Intelligent Artifice, formerly the Mobile User Acquisition Show

Our guest today is Sandra Wu, paid content marketer at Blinkist. In today’s interview, Sandra dispels many of the misconceptions about using these marketing channels. Starting from suggesting an entirely different approach to these ads and understanding the place it occupies in the funnel, to selecting the right metrics to measure success and critically evaluating if paid content marketing is indeed the right user flow for an app, she covers all bases. 

In this conversation, she highlights the many differences between Facebook and Google advertising and paid content marketing with relatable examples and sharp insights.

Key highlights: 

🧮How paid content marketing differs from Facebook and Google ads.
🔎The user flow on platforms like Outbrain and Taboola.
🛬Landing pages and the paid content marketing user flow.
🧩Components of a paid content ad.
✒️Why the headline is the first touchpoint for a user.
🤔Why two seemingly similar headlines can have very different performance.
🎯How copy helps qualify the right users.
🤞Why it’s important to mirror the style of the top publisher that you expect to work on.
🎰Why clickbait traffic can become very expensive.
💯How sensationalism or buzzwords can be impactful.
🛣️When to use a direct-to-app store user flow, and when to use a landing page.
🗺️How to structure a landing page.
⚖️How to strike the right balance between being sales-y and valuable.
⚠️The biggest mistakes made by marketers when it comes to paid content marketing.

Check out the show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-unlock-the-power-of-paid-content-marketing-using-outbrain-taboola-with-sandra-wu-paid-content-marketing-lead-at-blinkist/

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Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:
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Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:
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Our guest today is Paula Neves, product manager at Square Enix. We discuss how psychological models are integral for understanding user personas, which in turn give us data and insights on how to attract, engage and motivate different kinds of users - and change what oftentimes is the essence of a game itself. This is very much a masterclass in gamer psychology - and we’re thrilled to present our conversation with one of the smartest folks in mobile today.

Key highlights: 

🏅 What inspired Paula to start using psychological frameworks to understand gamer motivation.
🔑 The key psychological models and frameworks that are relevant for understanding gamer motivation.
🎮 How psychological models help point to the kinds of players a game will attract.📊 How Paula adapted models originally made for AAA games for an F2P context.
📈 How to evaluate a game as per a psychological model prior to its launch.
🧐 How psychological models help align on a vision for the game.
🤝 How to resolve disagreements that may come up when evaluating a game according to a psychological model.
👀 How Paula and her team structure their competitive analysis.
🧑‍🤝‍🧑 How to address resistance to applying psychological models within a team.
📄 How user testing, surveys and focus groups fit into the process of applying psychological models.
⚙️ How UA can be used to test user archetypes.
💬 How in-game user behavior can be tied back to the creatives or messaging that brought a user in.
🏃‍♀️  How psychological models can be applied to a game that is already live and active.
🕹️ How a game developer might start implementing psychological models. 

Check out the show notes here:
https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/player-motivations-psychological-models-paula-neves-square-enix/

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

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

Our guest today is Maor Sadra, co-founder & CEO at Incrmntal. In today’s episode, we dive into how last touch attribution has always been fraught with inaccuracies and how it measuring incrementality might just be the best way to understand what the true impact of your digital marketing is.

Key Highlights:

🥴 Why last touch attribution has always been problematic

🧐 What led to Uber being susceptible to fraud.

😤 How there’s a thin line between frauds and self-attribution, when it comes to claiming credit for click and view through installs

😯 How last touch attribution enabled fraud

🤦‍♂️ You don’t get direct or reliable access to impression or click level data from Facebook, or Google for mobile apps

😍 If you own your domain, you’ll get individual data about users and their impressions

🤨 How MTA can be challenging to make work on mobile

🙄 Marketing measurement is not deterministic

👍 Often if an advertiser pauses marketing temporarily, they start to see that they might be spending too much.

✌️ With sporadic incrementality testing, one will not be able to optimize marketing on an ongoing basis

🤔 Causal inference is critical while measuring incrementality.

🥂 The last touch attribution is a good way to understand creative performance..

🤵 Is measuring incrementality essential at small scale budgets? 

Check out the show notes here:
https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-incrementality-helps-measure-the-true-impact-of-marketing-spend-with-maor-sadra-ceo-co-founder-at-incrmntal/

**

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

The pursuit of free growth is much talked about & lauded. However, it's worth keeping in mind that every form of growth comes with some cost attached.

