revenue
12:20 From waterfall to in-app bidding
15:45 Most important factors in boosting ad performance
16:45 Re-testing old assumptions
20:40 Google Firebase
23:30 Ads that cause app crashes
27:25 What would you tell your younger self?
29:45 Most common mistake in mobile monetization
32:45 Top 3 tips to maximize mobile ad monetization
Dating apps are huge. 40% of couples are now finding each other via digital dating services, and dating apps are forecast to be an $8.4 billion opportunity by 2024.
But how do you beat the competition?
First of all, by defining your niche like, perhaps, the Thursday dating app … which only works on Thursdays. Or the dating app that’s only for people with beards. Or another only for music lovers.
But most importantly, you have to understand your users and locale. In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored, we chat with James Haslam and Mikael Orpana, who have analyzed the top dating apps, millions of installs, and billions of ad impressions to identify what works well and how the top apps win.
Timestamps
0:00 Love is in the air: dating apps
2:45 The top dating apps (and the challengers)
4:35 UA costs in dating apps
7:05 iOS vs Android: costs for users
10:25 Targeting men vs women
13:45 Best ad creative for dating apps
17:50 Top 3 tips for mobile marketers in the dating space
20:30 Localization of dating apps
You gotta do your data homework, you have to look under the hood of all those fancy shiny marketing platforms, and you have to find channels that your competitors overlook.
Those are just a few of the massive number of tips and insights for increasing sales in your retail app from Nico Winkelhaus, the Director of Digital Marketing at PAYBACK, Germany’s top loyalty program. (Little secret here: they see literally 5% of the entire nation’s commerce. Insane!)
In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored, hosts Peggy Anne Salz and John Koetsier chat with Nico about achieving sustained growth, learning from gaming apps, beating nightmare competitors, and evolving through changes in consumer behavior due to Covid.
Plus, we also chat about weaving service through web and mobile app channels, and Nico’s unconventional advice about why you should grow your app at the expense of other channels.
Timestamps
0:00 Sustained growth in retail apps
1:05 Nico Winkelhaus from Payback
4:15 From gaming to retail
6:45 What retail apps can learn from mobile games
8:45 The evolution of retail during Covid
12:05 The power of personalized offers
13:30 Getting your data homework done
15:50 Unsexy but effective marketing channels
18:15 Prioritizing your app over other channels
20:02 Creating relevant creative
22:10 Top 3 tips for retail app marketers
There are not many retention-first mobile user acquisition specialists on the planet. While retention is important -- ok, essential -- most UA experts focus, naturally, on the acquisition of users. While retention matters, it’s more the product and DevOps teams responsibility.
Not Miray Alanlar, Senior Product Marketing Manager at FOX Bet & PokerStars.
She focuses first on retention, because getting a new user doesn’t even matter if that user is just going to churn out in a few hours or days. That means targeting is critical, onboarding is critical, engagement is critical, and user experience is critical.
In this Mobile Heroes Uncensored, Miray chats with hosts John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz about acquisition, retention, capitalizing on big events like the Super Bowl or Olympics, and maintaining momentum between those natural growth points.
Plus, she even chats about something new we’re calling the “mobile retention stack.”
Timestamps
0:00 Retention growth marketing
2:01 The Super Bowl and betting apps
5:25 What is a retention growth marketer?
9:05 Starting at the bottom of the marketing funnel
12:45 Marketing a suite of mobile apps
15:51 Stalking the competition
20:15 Billion-dollar idea for free
21:25 Mobile retention stack
25:39 Top 3 tips for mobile marketers in sports and betting apps
Imagine competing with Apple, or Google, or Amazon, or Spotify. Better yet, imagine competing with all of them at the very same time.
Sounds insane?
Not for Audiomack, which has been streaming music from creators to fans for over a decade. In this Mobile Heroes Uncensored, we dive deep into senior VP of revenue Dave Edwards’ story: how Audiomack wins, how it monetizes, and how it’s become super-successful doing things that everyone else thinks are crazy.
