I built a €1.6M business between diaper changes and campaign launches

In five years, I grew my one-person company from essentially €0 to over €1.6 million in annual revenue. I did it my way — focusing on real value, staying profitable, keeping family first, and ignoring much of the usual “hustle hype.” It’s not always rainbows and unicorns out here, but sometimes it actually is!

This story isn’t the typical flashy startup tale. It’s not about chasing vanity metrics or burning out with 100-hour weeks. Instead, it’s a down-to-earth account of resilience, strategic value delivery, and sticking to what matters most. I’ll walk you through each year of my journey (with actual revenue and profit numbers), share the key lessons I learned at every stage, and illustrate how focusing on profit, family, and authenticity over vanity and hustle culture made all the difference. I hope that my experience can inspire you to carve your path to success on your terms.

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Humble Beginnings

In mid-2020, I took a deep breath and became my boss. Until then, I’d worked for other companies in the gaming industry (marketing and user acquisition). The decision to go solo was exciting and terrifying — I had zero clients on day one and no safety net. However, I believed in my skills and saw an opportunity to fill a gap for smaller and mid-sized gaming companies that the big agencies often overlook.

People don’t know where it all started, even before my first job in the gaming industry, Pixel Federation. My interest in online marketing grew during my last year at the University. A friend from my childhood, Ondrej, started his own company and brand, Gentlemen’s. Ecommerce brand focused on selling men’s accessories — wooden bowties, bracelets, notebooks, backpacks and other “fashion” shit. All are produced here in Slovakia. Handmade. This was 2013! We met, cofounded a company and started working on this project together, and the rest is history. Then, we sold the brand before I started focusing fully on gaming.

The entrepreneurship lessons about how to spend my own money were invaluable.

We had to reinvest everything we earned from the paid performance marketing. Its a different approach when you know its your own money and you HAVE to get it back, because if you don’t, you are fucked. It gives you a very different perspective.

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Afterwards, every time I have a budget to spend on User Acquisition, I treat it like it’s my own money. It makes a huge difference. Also, now we are back at it again with Ondrej (and Tibor) with Playablemaker.com

I am going to go a bit lighter on some of the details so I don’t repeat myself. A big chunk of my journey is well documented here:

Matej Lancaric: The Story of a Solopreneur

Hey there, fellow solopreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, and gaming industry peers! Today, I want to take you on an unfiltered and candid journey of seasoned solopreneur in the gaming industry — Myself! (HA!).

Read full story

Anyway, let’s go back to 2020. To my surprise, that first year went better than I could have imagined. By the end of 2020, my tiny consultancy had generated €576,622 in revenue and achieved about €284,302 in profit. Yes — over a quarter-million euros in profit in year one, with no investors, no fancy office, and (get this) no website or sales deck for most of the year. I literally didn’t even have a company website initially. Guess what? Nobody cared. Clients didn’t hire me for slick powerpoint decks or a pretty website; they hired me because I delivered real value and solved their problems in user acquisition and marketing. I focused all my energy on doing great work for the few clients I had, and it paid off.

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That humble start taught me a powerful lesson: Substance beats style. Instead of spending time on “looking professional” in 2020, I poured my effort into helping my clients grow their games. This no-bullshit approach quickly built a reputation through word of mouth.

By being authentically myself — a gamer and marketer who speaks frankly (sometimes too frankly) — I attracted clients who appreciated honest, effective advice over polished presentations.

Riding a Wave of Growth

If 2020 was about finding my footing, 2021 was a rocket ship. Word had spread that I could deliver results, and suddenly, more companies were knocking on my door (or rather, my inbox) than ever before.

Partially, thanks to COVID and the fact people realized I really don’t need to sit next to them in an office. Definitely helpful. Partially because I do my work well. (As humble as it sounds, wink wink)

I was just one guy, but I found myself in high demand in the gaming marketing niche. I said “yes” to a lot of new projects and pushed my own limits to seize the opportunity. That year, revenue doubled to €1,130,000 in 2021, with a remarkable €710,844 profit. For context, that’s a profit margin of over 60%, which is almost unheard of in many startups.

Thanks for reading Brutally Honest by Matej Lancaric! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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It was crazy to realize that I, a solo practitioner working from a home office, was running a business with over a million euros in sales and more than half of that in pure profit. The fun part is that the real profit margin is even higher because, at this point, half of my life is an expense for accounting.

How did this happen? Looking back, I’d credit a few factors. First, deep expertise and focus — I stayed in my lane, offering top-notch marketing and user acquisition services specifically for game developers and publishers. Being one of the few specialists in this area, I became the go-to person for clients needing that help. Second, I wasn’t afraid to charge what I was worth. In fact, I even slightly raised my rates as my track record grew, knowing that the value I brought justified the cost. (I’ve never believed in undercutting or offering big discounts to land a client — more on that later.) Third, I simply worked smart and leveraged my time well. Fourth, there was no plan B. This had to work, which is the most important part of this whole exercise.

If you have a plan B, you always count on the failure of plan A. Thats not a setup for success.

That’s not to say 2021 was easy. On the contrary, it was intense. I was essentially maxing out my capacity. Long days, juggling multiple client campaigns, very little downtime — I definitely felt the stress of rapid growth. There were moments I thought, “This is awesome, but can I keep this up?” It was a classic entrepreneurial high: exhilarating but precarious. The big lesson of 2021 was that growth can be amazing, but burnout is a real risk if you try to do everything alone. Yet, my daughter was born in late 2021. I started a podcast in Slovakia in 2021 and doubled down on content production and writing.

Still, 2021 showed me what was possible when you deliver great work and when you think with your brain and not your ass. That’s pretty important. 80% of people still didn’t get the memo. Anyway, I even got some external recognition: my company’s explosive growth landed us as one of the fastest-growing tech businesses in the country that year. (Apparently, we ranked 2nd fastest-growing technology company in Slovakia — not bad for a business literally run out of my daughter’s room!)

This proved that focusing on value and results rather than hype could beat out many venture-funded players on pure performance.

A Reality Check

As it turned out, 2022 gave me a reality check whether I wanted it. Early that year, I experienced every consultant’s nightmare: one of my biggest clients (who made up a large portion of my revenue) hit a crisis and abruptly cut their marketing spend.

In a week, about 50% of my monthly revenue disappeared. Ouch. After the previous year’s highs, this felt like hitting a wall at full speed. For the first time since going solo, I saw a significant drop in my income. That was scary, and it happened for the first time. Since then, it’s been happening from time to time. It’s happening to all consultants. It’s unpredictable AF. But you get used to it. Now I know, its all gonna be fine (but it still sucks)

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I launched a passion project: an “amazing no-bullshit gaming show” — a podcast and content series for the gaming community I co-hosted with friends Jakub and Felix. I am so glad we started doing this together. We had known each other for a long time, but two and a half gamers strengthened our friendship. I love them both deeply and couldn’t imagine doing this any other way. They also tolerate me, which is a big plus.

I wanted to start a podcast because I felt there is a need for real knowledge sharing.

After my daughter was born, I started consciously structuring my days to spend about 70% of each day with Katarina and fit work into the remaining 30%.

Because nothing is more important than my little one. Full stop!

Most people would say that’s impossible for a business owner, but I have proved it’s not only possible but can make you more effective. I learned that being “busy” is often just a state of mind; when you truly prioritize your time, you can achieve incredible things in less time than you think.

By the end of 2022, I had turned what could have been a disastrous year into a transformative learning experience. I diversified my client base so that no single client would hold me hostage again. I streamlined my processes even more to get work done faster. And crucially, I reinforced my commitment to a family-first, balanced lifestyle.

The lesson here was clear: It’s about building a life you actually want to live, even when business fluctuates.

Throughout 2023’s growth, more than once, I’ve been told, “Start an agency, man! You’d make a killing.” And sure, I’ve led teams before. People said I had “founder energy,” and maybe they were right. But the agency route? That’s a different beast. It’s less about doing the work you love and more about managing the people doing the work. And honestly? I’m not in this to be a full-time babysitter of KPIs and calendars.

I like getting my hands dirty in campaigns, digging into data, and solving marketing puzzles.

One of the funniest stats I have from 2023 is that my little company was listed among the top gaming companies in Slovakia by revenue, and all the others above me had dozens or hundreds of employees. I am constantly punching far above my weight class purely by being efficient and effective.

2024: Here we go!

As 2024 rolled in, I took a moment to appreciate how far the journey had come. This was the fifth year of my solopreneur adventure, and the business had consistently been profitable and growing in one way or another each year.

From a numbers perspective, 2024 was another solid year, reaching €1,617,668 in revenue. This is a modest rise compared to the leaps of earlier years, but if you read the graph properly, you know what’s coming in 2025!

In short, I chose to reinvest in quality and future growth rather than squeeze every last euro of profit out of the year. As mentioned before, my whole life basically now became an expense. Built three houses in Slovakia, invested in several companies (and continue doing so in 2025), and renovated another flat.

Mindset Over Money

Even though I mentioned the past revenue a lot in this article. Let’s get something straight. I’ve never been driven by the smell of freshly printed cash. Sure, I like earning good money (who doesn’t?), but the whole idea that “money makes the world go ’round” never really clicked for me.

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I’ve had plenty of people try to sell me the dream — equity deals, stock options, “skin in the game,” the usual pitch deck jargon. And while they were talking percentages and payouts, I mostly thought, “Eh, sounds exhausting.”

There’s this popular startup fantasy: build fast, exit hard, and ride off into the sunset with a suitcase full of cash. Is that your dream? Go for it. No judgment.

But let’s not kid ourselves — when money is the main motivator, your compass can start pointing in some weird directions.

It becomes dangerously easy to say yes to things that don’t align with your values just because there’s a payout at the end of the tunnel.

That “more” for me? Health, family, and peace of mind. I’ve seen too many people chasing corner offices and executive titles while their personal lives quietly crumble. They say their kids are their world, but their calendars tell another story. I’m not pointing fingers — we’ve all been there.

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I believe in working hard and earning well — but not at the cost of the moments that actually matter. Because what’s the point of a bigger paycheck if it means being a stranger in your own home?

Family First: Redefining “Success”

A huge part of my journey — and one of the main messages I want to share — is prioritizing family and personal well-being over the so-called hustle culture. You often hear entrepreneurs claim their family matters most, yet they’re working 24/7 and barely see those family members.

Adopting a family-first approach meant making strategic decisions to ensure my family, my mental health, and my company’s financial health could all thrive together.

Family-first means taking your kids into the middle of the woods and spending time with them. Who says others can’t join? Who says those others can’t be only dads?

GDC A.K.A Gaming Dads 𝙲̶𝚘̶𝚗̶𝚏̶𝚎̶𝚛̶𝚎̶𝚗̶𝚌̶𝚎̶ cabin.

• Only dads and kids. (or men without kids) because we love our children.
• Because we want to spend time with them.
• Kids love it.
• We love it.
• Moms love it.
• We do it every quarter, and we will continue doing so.

This is a family first approach.

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I structured my work around life (not the other way around). I’ve mentioned that in 2022, I was spending 70% of my day with my little girl — that wasn’t just a random luxury. Being there for my family is a non-negotiable, and I designed my business to accommodate that. It meant I had to be extremely efficient and focused during the limited work hours, which ironically made me even better at my job.

There’s no greater productivity motivator than knowing you want to actually spend time with your kid and watch her grow up! They grow so fast, too fast. By saying no to things that weren’t truly important, I got yes results in both family and business.

I want to emphasize this to anyone reading: you do not have to sacrifice family to build a successful business.

Don’t buy into the hustle bros that say endless grind is the only way. It’s simply not true. I’m living proof that you can scale back on the grind and still scale up your company.

In fact, having a happy personal life gave me the mental clarity and motivation to perform even better when I was working. It’s the classic win-win that too many entrepreneurs miss out on.

The family-first approach also opens up many opportunities. My daughter takes a short lunch nap, so I have about 60 minutes until she wakes up. What do I do? I made 15 videos (9 AI UGC) and finished before she woke up.

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Used these tools:

• Midjourney (free version), Envato ($16,50 per month), Canva with animate image plugin ($13,90 per month)
• Adobe stock videos (Free trial → 3 videos for free, $69 per month after)
• Poolday.ai (Free trial)

Here is the full guide:

How to decrease CPIs by 40% & find 3+ winners in 1h of creative production?

Matej Lancaric

·

November 24, 2024

This is what you get in this AI UGC video guide:

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2025 and Beyond: The Evolution of a Creator, Strategist, and Full-Time Curious Human

Five years into this journey, I’ve realized something strange: Success at the top can feel… weirdly lonely. When you’re just starting out, there’s always someone ahead of you to chase or learn from. But after a while, you start looking around and thinking, Wait, who do I follow now? That’s when you realize the next version of yourself doesn’t come from mimicking others — it comes from inventing the path you want to walk.

Of course, I haven’t gotten here alone. Tatyana Bogatyreva and Arthur Chin were two of my earliest connections in the UA world, dating back to the wild west of 2016–2017. Or was it earlier? We first met at the Facebook office in Paris during UA All Stars, where we were all just starting to figure things out. Nearly a decade later, I still look to these OGs as kindred spirits in the space. That kind of long-term professional friendship is rare and valuable — it reminds me where I came from and why I started.

With Tatyana, we go back to the time when I had no idea what IPM meant. This was at the 2018 London Appsflyer MAMA event after my talk about creatives.

Yeah. We learn all the time.

Asia FTW: Energy That Matches My Speed

One place where I feel completely at home professionally is Asia. The fast pace, constant innovation, and zero-BS attitude across South Korea, China, and beyond fit my natural rhythm perfectly.

Brutally Honest by Matej Lancaric is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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The Two and a Half Gamers podcast has gained a surprising amount of traction there, and the reception has been nothing short of energizing. Thats why we started our Korean channel on Youtube as well.

In January 2025, we held our first live event in Seoul, hosted with our friends at Airbridge, and it might just kick off a new tradition. We’re already dreaming up what version 2.0 could look like. It’s always thrilling to meet marketers, founders, and creators who match your energy — and Asia? They get it. We get it. And it feels like home.

More Creator, Less Conference Circuit

Here’s the thing: 2025 is shaping up to be my “creator era.” The spark that started with a few blog posts and podcast episodes has now ignited into something bigger. My Brutally Honest newsletter grew to over 18,000+ free subscribers (11,500 on Substack & 7537 on Linkedin)

Newsletter and podcast growth is a grind. There are no shortcuts, only hard work and valuable content that solves problems and offers solutions. Brutal honesty and a bit of fun help, too.

