Our guest today is Sharath Kowligi, the director of Ad Monetization at GameHouse and advisor to Rocketship HQ. Sharath works on improving monetization and yield for a portfolio of over 35 apps, and no, that is not a typo. Sharath has an incredible wealth of experience both on monetization as well as user acquisition and growth. In the past, he managed user acquisition and growth for Bash Gaming, where he worked alongside me. Bash Gaming was acquired for 170 million. Sharath also worked for Pretty Simple and has advised many companies on different aspects of growth. Something that Sharath has done an incredible amount of work on, has been App Store testing. He has run over 200 app store conversion experiments and that's what I'm excited to dive into with him today.Key Highlights:🔎 Why most apps don't run app store tests.🤔 How Google Play store has become so much more important than about 5 years ago.🚀 For an app that’s never tested anything before, where Sharath recommends beginning.🆕 How Sharath and his team uncovered a ‘new and interesting’ idea for an icon that was a big win.💡 How Sharath recommends generating ideas for experiments.🎨 Why dramatically different designs sometimes have no impact on metrics.📁 How a cadence of testing helps teams gain respect for each other - and how it helps avoid a culture of red button-green button testing.🤝 How to run effective team meetings.🤷‍♂️ How Sharath recommends testing if Android results are portable to iTunes.🔥 What metrics Sharath recommends using to evaluate results of AB tests. Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/learnings-from-200-app-store-conversion-tests-with-sharath-kowligi-head-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 Anette Staloy, the VP of Business & Marketing at Dirtybit, the Norwegian studio behind the successful Fun Run titles for mobile (125+ mill downloads). She joined the company almost 5 years ago, and has had a key role in growing the company from 8 to 22 employees. Anette is also co-founder of Women in Games Norway.I’m excited for this conversation because Anette & her team have had experiences that are a direct counterpoint to a very public position that I’ve had. In many articles and forums online I’ve stated that distribution on mobile is very very hard without paid marketing - for many reasons. Yet Anette and her team at Dirtybit crossed 100+ million installs for the Fun Run series of games with no paid marketing whatsoever - by relying primarily on their community to capitalize on a surprising burst of early virality.Yes, mobile is primarily pay-to-play today -> but this conversation with Anette showcases what circumstances let you evade the primarily pay-to-play nature of the mobile app ecosystem.Key Highlights:🔥How FunRun ended up trending worldwide on Twitter and became the top downloaded app on the iTunes charts in 2012. ⚡️How the DirtyBit team discovered that the virality had originated in high schools in America.🎨Why the DirtyBit offices have one wall designated for fan art.🤝What DirtyBit’s approach to community and live ops is like today.How DirtyBit works with in-game ambassadors - and how they incentivize them.💰Why DirtyBit started thinking about paid UA in 2017.🔎 What Anette and her team did when they noticed the older versions of Fun Run were cannibalizing the newer ones.🚀Is it realistic to expect to attain massive organic growth a la Fun Run in 2020?Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/100-million-installs-with-zero-paid-user-acquisition-spend-with-anette-staloyvp-of-business-marketing-at-dirtybit/**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 Adam Hadi, the VP of Marketing at the mobile bank Current. Adam began his career as an economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and made his way into mobile app marketing for The Topps Company. Since then, he’s headed up marketing for leading apps such as Draft, Quidd and now Current – and advised a host of other apps on influencer marketing. Adam’s experiences are fascinating because with his background in quantitative performance-focused marketing, he would be an unlikely proponent of branding in marketing - yet in his present role at Current, he has championed driving performance while being very brand-focused, even without massive budgets. In this conversation, we dive into why branding matters, especially for high-involvement products like fintech apps - and how Adam approaches this. As someone that, much like Adam, is very performance-focused, this was a refreshing & new perspective on marketing.Key Highlights:As someone with a predominantly performance marketing background, what made Adam aware of the importance of branding.Why branding is far less important for games than it is for high-involvement, emotional products like fintech apps.How Current’s brand and performance marketing efforts are integrated.Why complete focus on performance can erode your brand - and eventually hurt performance.How Adam recommends approaching branding for a performance marketer that is looking to become more brand-conscious.How the evolution of mobile has resulted in the natural shift to an increasing emphasis on branding.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/why-you-need-to-protect-your-brand-in-a-relentlessly-performance-focused-world-with-adam-hadivp-of-marketing-at-current/**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