We chat about:
- “David” marketing strategies for fighting “Goliath”
- Maximizing ads-based monetization
- New audio formats, including shake-to-click
- Communicating unique brand stories with almost no budget
- Making short attention spans your friend
- Video ads versus audio ads
- Getting 60% opt-in rates on ATT
- Monetization programmatically vs direct
- Dave Edwards’ top 3 tips for maximizing monetization
Timestamps
0:00 David beating Goliath
3:15 Communicating brand promise
8:22 Monetizing apps with interactive ads
10:37 Getting 60% opt-in rates on ATT
11:52 Ads monetization: programmatic vs direct
13:45 Interactive audio ads: shake to click
17:38 Stumbling into mobile marketing
21:00 Top 3 tips for mobile monetization
What do you need to know about competitive apps? In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored we chat with Apptopia CEO Jonathan Kay, who shares the three super-simple but uber-important pieces of data you need on competitors.
(Apptopia, by the way, collects 4 billion data points daily on over 1 million apps.)
Plus hosts Peggy and John ask Jonathan about app trends for 2022, finding new opportunities in data, knowing when to get excited about spikes in downloads and when not to, and Jonathan's 3 top tips for mobile marketers.
We also learn why Dunkin Donuts is super successful with its Apple Carplay app, why Sam’s Club gained on Costco in mobile, and why there’s an endless runner game with minions in it.
Timestamps
0:00 Eye of Sauron and mobile data
2:22 4 billion data points daily
3:45 Big drivers of mobile advertising change in 2021
6:20 Mobile app trends for 2022
11:05 Competitive data to focus on in mobile app marketing
14:25 Using market data to find new app niches
19:35 Success: when it’s fleeting vs when it lasts
20:45 ASO: ranking for other brands’ apps
23:15 Top 3 tips for mobile marketers in 2022
26:35 Old marketing, bell bottoms, and crypto apps
90 million writers and readers connect on global storytelling platform Wattpad. Daniel Kenny-Godoy, Wattpad’s director for ad-ops and programmatic, boosted revenue substantially.
But how?
In this Mobile Heroes Uncensored Origin Story, hosts John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz chat with Daniel about ad operations' biggest challenges and opportunities, how to scale ad revenue while maintaining a great user experience, and the increasingly important topic of contextual vs behavioral targeting.
Plus, we get his top 3 tips for ad monetization in 2022.
Timestamps
0:00 Buyers and sellers
0:40 Idiots and geniuses
3:00 Starting out in mobile ad monetization
4:40 Defining ad ops
6:10 Direct sales vs programmatic
8:01 Biggest challenges of ad ops
11:00 Biggest changes in programmatic
12:15 Behavior vs contextual targeting
16:30 Ad versus user experience
20:01 Boosting programmatic ad revenue substantially
22:15 Most important factors in scaling ad ops
27:10 Ad ops on Reddit
30:20 Top 3 tips for ad monetization
Is incrementality the answer to mobile marketing measurement’s crisis?
Let’s be honest: mobile marketers exist on last-touch attribution, whether they’re using GAID, SKAdNetwork, or probabilistic methodologies. But declining signal on iOS has led some to suggest that incrementality is the answer. And there is a place for it.
Today’s guest Moshi Blum of Beach Bum (owned by Voodoo) has been there and done that, and he has the scars to prove it. Armed with hard-won knowledge gained from leading user acquisition at Viber and being a country general manager for Adjust, Blum shares what he’s learned about incrementality and measurement with hosts Peggy Anne Salz and John Koetsier.
Plus, Blum gives us his three tips for mobile marketing success in 2022.
And we see the youngest mobile hero ever: Golan, who’s 4 months old!
Timestamps
0:00 Cheat codes for growing mobile apps
2:45 Growth to measurement back to growth
5:15 Challenges of 2021 for growth marketing
7:35 Opportunities for mobile marketers in 2022
9:21 Incrementality to measure user acquisition
13:30 Why incrementality is hard
18:25 The baby cries
19:10 What incrementality cannot do
20:45 How to try to accomplish incrementality
23:57 Last touch attribution
24:48 Favorite game: Brawl Stars by Supercell
26:37 Top 3 tips for mobile marketing in 2022
Everyone wants to grow. Today we’re learning from an expert, Vishal Korlipara.
