Mobile Heroes Uncensored

In-app bidding, waterfall, privacy, ATT … maximizing in-app ad monetization has probably never been harder. In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored we chat with GSN Games (Scopely) VP Brian Truman about boosting admon and scaling revenue without negatively impacting user experience.

In this episode:

Hosts John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz chat with Brian about how he got his start in mobile marketing (by knowing the right Excel shortcuts, of all things), ads that cause app crashes, and how hands-on experience makes a massive difference.

Timestamps

0:00 Ads and privacy

1:40 Excel shortcuts to a job offer

3:50 ATT and ad monetization

6:45 Privacy Sandbox for Android

9:45 Boosting ad-based app revenue

12:20 From waterfall to in-app bidding

15:45 Most important factors in boosting ad performance

16:45 Re-testing old assumptions

20:40 Google Firebase

23:30 Ads that cause app crashes

27:25 What would you tell your younger self?

29:45 Most common mistake in mobile monetization

32:45 Top 3 tips to maximize mobile ad monetization

Dating apps are huge. 40% of couples are now finding each other via digital dating services, and dating apps are forecast to be an $8.4 billion opportunity by 2024.

But how do you beat the competition?

First of all, by defining your niche like, perhaps, the Thursday dating app … which only works on Thursdays. Or the dating app that’s only for people with beards. Or another only for music lovers.

But most importantly, you have to understand your users and locale. In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored, we chat with James Haslam and Mikael Orpana, who have analyzed the top dating apps, millions of installs, and billions of ad impressions to identify what works well and how the top apps win.

Timestamps

0:00 Love is in the air: dating apps

2:45 The top dating apps (and the challengers)

4:35 UA costs in dating apps

7:05 iOS vs Android: costs for users

10:25 Targeting men vs women

13:45 Best ad creative for dating apps

17:50 Top 3 tips for mobile marketers in the dating space

20:30 Localization of dating apps

You gotta do your data homework, you have to look under the hood of all those fancy shiny marketing platforms, and you have to find channels that your competitors overlook.

Those are just a few of the massive number of tips and insights for increasing sales in your retail app from Nico Winkelhaus, the Director of Digital Marketing at PAYBACK, Germany’s top loyalty program. (Little secret here: they see literally 5% of the entire nation’s commerce. Insane!)

In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored, hosts Peggy Anne Salz and John Koetsier chat with Nico about achieving sustained growth, learning from gaming apps, beating nightmare competitors, and evolving through changes in consumer behavior due to Covid.

Plus, we also chat about weaving service through web and mobile app channels, and Nico’s unconventional advice about why you should grow your app at the expense of other channels.

Timestamps

0:00 Sustained growth in retail apps

1:05 Nico Winkelhaus from Payback

4:15 From gaming to retail

6:45 What retail apps can learn from mobile games

8:45 The evolution of retail during Covid

12:05 The power of personalized offers

13:30 Getting your data homework done

15:50 Unsexy but effective marketing channels

18:15 Prioritizing your app over other channels

20:02 Creating relevant creative

22:10 Top 3 tips for retail app marketers

There are not many retention-first mobile user acquisition specialists on the planet. While retention is important -- ok, essential -- most UA experts focus, naturally, on the acquisition of users. While retention matters, it’s more the product and DevOps teams responsibility.

Not Miray Alanlar, Senior Product Marketing Manager at FOX Bet & PokerStars.

She focuses first on retention, because getting a new user doesn’t even matter if that user is just going to churn out in a few hours or days. That means targeting is critical, onboarding is critical, engagement is critical, and user experience is critical.

In this Mobile Heroes Uncensored, Miray chats with hosts John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz about acquisition, retention, capitalizing on big events like the Super Bowl or Olympics, and maintaining momentum between those natural growth points.

Plus, she even chats about something new we’re calling the “mobile retention stack.”

Timestamps

0:00 Retention growth marketing

2:01 The Super Bowl and betting apps

5:25 What is a retention growth marketer?

9:05 Starting at the bottom of the marketing funnel

12:45 Marketing a suite of mobile apps

15:51 Stalking the competition

20:15 Billion-dollar idea for free

21:25 Mobile retention stack

25:39 Top 3 tips for mobile marketers in sports and betting apps

Imagine competing with Apple, or Google, or Amazon, or Spotify. Better yet, imagine competing with all of them at the very same time.

Sounds insane?

Not for Audiomack, which has been streaming music from creators to fans for over a decade. In this Mobile Heroes Uncensored, we dive deep into senior VP of revenue Dave Edwards’ story: how Audiomack wins, how it monetizes, and how it’s become super-successful doing things that everyone else thinks are crazy.

We chat about:

Timestamps

0:00 David beating Goliath

3:15 Communicating brand promise

8:22 Monetizing apps with interactive ads

10:37 Getting 60% opt-in rates on ATT

11:52 Ads monetization: programmatic vs direct

13:45 Interactive audio ads: shake to click

17:38 Stumbling into mobile marketing

21:00 Top 3 tips for mobile monetization

What do you need to know about competitive apps? In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored we chat with Apptopia CEO Jonathan Kay, who shares the three super-simple but uber-important pieces of data you need on competitors.

(Apptopia, by the way, collects 4 billion data points daily on over 1 million apps.)

