ABOUT OUR GUESTS: Melissa Zeloof (ironSource)  | Natalia Drozd (Fabulous)   | Jerome Turnbull (AppLovin)




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KEY HIGHLIGHTS

🕶 Creatives become more important with the automation of UA 

💼 End-to-end control over creative process with an in-house team

🧦 Data sharing internally is easier and without risk 

🚴🏻‍♂️  Faster production time with an almost simultaneous feedback with an in-house creative team

🌊 Why web-to-app strategies will get a boost going ahead

🏹 The switch from Facebook to other platforms for UA

🎤 How Tik Tok leverages creatives

💰 The beginnings of alternate payment methods on mobile games

KEY QUOTES

UA automation brings creatives to the fore front

 The more automated UA becomes, the more creatives become one of the key ways to get an edge with a campaign, especially interactive creatives.

Sharing metrics in-house is more easier

An in-house creative team that’s able to access all of the game’s data, creates a more seamless feedback loop. Just make sure you’re sharing all of your metrics internally. So what does this look like in practice? Let’s say there’s a level that’s performing really well in your game. Seeing these end game metrics, your game designers can let the creative team know that this level is a fan favorite. And then your creative team highlights the level in their next set of ads.

The execution of web to app flows

In order to optimize, I believe that more and more people will try to create different web ways, either one pagers, or web funnels or full web products. And they’ll use this subscription as the main one to surpass the extra fee.

The Tik Tok strategy

The main slogan of Tik Tok ads is to make Tik Tok, not ads. And what I really like about Tik Tok is that creative is the king, you don’t have to showcase your product, you have to show a beautiful story that’s engaging. So I believe it will make sense in 2022 to dedicate more time and effort to building your creative strategies not only on Facebook and Instagram, but also on other non-Facebook networks.

How will developers look at alternate payment methods?

Mobile developers are going to invest more into alternative payment methods. They’re going to incentivize their high value users to create accounts for this separate payment flow. 

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW

SHAMANTH

Welcome to the Mobile User Acquisition Show – and welcome to the second episode of our Mobile Growth Crystal Ball series to round out the year 2021! 

We’re thrilled to share with you forecasts and predictions for the year 2022 from some of the smartest folks in the mobile marketing space. 

In today’s episode we have Melissa Zeloof – VP Marketing at ironSource, Nataliia Drozd – Marketing Manager at Fabulous and Jerome Turnbull – VP Growth at AppLovin.

Melissa talks about the return of creative processes to internal teams and how this impacts performance marketing. Nataliia shares her insights on moving away from traditional UA sources and the possibility of other platforms to open up over the next year. Jerome gives us an idea about how apps are looking to optimize their paywalls over the next year. 

Let’s jump in.

Melissa Zeloof is VP Marketing at ironSource, one of the leading business platforms for the App Economy.  She is also the host of the Level Up podcast, which focuses on the design, development and business of mobile games.

Today, Melissa takes us through the evolution of creative processes. Oftentimes creatives have been outsourced in order for game teams to focus on core products. However, as it becomes increasingly clear that creatives are the foundation of UA, there is a movement to bring back creative production, in-house. 

Let’s listen to what she says.

MELISSA ZELOOF

Hi, my name is Melissa Zeloof and I’m the VP marketing at ironSource, a leading business platform for app developers to turn their apps into scalable businesses. 

I think we can all agree that user acquisition has only become more complex and competitive over the last year or so. And within that context, and we’ve said this a lot at ironSource, creatives become ever more important.

The more automated UA becomes, the more creatives become one of the key ways to get an edge with a campaign, especially interactive creatives.

But then one of the central issues we’ve seen come up is scale. How do you create the right team, and the right tech to be able to produce a huge amount of creatives and iterate on them at a fast pace? For many mobile game companies, this comes down to hiring an in-house creative team or outsourcing production. Every company has different needs – and our experience with working with companies of all sizes has shown us that in-house production has some unique benefits, while sometimes outsourcing can give you additional support, perspectives, and ideas. 

But as UA managers are building a strategy for 2022, we think we’re going to see more companies bring creative production further in-house. And here’s why: First of all, producing creatives in-house gives you end-to-end control over the entire creative process from ideation to optimization. Having your own creative team means having a group of professionals in your organization that are dedicated to managing the priorities of your game studio, and they can work closely with your other teams to help improve creative performance and your operation as a whole. Since your game’s success is directly aligned with their own, an in-house team is always more motivated to crack the creative code. An in-house creative team can also build an internal knowledge base of best practices that can translate into a big competitive advantage in the market and boost your speed of production.

The second big advantage of bringing creative production in-house is all about transparency.

An in-house creative team that’s able to access all of the game’s data, creates a more seamless feedback loop. Just make sure you’re sharing all of your metrics internally. So what does this look like in practice? Let’s say there’s a level that’s performing really well in your game. Seeing these end game metrics, your game designers can let the creative team know that this level is a fan favorite. And then your creative team highlights the level in their next set of ads. 

This whole process happens more quickly and efficiently than communicating with an external team. Also, you might not want to share a lot of sensitive in game data with outside organizations. With an in-house creative team, you can keep your secret sauce, which is basically your creative formula for success to yourself. 

The third key advantage of designing creatives in-house is reducing your time to market. When all of your teams are internal, factors that affect the speed of creative production are always shorter. That’s because bringing your creative team in-house improves internal communication and creates that well oiled feedback loop we mentioned just now. There’s a reason most hypercasual studios have in house creative teams. Speed is especially important for that genre, as the top charts change quickly and competition is high. 