Vishal leads growth at Future, the fitness startup, and has held roles at Morgan Stanley, Credit Karma, and Intuit. He’s essentially not just a growth expert, but an expert at ending jobs successfully, transitioning to new roles successfully, and initiating new stages in his career.
Hosts John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz chat with Vishal about ending well, when to switch jobs, how to start well, and Vishal’s unconventional but clearly effective top three tips for advancing your career in growth marketing in the coming year.
Timestamps
0:00 Growing your marketing career
0:55 Vishal Korlipara
1:50 Personal growth
2:25 Downside to career change
3:20 Relationship building
6:10 How to start a new job well
9:20 Doing your research
12:30 When NOT to switch jobs
15:30 Enterprise jobs vs startup life
22:29 Growth at Future
25:25 Top 3 tips for growing your career in 2022
We have had a year. In some ways an awful, horrific, challenging year. In other ways a crazy, wacky, but growth-filled year. What happened? What did it mean? And, more importantly, how will mobile marketers achieve massive growth next year in 2022?
In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored, hosts John Koetsier & Peggy Anne Salz chat with Shamanth Rao, who has lead growth for games leading to acquisitions by GSN Games, Zynga, and GameLoft (!!!). He now runs Rocketship HQ and might just possibly have a podcast that maybe potentially a few people might listen too. (It may or may not be called the Mobile User Acquisition Show.)
We rant and rave about the highlights and lowlights of 2021, then get Shamanth’s top 3 tips on how to win in 2022.
Timestamps
0:00 2021 yays and boos
0:51 Shamanth Rao
2:26 Feeling bad for Android
3:24 Apple vs Google
4:21 Adtech consolidation
9:21 Mobile games and ATT
13:39 Ad network winners and losers
15:52 Peggy dances on a toilet
16:37 Content fortresses: Reddit vs TikTok
18:07 What will be big in 2022
21:47 Top 3 tips for mobile marketers in 2022
How do you win in the most competitive space ever: mobile gaming? Well, you track 250 different features and components of games and see which ones tend to influence success.
In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored, Peggy & John chat with GameRefinery’s head of analytics Joel Julkunen. He’s not just a gearhead: he’s the former archery champ of the Finnish Air Force.
More importantly, he’s constantly tracking all the variables that go into mobile gaming success. And, of course, sharing that with us in MHU. We chat NFTs (hate ‘em? love ‘em?), we chat genre mashups and casual/mid-core crossovers, we chat social features, and of course we chat battle passes.
Timestamps
0:00 Canary in the coal mine
2:00 Live ops
2:50 Mobile game mashups
7:50 Mid-core and hypercasual crossover
10:55 NFTs & collectibles
15:45 Social in games
20:05 Differentiating your game
23:10 Battle passes
25:35 Top 3 tips for game devs in 2022
You know about growth marketers. You know about mobile advertising. But have you heard about "performance artists?" (And no, we're not talking about weird things in off-Broadway plays or pop-up art displays.) Performance artists, Lidia says, transform KPIs into winners.
How?
In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored, Socialpoint's UA lead Lidia Perez leads us through the process of creating winning creative. Which, as you know, can make a horrible app temporarily successful, a so-so app quite successful, and a truly good app (like yours!) a massive take-no-prisoners winner.
What we chat about:
-
finding winners
-
finding losers (almost as important!)
-
the right metrics to watch (top and bottom funnel)
-
and building a systematic process for designing and testing winning creative
0:00 Creative is everything
0:44 Lidia Perez, Socialpoint UA lead
1:45 Finding creative winners
4:36 Which metrics matter?
5:20 CPA vs retention
8:10 Systematizing serendipity
10:16 Performance artists
12:38 Serendipity and the structure of ideation
20:16 Tracking investment at every stage
23:40 Metrics that matter
CPIs are up almost 50%. ROAS, of course, is down. Competition is now global, and almost everything anyone could ever think of has been turned into a casual game?
So what do you do?
Well, maybe NFTs.
And, perhaps, acquisition for cross promotion.
