Our guest today is Holly Chen, growth advisor and the former Global Head of Digital Marketing at Slack. Before that, she led growth for Google Store & Google B2B websites, served as a product manager at Gucci, and had a brief stint at the UN.I’m excited for this interview because we look at one of the most admired brands of the last few years. We take a closer look at how they looked at mobile marketing while accounting for the numerous complexities of B2B marketing - including longer sales cycles, multiple touchpoints before sale. In the process of orienting their growth to mobile, they turned around a declining mobile growth trajectory - in what I find a very impressive effort. Key Highlights:🧗 How mobile fits into a B2B buyer’s journey for Slack - and why it’s challenging to measure.📉 Why a decline in mobile growth in 2017 was puzzling for Slack - and how they realized this was an opportunity.🚶 The first steps Slack took toward capitalizing on the mobile opportunity - and the success metrics they picked.🔗 The interdependence of mobile and desktop products at Slack.⏱️ How Slack attributed and measured the impact of the mobile marketing program.🖐️ What multi-touch attribution is - and how Google Analytics can be a starting point for products that are considering adopting multi-touch attribution.🏢 The infrastructure needed to be in place for multi-touch attribution.🤔 How Slack’s teams thought about mitigating the risks of multi-touch attribution.👨‍💼 How Holly and her team approached getting executive support for the mobile marketing program.🗓️ Some of the day to day tactical elements that had to change as Slack oriented itself more toward mobile.🔥 The impact of the shift toward mobile.Check out the full transcript and show notes here: http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-slack-reversed-a-declining-mobile-growth-trajectory-on-mobile-by-setting-up-cross-channel-attribution-with-holly-chen-former-global-head-of-digital-marketing-at-slack/**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 Nadav Ashkenazy, General Manager at Supersonic Studios. Supersonic Studios is a subsidiary company of ironSource, and has had 5 games that have hit #1 on iTunes - and this is just a few months after its launch.I’m excited for today’s interview because Nadav pulls back the curtain on the ingredients of a blockbuster launch - and the exact process and circumstances that go into a top 10 launch. More importantly, he explains why attaining a top rank on the app stores might NOT be a worthwhile goal in and of itself. For these and many other insights into what it looks like at the top of the app store charts, I’m very excited to present today’s interview.Key Highlights:🤔 Why hitting #1 on iTunes is not a good goal - and what is a better goal instead📈 Given that iTunes has deemphasized the top charts, how impactful is a top rank on the app stores?📉 How much has the k-factor associated with a top rank dropped in the current app store compared to the previous version of app stores?🎮 How Supersonic decides which games to promote.💰 How Supersonic runs early marketability tests and soft launches to validate a game’s long term profitability.🚀 When Supersonic launch a game, the key risk is that they may be paying too much for a top rank position.👀 How Supersonic looks at the allocating installs between organics, paid and cross promo during a launch.🧮 What metrics Supersonic’s teams are looking at during a launch - and what their launch cadence looks like.🗺️ How Supersonic evaluate different geos during a launch.🙋‍♂️ Do Android charts behave differently from iOS charts?👨‍💻 How Supersonic’s UA teams are structured so as to drive post-launch growth.Check out the full transcript and show notes here: http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-hit-the-no-1-rank-on-the-itunes-app-store-with-nadav-ashkenazy-gm-at-supersonic-studios/**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

"There are as many ways to test creatives as there are to skin cats." - old jungle saying.Today, we’ll look at two different, and equally successful, approaches to creative testing – one led by us, and the another by our friends at Miri Growth. We hope that by discussing the differing advantages and disadvantages of each method we can identify the main levers in the process, and in turn, inspire you to establish your own best practices.Check out the full transcript and show notes here: http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/two-ways-to-skin-a-cat-with-adam-turowski-miri-growth-and-shamanth-rao-rocketship-hq/**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 Jorge Canga, CMO at eGoGames, and Founder at Kaizen Internet. In today’s episode, we dive into an aspect of mobile growth that seems to have defied complete automation - ad monetization. We look at how ad monetization works - and understand why manual waterfall optimization can outperform completely automated optimization. We also explore other nuances and facets of ad monetization - and understand the levers that can often help easily drive 30%+ improvements in ARPDAU.Key Highlights: 🤔 What is ad mediation?🙋‍♂️ How mediation layers are connected to individual ad SDKs.💡 Why prioritizing a waterfall algorithmically or programmatically can lead to suboptimal revenues.📊 How eCPM floors work.📞 How different calls in the waterfalls work.🙆‍♂️ How many waterfalls an app should set up - and how an app should think about this.👨‍🏫 How an ad monetization manager needs to find the right balance between fill rate and eCPM floors.💵 Why ARPDAU is a more important metric than eCPM floor or fill rates.🎮 How the depth of a game’s content pipeline defines its ad monetization strategy.💰 How some games are built around rewarded videos.🤷‍♂️ In-app ads can result in churn - and also incremental monetization: how developers should think about this.