Also, I now have 405 paid subscribers, which pushed annual recurring revenue from $16k to $52k — a 3x jump! This excludes the paid promotion & collabs that started lining up. (Tell me if you want to collaborate, I have some slots left)

That’s not just growth. That’s a signal. It told me, “Matej, this is scalable. Go deeper.” So am I. Expect more articles, more videos, and yes — even more “crazy shit” ad creatives, because somehow that’s now my brand (and frankly, I love it).

What type of content can you expect from me?

• State of UA reports
• Playables and creative trends
• Specific genre playbooks
• Industry Reports TL:DR with my own takes
• Game UA reviews
• + a lot more ..

This shift in direction has also changed how I think about industry events. No more hopping from conference to conference every month just for visibility or FOMO. From now on, I’m all about niche, curated events with people I actually want to talk to. Quality over quantity. Depth over noise. If I’m speaking somewhere or hosting something, know that it’s because I truly believe in the crowd, the mission, and the conversations we’ll have there. That’s the bar now.

Thanks for reading Brutally Honest by Matej Lancaric! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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Brutal Honesty and the Joy of Asking

Funny thing — I used to be the kind of guy who never asked for discounts or favors. My logic was: if I can afford it and it’s worth it, just pay and move on. But lately I’ve changed my mind. Because I’ve realized a powerful truth: if you don’t ask, you don’t get. That applies not just to discounts, but to everything in life — intros, opportunities, mentorship, even feedback. Closed mouths don’t get fed. If you want something? Say it. Ask for it. The worst that can happen is a “no.” The best? Game-changer.

Meanwhile, let me just say: I still think “work-life balance” is a myth — but not in a cynical way. I just think the only way to win long-term is to genuinely love your work. If your “life” is spent recovering from your “work,” something’s broken. I don’t “balance” my work with life — I integrate it. I bring my whole self to the work, and I let my work fuel other parts of my life. That’s how I stay energized.

Minime in the Front Seat, Walk-and-Talks in the Back

I’ve embraced one more philosophy in recent years: never lose touch with your inner kid. That curious, creative, slightly mischievous version of you — keep that alive. Let them ride shotgun. Let them steer sometimes.

Whenever I’m creating something that feels truly fun or wild, it’s because my Minime is driving, and I’m just letting him rip around the track. This approach drove the growth of two & a half gamers significantly. Look at the 2024 numbers: now we are sitting on 15k subs (just 4 months from the last count!)

This episode is definitely our viral hit with 43k views.

Anyway, subscribe for more awesome no-bullshit content. And get our Merch!

Anyway. Also… I walk on calls. A lot. And apparently, this makes some people uncomfortable. I don’t get it. If we’re deep in conversation, and I’m pacing through a park or strolling down a side street, I’m actually thinking better. Moving helps me talk. It’s not disrespectful; it’s efficient. So to the folks who prefer I stay glued to my desk, I say: loosen up. Some of the best ideas I’ve had were born between footsteps. Who says you can’t move and build momentum at the same time?

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Key Takeaways from My Solopreneur Journey (So Far)

1. Authenticity is your greatest unfair advantage.

Being unapologetically yourself — whether that means being brutally honest (pun intended), slightly weird, or walking during client calls — is how you attract the right clients and collaborators. People don’t hire robots; they hire humans they trust.

2. Work-life balance is a myth — love your work instead.

If you’re constantly needing to “recover” from your job, you’re probably in the wrong one. Integrate life and work. Design a rhythm that fuels you instead of draining you.

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3. Ask for what you want. Seriously.

Whether it’s a better deal, a favor, or an opportunity — closed mouths don’t get fed. Learning to ask has unlocked more than I ever expected.

4. You don’t need to follow the traditional playbook.

No office? No problem. No pitch deck? Nobody cares. Forget the startup checklist. Build your business around what works for you — lean, real, and on your terms.

5. Your inner child knows what’s up.

Keep the curious, joyful, “crazy idea” version of yourself alive. That version is often the one closest to your creative truth — and your edge.

6. Build something that serves your life, not the other way around.

The ultimate flex isn’t how many hours you work. It’s how much freedom you’ve created to live fully, spend time with your family, and wake up excited to build your thing.

If you’re building solo, or thinking about it, I hope this gives you a glimpse of what’s possible. Not just the revenue but the freedom, family time, and meaning behind it. I’m still learning. Still adjusting. Still building.

Thanks for reading. If you’re on a similar journey, let’s connect. Subscribe to the newsletter, send me a DM, or just hit reply. I’m here for the long game.

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Writing this was very, very, very hard. Give it a share so I spent my time efficiently

Meta’s advertising platform has introduced a new campaign optimization method called Ad ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) that specifically uses in-app ad revenue as the optimization signal. In other words, instead of optimizing for purchases or installs alone, advertisers can now optimize for the ad monetization value that users generate. This is a significant development for app marketers, especially those in the mobile game and app publishing industry, whose revenue comes largely from ads. Meta’s solution allows these advertisers to find and bid for users who will generate the highest ad revenue in their apps, thereby maximizing ROAS. This feature was rolled out in late 2024 for Android app campaigns and represents a major shift in how we approach user acquisition for ad-monetized apps.

Why it matters: In the past, if your app monetized via in-app advertisements (IAA) rather than in-app purchases (IAP), you had limited options to optimize Meta campaigns for true revenue. You might have optimized for proxies like retention or engagement, or tried to pass ad revenue as “purchase” events as a workaround.

Now, Meta Ad ROAS with the AdImpression event enables direct value optimization based on ad revenue. This means the algorithm will seek out users who not only install your app but also generate high ad impression value over time​. For performance marketers, this can improve the efficiency of spend by focusing on high-LTV users that were previously hard to target with purchase-based optimization. It essentially unlocks ROAS-based bidding for ad-monetized apps, similar to how e-commerce apps optimize for purchase ROAS.

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What is the AdImpression Event, and How Is It Used in Optimization?

AdImpression is a predefined app event in Meta’s SDK and ad platform that represents an in-app ad impression (an ad view within your app) along with the revenue earned from that impression. In practice, when an ad is displayed to a user in your app (for example, a rewarded video or banner from an ad network), your app can log an AdImpression event to Meta, including details such as the type of ad and the ad revenue earned from that single impression. Meta then uses these events as conversion signals. When you optimize a campaign for “In-app ad impression value”, the AdImpression events (with their revenue values) are what Meta’s algorithm will try to maximize.

To break it down: each AdImpression event carries a monetary value (the revenue your app earned from that ad view). By sending this to Meta, you’re effectively telling the algorithm how much revenue each user is generating from ads.

Meta can sum these values per user or per cohort and prioritize delivering ads to people likely to generate more ad revenue (higher total value). This is analogous to optimizing for purchase value, but here the “purchases” are third-party ad impressions.

According to Meta’s event definitions, if you provide a value (often via the _valueToSum parameter) with the AdImpression event, that value is interpreted as ad revenue and can be used for value optimization.

In essence, AdImpression events allow Meta to treat ad monetization similarly to a purchase event for optimization purposes.

It’s important to note that AdImpression as an event is distinct from the normal ad impressions of your Facebook ad campaign. Here, we’re talking about impressions of ads inside your app (monetization ads, like AdMob or ironSource), not the impression of the Facebook ad itself. AdImpression is a standard event in the Meta SDK, with an event name constant provided in the SDK, used for third-party ad monetization tracking.

How it’s used in optimization: When setting up a Meta app install campaign, you choose a performance goal. With this new feature, you can select “Maximize Value of Conversions” and then choose “In-app ad impression” as the conversion event to optimize for. This tells Meta to optimize for the total value of AdImpression events generated by users coming from the ads. Essentially, Meta will bid for and target users in a way that maximizes the cumulative ad revenue (as reported by AdImpression events) per dollar spent — hence maximizing ROAS. Advertisers see this in Ads Manager as the campaign optimizing for AdImpression value (instead of purchase value). The AdImpression events you send (with revenue values) will show up in Meta Ads Manager metrics, and if properly configured,

Meta can calculate metrics like total conversion value and return on ad spend (ROAS) for your campaigns based on ad revenue. (Under the hood, historically, Meta treated all incoming revenue events as “purchase” value by default; with this feature, Android apps’ ad revenue events are explicitly mapped to the AdImpression event type instead of the purchase event type, allowing separate tracking of ad-derived revenue.)

Current platform availability: At the moment, this Ad ROAS optimization is available for Android app campaigns only. Meta’s rollout (as of Q4 2024) focused on Android because iOS has significant limitations due to ATT (App Tracking Transparency) and Aggregated Measurement. For iOS apps, you can still send ad revenue events, but they will be mapped to the traditional purchase event (fb_mobile_purchase) and used in aggregated ways.

In other words, iOS apps cannot yet select “In-app ad impression” as a conversion event for optimization in Ads Manager. Instead, any ad revenue you send from iOS will be added to your purchase ROAS or value reporting (a workaround some advertisers use by treating ad revenue as purchase revenue on iOS).

Meta will explore support for iOS in the future, as announced at one of their events. However, as of now, Ad ROAS with AdImpression is an Android-focused feature.

Benefits of Ad ROAS (AdImpression) over Traditional Event Optimization

Why is optimizing for AdImpression (ad revenue) so beneficial compared to the traditional ways of running app campaigns? There are several key advantages for marketers and some early data to illustrate them:

• Direct Revenue Optimization for Ad-Funded Apps: Previously, if your app’s income came from ads, you might have optimized for proxies like retention (assuming users who stay longer see more ads) or perhaps for a custom event, such as “ad watcher,” without a direct revenue attachment. These approaches were indirect.
• Now, by optimizing for actual monetary value (ROAS) from ad impressions, you align the campaign directly with your business outcome. The algorithm gets a clear signal of value (in dollars or your currency) for each user. This tends to improve the quality of users acquired, similar to how purchase value optimization finds big spenders. In short, you can optimize for LTV even if that LTV comes from ad views instead of purchases.
• Higher ROAS and LTV: Early adopters have reported significant uplift. For example, one mobile game that monetizes via ads tested an Ad ROAS campaign against a regular optimization campaign. The results after one week were striking: Day 1 LTV was 378% higher for users acquired by the Ad ROAS campaign, meaning those users generated nearly 4x the ad revenue on their first day compared to the control group. Moreover, retention improved (Day 1 retention +15%, Day 3 retention +12.8%) in the Ad ROAS group​. After opening up AdROAS to the whole world, ROAS and retention numbers were a bit all over the place and hadn’t yet fulfilled the promise. But Meta is working hard on preparing a new D7 AdROAS model and more algo updates.
• Improved Targeting Efficiency: Meta’s algorithm has always excelled at using rich signals to find the right users. By feeding it ad revenue events, you give it a powerful signal to differentiate users. Not all app installers are equal — some might generate $0.10 in ad revenue and some $10 over a period. Traditional install or even event optimization wouldn’t see that difference clearly, but value optimization does. This leads to more efficient spend allocation: the budget shifts toward sources (audiences, placements, times of day, etc.) that attract users with a higher propensity for ad engagement. Over time, this can lower your effective cost per revenue (improving ROAS). It can also lower CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) for a given revenue threshold, because the campaign stops spending on low-value users. Instead of just optimizing for the cheapest installs, it finds those “sweet spot” users who may cost a bit more to acquire but yield far more revenue, thus boosting profitability.
• Comparable to Purchase-Optimized Campaigns: This feature levels the playing field for different app business models. An e-commerce app can optimize for purchase value; now a free-to-play game with ads can optimize for ad value. Both can hit ROAS goals. This means marketers with ad-monetized apps can run campaigns optimized for true ROI just like any direct revenue app. In the long run, this should translate to better scalability (you can justify higher budgets when you know the returns in ad revenue will scale as well) and more stable performance, as the algorithm isn’t optimizing on a proxy metric but on actual dollars.
• Better User Experience Alignment: An interesting side effect noted in early tests is improved retention, as mentioned above. When you optimize for ad revenue, the algorithm may favor users who not only watch a lot of ads but also engage deeply with the app, thereby increasing their exposure to those ads. These could be users who genuinely enjoy the app content and thus see more opportunities for ads. If those users are having a good experience (e.g., willingly watching rewarded videos), they stick around. In contrast, if you optimized purely for retention without revenue, you might get users who stay but don’t monetize at all. Good old proxy events.

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In summary, Ad ROAS campaigns can drive stronger ROI by aligning Meta’s delivery optimization with the actual ad-generated revenue from users. The benefits include higher revenue per user, better retention (a sign of user quality), and the ability to scale spending with confidence that the algorithm is finding the right audiences for your monetization model. For any UA manager running user acquisition for an app that earns money through ads, this new optimization method can be a game-changer. You should definitely start experimenting with AdROAS.

Technical Overview and Implementation Considerations

Getting Ad ROAS optimization to work for your campaigns requires some technical setup and an understanding of the data flow. Here we’ll dive into how it works under the hood and what you need to implement.

Data Flow & Signal Collection: At the core of Ad ROAS optimization is the feedback loop of ad revenue events from your app back to Meta. The sequence is as follows:

1. In-App Ad Impression Occurs: A user sees an ad inside your app (for example, an interstitial, banner, or rewarded video from an ad network like AdMob, ironSource, Unity Ads, etc.). That ad impression generates some revenue for you, either an exact amount (in the case of a mediated network providing eCPM details) or an estimated value. Many ad networks provide callbacks or APIs in their SDKs to tell the app how much that impression was worth (impression-level ad revenue data).
2. Logging the AdImpression Event: Once your app obtains the revenue value for the ad impression, you log an AdImpression event via your analytics/attribution integration. This can be done in a few ways:

• Using the Meta (Facebook) SDK directly: You would call the Facebook SDK’s app event logging function with the event name “AdImpression” and include the revenue value (and possibly currency) as parameters. The SDK will send this event to Facebook’s servers.
• Using a Mobile Measurement Partner (MMP) SDK such as AppsFlyer, Adjust, or Singular: In this case, the MMP’s SDK might automatically capture ad revenue from integrated sources or via manual logging in the MMP SDK, and then the MMP forwards that event to Meta on your behalf as a postback.
• Using Server-to-Server (Conversions API): If you collect ad revenue events on your backend (for instance, your ad mediation platform sends webhooks of user-level ad revenue), you can forward those to Meta’s Conversions API, creating AdImpression events server-side. (Meta explicitly supports sending app events via the Conversions API as well.)