In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored, hosts John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz chat with Miniclip director of performance marketing Jonathan Winters and Funorama head of business development David Pich. We chat chess (yep!) maximizing player value, engagement, retention, NFTs, cross-promotion, and even a little iOS vs Android.
Plus we end with each expert’s top 3 tips for mobile marketers in casual games heading into 2022.
How do you beat the best ad you’ve ever done? Last year SocialPoint lucked into their best ad ever and simply could not beat it. All they could create was variations on a theme, but with increasing creative fatigue, ads increasingly brought diminished returns.
So mobile hero Danika Wilkinson built a process to systematize serendipity and become more creative on purpose. It worked, and as a result of that creative diversity, ROI increased 30% in just three months, and the team was able to increase retention by a further 25%.
In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored, hosts John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz go behind the curtain with SocialPoint’s product marketing manager and learn what makes this former Australian rugby journalist tick … and how she’s transformed marketing and creative production at SocialPoint.
In this episode:
0:00 Well you could work for the bank
1:06 Who is Danica Wilkinson
2:24 Origin story
3:47 Journalism to game marketer
7:33 Team alignment for creativity
9:25 Escaping the creative rut
12:01 Striking advertising gold
14:10 Macaws in the office
14:56 Creative testing
16:27 Systematizing serendipity
19:12 Privacy and granularity in mobile marketing
21:52 Future of consumer behavior on mobile
Should you have beautiful ads? Oddball ads? Funny ads? In-your-face ads? How about frustrating, impossible, annoying ads with puzzles that actually have no solution at all ... and even feature a narrator making fun of your inability to solve them?
That path less traveled led to a top-download 20 placement for brain game app Impulse, built by a small team in Ukraine.
In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored, hosts Peggy Anne Salz and John Koetsier chat with Impulse chief marketing officer Daria Opanasiuk to learn more about her strategy, and more about her story. Daria O is an accidental marketer with two master's degrees, neither of which are in business or marketing, and a super-successful app in one of the most competitive categories on the planet.
We also chat some IDFA, web-to-app flows, Private Relay, and much more ...
Cats make cameos and guests bring the jokes as we hit holiday marketing hard. Unfortunately it's not Club Med kind of holidays, but end of year, new year's, Halloween, Christmas, Hanukkah, and those kinds of holidays.
What works? What fails? And how do you cut through the noise of so much advertising competition?
In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored, we get serious. We get deep, and we chat with 3 experts:
-
Caroline Schlünsen, Channel Lead App Marketing at ABOUT YOU
-
Athina Sofou, Head of Digital Marketing at Pizza Fan
-
Justin Campbell, Creative Business Development at Admiral Media
Not only do we dive into pitfalls and opportunities, we quantify the holiday marketing opportunity, talk about timing, the impact of the global supply crunch, and segmentation by audience and geo.
We also ask each guest 4 critical questions, just for fun:
-
Biggest marketing nightmare
-
Most annoying industry pet peeve
-
Most unexpected success
-
Person you respect most in the industry
Enjoy!
Maybe last-click attribution does suck and doesn't represent reality. But just maybe it's "good enough" to optimize on. We chat attribution, insights, AB testing, and more with Lenette Yap, senior UA manager at Inkitt.
Then we get into the really interesting stuff: naming conventions.
(Sound dull, I know, but we make it fun. And they are actually unbelievably important to get right.)
Along the way we meet Dogtor Dre (you read that right) ... the poodle with his own Instagram account, discuss why AB testing is awful and horrible and necessary, and chat about how and when marketers need to follow their guts.
You're smart, you're capable, and you're ambitious. But how do you level up and grow your game and add some rocket boost to your career?
Start by checking out this podcast.
We ask two top women in tech how they did it: where they started, how they climbed the career ladder, what strategies and tactics they used, and how they enlisted support from their managers and mentors. Chatting with co-hosts Peggy Anne Salz and John Koetsier are:
-
Jade Worobec, Head of Performance Marketing at the Meet Group
-
Katie Gill, Head of Marketing at DREST
We chat travel, mobile consolidation, and tell a few jokes, but spend most of our time discussing
In this episode:
0:00 Fluent acronym?