In the past, we’ve actually found that there was a huge gap from when the creator was ready to go live to when it actually did go live. In one extreme example, a playable ad we created was waiting in someone’s Dropbox for 10 days. It later proved to boost performance 5x, which meant that that delay translated into a loss of hundreds of thousands of potential new users. But after we brought creative production in-house, we were able to automate the whole process of test payables in a much more controlled and precise way that reduced time to market.

The fourth and final advantage is perhaps a surprising one. In the long run, investing in an in-house creative team ends up being more cost effective. You’re not paying an agency premium anymore. And while of course, the cost of failing or struggling to deliver value is always there with hiring your own creative team, if you go about it the right way, the savings can help you scale the creative department that lets you enjoy all of the in house benefits.

SHAMANTH

It looks like there are definite advantages to bringing production in-house. Something for many of us working on creatives to think about. 

Nataliia Drozd is the Marketing Manager at Fabulous, a health platform based in Paris. She is an app marketing expert and her specialisation lies in App Store optimization, and growing apps through organic and paid marketing.

In the next section Nataliia takes over to tell us about how web-to-app flows are set to grow in the next year. She also tells us about the possibility of new channels for UA that will open up next year, how the numbers don’t favor Facebook as a UA source, and why we may see this trend climb steadily.

Over to Nataliia.

NATALIA DROZD 

Hello, Mobile User Acquisition Show, Nataliia Drozd here. I’m happy to be here again to share some of my predictions for 2022. A couple of words – I love working with apps and I love working with apps in the fitness niche. My suggestions are based on what I’m working with on a daily basis. I basically have two predictions and one small note. 

One small note: I hate predictions because no one can be 100% sure about the future. Our certainty is our uncertainty. I’ll share some of my observations. 

I have 2: One, I believe that more apps will try to use web-to-app strategies in different ways, because there is still no clarity in the Apple vs. Epic case. If it’s easy to surpass App Store fees of 30% because we already know that Google decreased it to 15% for subscriptions and Apple is still using a 30% fee as always. In order to optimize, I believe that more and more people will try to create different web ways, either one pagers, or web funnels or full web products. And they’ll use this subscription as the main one to surpass the extra fee. 

Two is basically in terms of user acquisition. Recently a report was released and it states that the most downloaded app of 2021 was – surprise surprise Tik Tok. This is interesting  because Facebook was not even mentioned in the top five. More people will try to switch to platforms from Facebook as user acquisition sources. First of all, because Facebook does not have enough young user base and two, because of the overall reputation of Facebook in terms of its popularity due to all the recent cases in American courts. They did not have a good impact, and people are becoming more and more ad resistant. Not only banner resistant, but only typical ad resistant as well. 

Creative assets on Tik Tok and Snapchat are different. The main slogan of Tik Tok ads is to make Tik Tok, not ads. And what I really like about Tik Tok is that creative is the king, you don’t have to showcase your product, you have to show a beautiful story that’s engaging. So I believe it will make sense in 2022 to dedicate more time and effort to building your creative strategies not only on Facebook and Instagram, but also on other non-Facebook networks. 

So that’s basically it. To sum it up – web-to-app will be growing, user acquisition on non-Facebook will be growing too. 

This is Nataliia Drozd, greetings from Ukraine. I wish you a great new year. And I hope that all your traffic will always be ROI positive. Cheers!

SHAMANTH

Thank you Nataliia, you have made it clear that we need to look at other channels to keep growing. 

Our next guest is Jerome Turnbull, VP Growth at AppLovin. Jerome played a key role during the launch of Project Makeover – a game that topped the charts in just 4 days of launching with over 5 million downloads in that time. 

In his short note, he talks about the opportunities that game developers can leverage in incentivizing their high value users.

Let’s hear it from Jerome.

JEROME TURNBULL

Here’s my prediction for 2022. Some of this is already happening.

Mobile developers are going to invest more into alternative payment methods. They’re going to incentivize their high value users to create accounts for this separate payment flow. 

It’s going to start with high LTV games: Casino, MMO, strategy etc. But over time, users are going to get trained to look for this and it’s going to be widely adopted in all games. And that additional margin is going to be invested back into acquisition budgets for growth teams. Happy holidays.

SHAMANTH

Thank you Melissa, Natalia and Jerome for your valuable forecasts with us in the second episode of the Mobile Growth Crystal Ball series!

If you missed the first episode of the series featuring Danika Wilkinson, Andy Carvell and John Koetsier, check it out on MobileUserAcquisitionShow.com or wherever you get your podcast fix.

Stay tuned for our final episode of the Mobile Growth Crystal Ball 2022 series – coming soon later this week!

Thank you for tuning in, I look forward to sharing the next episode with you soon.

A REQUEST BEFORE YOU GO

I have a very important favor to ask, which as those of you who know me know I don’t do often. If you get any pleasure or inspiration from this episode, could you PLEASE leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform – be it iTunes, Overcast, Spotify, Google Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast fix. This podcast is very much a labor of love – and each episode takes many many hours to put together. When you write a review, it will not only be a great deal of encouragement to us, but it will also support getting the word out about the Mobile User Acquisition Show.

Constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement are welcome, whether on podcasting platforms – or by email to shamanth at rocketshiphq.com. We read all reviews & I want to make this podcast better.

Thank you – and I look forward to seeing you with the next episode!