1. No matter the method, the key is Meta must receive an event called “AdImpression” with a value. The event will typically also carry an app user ID or advertising ID to match it to an install. If using the Meta SDK or an MMP, they handle user/device identification and attribution of the event to the original ad click.
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4. Attribution and Aggregation: Meta receives the AdImpression event and attributes it to the appropriate campaign/ad that brought in the user (assuming it falls within the attribution window and the user has consented to tracking, where applicable). These events then show up in Meta Ads Manager as part of the campaign’s results. By default (in the past), if you sent ad revenue events without special handling, Meta would record them under the purchase event (fb_mobile_purchase) because that was the standard way to send any revenue. However, with this new system, Meta expects Android ad revenue events to come in tagged specifically as “AdImpression.” For example, Adjust notes that if you enable this feature, they will map your ad revenue data to Meta’s AdImpression standard event (instead of the usual fb_mobile_purchase)​. This distinction is what enables the “In-app ad impression” optimization goal in Ads Manager.
5. Optimization Loop: Once Meta has these events attributed, the campaign can use them to optimize. In a Value Optimization campaign (which is what Ad ROAS essentially is), Meta’s algorithm will try to maximize the total value (sum of revenue) of events per cost. The more AdImpression events (and greater their values) coming from certain users or targeting criteria, the more Meta will favor finding similar users. It will adjust bids in the auction dynamically, bidding higher for users predicted to generate high ad revenue, and lower for users predicted to generate little or none. Over time, as more data flows (and after the initial learning phase), the delivery should hone in on the best pockets of inventory that yield high ROAS. Advertisers can then look at metrics like In-App Ad Impression conversion value and ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) in the reporting to judge performance.

Eligibility and Training Data: One critical implementation consideration is that Meta requires a minimum amount of data before it allows value optimization. This is also true for purchase ROAS campaigns, historically. For AdImpression-based optimization, the requirement is roughly:

at least 15 attributed AdImpression events (with value) from your app in the last 28 days, with at least two distinct values.

These events must be coming from users acquired through active campaigns (Meta wants to ensure these aren’t all organic or from other sources). If this threshold isn’t met, when you try to set up a campaign and choose the conversion event, you might find “In-app ad impression” is greyed out or not selectable.

In that case, you need to generate more data first. Best practice is to run a normal install campaign or an App Event optimization campaign (perhaps optimizing for a simpler event, such as “ad_view”, or just for installs with broad targeting) to acquire an initial batch of users.

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As they use the app and generate some ad impressions (and you send those events to Meta), you will accumulate the needed volume of AdImpression events. Once you cross the threshold (15+ events with value), Meta will unlock the ability to optimize for value.

Think of it as priming the pump — you need to feed the algorithm some examples of post-install ad revenue before it can start optimizing for it.

Technical Implementation — Key Requirements:

• Meta SDK or MMP Integration: You must integrate either the Meta App Events SDK or an MMP SDK that supports forwarding AdImpression events. Without an SDK or server integration, Meta won’t receive the signals. If you already use the Facebook SDK for login or analytics, you can use it to log events as well. If you prefer using your attribution partner (AppsFlyer, Adjust, Singular), ensure you are on a plan that supports user-level ad revenue tracking (e.g., AppsFlyer’s ROI360 or Adjust’s ad revenue integrations).​ This is because the MMP needs to obtain ad revenue data from the networks. On the app side, you might have to integrate each ad network’s SDK and the MMP’s ad revenue APIs (for example, AppsFlyer’s logAdRevenue API for each impression, or Adjust’s trackAdRevenue method).
• Event Mapping and Configuration: If using an MMP, you’ll need to map the MMP’s ad revenue event to Meta’s AdImpression event. For instance, AppsFlyer uses an event named af_ad_revenue for ad revenue, in the AppsFlyer dashboard, you should map af_ad_revenue -> Adimpression for Android (and to fb_mobile_purchase for iOS)​.

STEP BY STEP VIDEO

• Adjust provides a simple checkbox called “Enable AdImpression Mapping” which, when checked, will send ad revenue as AdImpression (if unchecked, it would send as purchase by default)​.

• VIDEO STEP BY STEP
• Singular similarly requires mapping their ADMON_USER_LEVEL_REVENUE event to “AdImpression” in the partner settings. The takeaway is that Meta expects a specifically named event to count as an in-app ad impression conversion. Make sure your integration is correctly labeling it. Otherwise, Meta might just treat it as a custom event (which wouldn’t unlock value optimization).

STEP BY STEP VIDEO

• Including Revenue Value: The quality of optimization heavily depends on sending an accurate revenue value with each event. Meta’s algorithm uses the _valueToSum (or equivalent) parameter to sum up ROAS. In practice, when logging the event via SDK or MMP, you provide the revenue amount (and currency, typically). For example, AppsFlyer’s SDK attaches an af_revenue parameter to the event, which Meta automatically maps to its _valueToSum internally. If you’re using the Facebook SDK directly, the logEvent function has an overload to include a numeric value. Ensure this value is in a currency Meta can interpret (usually your app’s default currency as set in your Meta analytics). If your ad revenue is coming in, say, USD, and your Meta account is USD, you’re fine. If it’s in another currency, you may need to specify that (some MMPs handle currency conversion or tagging via an af_currency parameter which Meta maps appropriately). Without a value, Meta cannot optimize for “highest value” – it would just count events. So this step is critical: always include the monetization value for each AdImpression event.
• Frequency of Events: Some apps might trigger very frequent ad impressions (e.g., if you have banner ads refreshing). Don’t worry — Meta can handle a high volume of events. However, extremely high event volumes could potentially throttle or get capped in reporting (Meta Analytics has some limits on event count and unique event names but AdImpression is a single event name). In general, send the events in real-time as they occur. If for some reason you prefer batching them, ensure the batch is sent within the attribution window. Real-time is ideal to give Meta’s ML the freshest data. Also, each impression should ideally be a separate event with its value, rather than summing up a user’s total and sending one big event occasionally. Granularity helps Meta learn incremental value from each additional ad view.

Thanks for reading Brutally Honest by Matej Lancaric! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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Privacy & Consent

Since ad revenue events tie back to user behavior post-install, ensure you comply with privacy regulations. On Android, this mostly means having a proper privacy policy and perhaps letting users opt out of personalized ads (which is more of a Google requirement). On iOS, if the user has not consented via ATT, the Facebook SDK will not send identifiable event data. In that case, events might be handled via SKAdNetwork or not at all. Currently, SKAdNetwork (Apple’s anonymous attribution) does not support value optimization in the same flexible way — it has conversion value schemes, but coordinating those for ad revenue is complex. Meta likely uses Aggregated Event Measurement (AEM) for iOS which can handle purchase values in aggregate; if you send ad revenue as purchase events on iOS, they might be aggregated. But again, you cannot run a dedicated Ad ROAS campaign on iOS right now. So privacy-wise, focus on Android (Google Advertising ID can be used if user didn’t opt out of personalization at the OS level). Always disclose in your app’s privacy policy that you share in-app events (including ad viewing events) with third parties for advertising/analytics.

• Meta Ads Manager Setup: On the campaign creation side, once everything is integrated and you have sufficient data, you will set up a Mobile App Install campaign (or App Event campaign) with the Performance Goal set to “Maximize Value” (instead of “Optimize for Installs” or “Optimize for Events”). Then in the conversion event dropdown, you should see “In-app ad impression” as an option (alongside others like Purchase, etc.). Select “In-app ad impression”. If it’s not there or greyed out: double-check the data and eligibility (as discussed). When it is active, also note the billing: Meta might still bill per install or outcome in some cases, but generally value optimization uses highest-value bid strategy. You might be asked for a target or minimum ROAS, but often Meta’s App ads don’t allow a target ROAS input (unlike web campaigns) — instead, you set a fairly high budget and let it optimize. Keep an eye on delivery: since this is a newer optimization type, it might stay in the learning phase longer if volume is low. Make sure you have an audience size and budget that can generate at least ~50 conversion events per week (Meta’s typical recommendation for stable delivery).
• Monitoring and Scaling: As the campaign runs, monitor the ROAS and cost per revenue metrics. You may see in Ads Manager something like “ROAS (AdImpression, D7)” which would be the return on ad spend measured by 7-day post-install ad revenue. If those numbers look good and stable, you can scale up budgets. If not, consider whether your input data is accurate (are all networks’ revenues captured?), or if perhaps your app’s ad revenue per user is so low that Meta struggles to differentiate (in which case, grouping multiple days of value might help — though Meta does that inherently by looking at multi-day ROI). Also, compare against a control if possible — for instance, run a holdout or a campaign optimizing for installs with manual bids, and see if the Ad ROAS campaign yields higher total revenue for the same spend.

Key Takeaways (Technical): To implement Meta’s Ad ROAS optimization, you must instrument your app to send AdImpression events with revenue, ensure Meta gets those events (via SDK or partner integration), and have enough event volume to train the algorithm. The system is Android-only for now, requiring some setup in MMP dashboards or your code. It’s a collaboration between your app (providing data) and Meta’s ad delivery (using that data). Proper implementation and data accuracy are crucial — if events are missing or mislabelled, the optimization won’t work. But when set up correctly, this closed-loop system will continually move your campaigns toward better ROAS by focusing on what matters: actual dollars earned from users.

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Real-World Use Cases and Measurable Improvements

Let’s explore some real-world scenarios and results where Ad ROAS with AdImpression has made an impact. This will give context on what types of apps should use this and what gains to expect.

1. Mobile Gaming (Hyper-casual / Ad-Driven Games):
Use case: A hyper-casual game studio releases free games that monetize exclusively through ads (rewarded videos, interstitials, banner ads). Traditionally, they ran Facebook App Install campaigns, optimizing for installs or a proxy event like “level_completed”, hoping that would correlate with retention and ad views. After enabling AdImpression optimization, they started feeding actual ad revenue values to Meta.

Result: The campaigns quickly identified a cohort of users who not only installed and played but consistently watched many ads (e.g., players who don’t mind watching ads for extra lives or rewards). The studio observed a significant jump in Day 7 ROAS — something they couldn’t even properly measure before. For example, one campaign report showed a 20% Day 7 ROAS. This was a big improvement over the 5–10% they saw with install-optimized campaigns. Over 30 days, the ROAS for the AdImpression-optimized campaign increased to 100%, while the install-optimized campaign plateaued at around 50%. No shit. Install campaigns are no longer driving any monetary value.

Use wisely as an addition to your Ad-driven UA stack where you have Applovin, Mintegral, Google, and most probably TikTok!

2. Hybrid Monetization Apps (mixed IAP and Ads):
Use case: A mobile game that has both in-app purchases and ads (many mid-core or casual games do this — e.g., players can buy items, but non-payers will see ads for bonuses). These apps have two revenue streams. Before AdImpression optimization, the UA team likely optimized for purchases (value optimization for IAP ROAS) because it was a straightforward metric, and they may have ignored ad revenue or counted it indirectly.

The risk was that the algorithm might favor big spenders only, overlooking ad whales (users who don’t spend money but watch a lot of ads). Or putting too much emphasis on the number of lower monetary events from Ads. Turning the whole “workaround” into a pile of … With the new method, they have a choice: run separate campaigns, one optimizing for purchase value and one for ad impression value. They decided to test an Ad ROAS campaign targeting countries where purchases are rare but ad engagement is high (for example, some emerging markets users tend not to spend but will watch a lot of ads).

Result: The AdImpression-optimized campaigns outperformed the purchase-optimized ones in terms of overall profit. The purchase campaigns struggled because few people were making IAPs, whereas the Ad ROAS campaigns thrived by capturing the ad monetizers. The measurable improvement was seen in overall ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) from those campaigns — when they added up IAP + ad revenue, the users from the AdImpression-optimized campaign had 1.3x higher total ARPU than users from the purchase-optimized campaign in those regions. This taught the team that they should tailor campaign optimization by market: in high-IAP markets, purchase ROAS is king; in high-ad markets, Ad ROAS brings in more revenue. They also realized you could run parallel campaigns — one focusing on big spenders, another on big ad consumers — to cover both dimensions of monetization.

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4. Improved CAC and Payback:
Across these scenarios, a common theme emerges: using AdImpression events for optimization can improve your customer acquisition cost (CAC) payback period. CAC (cost to acquire a customer) may not necessarily drop in absolute terms — in fact, to get high-value users, your CPI bid sometimes goes up.

However, because those users generate so much more revenue, the net effect is that you recover your costs faster and more fully. For example, in the gaming case, maybe the average CPI increased by 20% (because now you’re competing for higher-quality users), but the Day 7 revenue per user increased by 300%.

That trade-off is extremely favorable. Marketers often target a certain ROAS by day 7 or day 30 to consider a campaign successful. Ad ROAS campaigns allow previously untapped ad revenue to count toward those targets, making it easier to hit them. In effect, you reduce the effective CAC for a given amount of revenue.

If it used to cost $5 to acquire a user who produces $5 of revenue (breakeven), it might now cost $6 to get a user, but they produce $10 of revenue, so $4 net gain, where previously it was $0. This is huge for scaling and profitability.

In summary, the real-world impact of Ad ROAS optimization has been very positive for the right kinds of apps. Ad-monetized games, content apps, and any app with significant ad revenue stand to gain the most. They can now treat ad-engaged users with the same importance as purchasers. The measurable improvements include higher ROAS percentages, improved retention and engagement metrics, more balanced monetization (not relying only on IAP), and the ability to unlock spend in markets or audiences that were previously hard to justify. Marketers should still test and compare — for example, allocate a portion of budget to an Ad ROAS campaign and the rest to a traditional campaign as a control — but early case studies strongly advocate for testing this ASAP​ if it’s available to you.