🙅‍♂️ Why blacklisting competitors may not always be a good idea.Check out the full transcript and show notes here: http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-improve-your-arpdau-by-30-by-optimizing-your-ad-monetization-waterfall-with-jorge-canga/ **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 Josh Burns, founder of DigitalDevConnect. Josh founded DigitalDevConnect to partner with game developers, game publishers, and service providers to support key business areas including strategy, market intelligence, marketing, game publishing, business operations, product management and business development. Josh’s specialty is in advising game developers and publishers, and helping them crack international markets. Josh also curates the Gaming Insiders newsletter.Key Highlights:🤔How apps should begin thinking about international expansion.🙇Many developers tend to overthink internationalization by considering local partners when typically Western channels with local inventory can be the best place to begin.🙋How a developer should prioritize among the 200+ countries they could be localizing in - and what their first steps should be. 📋Why getting an iOS app to be approved to be live in China can often take 100-200 pages of paperwork.🌀Why the foreign developer approval process in China is almost humorously complex.🎫The regulation change that will kick in on July 1.📉Why the number of companies releasing foreign games in China has declined over time.😐Why does China make it so hard to publish an app?😓There is significant consolidation in Android app stores in China - yet there are challenges in operating here.🔨How featuring works in the Android stores in China.🕹Some examples of games that have transitioned well to the Chinese market.🤷‍♂️What might happen after July 1, after which you have to have a license to be on iOS in China.Check out the full transcript and show notes here: http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/100-page-documents-source-code-printouts-and-more-how-to-crack-international-expansion-with-josh-burnsfounder-a-digital-dev-connect/**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 Beth Gilmore, is a marketing consultant and founder at The New Department. Beth has an incredible wealth of experience in the programmatic space from her work as the Head of Commercial Partnerships at MoPub. In today’s conversation, Beth shares some fascinating insights about how many levers marketers have to understand and unpack their programmatic performance, if they only dive deep enough to understand what happens under the hood. From understanding what happens even before an ad is shown to being able to influence where in a publisher’s inventory an ad is shown, there’s so much possibility that this conversation highlights for advertisers - and I’m thrilled to uncover so much goodness in today’s interview.Key Highlights: 🤔 Why it’s important to understand what parameters a DSP takes into consideration in formulating their bids.😲 Why a bidder might correctly identify a bid request that might drive an install or purchase - and yet lose an auction.🤷 Why a bidder might win a bid request and might not end up showing an impression.⏳ What the lifecycle of an ad is like - from when it’s loaded in the system to when it’s eventually shown.🔅 How bidding on lowest-priced inventory can be suboptimal in driving performance.🗄️ What the best way is to think about privacy or confidentiality concerns around sharing data with DSPs.💡 Why DSPs sometimes may not have access to high performing inventory from publishers - and how they should address this situation.💯 What session depth means - and why it’s important for a marketer to be mindful of this.Check out the full transcript and show notes here: http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/unboxing-the-black-box-moving-the-hidden-levers-that-drive-programmatic-performance-with-beth-gilmorefounder-at-the-new-department-former-head-of-commercial-partnerships-at-mopub/**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 Colette Nataf, CEO & Co-Founder at Lightning AI. Lightning AI helps advertisers find target audiences and advertise to them on Facebook and Google. Lightning AI has worked with more than 500 ad accounts and has managed more than $100M in ad spend.I’m excited for today’s episode because Colette is among the few folks I know that’s transitioned from a user acquisition service to a user acquisition product. She’s not only taken what to many can be a significant leap - but has also grown her business at Lightning AI very substantially since then. Additionally of course, she’s always been a source of great advice to me -> and I couldn't be more thrilled to feature her today.Key Highlights: 🔑 Some of the key triggers that inspired Colette to start automating user acquisition work.🔄 How Colette mapped out her personal process as a precursor to automating it.🕹️ What resources should a marketer find once they understand what to automate.⏰ Figuring out Facebook’s documentation can sometimes be a very time consuming process.🏆 The most common early win for most marketers who are looking at automation.📈 Are products with very high CPAs just bad candidates for automation?👨‍🏫 What a marketer can do to educate themselves to be ready for automation.🛠️ Building the mindset of understanding processes is as important as building hard skills around analysis.⚖️ Why scaling audiences via automation can be challenging - and how Lightning AI approaches this.👩‍🏫 How learnings from audiences can inform creatives. 