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...

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...

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 ...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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? ...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...