1:19 Everyone is buying everyone
3:32 Why plants hate math
4:52 Who are these guests anyways?
8:44 First job
11:31 Be a boss
12:34 Set a gooooaaaaaallllllll
13:47 Say yes
15:31 True in every vertical
16:58 Chaos and careers
19:58 Go back in time
21:10 Game time: eternal rookie
24:52 Breaking out of a niche
27:37 Moving to management
29:49 Women in leadership
32:03 Patience: yes or no?
34:17 How mobile marketing is changing
37:36 Resume no-no's
39:18 Top tips for career growth in marketing
41:10 Mobile heroes in the news
What's better than a road trip? And in COVID times, we're still doing them virtually, visiting Eastern Europe to chat gaming with Nakusi Games and retail with Joom, a marketplace you may never have heard of that has over 350 million customers in 100+ countries.
In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored we chat with:
- Vladimir Ilchenko, UA Lead at Nakusi Games
- Sergei Pustovetov, Traffic Manager at Joom
Our topics, acquisition, attribution, and localization. We also play Ad Win of the Week, give Peggy's invisible bitcoin right back to her, chat about incrementality and media mix modeling, and discuss the biggest challenges in marketing mobile apps in Eastern Europe.
Plus, we have Mobile Heroes in the News, featuring:
- Aurelie Genet @ Flo
-
Björn Videkull @ Bjorn Videkull Performance Marketing
-
Thomas Hopkins @ Superpeer
-
Jayne Peressini @ Dapper Labs
How do you know when influencer marketing is working? How do you use influencer marketing to drive mobile user acquisition at scale?
In this Mobile Heroes Uncensored: Origin Stores we dive deep with Alexander Ruban, UA Lead at Product Madness on influencer marketing, gaming, and attribution. We learn where he got his start, how he approaches influencer marketing, what works best, and how he measures effectiveness.
As always, MHU is hosted by John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz.
In this episode:
0:00 The challenge of influence marketing
1:30 Who is Alexander Ruban?
2:25 Favorite part of UA?
4:05 Use an agency?
6:25 Picking influencers
9:31 Formula for success
11:36 Channels that win
13:11 Measuring performance
16:30 Incrementality
17:17 Product Madness is not in retail
20:22 Become a Mobile Hero
The godfather of growth and two super women in growth from Stash (finance!) and Gymondo (fitness!) join co-hosts John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz for a seriously fun episode on maximizing subscription revenue.
(OK, the "godfather of growth" is the guy who invented the Mobile Growth Stack. But he's still pretty awesome.)
Our guests:
-
Kate Palmer, Director of Growth at Stash
-
Jenny Schmidt, Team Lead Social & Influencer Marketing at Gymondo
-
Andy Carvell, Partner & Co-Founder at Phiture
We chat about getting money back from Apple, acronyms no-one knows, winning invisible Bitcoins, stuff we should know but somehow just don't, and most importantly, of course, subscription revenue. Top tips for subscriptions. Finding good users for subscription apps. Stopping churn for subscriptions. Pricing for subscriptions. Subscribing to subscriptions (ok, I'm lying now).
Plus, there's no less than 3 amazing jokes in this episode. The guy who made them promises that this is true. (Of course, he's also the guy who keeps promising guests free Bitcoin.)
Chapter markers:
0:00 DDoS'ing yourself (intro)
1:26 Apple vs Epic
3:41 iOS 15
7:35 Our mobile heroes
12:51 DDoS'ing yourself (the full story)
15:17 mAcronym game
20:52 Mobile app subscriptions: pricing
24:04 Mobile app subscriptions: influencer marketing
26:13 Subscription UA is different
27:11 Biggest mobile app subscription mistakes
30:29 SKAdNetwork and subscriptions
33:25 Compound values in SKAN postbacks
37:08 The Rick Astley of marketers
38:30 Opening up payments on iOS
42:58 Top tips for subscription marketers
Welcome to Mobile Heroes Uncensored, Origin Stories.