Best Practices and Potential Pitfalls

While AdImpression-based optimization is powerful, getting the most out of it requires following best practices and being aware of potential pitfalls. Here are some tips and cautions:

Best Practices:

• Ensure Data Quality and Integration Accuracy: Double-check that your AdImpression events are firing correctly. This means verifying in the Meta Events Manager or your MMP dashboard that events are coming through with the expected values. A simple mistake like sending the wrong currency or an incorrect value (e.g., cents vs. dollars) could skew the optimization. For instance, $0.05 mis-sent as $5.00 would completely confuse the algorithm. Use test devices to generate a couple of ad impressions and confirm the events show up in Meta with the right parameters.
• Meet the Minimum Event Volume: As discussed, you need a baseline of conversion events. If you’re just launching and don’t have that volume, plan a staging period. You might start with a cost-per-install bid campaign or a campaign optimizing for an easier event (like “app open” or “level complete”) for a few weeks to gather data. Once you log enough AdImpression events, then switch to value optimization. Essentially, be patient and feed Meta the data it needs. Starting a value optimized campaign without enough data will likely result in the campaign struggling (limited learning or not spending at all if it’s below the threshold).
• Use Broad Targeting Initially: The algorithm works best with a wide net when optimizing for value. Don’t narrow your targeting too much initially — allow Meta to explore different segments to find those high ad-engagers. Lookalike audiences of payers might not help here because we want ad “payers” (different profile). Instead, consider lookalikes of users with high session counts or just go broad (age/geography) with maybe some interest filters relevant to your app. Let the conversion optimization do the heavy lifting. Over-segmentation can reduce the chance of finding the golden cohorts.
• Budget for Learning: Value optimization campaigns may require a higher daily budget to exit the learning phase, because the events are typically fewer (not every install will immediately generate an AdImpression event with value, or even if they do, the value might be small). Meta’s learning phase usually needs ~50 conversions per week per ad set. Ensure your budget and expected install volume can support that. If your app gets an average of 1 ad impression per user per day valued at $0.01, then 50 conversions is only $0.50 of value — which might require quite a few installs. So scale your budget in accordance with the revenue per user you expect, to generate enough signal. You might also use a cost cap or bid cap strategy initially to control costs until performance proves out.
• Separate Campaigns for Different Revenue Streams: If your app has both IAP and ads, consider running separate campaigns: one optimized for purchase value (IAP ROAS) and one for ad revenue (Ad ROAS). This allows each algorithm to specialize and find the respective user types. Some advanced strategies could involve combining values (e.g., sending a single “total revenue” event that sums IAP + ad revenue for each user). However, that is complex and you risk muddying the waters. It’s usually simpler to have one campaign target purchasers and another target ad-mon users. You can allocate budget between them based on which revenue stream you want to grow. That said, avoid targeting the exact same audience with both in a way that competes; maybe use value rules or geo-split if needed. Monitor for overlap (Meta’s overlap tool) to ensure you’re not bidding against yourself for the same users.
• Leverage MMP Features: If you’re using an MMP, take advantage of any advanced features they offer for ad revenue. For example, AppsFlyer’s ROI360 not only provides the event forwarding but often gives analytics on ROI by campaign. Adjust and Singular have dashboards to validate ad revenue data per source. Use these to cross-check Meta’s reports. Sometimes, MMP reports might show a slightly different revenue total than Meta (due to attribution differences or timing). Keeping an eye on both can help you catch issues (like a partner integration failing to send data). Also, ensure no double counting: if your MMP by default sends all revenue events as purchases and you also enabled AdImpression mapping, you want to avoid sending the same revenue twice under two different event names. (Most platforms prevent this, but it’s worth mentioning.) For instance, Singular warns not to use a catch-all “REVENUE” event along with individual ad revenue events, to avoid duplicates​.
• Optimize Ad Experience in-App: This is more on the product side, but because we are now optimizing for showing ads, make sure your app’s ad placements are optimized for user experience. The goal is to have users engage with a lot of ads because they enjoy or at least don’t mind them, not because they are bombarded in a short time and leave. The better your ad engagement rates and the longer users stick around, the more conversion value you send to Meta. It becomes a virtuous cycle: good UX -> higher retention -> more ad impressions per user -> more revenue -> Meta finds more users like them -> good UX for them -> and so on. So avoid the temptation to suddenly crank up ad frequency for new users hoping to improve ROAS; that could backfire by reducing retention. Instead, use this as an opportunity to identify high-LTV users and perhaps learn from them (e.g., maybe they prefer rewarded ads over forced ads, etc.).
• Keep an Eye on Pacing and Bids: Initially, you might see fluctuating cost per result as the campaign learns. It’s often best not to interfere too early. But do monitor daily. If after a while the campaign isn’t meeting ROAS goals, consider adjusting your bid strategy. Meta sometimes allows a Target ROAS for value campaigns (though for app ads this has historically not been widely available; it’s more common in web e-commerce campaigns). If it is available, you could set a target (e.g., 100% D7 ROAS) — but be cautious, setting it too high might restrict delivery. Alternatively, use cost caps if you have a sense of allowable CPI or CPA. The guidance from Meta is usually to optimize for value without caps for a bit, then gradually introduce caps if needed.
• Geo and Platform Considerations: Right now, since this is Android-only, focus your campaigns on Android users. If you run mixed OS campaigns, split them so iOS isn’t lumped in with an Android Ad ROAS campaign (that would just waste iOS spend since it can’t optimize properly). Also, consider geo differences in ad monetization. In some countries, ad rates (CPMs) are high, in others low. This affects the value of AdImpression events. Meta’s algorithm will inherently factor that in, but you might find that certain geos yield much better ROAS. Use that info to allocate budget geographically. For example, if Tier 1 countries have higher revenue per user but also higher cost, the ROAS might actually be better in a Tier 2 country with moderate cost and decent ad engagement. Be open to the algorithm finding value in places you might not have targeted aggressively before.

Pitfalls to Avoid:

• Not Meeting Meta’s Criteria and Forcing the Campaign: If you try to run an Ad ROAS campaign without the sufficient prior data, you risk the campaign stalling or underperforming. This could lead to mis-concluding that the strategy doesn’t work, when in fact it just wasn’t given a fair shot. Always check if the option is enabled and not greyed out. Meta provides a tooltip if it’s greyed out — it means you haven’t met eligibility. The fix is usually “send more conversion events for a while and try again.”​Don’t ignore those signals.
• Using Incorrect Event Mapping on MMPs: A common mistake could be mapping the wrong event or duplicating. For instance, if on AppsFlyer you accidentally map af_ad_revenue to a Custom event instead of the predefined AdImpression, Meta might treat it as a generic custom event (which cannot be used for value optimization at this time). Ensure it’s mapped to the exact Meta event “AdImpression” (capitalization and spelling exactly as required). Similarly, on Adjust, you must tick the “AdImpression Mapping” checkbox in addition to enabling ad revenue data sharing. Missing one of these steps would result in events still coming in as purchases or not at all. A misconfiguration could silently fail to optimize, so it’s worth doing a sanity check after setup. One way is to intentionally run a small campaign optimizing for purchase value and see if the ad revenue shows up as “purchases” vs. if you switch it to AdImpression and see if the campaign starts counting those conversions properly.
• Depending on MMP Plan: As mentioned, some MMPs gate the ad revenue feature behind premium plans (e.g., AppsFlyer ROI360)​ If you don’t have access, you might attempt to implement a workaround by sending ad revenue as a custom event. But be aware: Meta’s platform currently doesn’t allow optimizing for custom events for app campaigns (custom events are mostly for analytics or building custom audiences, not for AEO/VO campaigns). So if you can’t use the official AdImpression or purchase events, you might be stuck. One workaround could be manually calling the Facebook SDK in addition to the MMP (so the MMP does attribution and you still send events via FB SDK for optimization). That can work, but it adds complexity and potential data duplication. The pitfall would be either overspending on an MMP plan you don’t need except for this feature, or implementing a hacky solution that might break. Evaluate the cost-benefit: if Ad ROAS could significantly boost your revenue, it might justify upgrading the MMP plan or spending dev effort to integrate the FB SDK directly just for this event.
• Overestimating Revenue (be realistic): The algorithm can only optimize based on the data you give. If your app’s ad revenue per user is inherently low (say your average user only generates $0.10 total), the campaign might have trouble because even “good” users don’t provide much room for improvement. You should set expectations accordingly. Ad ROAS optimization isn’t magic — it can’t suddenly make users watch 10x more ads unless those users exist. It will find the best available, but if your app monetization is limited, you might see only modest improvement. A pitfall would be expecting huge jumps in ROAS in an app that simply doesn’t have much monetization potential or where ad revenue is capped by design. Make sure your monetization strategy in-app is sound; then the ads campaign can amplify it.
• Ignoring Other Funnel Metrics: It’s easy to focus purely on ROAS once you have this set up, but keep an eye on other metrics like retention, engagement, and even IAP revenue if applicable. You want high-value users, not necessarily just a high immediate ROAS at the cost of long-term growth. For example, an extreme scenario: Meta might find a small cohort of users who watch tons of ads initially (high D7 ROAS) but then churn by day 10 because maybe they were incented or misled. Meanwhile, a broader set of users might have slightly lower D7 ROAS but much higher D30 ROAS because they stick around. Balance short-term and long-term. Use value breakdowns if possible: check ROAS at D1 vs D7 vs D30. Meta’s optimization will primarily focus on whatever window it can observe (likely 7-day or so), so you ensure that aligns with your business goals. If you care about 30-day ROAS, you might need to keep campaigns running longer to see that realized and possibly adjust bids accordingly.
• Attribution Discrepancies and Overlap: When you introduce a new type of conversion event, be mindful of how it overlaps with existing ones. If you run purchase-optimized and ad-optimized campaigns simultaneously, a single user could trigger both a purchase event and multiple ad events. Meta’s attribution system might attribute that user’s install to one campaign and thus that campaign gets all that user’s conversion value (e.g., if a user came from the purchase campaign ad, that campaign won’t “see” the ad impressions in its results, because those events might be mapped to a different campaign’s goal). In other words, whichever campaign gets the install attribution will claim the events it’s optimizing for. It’s usually fine because campaigns typically target different user segments (if set up smartly), but just be careful in analysis: you might see one campaign driving mostly purchasers and another driving ad revenue, and the sum is your app’s total. To avoid confusion, you might temporarily turn off one type to measure the other, or use your MMP to get a holistic view of total revenue per source. A pitfall would be double-counting revenue across campaigns in your head — remember that one user’s both streams won’t be split across two campaigns in reporting.

Thanks for reading Brutally Honest by Matej Lancaric! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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Monitoring and Iteration:
Finally, treat Ad ROAS campaigns as a living project. Monitor them closely, but also give them time to breathe. We’ve seen that once the algorithm “finds its groove,” performance can actually improve over a few weeks as it refines its understanding of valuable users. Don’t panic if week 1 ROAS is not great; look for an upward trajectory. Conversely, if performance saturates, try creative refreshes or expanding audiences — typical campaign optimizations still apply.

Pitfall to avoid: turning off the campaign too quickly. Value-optimized campaigns might start slow. If you kill it before it exits the learning phase or just as it’s gathering steam, you could miss out on the upside. Give it a fair budget and time, as long as you see some positive indicators (like rising conversion value each day, or some high-value users coming in even if average isn’t there yet).

In summary, best practices for Meta’s Ad ROAS include proper setup, ensuring ample data, and maintaining a healthy in-app ad strategy, while pitfalls mostly relate to misconfiguration or misinterpretation of data. If you follow the setup guide (coming next) and keep these tips in mind, you’ll set yourself up for success and avoid common mistakes. This is a new tool, so continuous learning and adjustment on your side will go hand-in-hand with the campaign’s machine learning.

Final Thoughts and common Q&A I get

Final Thoughts: Meta’s introduction of Ad ROAS optimization using AdImpression events is a significant evolution in the performance marketing landscape. It acknowledges that not all app revenue comes from purchases — a huge number of apps rely on advertising dollars. By giving advertisers the ability to optimize for that, Meta has opened the door to more efficient and scalable growth for those apps. Early results are promising, with reports of higher LTV and better retention from campaigns that use this signal​. It does require some upfront work to implement the tracking, but once in place, it largely runs on autopilot, leveraging Meta’s powerful ML to find your most valuable users. As with any new feature, we expect Meta to refine it over time — possibly extending it to iOS in some form, adjusting eligibility criteria, and improving reporting.

For marketers, the key takeaway is: if your app makes meaningful revenue from ads, you should strongly consider testing Ad ROAS campaigns. It’s an opportunity to squeeze more profit out of your ad spend and discover user segments you might be missing with standard optimization. It aligns your campaign optimization with your business’s revenue streams more directly than ever.

To wrap up, let’s address some common questions about Meta’s Ad ROAS and AdImpression optimization:

• Q: Is this feature available for iOS app campaigns or only Android?
  A: As of now, it’s Android-only for direct optimization. Meta has restricted “In-app ad impression” value optimization to Android app install campaigns​. This is largely due to Apple’s privacy rules (ATT) and the reliance on Aggregated Event Measurement for iOS, which doesn’t allow the same real-time, granular value optimization. iOS apps can still send ad revenue data (for example, AppsFlyer will forward it as a purchase event for recording purposes)​, but you cannot create an iOS campaign that specifically optimizes for AdImpression value at this time. We anticipate Meta might find a way in the future (perhaps using SKAN 4’s conversion values or improved AEM) to incorporate ad revenue in iOS, but nothing official yet. For now, focus on Android where the IDFA/GAID is available for attribution. If you do send ad revenue from iOS, it will be visible in aggregated reports (and you might see it under your ROAS if you optimize for purchases), but it’s not individually optimizable.
• Q: What if my app uses both in-app purchases and ad monetization? Should I combine both in one campaign’s optimization, or run separate ones?
  A: The current Meta campaign structure only allows one optimization event per ad set, so you can’t directly optimize for two different events simultaneously in one campaign. You have a couple of options:

1. Run separate campaigns/ad sets — one optimizing for purchase value (fb_mobile_purchase) and another for ad impression value. This is the simpler approach, as discussed. Each will find the best users for that revenue type. You can then allocate budget between them based on which revenue stream you want to grow or which yields better ROAS.
2. Combined value approach (advanced): In theory, you could create a custom event that represents “total value” and send that to Meta. For example, whenever a user either makes a purchase or sees an ad, you log a “TotalValue” event with the dollar amount. Meta would then optimize for total revenue. However, this is not straightforward — Meta doesn’t natively support optimizing on a custom event for app campaigns (only standard events). A hack would be to piggyback on the purchase event: e.g., log a purchase event for ad revenue as well so both IAP and ad revenue appear as “purchase” value to Meta. Some advertisers have done this historically (pre-AdImpression feature) — basically summing all revenue into purchases. This can work for optimization, but it mixes user types and can confuse analytics (you’d see inflated purchase values that actually include ad money). Best practice is to keep them separate for clarity and better targeting. Perhaps run them in parallel and then internally add up the revenues to see total ROAS. If one campaign is vastly outperforming the other, you can adjust budgets accordingly.

