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

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

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

Creative tests on Facebook can be challenging to execute - especially since there is no clear official documentation around this. We explain here how we do it and what considerations are the most important for creative tests that drive results.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-run-creative-tests-on-facebook/**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 Steve P. Young. Steve is the founder and CEO of AppMasters. Steve is one of the best known experts on ASO in the world today - and he’s helped many many apps kickstart their organic growth. He’s also the host of the very popular AppMasters podcast and Youtube channel. Something that Steve is very very good at is getting his clients featured by Apple. This can often be a game changer for an app - and can result in thousands of downloads. In this interview Steve breaks down his process and gives us the inside track on exactly how to pitch Apple for a feature.KEY HIGHLIGHTSThe difference between Apple and Google in how they evaluate apps for featuring.How one of Steve’s clients drove 8000 downloads before they even launched.How an app can prepare before pitching Apple for featuring.How to cold email app store managers at Apple – and the key components of a cold email pitch.One of the most effective subject lines for cold emails.How to capitalize on an Apple feature to magnify the impact from featuring.Why Steve recommends going to WWDC to pitch app store managersCheck out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-get-your-app-featured-on-the-apple-itunes-store-with-steve-p-young-founder-ceo-at-appmasters/**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 Matej Lancaric. Matej is the Director of User Acquisition at SuperScale and a mobile user acquisition consultant who has worked on UA for many hypercasual games. In the past he headed mobile UA for Boombit and Pixel Federation, and is one of the leading experts on UA, particularly for hypercasual games. I’ve been fascinated by hypercasual games - mainly because of the order of magnitude difference some hypercasual games have in their performance compared to other genres - be it in CPIs, IPMs or install volumes. In this interview, I sit down with Matej to understand what forces drive these tremendous metrics and contribute to the scale of hypercasual games.KEY HIGHLIGHTSWhat sort of metrics hypercasual games are able to achieve.Why broad targeting is effective for hypercasual games.What sort of creatives are the best for hypercasual.What campaign structure and ad set setup Matej recommends.What the ideal audience size is for each ad set.What strategy works best for UAC, and what is the best way to structure different ad formats within UAC.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-unlock-massive-scale-with-hypercasual-games-with-matej-lancaric-director-of-user-acquisition-at-super-scale/**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

This episode features Anish Shah, CEO of Bring Ruckus, a firm focused on attracting, vetting and recruiting the best talent in growth - that includes digital marketing, product, analytics, and design.KEY HIGHLIGHTSWhat are some of the key challenges Anish’s clients face while hiring talent.How a founder looking to hire growth talent should begin to cultivate relationships to plan to bring this growth hire in.Why brilliant growth hires at the wrong stage of a company’s growth can not only set back a company’s growth but also its culture.What top growth candidates look for in a company.What one of the most common unsavory experiences is among top growth candidates.Why Anish doesn’t advise CEOs to go out and pitch growth hires that they’d make millions – and what he advises them to say instead.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-hire-superstar-growth-leaders-with-anish-shah-ceo-at-bring-ruckus/**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

This episode features Eric Seufert, founder at Heracles, founder at QuantMar, and founder at MobileDevMemo.com . Eric is perhaps one of the smartest people in mobile user acquisition today - in this episode Eric walks us through how to model out an app's DAU. Key highlightsWhy systematic modeling of growth is crucial to an app.What inputs Eric recommends for systematic modeling of growth.How to think about the DAU gap to be closed – and the UA effort required to close it.How granular or high-level should a model be? How Eric recommends thinking about this.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-model-out-an-apps-dau-with-eric-seufert-founder-at-heracles-quantmar-mobiledevmemo/**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

What do you do when your app's redesign provokes a massive user backlash - and your rating drops from 4.5 to 2.3? Mirela Cialai (Director of Mobile Marketing- Zinio) faced this challenge some time ago - here's the story of how she dealt with it and got Zinio's app ratings back to 4.5 (and Zinio back into the top 50 ranks in its category on iTunes).Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-improve-an-apps-rating-from-2-3-to-4-5-with-mirela-cialai-director-of-mobile-marketing-zinio/**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

Facebook's split test functionality lets you run AB tests within the Facebook ads manager. Surely this should help you ascertain which ads perform well and which dont? Here are 3 reasons why we prefer & recommend not using this functionality.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/3-reasons-why-we-dont-use-facebooks-split-test-functionality/**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 more common requests we get from smaller developers is to run ads on Google UAC. Unfortunately, Google UAC can take significant budgets to make work - in this episode we explain why this is the case - and provide some numbers to illustrate this.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/why-we-dont-run-google-uac-on-smaller-mobile-user-acquisition-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

If you're starting out with mobile user acquisition on Facebook, what is the exact account structure that we recommend? This episode walks you through the 3 key components that matter the most.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-structure-your-first-facebook-ad-account-if-youre-an-indie-developer-with-limited-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

You’ve perhaps seen apps and games change icons for specific seasons and occasions. Cute, yes? Absolutely. Catchy? Certainly.Do these really help or impact business or metrics? This episode explains how these icon swaps are impactful.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/the-non-obvious-benefits-of-icon-changes/**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