“Creative is king.”
“Creative is the most essential UA lever in 2020”.
Creative this. Creative that. We get it — creative is important. What most people don’t understand, though, is that creative is hard. Really. Damn. Hard.

How did we get here?

If you’re a fan of the Mad Men series, you’re well aware that creative has always been a popular topic among marketers. Great creative is a conversation starter and something that makes great brands what they are. On the performance marketing side, however, creative used to be one of many levers that are used to optimize campaigns. An important one, obviously, but still…

Two months ago, during the UA Masters Summit in San Francisco, I interviewed some of the top UA (User Acquisition) professionals from the industry on the KPIs they use to optimize towards. Not surprisingly, D7 ROAS was the most common answer. In practical terms, this means that campaigns with the highest D7 ROAS get a larger share of the overall budget. At the same time, the lower-performing ones are getting scaled-down. As a result of this, the overall ROAS should improve. This has been the case pretty much since I started doing UA, and there are many reasons for that:

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I noticed this morning that Jelly Shift is still the Top Free game which reminded me of a story that one of my industry friends shared with me on what the IPM (installs per 1000 impressions) for that game was at the time of launch. I was quite shocked to learn that this game converts 50–100x better than any game I promoted in my career. This KPI alone also explains, in a simple way, why hypercasual is not going anywhere and why we see fewer hard-core games in the Top Free chart than ever.

Is IPM really the new LTV?

In the article about Matchington Mansion…

There has been a solid amount of coverage for the latest Facebook’s acquisition. Given the price tag, it’s no strange that people are starting to question the decision. But, lets look at the problem from a different perspective.

Context is still king

And there is no difference here between mobile and web. Ads in Gmail are not as aggressive as those on network websites, but the context about users this service provides is of great value to the company. Scraping the emails helps Google understand its users and their needs better, which directly implies to the effectiveness of its ad solutions.

No Ads, No Games, No Gimmicks

There is…

Moving to the US brought another issue to the table that I wasn't really aware of. The frequencies our cell phones work at here, and back at home are a bit different. The result — a poor signal that was driving me nuts for months. Changing the phone was the only solution, and since I wasn't ready to join the Android crew, I had to wait for the iPhone keynote to upgrade my Apple buddy. It finally happened a month ago and I believe you are aware of the outcome. Apple stocks dropped more than 5% in a day, and…

Right now, I am in the middle of a job search. If you ask me, it’s never a fun thing to do. Prior to this, I was lucky enough either to run my own company, or get referred for a job by some of the people who were familiar with my work. Social media exposure helped in this regard. However, I decided to move to the US for grad school. Being fresh off the boat meant new challenges when it came to my professional career. Finding a job turned out to be a whole new ball game.

Starting from scratch

What was my…

In the last couple months, more and more news outlets are reporting that teenagers are leaving Facebook – deciding instead, to use other platforms. In one recent article, Business Insider gives a detailed analysis on the reasons behind this behavior. Unfortunately, the article itself is more of a statement than a particular conclusion about the shift we are witnessing at the moment. The truth is very simple: every generation needs its own way of communication, and what’s happening to Facebook right now has already happened to email and phones in the past.

Generation gap

If someone asked you to go to a…