• In short, prefer separate optimization for each revenue source. The users who purchase versus the users who watch ads might be different personas; treating them distinctly allows Meta to tailor acquisition for each. Just coordinate so you don’t overspend trying to get one user to do both things — usually a user will strongly do one or the other.
• Q: How do I implement this if I’m not using an MMP?
  A: You can integrate directly with Meta’s tools:
• Using the Meta (Facebook) SDK: Integrate the Facebook SDK for Android (and iOS if needed for other events). After initializing it in your app, whenever an ad impression occurs, call the event logging method. For example, on Android: AppEventsLogger.logEvent("AdImpression", valueToSum = <revenue_value>, params). On iOS, similarly use FBSDKAppEvents.logEvent with the event name @"AdImpression" and supply the value. Ensure you set the currency if not USD (Facebook SDK might use a default or you can add a parameter like { "fb_currency": "EUR" } if needed). The SDK will send these events in the background. You should also log the standard app install and app activate events (which the SDK can do automatically) so that Meta knows about installs and sessions. Once the events are flowing, you connect your app in Events Manager and you should see the AdImpression events there.
• Using the Conversions API (CAPI): If for some reason you can’t use the SDK (say your app is built in an engine where adding the SDK is difficult), you can send events server-to-server. Meta’s Conversions API for app events allows you to send events like “AdImpression” with a user’s ID or advertising ID. You would need the Facebook App ID and an access token, and you’d construct a POST request to Meta’s Graph API endpoint with the event data. (Many server-side platforms or even Tag Manager setups support this.) The key is you need an identifier to tie the event to a user — typically the Advertiser ID (GAID) and the FB App ID are used. Using CAPI is more complex and usually not necessary unless you have a specialized stack, but it’s an option. Meta’s documentation explicitly states that to be eligible for this product, you need to send ad revenue data via either the Facebook SDK or Conversions API​ — so both are supported.
• If you go direct, you won’t have an MMP to do attribution, which means Meta will handle attribution fully on its side (which is fine for optimization). Just remember if you also want a third-party source of truth, you might still want some analytics SDK capturing revenue. But purely for running the campaign, the FB SDK/CAPI approach will suffice. Many developers integrate the FB SDK just for app event optimization even if they use another analytics tool for other things.
• Q: What kind of values should I send with AdImpression events? Do I send lifetime value, per-impression value, or something else?
  A: You should send the per-event revenue — i.e., the revenue associated with that specific ad impression. If an ad network tells you “this impression earned $0.02”, then you log an event with value 0.02. Do not accumulate values and send a lump sum later (Meta will aggregate on their side). Also, do not send something like an eCPM or predicted value — send actual revenue if available. Most mediated ad SDKs now provide impression-level revenue callbacks. Use those. If for some reason you only get aggregate data (e.g., you know a user’s total ad revenue after a day), you could simulate impressions by sending multiple events or one event with the total. But that’s less ideal. The granularity helps Meta learn which moments or which users are driving value. Additionally, include any parameters that might be relevant. Meta’s AdImpression event has an fb_ad_type parameter for instance – if you can, you might pass whether it was a rewarded video vs banner, etc. It’s not strictly required for optimization, but it could be useful for breakdowns or if Meta uses it under the hood. The main thing is the numeric value. In terms of currency, Facebook by default assumes the event value is in the app’s currency (which you set in the developer settings or it might default to USD). If you have multi-currency (like ad network pays in different currencies), convert it server-side or specify currency in the event parameters so Meta doesn’t mix currencies. Typically, keep it consistent – e.g., always send USD values.

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• Q: What if I don’t have an impression-level revenue data from my ad networks?
  A: This is a challenge because the whole feature relies on user-level revenue signals. Many ad mediation platforms (ironSource, MAX, AdMob, etc.) now offer APIs for impression-level revenue. If yours doesn’t, consider switching or see if they provide at least per-session or per-user revenue. In a worst-case scenario, you might estimate. For example, if you know your average revenue per impression is $0.005, you could theoretically send that value for each AdImpression event even if you don’t know the exact. However, this is not ideal: it gives Meta no variation in value (every event looks the same), which fails the “distinct values” criterion​ and won’t help the algorithm differentiate high-value users from low. It might then default to just counting events (which is like optimizing for number of ad impressions regardless of quality). So, the pitfall is if you send identical dummy values, you won’t get the full benefits. It’s highly recommended to integrate a solution that gives actual revenue per impression. Many MMPs have partnerships where the ad network SDK automatically sends that to the MMP SDK (e.g., AppLovin MAX can feed Adjust/AppsFlyer with revenue data). Leverage those. If absolutely impossible, you might hold off on Ad ROAS campaigns until you can improve your data granularity.
• Q: How do I measure success for Ad ROAS campaigns?
  A: The primary success metric is ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) at whatever timeframe matters to you (Day 7, Day 30, etc.). You want to see higher ROAS% compared to your previous baseline or compared to other campaigns. Additionally, you can look at absolute revenue — are you generating more total revenue from the campaign than before? Also consider payback period: if previously it took 60 days to break even on ad spend and now projections show 30 days, that’s a success. Secondary metrics include retention (are you keeping the quality users), ARPU, and CPI/CPE (cost per install or cost per event) to ensure you’re not overspending. If possible, do a controlled experiment: e.g., run a holdout geo or audience with a normal campaign vs. one with Ad ROAS. That isolate the effect. In summary, success = higher revenue for the same or lower spend — which should manifest as improved ROAS and often improved retention. Keep an eye on the quality to ensure you’re not just getting short-term ad watchers who churn (though the early evidence suggests quality is good when optimizing for value).
• Q: Could this optimization lead to acquiring “clicky” users who might click ads aggressively (maybe even fraudulently) and harm advertiser partners?
  A: It’s a thoughtful question — if we optimize for ad revenue, could we inadvertently target users who click ads in the app just for the sake of it (like click farms or reward abuse)? Meta’s algorithm generally optimizes for legitimate value, and it’s in Meta’s interest as well that those ad impressions are genuine (since Facebook also cares about the advertiser experience in Audience Network or other networks). If your app is well-monitored for ad fraud (e.g., you’re not showing ads in a way that encourages accidental clicks), this shouldn’t be a big issue. The optimization is for impressions (views) and the revenue from them, not specifically clicks. In many cases, video ads give revenue on completion, not necessarily click, so the algorithm likely chases users who complete ads. Those tend to be real users enjoying rewarded videos for instance. However, remain vigilant: if you notice strange patterns (like a cohort of users with abnormally high ad click rates), ensure your app’s anti-fraud measures are in place. You don’t want to attract bots or exploiters. This is more of an app quality concern than the Meta campaign itself, but worth keeping an eye on. In legit scenarios, Meta will find engaged users, not fraudsters — especially because the ad revenue feedback is something you control and presumably you’re not crediting fake revenue.
• Q: Any insight on how Meta’s algorithm adapts with this signal?
  A: While Meta doesn’t publish details of its algorithms, we can infer that it uses similar logic as with value optimization for purchases. It will use historical data to predict a user’s likelihood of generating a certain amount of ad revenue (maybe using lookalike modeling, device data, etc.). It likely updates prediction models continuously as new AdImpression events come in. The more data you feed (especially diverse data: different user behaviors, values, etc.), the better it can distinguish and predict. Over time, Meta’s model might even learn seasonal or contextual patterns (maybe users acquired in the morning produce more ad revenue than those at night — it could adjust delivery accordingly). It’s quite complex, but the key is that it’s leveraging all available data points to maximize a long-term value metric rather than a binary install or event. Advertisers should note that such campaigns might favor quality over quantity — fewer installs but each worth more. This can be a shift in mindset if you’re used to judging success by install volume. Trust the ROAS and total revenue more than CPI or install counts in this context.

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With these questions addressed, we conclude our deep dive. Meta’s Ad ROAS with AdImpression optimization is a promising tool for performance marketers, offering a new avenue to improve campaign profitability and scale. By carefully implementing the technical setup and following best practices, you can leverage this feature to acquire the right users for your ad-monetized apps. It marries the world of user acquisition with monetization in a way we haven’t had before on Meta’s platform. As always, continuous testing and learning will help you refine your approach. Good luck, and may your ROAS be ever-increasing!

Platform-Specific Implementation Guides (Step-by-Step)

Now that we’ve discussed the concepts and benefits, let’s get into the technical how-to. Below are step-by-step setup guides for implementing Meta Ad ROAS optimization using AdImpression events on various platforms and integrations. We’ll cover the Meta SDK (for Android & iOS) and popular Mobile Measurement Partners: AppsFlyer, Adjust, and Singular. Each section will ensure you know how to send the AdImpression event properly and configure the systems to start optimizing for ad revenue.

Meta SDK (Android & iOS) Integration Guide

If you choose to integrate directly with Meta’s own SDK (Facebook SDK) for app events, follow these steps:

1. Add the Facebook SDK to your app: If not already installed, add the Meta (Facebook) App Events SDK to your project. For Android, this typically means adding the Facebook SDK via Gradle (implementation 'com.facebook.android:facebook-core:[latest-version]') and initializing the SDK in your Application class. For iOS, use CocoaPods or SPM to add FBSDKCoreKit (which contains FBSDKAppEvents). Initialize it in your App Delegate (ApplicationDelegate.initializeSDK(...)). Ensure you have a valid Facebook App ID for your app and configure the Info.plist (iOS) or AndroidManifest with that App ID and required metadata. This Facebook App ID links your app to the Events Manager on Meta’s side.
2. Enable automatic events (optional): The FB SDK can automatically log installs (mobile_app_install) and app opens (fb_mobile_activate_app). It’s good to have these, as they’re needed for baseline tracking. Follow Meta’s docs to enable automatic event logging. This ensures Meta knows when an install happens and can attribute events properly. On iOS 14+, you should also handle the ATT prompt; if the user opts out, the SDK will still log events but without device ID (they’ll go into aggregated measurement).
3. Implement AdImpression event logging in your code: Whenever an ad is shown in your app, log an AdImpression event. You’ll need to hook into your ad SDK’s callback. For example, if using Google AdMob, you can use the PaidEvent (for AdMob’s SDK which provides earnings per impression). If using ironSource or others, they have similar delegates for impression data. In that callback, call the Facebook SDK’s log event function:

• Android (Java/Kotlin):

java

• CopyEdit
• AppEventsLogger logger = AppEventsLogger.newLogger(context); Bundle params = new Bundle(); params.putString("fb_ad_network", "AdMob"); // example parameter, optional params.putString("fb_ad_plcement", adUnitId); // you can pass placement id or ad format // ... (Meta has predefined parameter keys like fb_ad_type if you know it) logger.logEvent("AdImpression", revenueValue, params);
• Here, revenueValue is a double or BigDecimal representing the money earned from that impression (e.g., 0.02 for 2 cents). The event name must be exactly "AdImpression" (case-sensitive). The SDK will automatically treat this as a standard event. The valueToSum in this call is what Meta uses as the conversion value​. Additional params are optional but can include info like ad type, placement, etc., using Meta’s recommended keys (e.g., "fb_ad_type" could be "rewarded_video").
• iOS (Objective-C/Swift):
  In Swift (using FBSDKCoreKit):

swift

• CopyEdit
• let params: [AppEvents.ParameterName: Any] = [ .init("fb_ad_network"): "AdMob", .init("fb_ad_placement"): adUnitID ] AppEvents.shared.logEvent(AppEvents.Name("AdImpression"), valueToSum: revenueValue, parameters: params)
• This does similar: logs an event named “AdImpression” with the revenue value. If you’re using Objective-C, you’d use [FBSDKAppEvents logEvent:@"AdImpression" valueToSum:revenue parameters:params]. Ensure you import the FBSDKCoreKit and have the necessary using statements.
• Unity or other engines: If using Unity, Meta has a Unity SDK plugin. You’d call FB.LogAppEvent("AdImpression", valueToSum, parameters) accordingly. Note that in some versions of the Unity SDK, not all event constants were exposed, so you might just use the string name. According to Meta, use the exact string "AdImpression" (older documentation might not list it, but it is supported)​

1. Verify events in Meta Events Manager: After integrating, run the app and trigger a few test ad impressions (you can use test ads from networks to do this). Then go to the Facebook Events Manager for your app (in your Meta Business Suite) and verify that you see the “AdImpression” events coming in. They should show a count and the aggregated value. You can use the Event Debugging tool to watch real-time events from a test device. If they don’t appear, troubleshoot the integration (check the SDK initialization, logcat or Xcode log for any errors, ensure the device has internet, etc.). Common issues might be missing permissions or the app not being in development mode (for testing, you might need to add your Facebook test user account as a tester for the app).
2. Implement on both Android and iOS (with limitations): You can put this code in both your Android and iOS builds. On Android, events will be used for optimization. On iOS, you won’t directly optimize on them now, but it’s still good to send them for record-keeping or if Meta later uses them in aggregated form. Just be mindful that on iOS 14+ if user opts-out, events go into SKAdNetwork’s postbacks or AEM. You may consider using the SKAdNetwork conversion value for ad revenue, but that’s advanced and beyond our scope. For now, sending them via FB SDK on iOS will at least log them under “fb_mobile_purchase” (since Meta maps AdImpression to purchase for iOS as a workaround​).
3. Campaign setup in Ads Manager: With the SDK logging events, ensure your Facebook app is linked to your ad account (usually done by adding the app in Events Manager and having the same Business Manager own it). When creating a campaign, choose App Promotion (App Installs) as the objective. In the Ad Set, set Optimization & Delivery to “Value” (or “Maximize Value”). Then in the Conversion Event dropdown, look for In-app ad impression. Select it. (If you don’t see it, or it’s greyed out, revisit the earlier section on eligibility — you might need to run some basic campaigns first to get events flowing​) Complete the campaign setup (targeting, creatives, budget, etc.) and launch it.
4. Post-launch monitoring: After launching, keep monitoring in Events Manager to ensure events continue to flow as volume increases. Also check Ads Manager for the “Results” column showing “In-App Ad Impressions (Value)” and related ROAS metrics. It may take some time for data to accumulate. If you see installs but no “value” yet, it might be that new users haven’t generated an ad impression yet — which can be normal if there’s a delay before a user sees an ad. Over a day or two, those should start coming in. If not, perhaps there’s an issue in the code where not all ad impressions are being captured (make sure you integrated callbacks for every ad format in use).

By following these steps, you will have implemented the AdImpression event via the Meta SDK, enabling Meta to directly receive and optimize on your in-app ad revenue signals.

Note: The Facebook SDK approach means Meta has all the data directly. If you are also using an MMP, you’ll essentially have two parallel event reporting channels (which is okay). Just be careful not to double count if you look at analytics — MMP might show one set of numbers and FB another. For campaign optimization though, Meta will use what its SDK sends. Some advertisers do both: they use MMP for attribution and the FB SDK for real-time events to power optimization (especially on iOS because of SKAdNetwork, but that’s another story).