In this mini-episode, we explain why that is the case (even if you're not reliant on paid acquisition).

We'll be back with our regular programming of interviews starting next week.

Check out the show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-growth/

**

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

One of the casualties of iOS 14 and the post-IDFA world will be the concept of LTV as it exists in the current paradigm. In today's mini-episode, we argue that even though the LTV has had a veneer of precision, there was still quite a bit of subjectivity involved in decision making driven by LTVs.

LTV has been a made up number - in many ways; and its loss will not be the end of the world.

Key Highlights:

🙅‍♂️ There is no such thing as ‘user lifetime’.

📈 LTV is often projected and estimated.

🤼 Different teams calculate LTV differently.

🤔 The traditional LTV modeling paradigm also assumes that the last-click paradigm is accurate, which may not be strictly true.

🤝 The LTV model that prevails is often a function of corporate politics.

Check out the show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/the-ltv-metric-will-die-with-the-advent-of-ios-14-but-it-was-always-an-imperfect-metric-to-begin-with/

**

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’s mini-episode features an article we wrote for our friends at Phiture for their blog Mobile Growth Stack. We talk about some of the limitations of the d1, d7, d30 metrics - especially in evaluating the health of users who have been in your app for a long time already; and we recommend 3 other metrics that fill in the gaps.

Key Highlights:

👀 d1, d7 etc. metrics tell you how your new users progressed through an app - but not how your existing users reacted. They also tell you if a user returned, but not if a user was retained after they returned.
💪 CURR - measures the health of your currently active users.
🏋️ NURR - measures the health of your newly(or recently) acquired users.
🎗 RURR - measures the health of your resurrected users.
3️⃣ All three complement traditional retention metrics.


Check out the show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/the-problem-with-traditional-retention-metrics-and-3-metrics-to-fill-in-the-gap-via-phitures-mobile-growth-stack-blog/

Check out the original blogpost here on the Mobile Growth Stack blog.
https://phiture.com/mobilegrowthstack/the-problem-with-traditional-retention-metrics/

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

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

Our guest today is Mark Loranger, co-founder of Braavo Capital. Today, we dive into the different financing options for every company, and how VC funding isnt the only financing option for app developers. We’ll look at how app developers should think about financial decisions in the wake of the upcoming changes to the app economy starting with iOS 14.

Key Highlights:

🙅‍♂️ There’s no one-size-fits-all solution with regards to capital and fundraising for building businesses.

👀 At what point should apps start exploring their options with regards to funding?

🤷 What are all the different funding options out there for app developers?

🤔 What optionality is - and why it should matter to entrepreneurs.

💰 What is revenue based financing?

👥 What is user acquisition funding?

🔍 What sort of app is VC funding right for?

⚔️ What are the tradeoffs and challenges of obtaining non-VC funding?

📑 Why it’s important to think about the fundamentals of your business all the time.

💪 Why a lifestyle business can be very sustainable and healthy.

👨‍💼 How it’s smart to seek out other funding that’s not VC funding

🤓 How VC funding can backfire and lead to minimal payout to founders and early employees

🤩 How you should use capital to build enterprise value vs. for marketing.

👨‍💻 How should a developer look at funding if they aren't sure if they will have strong retention?

🔥 The risks of venture debt.

❗Why receivables financing isnt just for companies that want to pay their bills faster.

🗑️ In the light of the upcoming IDFA deprecation, why it’s important to avoid making very long term commitments.

✅ Why planning for IDFA deprecation is in some ways similar to planning for handling the pandemic.

💡 Why the current changes are similar to when companies started to transition to subscription based models in 2015.

💯 What we are advising our clients at RocketShip HQ.

Check out the full transcript and show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-finance-your-apps-growth-without-accessing-venture-capital-with-mark-loranger-co-founder-coo-at-braavo-capital/

**

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

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

Our guest today is George Natsvlishvili, Head of Organic Growth at Glovo. Georgy is a repeat guest on the Mobile User Acquisition Show - and I’m thrilled for today’s episode because Georgy and his team are doing what very few teams do, which is automating their ASO KPIs. Very many teams leave this aside as not very actionable or trackable - and this episode is very instructive for the potential it highlights for tracking and actioning these KPIs.

As a side note: the audio quality in this episode isn't the best - however it’s all audible. You should also be able to consult the transcript and show notes for details. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Key Highlights:
🎛How Georgy’s team collects all ASO KPIs in a single dashboard.