In this premier episode, we dive in the deep, dark, and twisted crevices of Alexey Gusev’s mind. He leads growth at Goodgame Studios, and has a very interesting way of boosting conversions to paying users by as much as 30% … just by selecting the right creative. He also tells a joke (!!) plays the guitar (!!) and earns an Invisible Bitcoin by being far, far, far too nice.
Mercedes, Oktoberfest, and mobile apps are what Germany is known for, right? Well, sort of.
In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored we chat with the top growth marketers at major German mobile first or mobile centric companies: Yazio, Soundcloud, Flixbus, and Delivery Hero. Our goal: drive great cars, drink great beer, and learn what makes apps successful in Germany. And, of course, what German mobile developers make better than anyone else. (We succeed in one of those ambitions.)
Co-hosts John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz chat with:
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Vincenzo Serricchio, Global Head of Mobile Marketing at food ordering app Delivery Hero
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Sergio Palau, Online Marketing Manager at mobility & travel app FlixBus
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Dora Trostanetsky, Director of Growth Marketing at music & audio company SoundCloud
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Carolin Rohte, Head of Performance Marketing at nutrition & health app YAZIO
We chat about marketing superpowers, marketing kryptonite, we get their true confessions about ultimate fails, and we learn about mobile marketing in Germany: what works, what fails, and what outsiders don't know.
0:00 Horrible awful no-good joke
1:34 App Store changes
3:48 Big Liftoff+Vungle news
6:05 Introducing our mobile heroes
9:29 Mobile growth superpowers & kryptonite
16:25 True Confessions
24:43 Mobile growth in Germany
34:35 What is Germany really good at in mobile?
36:53 German mobile blind spots
44:22 Localization and mobile in Germany
46:15 Feed me now
51:04 The future of mobile marketing in 2021
Retail isn't easy but mobile retail has grown enormously over the past 18 months. We chat with the head of product and growth marketing at Sam's Club, part of the one of the world's largest retailers (yep, Walmart) and a former colleague, now retail app builder. We chat BBQ, augmented reality, growth post-COVID, and the vampires of the mobile world: QR codes.
Guests:
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Drew Frost: Head of Product and Growth Marketing at Sam’s Club at Walmart
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Matt Hudson: founder of BILDIT, a mobile app e-commerce platform
As always, co-hosts John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz get their best tips about growth, retention, and mobile marketing strategy. We also discuss the role of mobile apps for bricks-and-mortar retailers, the most important parts of a retail app to highlight in advertising and marketing campaigns, and what is changing in mobile growth in 2021.
Lucky episode #13 ... here we go.
My growth isn’t tanking … I’m doing an incrementality test!
If you’re one of the largest dating platforms on the planet, you probably know something about growth. So Peggy and John were super-happy to chat with Bumble director of growth marketing Morry Mitrani and senior growth marketing manager Solange Baki, along with Liftoff’s director of creative, Thomas Sukowski.
We chat about the ongoing changes/challenges/impacts of COVID, the marketing data apocalypse in iOS 14.5, how Bumble uses creative for targeting and conversions, and the challenges of modern attribution and marketing measurement.
We also chat about privacy, cross-platform, and how Bumble is expanding beyond dating to friends and work colleagues … and how Bumble has pioneered the ability to delete part of an app off your phone, instead of the entire and complete app.
In addition:
Mobile news:
Facebook AMM and a lawsuit that says Google and Facebook worked together, possibly illegally.
And … mobile heroes in the news, with funding, SPACs, explosive growth, promotions, and much, much more ...
Etienne de Guébriant, Gazeus Games
Kartick Narayan, founder and CEO, Kilo
Melissa Lertsmitivanta, Marketing Director at realtor.com
Kelvin Saputra, Performance Marketing Manager, Kredivo
Iain Russell, Head of Performance Marketing, Moneyhub
Plus:
Our horrible, no-good, awfully bad, somewhat wonderful joke of the week!
0:00 Going viral
1:33 Facebook AMM deprecated
3:32 Suing Facebook & Google
4:50 Mobile heroes in the news
9:15 Bumble growth leaders
18:21 Ad win of the week
23:10 Covid & Bumble
26:17 Privacy, data, and marketing
31:32 Creative and targeting
The IDFA gave. Now it's taking away. And what are we left with? Honestly, some degree of chaos in the mobile advertising market, with budgets fleeing iOS and stampeding Android.