AppsFlyer Integration Guide

AppsFlyer is a popular MMP that can forward in-app events (including ad revenue events) to Meta. Here’s how to set up Ad ROAS using AppsFlyer:

1. Integrate AppsFlyer SDK and Ad Revenue APIs: Make sure your app is running the latest AppsFlyer SDK (Android and iOS). To capture ad revenue, AppsFlyer offers a feature called Advanced Ad Revenue (ROI360). This typically involves either integrating adapters for each ad network or using AppsFlyer’s unified API to log ad revenue. For example, AppsFlyer’s SDK has a method AppsFlyerLib.logAdRevenue(adNetwork, payload) that you call when an impression happens. Many ad networks (ironSource, AppLovin MAX, AdMob) have built-in support where their SDKs can directly pass revenue info to AppsFlyer’s SDK if configured. Refer to AppsFlyer’s docs on Impression-level Ad Revenue integration and ensure your networks are supported. If you do not have the ROI360 plan, you might not have the af_ad_revenue event by default, but you can still manually log a custom event for ad revenue (it just won’t be labeled af_ad_revenue – see step 3 note).
2. Enable sending ad revenue events to Meta: In the AppsFlyer dashboard, go to Configuration > Integrated Partners and select Facebook (Meta). There will be an In-App Events mapping section. Turn on Sending Events if it’s off. You’ll see a list of your AppsFlyer events on the left and a dropdown to map to Meta events on the right. Locate af_ad_revenue in the list of your events (AppsFlyer populates standard events after they occur at least once; if you haven’t generated one yet, you may need to add it manually in the mapping interface by typing it). Map af_ad_revenue to AdImpression for Android​. For iOS, since Meta doesn’t accept AdImpression events from iOS yet, AppsFlyer’s recommendation is to map af_ad_revenue to fb_mobile_purchase on iOS​. AppsFlyer actually shows this in their interface: they treat AdImpression as Android-only and use purchase for iOS as a fallback. This way, your iOS ad revenue will be sent to Meta as if it were purchase revenue (so you’ll see it in aggregated values, though you can’t optimize on it separately).
3. Configure ROI360 (if applicable): AppsFlyer’s af_ad_revenue event is part of their ROI360 suite​. Ensure your account has this enabled (it usually requires a contract add-on). If you don’t have it, you can alternatively log a custom event for ad revenue (say you call it “ad_revenue”) and map that to AdImpression. Important: The AppsFlyer documentation notes that non-ROI360 customers can still send ad revenue using other event names​. So you could do: log an event “my_ad_revenue” with a parameter af_revenue, then in the mapping map that custom event to AdImpression (for Android). The key is making sure the value goes through (af_revenue parameter will map to Meta’s valueToSum as long as you map the event, either as predefined or custom). However, if possible, use the standardized af_ad_revenue because it’s automatically formatted and recognized in their system.
4. Include revenue and details in the event: When logging ad revenue events via AppsFlyer SDK, include the monetary value. AppsFlyer will typically use af_revenue as the parameter for the amount (and af_currency for currency). It automatically maps af_revenue to Meta’s _valueToSum​. This means when AppsFlyer sends the postback to Meta, Meta receives an event “AdImpression” with value = that af_revenue. So ensure you’re calling the logging method with the value. For example, in Android if using the manual method:

java

1. CopyEdit
2. JSONObject impressionData = new JSONObject(); impressionData.put("ad_network", "AdMob"); impressionData.put("af_revenue", 0.02); impressionData.put("af_currency", "USD"); AppsFlyerLib.getInstance().logEvent(context, "af_ad_revenue", impressionData);
3. If using their provided integrations, this might be done for you. On iOS, similarly use [AppsFlyerLib logEvent:@"af_ad_revenue" withValues:payload]. Confirm in AppsFlyer’s Logs that the events are coming in with revenue.
4. Test and verify: As with the SDK, trigger a test ad impression. Then in AppsFlyer’s dashboard, go to Logs or Analytics > Events to see if an af_ad_revenue event was recorded for your test device. Also check the Partners > Meta > Test Postbacks (AppsFlyer sometimes has a testing tool) or just wait a short while and check Meta’s Events Manager. If mapping is correct, Meta’s Events Manager should show incoming AdImpression events (if your test was on Android). If on iOS, they would show as purchases. The AppsFlyer “Integration Test” feature might let you send a sample event to Meta to ensure it arrives.
5. Finalize Meta partner setup in AppsFlyer: In the Facebook integration settings on AppsFlyer, ensure you have your Facebook App ID entered. Also, set the toggle for sending event values. AppsFlyer allows you to choose to send all events, or only attributed events, etc. For maximizing data to Meta, you might send events from all media sources (so Meta can even learn from organic or other sources). But by default, AppsFlyer will send attributed events to the source that owns them. (Check the setting “for events coming from All media sources including organic” when mapping — usually you want that so that even organic events are sent, which can help Meta’s modeling​) However, note that Meta’s policy might only use attributed ones for optimization — still, sharing more data likely doesn’t hurt. The mapping interface typically has a column “for users from” — you can select “All media sources, including organic” for the ad revenue event mapping, to maximize data sent.
6. Launch the campaign on Meta: Once AppsFlyer is forwarding events, set up your Android campaign in Meta Ads Manager as described: choose value optimization and “In-app ad impression” as the event. AppsFlyer will handle sending conversions to Meta. You might not see the values immediately in Ads Manager until actual attributed installs start generating them. But behind the scenes, as long as AppsFlyer is integrated, everything is automated. Keep the AppsFlyer SDK running in production so that every user’s ad impressions are tracked and sent.
7. Monitor performance and event delivery: Check AppsFlyer’s Dashboard > ROI Reports (if you have ROI360) to see the ROI that includes ad revenue. Check that the number of AdImpression events in Meta roughly matches what AppsFlyer shows as sent. Minor discrepancies can occur, but large gaps might indicate some postbacks not going through. Also watch for any rate limit messages — though unlikely at typical volumes, ensure that if your app generates tons of events, AppsFlyer isn’t throttling (they have high limits, but just be aware).

By following these steps, you effectively use AppsFlyer as the bridge: your app feeds ad revenue to AppsFlyer, and AppsFlyer feeds it to Meta (with the correct AdImpression label on Android). The benefit is you also keep all your attribution and analytics consolidated in AppsFlyer, and you don’t need to maintain separate code for Meta’s SDK events. AppsFlyer’s documentation confirms that this setup enables Meta to optimize based on ad revenue​, as long as the mapping is correct and your account is eligible.

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Additional AppsFlyer Tips/Pitfalls:

• Make sure the time zone and currency settings in AppsFlyer and Facebook match or are accounted for. AppsFlyer will send a currency code with each event; Meta will convert it to your ad account currency if needed.
• If you’re testing on a non-ROI360 plan, you might need to use a custom event name. Ensure to map that to a Custom event in AppsFlyer’s Meta mapping with “Value” sending. It’s possible to map a custom AppsFlyer event to a Meta custom event, but since Meta doesn’t optimize for custom events, you should map it to AdImpression if possible (some have reported that even without ROI360 you can manually type “AdImpression” as the partner event — effectively doing the same mapping).
• AppsFlyer’s event mapping interface also allows sending event values or not. Obviously for ROAS you need to send value, so check that “Value & Revenue” (or equivalent) is toggled on for that event mapping. This ensures the af_revenue gets included in the postback. If you only send the event without value, Meta would see conversion count but zero value – not useful for value optimization.

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Adjust Integration Guide

Adjust offers a robust solution for tracking ad revenue and forwarding it to partners. Here’s how to set up Meta Ad ROAS using Adjust:

1. Integrate Adjust SDK and Ad Revenue tracking: Include the Adjust SDK in your app (Android & iOS). To capture ad revenue at the user level, Adjust provides an Ad Revenue tracking feature. Adjust supports integration with various ad networks and mediation platforms (e.g., you can integrate Adjust’s SDK to receive callbacks from ironSource, AppLovin MAX, AdMob via adapters, or use Adjust’s server-to-server for ad revenue). One common method is Adjust’s trackAdRevenue method, where you specify the source (like Adjust’s predefined constants for sources) and a JSON payload containing revenue info. For example, Adjust.trackAdRevenue(AdjustConfig.AD_REVENUE_ADMOB, revenueJson) for each impression. Ensure you implement these calls in the appropriate callbacks of your ad SDKs. Adjust also has partnerships where certain SDKs automatically feed data to Adjust if configured. Consult Adjust’s documentation for Ad Revenue to set this up. This typically requires you have credentials or settings from your ad mediation to pass to Adjust (for impression-level data). It might be technical, but once done, Adjust will receive an “ad_revenue” event for each impression.
2. Configure Adjust to forward data to Meta: In the Adjust Dashboard, navigate to your app settings and find the Partner Integrations or Data Sharing section for Facebook (Meta). Adjust has a specific integration page for Facebook. There you need to do a few things:

• Enter your Facebook App ID (so Adjust knows where to send events)​.
• If applicable, enter the Facebook Install Referrer Decryption Key (for Android) — this is for more accurate install attribution on Android, not directly related to ad revenue, but recommended​.
• Look for the Data Sharing Options: Adjust provides checkboxes such as “Send ad revenue data”. Specifically, check “Ad revenue (from ad views)” to enable sending those events​. By default, if you check this without further options, Adjust would forward ad revenue events as purchase events (fb_mobile_purchase) to Meta with the revenue value. However, since late 2024, Adjust introduced an additional setting to use AdImpression mapping.
• Check “Enable AdImpression Mapping (Android only)”. This is the crucial step for Ad ROAS. When you check this, Adjust will map the ad revenue events to Meta’s AdImpression event instead of fb_mobile_purchase for Android​. This effectively tells Meta “these events are ad impressions with value” and allows the AdImpression optimization. (Under the hood, if unchecked, Adjust would send them as purchase events named fb_mobile_purchase, which would still show revenue but not trigger the new optimization goal.)
• Ensure any other relevant options are set: e.g., “Send revenue value” (Adjust usually always sends value with revenue events). Also, you might have the choice to send data for all attributions or just meta attributions. Adjust by default sends all data (which can be beneficial)​, but you can configure if needed.

1. Eligibility and prerequisites: Adjust mentions that the AdImpression mapping feature is available for Android apps and requires that Meta has enabled the “maximize in-app ad revenue” for your account. If the toggle is greyed out in Adjust’s UI, it might mean your Adjust account needs a certain package (they mention “Adjust Growth Solution” in some communications, possibly required for ad revenue forwarding). Also, ensure you are on an updated SDK version that supports this. As of Adjust SDK 4.33.0+ (for example), ad revenue tracking and new mapping should be supported, but check release notes.
2. Implement and send ad revenue events: With the settings in place, run your app and trigger some ad impressions. Adjust’s SDK will collect those (if properly integrated). You can verify in Adjust’s dashboard under Statistics > Event Types that ad revenue events are recorded. Adjust typically labels them under an event token internally (since Adjust events are often tokenized). There might not be a human-readable name for the ad revenue event in the dashboard, but you will see the revenue in the aggregate stats. More directly, use Adjust’s test tools: Adjust has a Testing Console where you can simulate an ad revenue event, or use the SDK test mode to print logs. Ensure that these events are indeed being sent out to partners. If your device is set as a debug device in Adjust, you might see logs like “Sending ad_revenue to partner Facebook” or similar.
3. Confirm events on Meta side: Since Adjust sends events in real-time to partners, after a test impression, check Meta’s Events Manager. You should see an “AdImpression” event come in (for Android tests). If something is off, you might instead see a fb_mobile_purchase event. That indicates the mapping toggle might not be on or working. Double-check the “Enable AdImpression Mapping” box​. (Remember, iOS events will still go as purchases due to Meta limitations, so focus on Android for this verification.)
4. Launch the campaign: In Meta Ads Manager, set up your app campaign for Android with the optimization event “In-app ad impression”. Since Adjust is attributing installs and sending events, use App Events optimization and select the AdImpression event. If your account is eligible and Adjust has started sending data, it should be selectable. If you literally just started sending, you might need to wait until Meta registers a few (the threshold is at least 15 events historically). Adjust notes that if the option is visible but greyed out, you need to send more events or meet criteria​. So if greyed out, ensure you generate enough dummy data or run a short pilot campaign to get those 15+ events in.
5. Monitor in Adjust and Meta: Once live, you can use Adjust to monitor raw data. Adjust can show you each attributed event. In Adjust’s Raw Data exports (or callbacks), an ad revenue event will have a certain event ID and revenue. Verify that those events show attribution to the correct campaigns. Additionally, check your Meta Ads Manager to see if it’s receiving the values. Ideally, do a small spend and then compare: does Meta show, say, $5 of conversion value and Adjust shows $5 of ad revenue for that campaign? They should align closely. Minor timing differences aside, it’s a good consistency check.
6. Adjust features for troubleshooting: Adjust provides some useful tools. The Activity Log can show partner linking status. Also, if Meta provided any feedback (like if events were rejected), Adjust might show an error. Ensure that the Facebook partner is Activated in Adjust (usually by saving the integration settings it becomes active). If you have any other custom mappings (like if you also send purchase events), make sure those are mapped properly too (they can coexist). Adjust by default will send any event that has revenue either as purchase or AdImpression depending on that toggle. If you also have in-app purchase events, those can still be sent as fb_mobile_purchase concurrently. That’s fine — Meta will get both types of events from Adjust.

By using Adjust, you benefit from its accurate attribution and perhaps less engineering effort on your side (especially if you already use Adjust for other campaigns). Adjust handles all the heavy lifting of event de-duplication and sending. One advantage Adjust has is the ability to send all ad revenue events, even those not attributed to Meta, to Meta (if you opt to share all data)​. This means Meta’s ML could potentially learn even from organic users’ behavior. However, Meta officially optimizes on attributed events. Still, more data presumably doesn’t hurt.

Note: Adjust’s documentation emphasizes checking eligibility in Ads Manager (like ensuring the option appears) and highlights that the feature is in limited availability​. If your account doesn’t show it at all, you might need to contact your Meta rep or wait for the rollout. As of late 2024 it’s rolling out widely, so by 2025 most accounts should have it.

Also, Adjust automatically sends the revenue value (with currency). They mentioned that by default previously they’d send it under fb_mobile_purchase (with valueToSum). Now with the new mapping, they send it under AdImpression. Meta knows to treat that as ad revenue. Keep an eye on Adjust’s updates – as this is new, they might refine the integration. For example, if Meta changes criteria or adds iOS support down the line, Adjust would update their interface accordingly.

