Intelligent Artifice, formerly the Mobile User Acquisition Show

What’s happening with Facebook? What is changing, what is working with creatives, reporting and day to day ops - and what is a big hot mess right now? 

It’s just under a month since ATT and iOS 14.5 - and we have a clear early read of what is happening. In today’s episode we survey the landscape of Facebook ads post ATT - and speak about the key challenges and opportunities we see.

**

By the way, we go into this in much much more detail in our workshop series Mobile Growth Lab - where we share case studies, examples and data around what is happening. Recorded sessions from the Mobile Growth Lab are available right now. See more details here: https://www.notion.so/Mobile-Growth-Lab-2021-Recorded-Sessions-7132fcdf1d8b4d98a4a91c624423b94f 

(You can also just join the waitlist for the next edition here: http://MobileGrowthLab.com ).

**

Highlights

📊 No purchase data for some apps.

🚫No breakdowns between redownloads and new users.

❌No clear metrics at ad group and creative level

🌪️Reporting is still a mess

✔️Install optimization is working relatively well.

🚧Non iOS 14 campaigns(targeting IDFA users) are still working.

🔄Persona and interest based creative pairing is making progress.

🔢Blended numbers still provide strong guidance.

Check out the show notes here:
https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/the-state-of-facebook-ads-post-ios-14-5-att-4-challenges-4-opportunities/

Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:
http://RocketShipHQ.com
http://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

Highly specific or customized SKAdNetwork conversion schemas can be relevant and useful - primarily because these are a good indicator of eventual LTVs of users. However there are aspects of these custom schemas that definitely need to be thought through for them to be relevant - some of which considerations we talk through in this mini-episode.

Check out the show notes here:
https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-make-compound-synthetic-conversion-value-schemas-work-in-skadnetwork-ios14/

Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:
http://RocketShipHQ.com
http://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

“We discovered that the more words we put in front of people, the better return on ad spend we were getting.”

Our guest today is Stevie Lutgen, Sr. Manager UA at Radish Fiction. In our conversation today, we talk about the importance of copy(especially long copy) in reaching and retaining valuable audiences. In a world where emphasis is placed on creating short digestible snippets of content, we were surprised to hear that Radish uses paragraphs and paragraphs of text in their most successful ads. 

In our conversation today, Stevie walks us through the process of selecting, testing, and refining ad copy to best represent their product. We also look at how framing and identifying ‘hooks’ can be so pivotal to performance. 

This week’s episode is a masterclass in how words, narratives and framing can so dramatically impact performance in a world where they are almost taken for granted.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS
📈 Why more copy has correlated with stronger ROAS for Radish.
📚What Radish’s ads look like - and how they ended up with text-heavy ads.
🖼 Framing matters more than the story itself.
🧪Watching Netflix for research.
👏How stories become ads: who on the team owns what part of the process.
📓How stories and narratives work for UAC
🎥 Telling stories on Snap and TikTok
☎️ How Radish is dealing with the absence of deep linking post iOS 14.5
**
Check out the show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-use-words-to-shatter-short-attention-spans-stevie-lutgen-user-acquisition-radish-fiction/

**

Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:
http://RocketShipHQ.com
http://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

"Oh, if we turn off the spigot, is it going to tank our growth?"

When practically all UA mixes involve Facebook, it is rare to come across a strategy that doesn’t use it at all.

Trang Dao, VP Growth at Atom Finance, talks to us about how they made the decision to remove Facebook—and all paid social—from their UA strategy altogether.

We talk about getting management buy-in, the importance of channel diversification, how to restructure processes and how to pick the right digital channels to make sure that growth continues unabated.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

🔱 Why Facebook shouldn’t be your only channel
🚩 The importance of channel diversification
🌿 There are channel options for every company size
🎓 Why products which need education are not a great fit for paid social
🏗️ How to rebuild the infrastructure to transition out of Facebook
🧗 Manpower intensive channels take a while to ramp up
🤑 Publishers follow demonstrated success
🚓 Dealing with the potential of fraud with affiliate traffic
💅 You need to counteract churn with product management to balance low initial signals
🎛️ The few but predictable levers for targeting on pre-install ads
💡 How to use mobile web in the face of iOS 14 and ATT changes

Check out the show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-break-up-with-facebook-the-opportunities-and-challenges-of-an-unusual-acquisition-channel-mix-with-trang-dao-vp-of-growth-at-atom-finance/

**

Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:
http://RocketShipHQ.com
http://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

**

Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:
http://HowThingsGrow.co

Our guest today is Adam Lovallo, CEO and founder of Thesis, host of the MAU [Talk] podcast, and founder of grow.co. Adam was our first guest on How Things Grow, and his episode on the rise and fall of daily deals was a very interesting behind-the-scenes peek into a roller-coaster of time that he lived through. Today, we are excited to talk to him about a subject that he feels strongly about: incrementality.

We start with talking about what incrementality testing is, how to identify signs of underlying issues in campaigns, and why Facebook and Google reported numbers can be problematic. Adam then goes on to describe prescriptions on how UA teams can solve incrementality issues, discussing the efficacy and potential outcomes of each.

Finally, we talk about the role of MMPs, how iOS 14 plays into the picture, the critical importance of channel mix in budgeting and performance decisions, and the importance of seemingly old-school ways to measure performance like blended CPAs or marketing-as-percentage-of-sales. This is a masterclass in understanding the true impact of your marketing, and an unmissable episode for anyone who has questions about how to diagnose issues and implement fixes in their strategy. Enjoy!