But our panelists from Singular, AdColony, Liftoff, and Fyber highlight that in every apocalypse, there is a silver lining. Because smart marketers are now using contracyclical strategies to get cheap installs, steal a march or two, and beat the competition. And, yes, we also talk some privacy, some gaming competition for Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass, and maybe even things no-one knows about mobile.
One thing we absolutely do not do ever under any circumstances even just once is have any fun, tell any jokes, or embarrass any executives. Fingers crossed.
Our guests for this show:
- So-Eun Park, VP business operations, Fyber
- Avi Das, sales lead Americas, Liftoff
- Ron Koenigsberg, chief growth officer, Singular
- Alasdair Pressney, director of product, AdColony
We have far too much fun with excellent guests talking about garbage metrics in this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored. Peggy and John chat with:
- Sylvain Gauchet, who heads up Growth and Marketing at Babel
- Lior Barak, data strategist at Tale About Data
- Bjorn Videkull, head of performance marketing at Flexion Mobile
Along the way one of your hosts starts dancing (the one who definitely shouldn't), another one of the hosts tells jokes (OK, both of them do), and we chat about the hottest new area in dating apps, which isn't dating at all, and how one gaming company is becoming a music label. We also dive into the future of marketing measurement, the most key metrics for mobile growth, and whether GAID/AAID will go the way of the IDFA.
And yes, due to popular demand ... we have added outtakes.
Be kind :-)
In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored we get the top secrets of game marketing from Ludia Games' Rose Agozzino, BoomHits CEO Jon Hook, and top games journalists: Dean Takahashi of GamesBeat and Dave Bradley of PocketGamer.
Along the way we find out what fictional games characters they would date.
And we invent a new game from scratch in real time.
Also: tips for getting games journalists' attention, when NOT to send press releases, and what you should do when top reporters are reviewing your games. We also chat some AR, marketing vs product in game success, the most creative way to market a game, where the games industry is going, and where there are underserved markets in gaming.
Get more here:
https://www.heroes.liftoff.io/mobile-heroes-uncensored/
Experts from CleverTap, Tier Mobility, and Delivery Hero share insight on segmentation and engagement while hosts Peggy Anne Salz and John Koetsier dish on mobile news, mobile heroes, and ... some very critical back-to-office protocol to utterly ignore as some companies start re-opening.
Who's in episode 8 of Mobile Heroes Uncensored?
- Timothy Lange, head of CRM at Tier Mobility
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Marco Esposito, former Liftoff Mobile Hero and just out of Delivery Hero
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Dave Dabbah, chief marketing officer at CleverTap
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Simone Wong, CRM manager at Tier Mobility
They dish on engagement strategies and their top tips for user segmentation while also answering what they would do as the Queen of All Mobile or the Undisputed Heavyweight Champion of iOS and ... you get the point.
Get more here:
https://www.heroes.liftoff.io/mobile-heroes-uncensored/
In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored we learn what happened to the 3-martini lunch, why the Madmen aren’t in jail, and how to get your way in client meetings by being a powerlifter. Peggy & John chat with Nadine Santana, Account Manager at Camelot, Bridget Hall, Director of Planning at M&C Saatchi, and Liz Emery, Senior Director, Mobile + Ad Tech Solutions, Tinuiti. This all-female power panel shares the role agencies can play in mobile growth … and how agencies are adapting to stay relevant in the 2020s.
As always, get the details and more on the Liftoff site:
https://www.heroes.liftoff.io/mobile-heroes-uncensored/
In this episode, Yoda tells us why playable ads are driving innovation and growth. Or it might be one of our freakishly awesome guests who are competing for some of Peggy’s free Bitcoin. We chat with Akseli Virtanen of Traplight Games, Lomit Patel from IMVU, Tyler Black from Hyper Hippo, and Alexandra Vornle von Haagenfels, who has the longest name in recorded history and is also the International Creative Manager at Liftoff.
Our focus: playable ads.
