Our guest today is Nebojsa Radovic, Growth Lead for the N3twork Scale Platform at N3twork. I’m excited to have Nebo, as he’s known, today because I’ve known him for many many years - and he’s one of the smartest folks in UA. Nebo talks not just about UA - but also the extended ecosystem in which it can be most effective. We explore how collaboration with product, design and analytics teams can unlock tremendous performance in UA teams.Key Highlights:💡How Nebo's UA team learned to understand how the game performs to unlock growth opportunities👥How UA and game teams can work together to change the appeal of the game, improve onboarding, or build new games🥅The ultimate goal is to improve the revenue and ROAS of the game.🔄How a seamless flow between an ad, the App Store, and the game itself can impact retention and long-term monetization⏰What works on UA changes as a game grows older.🎣How a product team can think about ‘hooks’ that can attract users to a game.🗣The importance of developing a common language between product and UA teams.🛠How game team metrics like DAU, ARPDAU and retention are often a function of UA strategies.🤔How the different infrastructure of UA and game teams is different can be a challenge👀Thinking about analytics and design teams organizationally - along with game and UA teams.🤖Designing in-game characters that can convert well on the UA front.💪🏽The importance of a product marketing manager - and the kind of meeting cadence that makes sense for seamless collaboration.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/winning-together-how-to-unify-product-and-user-acquisition-teams-with-nebojsa-radovic-growth-lead-at-n3twork-inc/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

On this episode of the Mobile User Acquisition Show, we wanted to share some updates based on Apple’s announcements from WWDC that have the potential of having a significant impact on the mobile app ecosystem. The IDFA, which has formed the backbone of much of mobile ad tech infrastructure, will be rendered basically useless effective September 2020. We will dive into mobile marketers’ most pressing questions surrounding this monumental change. Key Highlights:🤔What exactly is this Apple update?📚The history leading up to this decision📱What is the SKAdNetwork?⚠️What will happen to the different elements of the mobile ad ecosystem? - MMPs, Facebook and Google, DSPs, SDK ad networks, Android, and you and me📍Impact on ROAs and CPM without user level data🏃🏽‍♂️The expectation that Google will likely follow Apple’s track🔄Marketing team transition from last click focused to incrementality focused🛠Very different tools for a post IDFA world💭Looking forward to an era of challenges, change, and opportunity Check out the full transcript and show notes here:https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/rip-idfa:-how-to-navigate-a-post-idfa-world-with-ios-14/‎**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

Our guest today is Michael Jessen, Senior User Acquisition Specialist at Socialpoint. I’m excited for this episode because Michael’s team does something in-house that very few teams do, which is make playables. This is something that they do at significant volumes - and have seen massive performance from - and I’m thrilled to dive into their experience today.Key Highlights: 💡What inspired Michael and his team to look at in-housing playables.📄What teams and resourcing are required to in-house playables.💻How templates and variants are defined for each game.🛠What the most important elements to test are.🔌What the inputs - and the outputs of the playable tool are.📊How Michael and his team measure performance of playables - and the key metrics they track.📉How metrics can help identify drop off points in playable.⚠️The challenges of making in-house playables for smaller companies✅How videos, playables, end cards and in-game experiences can be a single unified experience.📲What the impact of in-housing playables has been.Check out the full transcript and show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-in-house-playable-production-with-michael-jessen-senior-user-acquisition-specialist-at-socialpoint/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

Our guest today is Kentaro Sugiura, former Head of User Acquisition in APAC at BoomBit and founder of his own game studio Evelong Games. I’m excited for this interview because Kentaro is among the few people who has transitioned from being a game marketer to a game developer. In this interview we discuss what it’s like to be creating your own mobile game studio without a technical background - and how it’s often easy to start making classic games. Key Highlights:🎲The most important element of running a classic game.💯Classic games have very strong long term retention.🗣How Kentaro found development resources to build his first game. What his communication with his developers was like.🤔Should you build a game from scratch or buy source code online to customize it?💪🏽How Kentaro maximizes organics for his apps.🎨How Kentaro thinks about creatives for his marketing.📲Finding opportunity by keeping marketing strategy simple and effective 📈Does long term LTV matter for optimizing a classic game?⚙️What sort of analytics is best for a small game studio.👯‍Does this same approach work for a hyper casual game?⚖️What sort of scale Kentaro is at with revenue and spend.🤷🏽‍♂Why more people don't start their own game studios.Check out the full transcript and show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-start-a-game-studio-with-a-500-budget-with-kentaro-sugiura-founder-at-evelong-games-former-head-of-user-acquisition-in-apac-at-boombit/‎**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