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Singular Integration Guide

Singular is another MMP that can send user-level ad revenue to Meta. The setup is somewhat similar to others:

1. Integrate Singular SDK and enable Ad Revenue tracking: Make sure you have the Singular SDK integrated for your apps. To capture ad revenue, Singular provides a feature often called Ad Monetization Revenue tracking. Singular can ingest data via its SDK from mediation partners or via S2S. For instance, if using IronSource, you can configure IronSource to send impressions to Singular. Or you can use Singular’s API calls to record ad revenue events. Singular’s SDK might automatically log an event like __ADMON_USER_LEVEL_REVENUE__ for each impression if set up. The key is to have per-impression or at least per-user ad revenue being tracked by Singular. Check Singular’s docs on “Ad Revenue Attribution” – typically you have to include the network SDKs and add some lines of code to inform Singular of ad revenue (like their Ad Monetization API which might take ad unit, revenue, currency, etc.).
2. Configure Facebook (Meta) as a partner in Singular: In Singular’s dashboard, go to Partners > Facebook Ads configuration. Make sure your Facebook App ID is linked (you’ll input the FB App ID in the settings)​. Singular will use this to send events to the correct app. Also ensure the basic integration is toggled on (so installs and sessions are being sent to FB — singular does this automatically for mobile_app_install and fb_mobile_activate_app when configured​).
3. Map the Ad Revenue event to AdImpression: Under the Facebook partner configuration in Singular, find the Event Postbacks section (sometimes just labeled as “Events to send”). Here you can add mappings. Singular often lists events by the SDK event name. The standard one for ad revenue is __ADMON_USER_LEVEL_REVENUE__ (that’s a default event name used internally for ad monetization). Map this event to Meta’s AdImpression event​. There should be a dropdown of Meta’s predefined events – select “AdImpression”. Also, check the box or option that says “Include Revenue Value” (Singular’s UI typically has a checkbox to include the revenue amount when sending). This ensures that the monetary value captured with that event is forwarded to Meta. Additionally, make sure the currency is handled (Singular will likely send the currency code if it knows it; ensure your Singular event has currency info – usually it will, since when you integrated ad revenue, you would specify currency or it defaults to USD).
4. If you have separate events for IAP (like iap), you can map those to fb_mobile_purchase as usual​. But our focus is the ad revenue event to AdImpression mapping. Save the configuration.
5. Verify event mapping: Singular, once configured, will send a test (some platforms do a test ping on save). To be sure it works, generate a test ad impression in your app. Then in Singular, check the Live Logs or Event Tracker if available, to see that the event was received. Next, go to Meta’s Events Manager to see if an AdImpression event shows up. If you don’t see it, you may want to use Singular’s testing tools. They might have an option “Send test postback” for partner integration. If not, you can contact Singular support or double-check the mapping format. It might also require that an install from a Facebook campaign exists; sometimes partner postbacks only fire for attributed users. If you want to test end-to-end, you might need to run a Facebook ad to your device, install via that ad (so that install is attributed to FB via Singular), and then generate an ad impression. Then Singular will send the AdImpression postback to Facebook with attribution info. This is a heavy test, but it confirms everything. Alternatively, ensure the mapping is correct and trust that when a real campaign runs, it will work.
6. Check eligibility and Singular’s notes: Singular’s documentation (as of early 2025) acknowledges that you can send ad revenue to partners to run Ad ROAS campaigns​. They even list which networks accept ad revenue postbacks (they listed Unity, ironSource, etc.; Meta likely is now one of them). Singular’s specific instructions for Meta were: select ADMON_USER_LEVEL_REVENUE and map to AdImpression, including revenue. If there are any special conditions (like needing to be whitelisted), Singular would likely mention it. Make sure your Singular account manager has enabled Ad Revenue Attribution for you, as that can be an add-on.
7. Launch Meta campaign: Set up the Meta campaign for Android as described (Maximize Value, event = In-app ad impression). Because Singular is an MMP, Meta will still attribute installs through Singular (assuming you’ve set them up as the attribution partner). But for optimization, Meta will use the events you send. As long as those events come with attribution, it will optimize. Typically, MMP postbacks for events include info like the campaign ID, etc., so Meta knows which campaign the event is tied to (or they just trust the MMP to only send for attributed users). Singular likely only sends the AdImpression events for users attributed to Facebook campaigns (unless configured otherwise). So you might want to ensure you send for all sources if that helps (there may be a toggle like “Send events for attributed users only” — if so, consider sending for all so even organic ones go, but it’s up to you).
8. Monitor via Singular and Meta: Singular will be your source of truth for total revenue. Compare that with Meta’s reported revenue. They should be close. If there’s a discrepancy, one possible cause is that Singular might send only events for click-through attributions, not view-through (depending on settings). If a user was view-through attributed, make sure you enabled View-through attribution for Facebook in Singular and sending those events as well​. Also, check if re-engagements are being tracked; usually for user acquisition, you just focus on installs.
9. In Ads Manager, ensure you see conversion values populating. If not, double-check that events are indeed being sent. Possibly reach out to Singular if something seems off — since this Meta integration is relatively new, their support might provide guidance if needed.
10. Adjust as needed: If you see that events aren’t being counted, one trick: you might temporarily map ADMON_USER_LEVEL_REVENUE to fb_mobile_purchase as well (for iOS or just for testing) to see if they show up as purchase events. But since we want AdImpression, stick to that for Android.

By completing these steps, you have effectively enabled Meta to optimize based on ad revenue data via Singular. The heavy lifting (event aggregation from different ad sources) is handled by Singular, and you just configure the pipeline to Meta. One benefit here: if you’re using Singular for many networks, you get a unified view of ad revenue across them, and all that is sent to Meta as one event type. This simplifies the Meta side — you don’t need to worry which network the revenue came from; Meta just sees “this user generated X revenue.”

Thanks for reading Brutally Honest by Matej Lancaric! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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Singular-specific notes:

• Singular’s event name __ADMON_USER_LEVEL_REVENUE__ is a special internal event that automatically collects all ad revenue from various sources. Make sure you’re not also manually logging separate events for each network, or if you are, don’t double map them. Usually, you’d just use the one unified event.
• Ensure your Partner Configuration in Singular for Facebook has the “Include revenue” toggled. According to their doc snippet, it says to check “Include Revenue Value” when mapping to AdImpression​. Missing that would result in sending the event without a value.
• If your app also has IAP, you might have mapped purchase events too (like they suggested mapping iap to purchase)​. That’s fine. Meta can receive both purchase and AdImpression events from Singular. But your campaign will be optimizing for one. The other event might just show up in analytics. It won’t confuse the optimization because the ad set is locked to one type of event for optimization.

Now that we have covered all major platforms:

Each of these integration methods — Meta SDK, AppsFlyer, Adjust, Singular — achieves the same end goal: Meta receives AdImpression events with revenue from your app, enabling Ad ROAS optimization. Choose the one that fits your tech stack best. If you already use an MMP, leverage it; if not, the Meta SDK is perfectly viable.

The article breaks down the game-changing lessons in User Acquisition (UA) and creative strategies for mobile marketing in 2024.

It’s packed with insights you can’t afford to miss, from diversifying UA channels and leveraging AI-driven optimization to mastering creative production and adapting to shifting platforms. It highlights how detailed creative briefs, effective communication, and experimental tools like TikTok Creative Challenges helped marketers stay ahead in a rapidly changing post-IDFA world.

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As we gear up for 2025, the stakes are higher than ever. Success lies in embracing AI-generated UGC, incentivized ads, and playables to drive engagement, slash CPIs, and scale effectively.

This guide provides the playbook for dominance, with actionable steps for refining your strategies, optimizing your teams, and staying ahead of the competition.

Don’t fall behind — future-proof your UA strategy now! Dive into this must-read guide and equip yourself with the tools and tactics to crush it in 2025!

Sit back, relax, grab a Christmas Margarita or eggnog, and enjoy the learnings of 2024 with my lovely comments!

How to decrease CPIs by 40% & find 3+ winners in 1h of creative production?

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But where to start? There were so many important things that worked so well. I already shared a bunch of them in my previous tips, so this time I will mention those that made the most impact on my UA ops! It’s quite a lot of learnings; definitely get that eggnog. Here we go:

Creative Trends & inspiration

Where to get creative inspiration? That is always the hard question. Maybe the hardest one! Let’s dig a little bit deeper: There are companies/games you need to follow to uncover the recent creative trends. Continue reading!

Starting with the must-do!

Always check your competitors. Use the FB Ads library, TikTok Ad library, and Google Ads transparency center, and Adscan.ai to spy on your competitors and see which creative is spending the most in Europe (the most-spending creative is most likely their best-performing creative at that moment).

Take the inspiration and tailor the creative to your gameplay.

I usually use a combination of the above-mentioned free tools and Sensor Tower — a quite good combination! See the top creatives from the last 30 days; they give you super interesting insights. Or just check out one of our podcasts. I do it for you each month!

Games you need to follow:

• Township
• Royal Match
• Coin master (recent Beckham creative is awesome)
• Hero wars
• Pizza Ready / Outlet Rush
• Whiteout Survival
• My Perfect Hotel
• Gold & Goblins

Creative Winners: Where to get inspiration?

Where to get creative inspiration? That is always the hard question. Maybe the hardest one! Let’s dig a little bit deeper: There are companies/games you need to follow to uncover the recent creative trends. Continue reading!

Read full story

Ugly Ads FTW

• Go lo-fi for greater authenticity (avoid polished videos) = shit works! There is already a movement to use ugly ads outside of gaming industry.

This refers to compiling and editing your video with in-app features (i.e. leveraging filters, sound effects, text layers, etc.)

• Feature people (creators, players, you, your wife, your dog, your kids… No, exclude kids)
• Leverage sound for extra impact (“TikTok” AI voice is a must!)

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Creative Quantity & Diversity

• Running a large number of creative assets allows for better asset selection optimization. Spread your creatives across multiple ad groups, with at least 3–5 creatives per group. This helps you experiment and test while allowing the system to learn what works best for you.
• Creative refresh frequency is the #1 factor determining an ad group’s lifespan. Regularly refreshing and uploading new assets to your campaign works better than initially putting out too many creatives. Once a week was usually my frequency, but I moved to 2 to 3 times per week on Facebook and TikTok.
• Stay Ahead in UA for 2024: My Top 43 Tips Revealed
• Read full story

My prediction for 2025: Creative quantity will win over quality. It’s going to be a volume play!

Captions / Subtitles

Captions have proven to be one of the most useful additions to videos, as they help provide supporting details or context while ensuring a correct understanding of the audio.

Adding captions can positively boost performance in terms of view time, brand affinity, likability, recall, and uniqueness.

Text / Text Overlay

Text overlay is another prominent way to emphasize key messages. Text boxes are used in 86% of all ads.

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This can be a highly effective way to visually engage and spark interest in potential customers, as it results in a significant 64% increase in conversion rate. I also found out, that text overlay in the thumbnail makes a big difference in organic uplift and additional views too”!

Stickers / Graphics

Animation-style stickers make your creative ads more attractive and dynamic. These eye-catching add-ons can help you attract audiences and encourage them to keep watching your ads.

They can also help you emphasize key information that you want your audiences to remember, such as selling points.

Use whatever makes 0 sense and catches attention.*

* This tip is brought to you by a dancing unicorn

two & a half gamers bringing you the latest creative trends every month. Check our YouTube playlist here.

But there was a different trend I had in mind that I have been seeing for some time.

This was exactly it! This “wall of text” trend is all over the app business. Here is an excerpt from the guide I posted recently:

Let’s fire up canva.com and start working on the real video (it’s still Saturday, and I don’t want to bother anyone else; I am around 15 minutes into this creative production!).

My daughter takes a short lunch nap, so I have about 45 more minutes until she wakes up.

I have a few static images that performed well on Facebook; I have this grim reaper video from Adobe Stock. I will need a Halloween spooky sound, but that’s easy peasy with Envato.

Here we go:

1–55_01.mp3

Perfect! Adding a nice vibe.

Final video

As I said, I played around with some static images and videos. I created five different variations and added all of them to the Facebook user Acquisition campaign mix.

This is what you get in this AI UGC video guide:

• A practical guide to creating AI-powered UGC videos for mobile game marketing, completed in under 1 hour
• Leveraged stock footage, Canva, and AI UGC tools like poolday.ai to create 15 videos (including 9 AI UGC)

Combined trending “wall of text” style with spooky-themed content for a Pocket Necromancer and found 3+ winners

• The total production cost is approximately $7 per AI UGC video
• Multiple video variations were tested in Facebook UA campaigns, with V1 and V5 showing immediate budget spend (40% CPI decrease with triple ROAS)
• AI UGC videos demonstrated better conversion rates than traditional UGC content
• Stay Ahead in UA for 2024: My Top 43 Tips Revealed
• Read full story

Frustrated by rising CPIs, I decided to take action. While I have 10 talented motion designers on my creative team, I wanted to experiment in this AI era. I love trying new things and still enjoy getting my hands dirty on the UA side, so why not dive into the creative side, too?

How to decrease CPIs by 40% & find 3+ winners in 1h of creative production?

This is what you get in this AI UGC video guide:

Read full story

Started testing a new batch of UGC videos right away.

Takeaways & numbers

Used these tools:

• Midjourney (free version), Envato ($16,50 per month), Canva with animate image plugin ($13,90 per month)
• Adobe stock videos (Free trial → 3 videos for free, $69 per month after)
• Poolday.ai (Free trial)

Made 15 videos in total (9 AI UGC), finished before my daughter woke up.

TOTAL TIME: 54 minutes

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Unlocking TikTok with TikTok Creative Challenge. How Does It Work?

The TikTok Creative Challenge is a performance-driven advertising feature where brands collaborate with creators to promote products or services through unique, engaging content — unlocking TikTok. Seems like a big challenge. Oh wait, have you said challenge? Do you mean TikTok Creative Challenge (TTCC)? Badumtss! Jokes aside. You are missing out heavily if you are not running TTCC videos.

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TikTok is transforming how people discover new ideas and products while creating a new way for games to engage with creators to reach and connect with diverse communities around TikTok.

How to decrease CPIs by 40% & find 3+ winners in 1h of creative production?

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TikTok Creative Challenge is a new in-app feature that allows creators to submit video ads to brand challenges and receive rewards based on video performance. Creators can browse through the list of challenges, read the challenge’s brief, which displays the reward pool and details rules and requirements, and submit their video ad.

The Creative Challenge gives creators full creative freedom over their ads, unlocking more opportunities for them to collaborate with brands in a way that is most authentic to them.

Easy! Sit down and visit TikTok One — Creator Marketplace. Then, prepare a creative brief for creators. Don’t forget — the brief is the key to receiving quality videos! More about that later.

I must say, I saw some pretty weird shit in the TTCC for many games. But there is also gold in there. Your performance (and scale) improves heavily when you find that gold! Here is a guide on how to find that gold:

I was always a big fan of leaving the brief really broad and letting creators do the creative job. (I am also way more creative when I have my freedom) but there are always boundaries/more info that you should add to your TTCC briefs:

This makes you really think about your audience — who, what, when, and why they play?

Still kind of broad, but way more specific than nothing. You should try. Remember my tip regarding audiences on Google Ads? Same thing. Now, think more about restrictions:

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Creative freedom with some boundaries:

This will improve your TikTok Creative Challenge outcomes immediately. Then you can play around with it and go wild!

How to decrease CPIs by 40% & find 3+ winners in 1h of creative production?

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TikTok Creative Challenge as a source of inspiration

Use the TikTok Creative Challenge as a source of inspiration! Transform the best-performing ads into ads that you can also use on other channels.