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

🤔 What are incremental conversions
🚩 The first signs of an incrementality issue
💥 Results from an incrementality test can be startling to advertisers
💊 Prescriptions to fix incrementality issues
🔀 Why you should change up your channel mix
🙋 Self-attributing channels are configured to take credit
⛔ The limitations of MMPs with tracking
🌎 How geographic targeting can generate clean data
🧮 The importance of using blended numbers to determine CAC

Check out the show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/is-your-cac-10x-what-it-should-be-how-to-surface-incrementality-issues-in-your-paid-ua-with-adam-lovallo-ceo-and-founder-of-thesis/

**

Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:
http://RocketShipHQ.com
http://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

**

Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:
http://HowThingsGrow.co

After IDFA’s deterministic paradise, SKAdNetwork and the move to probabilistic targeting can feel like fumbling in the dark—and like we are stepping back in time.

In today’s episode, we talk about the mechanics of how lookalike and post-install event optimization used to look, in order to understand exactly what will be changing, and more importantly what impact that change will have.

In spite of these changes, we will have lookalikes - and we will have optimization for post install events. In this episode we talk about how these will look going forward.

Check out the show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-will-lookalikes-and-post-install-event-optimization-work-under-att-skadnetwork/ 

**

Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:
http://RocketShipHQ.com
http://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

**

Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:
http://HowThingsGrow.co

“Nobody's going to listen to audio. Even the biggest publishers in the world have only a couple of minutes per session per day on their websites. With audio being sequential and immersive, it’s going to be very hard to build anything engaging in the space” - these were some of the words that folks told our guest Govind Balakrishnan, CEO and founder of Curio Labs, when they were starting out.

In our chat today, we talk about how they questioned - and overcame these assumptions. In this episode of the Mobile User Acquisition Show, we talk about how Curio defined a new genre and category of apps: right from experimenting with user journeys, to identifying non-obvious signals for habit formation to overcome entrenched assumptions to define and grow within a new category.

This is an unmissable episode about partnerships, user experience, onboarding and so much more from a pioneer in the audio space.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

🎶 All audio is not synonymous with podcasting
🏋️‍♂️ What are the jobs that Curio does for users?
⏰ Time shifting in audio consumption
🤩 Users of your product are your best advocates
🤔 The tradeoff between choice and discoverability
📋 People appreciate clarity in terms and conditions
🛣️ How to build a pathway for users to experience products
📡 How to identify non-obvious habit formation signals
☯️ Activation and revenue are connected but require different ways of thinking
🧘 The three dimensions of content that resonate

Check out the show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/zero-to-category-leading-how-habit-formation-can-fast-forward-subscription-growth-in-an-uncharted-genre-with-govind-balakrishnan-ceo-and-cofounder-of-curio-labs/
**

Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:
http://RocketShipHQ.com
http://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

**

Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:
http://HowThingsGrow.co

What makes someone pay $60,000 for a counter-strike skin? Why do folks shell out small and big money for digital collectibles - and for looking good in a virtual world?

In this insightful conversation with Joanna frota Kurkowska, data insights analyst at G2A, we delve into player motivations, the evolution of fashion in gaming, the increasing proliferation of virtual worlds in our day to day experiences - and much much more.

Although our conversation starts with the intersection of fashion and gaming, it moves into different realms of player psychology, drivers for the rise in aesthetics in games, and how developers should all be reimagining games as social and community platforms.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

🌅 Early games didn’t have aesthetics
👀 When visual experiences became important
🎎 How JRPGs spearheaded the fashion movement in gaming
💍 Digital accessories can cost wildly different amounts
👟 The drivers for the rise of in-app fashion purchases
🤑 The pandemic played its part in driving up mobile gaming spend
💎 Player motivations for buying expensive digital accessories
👯 How games have evolved to be social platforms
💃 Digital experiences are making up for the lack of real-life ones
🎁 The factors that make in-app items more or less valuable
🔫 Successful collaborative games are mostly violent
🛍️ How e-commerce can see a significant shift if games are made as social platforms
😳 Why ads would find a more engaged audience in games
🤩 How Covet Fashion engages its community on YouTube
🏗️ It is possible to build games with the community
💅 The factors a fashion company should consider when venturing into games
✨ How designers in fashion companies and gaming companies can create magic
🔮 Fashion brands should find their niche
🧚 How games can be less intrusive platforms than social networks for brands


Check out the show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/playing-in-style-how-gaming-fashion-are-becoming-increasingly-intertwined-with-joanna-frota-kurkowska-digital-insights-analyst-at-g2a-com/

**

Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:
http://RocketShipHQ.com
http://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

**

Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:
http://HowThingsGrow.co

Today, we are excited to present a very special episode. Highlights from our new book: The Mobile Growth Handbook 2021 Edition.

We have collected the best insights from 90+ episodes of the Mobile User Acquisition show, and compiled them into this book. It is a treasure trove of wisdom from some of the smartest folks in mobile, who are on the frontlines of growth.

There are 11 sections in total, running the gamut from strategy and UA channels, to growth engineering and virality. There is a dedicated section on iOS 14 strategy as well, which as we all know is especially relevant right now.

Link to download the book: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/mobile-growth-handbook-2021/

Check out the show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/highlights-from-the-mobile-growth-handbook-2021-edition/
**

Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:
http://RocketShipHQ.com
http://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

**

Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:
http://HowThingsGrow.co