With over 800 million monthly active users, TikTok is now the 3rd largest social media platform, just behind Facebook and Instagram. As a channel that is starting to emerge for mobile UA, the potential is massive.What is cool about TikTok is that it has opened up immense creative possibilities for marketers. It certainly has inspired wholly new ways to think about creatives for TikTok - but these strategies for what we call TikTok style videos are equally effective on other platforms.Today we'll look at 5 key ingredients of winning TikTok style videos - and how you might be able to apply these to your own creatives.Winning With Creatives:✅Character driven, narrative driven🎵Lead with music and movement💃Portray primary emotions👌Exaggeration is good.⛰️Raw, unpolished, unfilteredCheck out the full transcript and show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/mini-episode-5-key-elements-for-winning-with-tiktok-style-creatives/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

What do you do when your revenues fall off a cliff? Today, we get to the bottom of things - and point to a way out. I'm joined by Sharath Kowligi, Director of Ad Monetization at GameHouse and advisor to RocketShip HQ. This deep dive is based on a discussion that Sharath and I had with the founder of an app sometime ago(we're keeping the app's identity anonymous - although the learnings and takeaways from this discussion are widely applicable). In this deep dive, we will discuss some of the specific factors at play that caused this app's revenue to drop 75%, and what we see as the ways forward to help them recover ground. While it's easy to think organics are hard to impact, this is a masterclass in how they can be moved and impacted, especially when they are central to an app's financial future.Key Highlights:😵 The immediate issue with refunds that the app was facing.🤷‍♂️ What happens when an app’s rating goes below 4.🤑 Why paid advertising isn’t always the answer if organics drop on account of ratings.🤭 What Google’s bad behavior thresholds are.🔢 What metrics Sharath recommends looking at to diagnose organic drops.📋 Benchmark organic to paid ratios for Android and iOS.😲 How Apple perceives ‘bad behavior’ metrics as compared to Google.🔓 Oftentimes just playing by Google’s rules unlocks a ton of organic traffic.Check out the full transcript and show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/welp-our-revenues-dropped-75-and-they-were-all-organic-with-sharath-kowligidirector-of-ad-monetization-at-gamehouse/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

My guest today is Anish Shah. Anish is the founder and CEO of Bring Ruckus, a firm focused on attracting, vetting and recruiting the best talent in growth.Today’s episode is one that is very very significant to me. Yes of course, black, Latino and underrepresented folks have vocalized their frustrations against structural racism in American society. I’ve had some personal acquaintance with this sort of systemic racism in many contexts - without going into too much detail, I’ll just say some of these jeopardized my home, livelihood and career in ways that at the time seemed irreparable.For these reasons, everything that’s happening in America today has been very much on my mind - as is the most important question: what do we do about it?I’m glad to have on the show today Anish, who has thought clearly about racial bias and the subtle forms it takes - from the perspective of having seen hundreds of executive hiring decisions from up close. For folks who are asking themselves - “how did we get here? And what can we do about systemic racism in our own companies and professional communities?,” perhaps this episode will provide some answers.Key Highlights:👀 What Anish sees as key patterns of bias when companies he works with are looking to hire a senior level exec.🤩 What most startup founders look for in key hires.🚵 Why more diversity in VC can lead to more diversity among founders - and thus to more diversity among hires.👨 What characterizes founders who are typically open to overcoming their biases.🙋‍♂️ What founders can do once they do realize they may have some bias in their hiring processes.🤔 What form of bias is much more common than ethnicity or gender.👩 For a company that notices they have very few women on their team, is it a good idea to only interview women for their next open role?3️⃣ How to think about culture fit - and the three elements that can make for a clearer definition of culture fit.👍How hiring outside the mold can be beneficial to a company. ✅ There is truth to the fact that underrepresented people are frequently disenfranchised.⛔ What underrepresented people can do as they choose not to work for a company that is not diverse.🔎 How networking can empower underrepresented folks in their job search.Check out the full transcript and show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-hire-the-best-and-dismantle-systemic-biases-against-black-latino-brown-folks-in-your-company-with-anish-shah-founder-ceo-at-bring-ruckus/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