📸How to automate the customization of screenshots and metadata for multiple countries.

⚡️How seasonal offers and campaigns can be emphasized through app store screenshots.

💁🏻‍♀️Every app is different -- why that makes automation of screenshot testing challenging.

1️⃣The most important metrics to look at on the ASO KPI dashboard.

⚖️Filtering different countries to measure effect of featuring in each country individually. 

😄Different ways in which the dashboard is extremely actionable. 

🌤How you can track ratings on a day-to-day basis by using the dashboard.

🏆How Georgy’s team uses repetitive testing to ensure his winners are reliable - because of the way Google Play measures confidence levels.

💸What are some of the ways organics are affected by paid or offline marketing?

🌏How Glovo does incrementality tests at a regional or city level.

🙌🏽Why Glovo’s team set up a dedicated automation team for paid acquisition.

Check out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-automate-your-teams-organic-aso-metrics-tracking/

**

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

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

In today’s episode, we have an all star panel featuring the smartest folks we know. The episode features Eric Seufert from Mobile Dev Memo, mobile growth consultant Thomas Petit, and Nebojsa Radovic from N3TWORK.

What are advertisers solving for? What kind of advertisers will be the most and least impacted? Of the solutions proposed, what’s real and what isn't? Each of our superstar guests offers their tips, strategies, and opinions on what the mobile marketing world will look like post-IDFA - and more importantly how to prepare. 

Key Highlights:
🤔What strategies are realistic and which strategies are not?

🔄Is Apple going to provide loopholes for advertisers and ad tech companies?

✨Deterministic measurement has been an illusion all along.

🙅🏻‍♀️Why investing in a short-term, potentially fleeting, strategy is not advisable

🕸The importance of embracing the complexity of attribution by nature.

🗓How figuring out workarounds might help in the short term, but there is a need for a more scalable solution in the long-term

📝The importance of a publisher that's really good at technical UA and understands incrementality.

👀If you’re a small developer, what sort of publisher should you look for?

💰What will be the impact of this change on ad monetization dollars - and specifically hypercasual developers?

💡What are some of the reasons other than privacy behind Apple implementing this shift away from iOS 14?

🌀What the transition period right after the introduction of iOS 14 could look like.

⬇️Why a small drop in costs and efficiency might mean you aren't able to spend anything.

🕶What will the opt-in rates and app revenues really look like?

👩‍👧‍👧How apps for kids are already dealing with some of these regulations and challenges.

🤑Will the spend shift to Android?

⚡️Why subscription based apps might have an advantage over others.

👊🏽Subscription apps might be much more aggressive on their first time experience.

😮Where Apple may iterate with SKAdNetwork.

✍🏽Why subscription apps might add signups to their app onboarding flow.

🔨One workaround might be to get the IDFAs of only high-value users.

🤖What sort of games might be most impacted post iOS 14.

🙌🏽How apps might lean into the SKAdNetwork approach.

Check out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-prepare-for-a-post-idfa-world-as-a-marketer-on-ios-14/

**

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

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

Our guest today is Gadi Elisahiv, co-founder and CEO at Singular. Gadi is among the folks who has been deeply involved in conversations about IDFA deprecation - and what the world can look like post iOS 14. Today we talk about what might happen to MMPs - and how we might work with SKAdNetwork in a post-IDFA world.

Key Highlights:
👉🏽Fingerprinting, attribution hash, and customized popups - can these work under iOS 14?

👣The default path that Apple wants us all to use: SKAdNetwork.

⛔️The challenges and shortcomings of SKAdNetwork -- conversion values, campaign IDs, postback, deduping, and more.

😬How the way the postback is currently architected can result in fraud.

👀What will be the role of MMPs post iOS 14?

🤦🏼‍Why aggregating data is difficult - and challenging for in-house advertisers to take on.

🌟How there will be a lot of innovation once the basics are established post IDFA deprecation.

📶Is conversion tracking becoming simpler or more complex with iOS 14?

🕰Will Apple release improvements to SKAdNetwork over time?

💸What might happen to ad spend and CPMs in October.

👩🏻‍💻How important it is for companies’ senior management to understand the IDFA issue and its ramifications.

👊🏽How advertisers are preparing for the upcoming changes.

🧐What sort of product changes apps are contemplating.

Check out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-mobile-measurement-will-work-with-ios-14-in-a-post-idfa-world-with-gadi-eliashiv/

**

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