What makes them work, what makes them fail, and where you should use them. Check it out!
Once again we gather 3 amazing mobile marketers and promise them free bitcoin for acting silly and spilling all their best tips. Of course, we never pay up. But we do get crazy-good insights into marketing fitness apps ... and dirt on their biggest mistakes, including one that locked a client out of Facebook and got someone fired.
In this episode John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz chat with:
- Boris Manhart, CEO of TRIQ
- Marta Vogel, 7Mind
- Andre Kempe, Admiral Media
We chat fitness (or lack thereof), ATT in iOS 14.5 (everyone needs to show it, apparently), Dogecoin and Elon Musk, and we play a few games, including Ad Win of the Week and Marketing Mogul. Check it out, join the fun, and subscribe. Also, if you want to be on the show, reach out to Peggy and John on Twitter.
This is the newest episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored and it's also the funniest. And most insightful. Plus longest (just joking). And best. Well, it's definitely the most recent.
In addition, it comes with same-day delivery and a full money-back guarantee!
Video ads are the fastest-growing (we've got the numbers) and the most lucrative (just guessing on this one) sector of mobile advertising, and we dive into color theory and usage and pricing and how to build them and about 3.72% of everything else you need to know about mobile video advertising. Plus, of course, we play evil games and reveal all our guests' deepest and darkest secret, insecurities, and deep-seated vulnerabilities in a barely-functional we say "panel," they say "group therapy session."
Our guests, who outshine our soon-to-be-jobless hosts in every way imaginable except sheer animal sex appeal, include:
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Lukasz Kwiecien, Head of Marketing @ Gamesture
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Pierre Strubelt, Senior Affiliate Marketing Manager @ Lovoo
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Deanna Ulrich, Manager, Ad Creative @ Liftoff
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Etienne de Guébrian, head of UA @ Gazeus Games
Enjoy!
(Oh ... and email ilovemymotherinlaw@liftoff.io for $0 back if we fail, as expected, to meet your impossibly lofty expectations!)
:-)
2020 was a horrible year for the world, but as we got more virtual, many app verticals had a breakout year. How is that transitioning into 2021 in a confusing post-pandemic, still-pandemic, third-wave, partially-vaccinated reality? In addition to yanking their chains a little, we coax some amazing insight from Annica Lin, director of performance marketing and CRM at Thimble, Roberto Salem, Head of Growth at Pawp, Iain Russell, Head of Performance Marketing at Moneyhub, and Kyle Sausser, Growth and Partnerships Manager at Acorns.
Plus, of course, we have a free Lambo to give away and bad jokes to tell and awkward positions to put our guests in :-)
This is episode 3 of Mobile Heroes Uncensored, with hosts John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz.
Watch the whole thing in stunning not-quite-HD at https://www.heroes.liftoff.io/mobile-heroes-uncensored/
It's hard to understand why, but Liftoff ordered a second episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored, with John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz. As usual, we totally screw it up only to be saved by our horribly great guests: Jason Conger, Head of UA, Wooga; Claire Rozain, UA manager, Product Madness; Melanie Zimmermann, Head of Marketing, Wooga; Assaf Shalev, Head of Creative Marketing, Playstudios.
What we talk about, besides free Lambos and astrology?
- IDFA (yep, still on that meal ticket)
- Creative (apparently it matters)
- Craft beer (sounds better than it tastes)
- Mobile news (really)
- Mobile heroes in the news
- Dating
- And yes, a whole lot of insight around how to win when you don't have IDFA or granular device-level data anymore
So check it out! And share! And let us know if you liked it. (But only if you did.)
Joking. Sorta.
This very first episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored is currently the best. And the worst. And it's definitely the funniest, with the most awfully good guests too.
In this inaugural episode John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz chat to leaders from InMobi, Liftoff, Vungle, Singular, and Fyber and force them to reveal their deepest, darkest secrets, their ultimate fears and most private fantasies (ALL ABOUT THE INDUSTRY. WOW.) And yeah, we also talk IDFA and iOS 14 and why the best marketers won't suffer.
Check it out in video form as well on Liftoff's website: https://liftoff.io/