Our guest today is Natalie Rozenblat, Marketing Strategist at the mobile marketing consultancy Incipia. Natalie and her team have unlocked some significant wins on TikTok - about which she’s written a case study as well. In this interview, we uncover the ingredients of what makes for an effective TikTok strategy - and identify the keys to capitalizing on what is still an early stage platform that is very much exploding.Key Highlights:🎨The challenges with creative approval on TikTok.⭕️What the safe zone is - and why it matters.⬇️TikTok’s download card - and why its timing matters for marketers.🤔What happens when you click on the download card - as compared to when you click on the ad or when you swipe up.⚖️The pros and cons of automatic creative optimization⚡️How to use and optimize TikTok’s ad tags🏷How interest-based audiences with relevant ad tags can be mapped to ad creatives.💡Thinking outside the box to build an organic presence even if you aren't ready to run ads🔐The components of high-performing creatives 👩🏽‍💻Crafting a cost-efficient influencer marketing strategy - by reaching out directly to TikTok users. Check out the full transcript and show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-nail-mobile-user-acquisition-on-tiktok-with-natalie-rozenblat-marketing-strategist-at-incipia/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

Our guest today is Warren Woodward, Co-Founder & Chief Growth Officer at Upptic.In 2010 Warren quit his day job in the film industry to go full time into building a one-man performance marketing agency, quickly pivoting to mobile around the dawn of the App Store. He has since built marketing divisions and launched massive apps for companies like Nexon, Wargaming and Blastworks. In 2019 Warren co-founded Upptic, a company focused on providing growth services and growth automation technology to app developers. I’m excited for this interview because Warren describes a solution to a significant pain point for marketers - how to optimize their performance on rewarded video networks where there are thousands of source apps. Today I’m thrilled to explore the elegant and effective approach to cut through this complexity that Warren describes.Key Highlights:🗣️ What an engineer at a big ad tech company said that made Warren realize as to what the incentives of ad tech companies were.🤖 What ad tech algorithms typically optimize for.🔗 What channels is it worth building your own algorithm for.📋 The key rules that Warren recommends using for optimizing rewarded video networks.🤔 How to find statistical significance in decisions based on these rules if data is skewed by outliers.💸 Advertisers can lose a lot of money on the long tail of unexplored inventory.📟 How a marketer should begin to approach codifying their work.👨‍💻 The different levels of automation that a marketer can pursue based on their resource availability.💯 The optimal workflow - and the fallback workflow that between them can work with nearly every partner.🤷‍♂️ Do the rules of the algorithm need to change for a completely new network?📈 Does this approach of building rules based on performance of supply pools work on programmatic traffic?Check out the full transcript and show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-build-your-own-algorithm-to-drive-ua-performance-with-rewarded-video-networks-with-warren-woodwardco-founder-at-upptic/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

Our guest today is Miray Alanlar, former Mobile Product Marketing Manager at Mozilla. Miray has a wealth of experience in mobile over many years - and something she has particular expertise in is onboarding experiences and improving retention through the first 30 days of a user’s journey, so much of which I’m thrilled about diving into with her today. Key Highlights:💡 Where marketers should look for ideas to help improve their onboarding flow.🎬 The key components of user onboarding flow.🎨 The key types of messages that can be tested in creatives.👥 What extended onboarding means - and how to segment users for extended onboarding.💭 How to think about multiple channels - and which user segments they are appropriate for.🎯 How to think about automation - and what user segments to target with it.🙅‍♂️ When you should not automate your onboarding messaging.Check out the full transcript and show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/the-first-30-days-how-to-improve-your-early-retention-with-miray-alanlarformer-mobile-product-marketing-manager-at-mozilla/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co