📊 How parts of creative iteration and execution can be automated.Check out the full transcript and show notes here: http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/taking-the-leap-how-to-get-started-with-automating-your-user-acquisition-with-colette-natafceo-at-lightning-ai/**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 Matej Lancaric. Matej is the Director of User Acquisition at SuperScale and a mobile user acquisition consultant who has worked on a number of games. He’s worked on soft-launches, on massively scaled campaigns - and on everything in between while managing over $10 million in user acquisition spend.In today’s episode, we dive into the art of the soft launch - and look at the 3 key stages of a soft launch, and why it’s important to nail every one of these. Also: Matej is teaching the course ‘Soft launch strategy for mobile games’ at the Mobile Dev Memo Academy. If you are interested in going much deeper into soft-launches - and dive into every aspect of soft-launches - from ASO to UA to early testing, you should definitely check out his course on the Mobile Dev Memo Academy at http://mdm.academy.Key Highlights: 📲 What goes into the technical stage of a soft launch.👀 What metrics to look for in the technical stage of a soft launch.⏳ What metrics to look for in the retention stage of a soft launch.🤩 Why it’s preferable to soft launch on Google Play before iOS.💸 What metrics to look for in the monetization stage of a soft launch.🔎 What volume of payers to aim for in the monetization stage.✅ Why it’s important to do the retention test before the monetization test.💭 Does this way of thinking about soft launches change for subscription apps or ad monetized apps?😮 The common mistakes that developers make with soft launches.⏱️ Why it’s important to ideally look at a six month time frame for soft launches.🤦‍♂️ One outcome of a soft launch might be that you have to kill your app.Check out the full transcript and show notes here: http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/three-steps-to-a-killer-soft-launch-with-matej-lancaricdirector-of-ua-at-superscale/**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 Bozo Jankovic, Business Development Manager at GameBiz, a boutique consultancy firm for games.Bozo works with F2P game developers, helping them grow the business by monetizing their games with ads. Some of his clients include studios such as Wargaming, Creative Mobile, Nanobit, Two Desperados. etc..This is also the third episode of the Mobile Dev Memo Academy preview series. Bozo is also presenting the course Ad Monetization 101 for the Mobile Dev Memo Academy - so if you want to go deeper, do definitely check out his course on mdm.academy.This is also our first episode on ad monetization -> and today we’ll talk about an underappreciated yet emerging opportunity in ad monetization - native ads. This is a topic that I’m very very curious about - primarily because it used to be something that used to be accessible only to big brands with massive teams and budgets, but of late this has become much more available to smaller advertisers and app developers.Key Highlights:💡 The 3 stages of evolution of early native ads.💯 The best known native ad examples - Barack Obama, Farmville, Pokemon Go.👨🏻‍💻 How recent incarnations of native ads are accessible to smaller game developers.🤔 The factors that an app should consider evaluating the opportunity with native ads.👀 Most native demand comes from brands - not from games or performance advertisers.🎥 How CPMs for native ads compare to rewarded video or interstitial ads.👌 Why native ads may not be a natural fit for performance advertisers.🧐 Do native ads cannibalize your rewarded video, interstitial and banner ads?🙋 Why revenue impact shouldn’t be the primary criteria for assessing the viability of native ads for a game.😅 The key pitfalls that a developer should watch out for while evaluating native ads.Check out the full transcript and show notes here: http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-capitalize-on-the-native-ad-opportunity-with-bozo-jankovicbusiness-development-manager-at-gamebiz/**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

Welcome to the second episode of the Mobile Dev Memo Academy preview series.Our guest today is Eric Seufert. Eric is the founder of Heracles and Mobile Dev Memo. Eric is a media strategist and quantitative marketer who has spent his career working for transformative consumer technology and media companies, including Skype and Rovio. Eric most recently sold his mobile advertising analytics company, Agamemnon, to the mobile gaming company N3TWORK. In today’s episode, we get into a macroeconomic perspective on what the current pandemic means for the mobile app economy - and how we might see the world change over the next couple of months. This is absolutely something that Eric has a great deal of perspective on - and I’m thrilled to have him share these. Also: Eric is teaching the course ‘Introduction to Marketing Cohort Analysis’ for Mobile Dev Memo Academy. Check his course out on http://mdm.academy - alongside the other courses taught by some of the smartest folks in mobile. Of course, Eric is the brain behind the Mobile Dev Memo Academy - huge props to him for helping make this project happen. As the pandemic makes massive changes to the retention and monetization profiles of apps, these courses are perhaps timely in helping you adapt, learn and upskill - and I highly recommend checking these out. Key Highlights:🏦 While the pandemic is driven by exogenous non-economic forces, it likely does exacerbate structural weaknesses in the economy.🌪 The pandemic is like Hurricane Katrina hitting every metro area in the world at the same time.📅 What trends are visible from Silicon Valley layoff lists.🤔 Will the app economy’s low-priced digital goods(IAPs) be impervious to recessionary forces?📲 How the ad supported apps are impacted by the increased engagement - and the recessionary forces.📑 Why it might become important to shift thinking from a ROAS standpoint to a profitability standpoint.💡 Why the current crisis might see a migration of advertisers to Facebook and Google from other ad networks.Check out the full transcript and show notes here: http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/inside-the-storm-what-the-coronavirus-pandemic-means-for-the-mobile-app-ecosystem-with-eric-seufertfounder-at-heracles-and-mobile-dev-memo-mdm-academy-preview-special/**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