Plus hosts Peggy and John ask Jonathan about app trends for 2022, finding new opportunities in data, knowing when to get excited about spikes in downloads and when not to, and Jonathan's 3 top tips for mobile marketers.

We also learn why Dunkin Donuts is super successful with its Apple Carplay app, why Sam’s Club gained on Costco in mobile, and why there’s an endless runner game with minions in it.

Timestamps

0:00 Eye of Sauron and mobile data

2:22 4 billion data points daily

3:45 Big drivers of mobile advertising change in 2021

6:20 Mobile app trends for 2022

11:05 Competitive data to focus on in mobile app marketing

14:25 Using market data to find new app niches

19:35 Success: when it’s fleeting vs when it lasts

20:45 ASO: ranking for other brands’ apps

23:15 Top 3 tips for mobile marketers in 2022

26:35 Old marketing, bell bottoms, and crypto apps

90 million writers and readers connect on global storytelling platform Wattpad. Daniel Kenny-Godoy, Wattpad’s director for ad-ops and programmatic, boosted revenue substantially.

But how?

In this Mobile Heroes Uncensored Origin Story, hosts John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz chat with Daniel about ad operations' biggest challenges and opportunities, how to scale ad revenue while maintaining a great user experience, and the increasingly important topic of contextual vs behavioral targeting.

Plus, we get his top 3 tips for ad monetization in 2022.

Timestamps

0:00 Buyers and sellers

0:40 Idiots and geniuses

3:00 Starting out in mobile ad monetization

4:40 Defining ad ops

6:10 Direct sales vs programmatic

8:01 Biggest challenges of ad ops

11:00 Biggest changes in programmatic

12:15 Behavior vs contextual targeting

16:30 Ad versus user experience

20:01 Boosting programmatic ad revenue substantially

22:15 Most important factors in scaling ad ops

27:10 Ad ops on Reddit

30:20 Top 3 tips for ad monetization

Is incrementality the answer to mobile marketing measurement’s crisis?

Let’s be honest: mobile marketers exist on last-touch attribution, whether they’re using GAID, SKAdNetwork, or probabilistic methodologies. But declining signal on iOS has led some to suggest that incrementality is the answer. And there is a place for it.

Today’s guest Moshi Blum of Beach Bum (owned by Voodoo) has been there and done that, and he has the scars to prove it. Armed with hard-won knowledge gained from leading user acquisition at Viber and being a country general manager for Adjust, Blum shares what he’s learned about incrementality and measurement with hosts Peggy Anne Salz and John Koetsier.

Plus, Blum gives us his three tips for mobile marketing success in 2022.

And we see the youngest mobile hero ever: Golan, who’s 4 months old!

Timestamps

0:00 Cheat codes for growing mobile apps

2:45 Growth to measurement back to growth

5:15 Challenges of 2021 for growth marketing

7:35 Opportunities for mobile marketers in 2022

9:21 Incrementality to measure user acquisition

13:30 Why incrementality is hard

18:25 The baby cries

19:10 What incrementality cannot do

20:45 How to try to accomplish incrementality

23:57 Last touch attribution

24:48 Favorite game: Brawl Stars by Supercell

26:37 Top 3 tips for mobile marketing in 2022

Everyone wants to grow. Today we’re learning from an expert, Vishal Korlipara.

Vishal leads growth at Future, the fitness startup, and has held roles at Morgan Stanley, Credit Karma, and Intuit. He’s essentially not just a growth expert, but an expert at ending jobs successfully, transitioning to new roles successfully, and initiating new stages in his career.

Hosts John Koetsier and Peggy Anne Salz chat with Vishal about ending well, when to switch jobs, how to start well, and Vishal’s unconventional but clearly effective top three tips for advancing your career in growth marketing in the coming year.

Timestamps

0:00 Growing your marketing career

0:55 Vishal Korlipara

1:50 Personal growth

2:25 Downside to career change

3:20 Relationship building

6:10 How to start a new job well

9:20 Doing your research

12:30 When NOT to switch jobs

15:30 Enterprise jobs vs startup life

22:29 Growth at Future

25:25 Top 3 tips for growing your career in 2022

We have had a year. In some ways an awful, horrific, challenging year. In other ways a crazy, wacky, but growth-filled year. What happened? What did it mean? And, more importantly, how will mobile marketers achieve massive growth next year in 2022?

In this episode of Mobile Heroes Uncensored, hosts John Koetsier & Peggy Anne Salz chat with Shamanth Rao, who has lead growth for games leading to acquisitions by GSN Games, Zynga, and GameLoft (!!!). He now runs Rocketship HQ and might just possibly have a podcast that maybe potentially a few people might listen too. (It may or may not be called the Mobile User Acquisition Show.)

We rant and rave about the highlights and lowlights of 2021, then get Shamanth’s top 3 tips on how to win in 2022.

Timestamps

0:00 2021 yays and boos

0:51 Shamanth Rao

2:26 Feeling bad for Android

3:24 Apple vs Google

4:21 Adtech consolidation

9:21 Mobile games and ATT

13:39 Ad network winners and losers

15:52 Peggy dances on a toilet

16:37 Content fortresses: Reddit vs TikTok

18:07 What will be big in 2022

21:47 Top 3 tips for mobile marketers in 2022