Often the duopoly of Facebook & Google just don't suffice to meet all your UA needs. Sometimes you need to hit scale that’s far bigger than Facebook and Google can provide, even if these come together with Snapchat, Apple, Pinterest & other self-attributing networks. Programmatic advertising can be a wide blue ocean opportunity for advertisers seeking scale - but it is also one that is fraught with risks, because you’re essentially bidding on CPM, and are building on ML/AI capabilities of DSPs to drive performance for you. We untangle some of the many challenges that programmatic advertising can often present - and I have with me one of the foremost experts on programmatic/DSP buying today.  I interview Misha Syrotiuk, the Head of Ad Networks & programmatic for UA at Huuuge Games - and we talk about many things programmatic, and discuss how to unlock scale outside the duopoly.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-unlock-scale-outside-the-duopoly-with-misha-syrotiukhead-of-ad-networks-programmatic-for-ua/**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

One element of Facebook ads that can come across as monolithic or opaque is bidding - at the outset, it can appear simplistic - you either increase bids or drop them, and that is what it is. However the way Facebook’s(and any other ad tech platform’s) algorithm works is that the bid isn't the only thing that matters - relevance does just as much. In this episode, I’ll walk you through some of the math behind bidding for ad auctions - and how to impact its different components.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/why-bidding-isnt-everything-the-simple-math-behind-winning-ad-auctions/**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

Today I’m going to talk about how to set ad set level budgets - and how to distribute your overall budgets across all your ad sets. This is a common conundrum when you are setting up campaigns & ad sets -> do you set up a lot of ad sets with very low budgets? This ostensibly lets you test more creatives & audiences.Or do you set up a very few ad sets with high budgets? This lets you get more data - and more statistically significant data. Where indeed is the sweet spot? This episode shows you how to think about this. We also look at:-> The relationship between target CPA and ad set budgets.-> How to think about campaign budgets for a CBO.See here the spreadsheet template from the video that you can make a copy of and use. http://bit.ly/AdSetBudgeting Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-set-ad-set-level-budgets/**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 Georgy Natsvlishvili, Head of Organic Growth at Glovo. I’m very excited to have Georgy because he & his team take a very very expansive view of organic growth - and cover a terrain that is far more significant than mere keyword optimization that most folks speak about when they talk about ASO. Georgy and his team have done some very impressive work in quantifying organic growth - across keyword optimization, conversion optimization, improving ratings - and even SEO(and no, that’s not a typo). They’ve driven significant conversion rate improvements, massive rating improvements - and saved over $3mm in marketing spend through their optimizations. We dive into an immense breadth of topics in this very fascinating interview.KEY HIGHLIGHTS:How Georgy recommends quantifying impact of keyword optimizationHow improving ratings from 3.2 to 4.3 improved not just organic conversions but also performance of paid campaigns.How Glovo’s team improved ratings from 3.2 to 4.3An example of an App Store screenshot that Georgy expected to see winning but didn’t win.What tools Georgy recommends for app store conversion testing – and the problems he sees with third party tools.The ASO KPI dashboard that lets Glovo track and monitor their key organic metrics.How Georgy’s team can now avoid delays with their tech team when they want to make simple changes to popups.Why Glovo does SEO activity to drive organic traction for their app.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-save-3mm-in-marketing-budgets-through-app-store-optimizationwith-george-natsvlishvili-head-of-organic-growth-at-glovo/**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

Competitive challenges in Q4 are well known and much spoken about - often with some trepidation about being priced out by big brands that escalate spends during this time. Yet the flip side of this dynamic are the opportunities in Q1. January and the post-holiday season phase often presents significant opportunities for mobile marketers because of the unique dynamics inherent in it. Here are the 3 key opportunities that mobile marketers can capitalize on.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/the-q1-opportunity-3-factors-that-can-unlock-growth/**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

Because there's no direct way to measure or quantify your app store optimization efforts, it can be easy to rely on keyword rankings as a measure of progress. Here's why that can be problematic.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/what-not-to-track-while-measuring-the-impact-of-app-store-optimizationaso/**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

One of the key challenges with app store keyword optimization activity is that it isn’t easily measurable or quantifiable. In this video we talk about what the best approach is for assessing your ASO performance - and walk you through what assumptions & estimates you’re going to have to make.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-do-you-quantify-the-impact-of-app-store-keyword-optimization-aso-activity/**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