TTCC creators are using your own assets, so you can just replace them with AI people and recreate the same creative angle that works well on TikTok.

My go-to AI tool for this purpose is Synthesia. Works like a charm! With the recent rise of AI, this is even more relevant than ever!

How to use AI in advertising

What You’ll Learn in This Article:
Easy Step-by-Step Guide to Making AI Ads: I will show you how I use AI tools like Midjourney and ChatGPT to create cool mobile ads. Even if you’re new to this, don’t worry — I’ve got you covered.
My Personal Journey and Stories.
Practical Tips and Tricks.
How to boost Ad Performance with AI

Read full story

UA diversification — Top UA channels for 2024?

Let’s dive straight into the UA Playbook, which covers the UA channel mix, AKA Diversification, spying competitors, creative trends as a form of diversification, and channel best practices that unlock growth for you.

How to decrease CPIs by 40% & find 3+ winners in 1h of creative production?

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Which UA channels are best for your game, and what should the campaign structure look like? Well, everything depends on your budget. With a smaller scale, you can start with Facebook. You don’t need an MMP. Facebook SDK is sufficient. Facebook provides the best targeting options, and you can still get a lot of data from this network.

Diversification of your UA channel mix is crucial — we know that.

Diversification doesn’t always mean you have to run a million UA channels at once. It really starts with one channel. What am I talking about? What to diversify:

• Campaign optimization
• MAI, AEO Engagement events, AEO Purchase, VO
• Attribution windows (campaign types)
• D0, D1, D7, D28
• GEOs
• Creatives
• different angles bring different types of players
• Placements
• Monetization (IAA, IAP, hybrid)

FB, Google, TikTok, Applovin, and Moloco are the main channels. No doubt!

While none of these channels in the picture below are NEW, I see them climbing up the UA channel ranks in the games I manage or the games we review on our no-BS podcast.

Wait, there is more:

Now, it gets pretty complicated. The number of rewarded-play UA channels is on the rise, so I would say the hype is real.

It started with Misplay a while back:

Mistplay is a loyalty program for gamers, allowing users to earn rewards by playing games. Here’s how it works:

• Game Discovery: Mistplay features a selection of mobile games from various genres. Users can discover and try out new games that are recommended based on their preferences.

I talked multiple times about diversification; this is the most recent talk. Request here!

• Earning Points: As you play these games through the Mistplay app, you earn points called “Units”. The amount of Units earned can depend on factors like the time spent playing and in-game achievements.
• Redeeming Rewards: Accumulated Units can be redeemed for a variety of gift cards and rewards, such as Amazon, Google Play, Visa prepaid cards, and more.

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• Social Features: Mistplay also includes social elements like chat features and leaderboards, allowing users to interact with friends and see how they rank against other players.

After a pretty successful year 2023 for Mistplay, people started founding companies and moving in the same direction. Now we have a shit ton of them. Good or bad?

The whole database is put together by a true hero, Paul Bowen. Give him a follow!

Here is the Rewarded-play UA channel series, but you should definitely check these:

Incentivized advertising for f2p gaming UA: 101

What I learned making the Incentivized Ad Platform Database

Why your incentivized f2p UA campaign failed (and how to fix it)

​​Diversifying UA on Rewarded-play channels

Credits: Paul Bowen

This picture says everything. Choosing inappropriate Cost Per Engagement (CPE) events is a common reason marketing campaigns fail. If an event is too easy, it may not attract high-quality users (AKA shitty players) who are genuinely interested in the game, leading to low retention rates and poor long-term engagement.

How to decrease CPIs by 40% & find 3+ winners in 1h of creative production?

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Conversely, overly challenging or irrelevant events can result in high drop-off rates. Users abandon the effort when tasks seem unattainable or misaligned with their interests.

Discover how channel diversification is reshaping the future of gaming marketing and learn actionable strategies to scale in 2025.

2024 UA Playbook: Diversifying beyond Traditional Channels

All of this is from my recent talk at Appfest in Barcelona!

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The Power of Communication in User Acquisition

Effective communication isn’t just a skill — it’s the glue that holds User Acquisition (UA), creative, and product teams together. It drives understanding, builds trust, and fosters collaboration, all of which are critical for achieving goals and making progress. Yet, sometimes, we simply forget to communicate, even when it can make all the difference.

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Here’s why and how communication impacts UA success:

Why Communication Matters in UA

1. Alignment Across Teams: Sharing updates on UA channel performance and creative effectiveness ensures alignment among the product, creative, and UA teams.
2. Expectation Management: Clear communication helps set realistic goals, delegate tasks effectively, and coordinate efforts across departments.
3. Trust and Collaboration: Honest, transparent conversations build trust and create a culture where teams feel empowered to share ideas, challenges, and wins.

Tips for Effective Communication

Be Clear and Concise

• Avoid jargon. Remember, not everyone knows what IPM, CTR, ROAS, or CPI means. Simplify your message to ensure it resonates with your audience. I always forget about this! ALWAYS!

Listen Actively

• Communication is a two-way street. Actively listen to your colleagues’ perspectives to ensure the conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue.

Be Honest and Transparent

• Admit mistakes when they happen. Speak up if something feels off. Transparency fosters trust and credibility.

Show Empathy

• Acknowledge others’ feelings and perspectives. Empathy strengthens relationships and improves team dynamics.

Choose the Right Medium

• Tailor your communication channel to the situation.
• Quick updates? Slack or Discord.
• Deep discussions? Calls or Zoom.
• Sensitive topics? Face-to-face, if possible.

Celebrate and Critique Thoughtfully

• Recognize good work and provide constructive feedback when necessary. Acknowledge both wins and struggles to keep everyone motivated and aligned. This is the hardest part. Many people don’t know how to process constructive feedback or critique.

How to decrease CPIs by 40% & find 3+ winners in 1h of creative production?

Read full story

Practical Applications

• Share Your Work: Tell your colleagues what you’re working on, what’s succeeding, and where you’re struggling. Highlight which UA channels and creatives are performing well and share insights with product and creative teams — they’ll appreciate the transparency.
• Continuous Feedback: Create a feedback loop with regular updates to ensure everyone stays on the same page.

I should and will overcommunicate shit. Its better than silence. For everybody!

Communication: A Core Skill for Senior UA Managers

As a Senior UA Manager, communication is one of the most critical skills you can develop. It’s not just about relaying information; it’s about creating a culture of collaboration, understanding, and trust.

And remember — no one’s perfect. Me neither. Even the best communicators can improve. So, let’s all strive to communicate better together.

How to boost user acquisition with playables?

Playable ads add variety to your UA campaigns. It’s an absolute must for UA outside of Facebook, Google, and Tiktok. Basically, all SDK networks! With so much access to creative tools to produce them, it’s a no-brainer to add them to your creative mix for testing. Here are a few more reasons why you should play around with them:

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They’re super engaging, especially when compared directly to static or video ads. Playable ads drive 27x higher conversion rates than banner ads. In comparison, video drives 23x. More engaging means more memorable and almost impossible to ignore.

They’re cost-friendly to run. On Android and some ad networks, playables are one of the cheapest to run on ($0.60) and run at less than half the cost of native ads ($1.22). According to Liftoff.

Stay Ahead in UA for 2024: My Top 43 Tips Revealed

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You can work with good data. I’ll cover this more later, but you can test things like if letting users win will drive more conversions or measure how quickly users engage with your ad. These customizations can help you fine-tune

What a playable ad looks like

There are five simple parts to a playable ad.

1. Intro: a brief graphic or video that captures the user’s attention
2. Tutorial: a quick visual explanation of how to play the game. Some apps show a quick video tutorial or use on-screen elements like arrows, prompts, or pointers.
3. Key gameplay mechanic: the interactive element where users can play the game.
4. Feedback: rewards, points, and indicators of win or loss
5. Call-to-Action (CTA): something to compel the user to install and continue playing

Here are a few examples of what playable ads look like:

Source: https://www.is.com/community/blog/the-what-how-and-why-of-playable-ads/

Two types of playables

Playables are not only for gaming. Shopping, fitness, finance, and travel apps use them too. Temu has a minigame where users play a match game to unlock a discount. Dating apps will let you create a profile. Or fitness app can let you select your workout goals. It’s becoming more widely adopted across all app categories, but we’ll try to stick to gaming in this guide.

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There are two versions of playable ads:

• HTML5 code and assets pulled from the game to give users a feel for the real game
• Interactive videos that use footage with interactive HTML elements that make it ‘playable’

Although the video format is easier to produce and may be lighter, the HTML5 version is often more visually appealing and accurate to the product.

Yes, some of you might know this. Playablemaker is a tool we develop. I would appreciate it if you booked a demo, tried the tool, and shared feedback. If you use promo code DANCING UNICORN, you might get a discount.

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PlayableMaker.com and our ad network comparison clearly show that UA managers are interested in building for all of them when they can do so.

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No 💩 BS UA Newsletter: Real Insights for the Post-IDFA World

Funny story — I started this weekly newsletter in March 2022, thinking I’d never have enough time, ideas, or insights to keep it going. Fast forward to today, and wow, what a ride it’s been!

• March 2022: 0 subscribers
• December 2022: 2,500 subscribers
• December 2023: Nearly 8,500 subscribers with an average open rate of 42%!

And now? 2024: We’re sitting at 15,785 subscribers — nearly double last year’s count. THANK YOU so much for the support and for sticking with me through this journey.

I’m committed to bringing you no-fluff, actionable insights about UA, especially as we navigate the challenges of the post-IDFA world. Here’s to more learning, sharing, and growth in the year ahead.

What topics or insights do you want to see more of in 2025? Drop me a reply — I’d love to hear your thoughts!

If you haven’t done it yet, please subscribe to my newsletter. It’s so honest it might actually annoy you. If you are easily annoyed, please don’t subscribe.

Brutally Honest by Matej Lancaric is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I also just started a paid subscription where I share insights, special UA tips, and creative hacks monthly. Check it out here!

Most popular paid content

How to soft launch a mobile game in 2024? Benchmarks & Real data inside!

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Creative framework: How to win in 2024?

Read full story

Stay Ahead in UA for 2024: My Top 43 Tips Revealed

Read full story

No Bullshit Gaming Podcast: Explosive Growth in 2024

Wow. What a year! This little baby has grown beyond anything we ever imagined. Oh my freaking god! The feedback has been incredible, and it’s all thanks to YOU. Your support pushes us to keep delivering no-BS, high-quality, and (let’s face it) super fun content.

Here’s the growth story:

• 2022: Barely 1,000–1,500 subscribers.
• 2023: Hit 8,200 subs across all platforms.
• 2024: We’re closing the year with an insane 12,543 subscribers!

We’re thrilled, humbled, and excited to keep growing. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please do — it means the world to us and keeps the momentum going as we pour our hearts into this podcast.

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BIG Thank you for being part of the journey. Here’s to an even bigger and better 2025!

How Did We Really Do It? The Podcast Growth Playbook by Matej Lancaric

Let’s be real — our growth wasn’t just luck. There’s a method to the madness, and it’s all part of what I like to call the Podcast Marketing Playbook, aka riding the hype wave.

Here’s the deal:

• We leaned into bold, unapologetic humor. Those little “jokes”? They made some people laugh out loud, but also ruffled a few feathers. Turns out, poking fun at life (and those who take it way too seriously) isn’t for everyone.
• Spoiler alert: I don’t care. 0 fucks given.
• Share

This approach worked. The controversy and relatability kept us top of mind, made people talk, and built a loyal audience who understood the vibe.

Subscribed

So, if you want to grow, here’s the real playbook:

• Be Authentic: No scripts, no fluff — just real talk.
• Ride the Hype: Tap into trends but make them your own.
• Embrace the Hate: If people are mad, at least they’re paying attention, and god is our witness. They paid attention so much. Thanks a lot!

We’ll keep bringing the same no-BS, hype-driven energy that got us here, and we’re glad you’re along for the ride. Buckle up — it’s gonna get even wilder in 2025! We are cooking something insane.

We are building an inclusive community space in the gaming industry.

Building an inclusive community space in the gaming industry can significantly enhance collaboration and innovation. It creates an environment where diverse voices and perspectives are valued.

Yes, we actually did this too. We opened up a community space for everybody. Juniors, seniors, developers, marketers, salespeople, vendors. The most inclusive community in gaming! Join us here.

2024: A Hard Year, But a Worthwhile Ride

The year 2024 was tough. Really tough. And guess what? I don’t think 2025 will be any easier. If anything, it’s going to test us even more. But here’s the thing — I don’t complain, and neither should you. The key is to enjoy the ride as much as possible and not take life too seriously.

Magic happens when you’re forced out of your comfort zone. This year, like so many others, challenged me in ways I didn’t expect. I learned a lot — about myself, my priorities, and what I’m truly capable of. That’s the beauty of this roller coaster ride we call life, especially in the world of consulting and user acquisition (UA).

The Reality of a Mobile UA Manager

A UA manager’s job is simple on the surface: make gaming companies a lot of money by driving installs. But in practice? It’s a whirlwind:

• If you’re good, the sky’s the limit on your salary.
• If you’re average, you might last a few months before hopping to the next gig. Turnover is brutally high.

Here’s the kicker: most people have no idea what the fuck they’re doing. And that’s okay! The industry changes so fast that nobody’s an expert for long. What worked yesterday probably won’t work today.

High-Level Challenges in UA

If you’re a UA manager or thinking about becoming one, here’s what you’re signing up for:

• Fragmented Data: Pulling insights from everywhere and praying it’s trustworthy.
• Managing Upwards: Effective reporting is an art.
• Mastering Communication: crucial part of the daily UA life
• Creative Production: It’s a resource-draining beast from ideation to scheduling.
• Post-IDFA Rules: Navigating ever-changing privacy policies.
• SKAN 4.0: Making sense of Apple’s chaos and still hitting targets.
• AI revolution
• Soft launching & global launching games
• bla bla bla, obviously much more ..

And that’s just scratching the surface.

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The Good News? Mobile Phones Rule the World

The mobile industry isn’t going anywhere. Apps and games are everywhere, which means opportunities abound. But if you want to thrive, you need to be a true unicorn — someone who’s both deeply knowledgeable and hands-on in the industry.

Life’s hard, but it’s also incredible. The challenges, the chaos, the wins — they’re all part of the ride. Enjoy every moment, even the tough ones. Learn, adapt, and most importantly, don’t forget to laugh along the way. That is why I wrote about the reality of a UA manager.

We are going to tackle 2025 with grit, growth, and a hell of a lot of fun!

Solopreneur Matej

Opening up about my solopreneur journey, complete with all the numbers and thoughts about life, was hands down one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Putting it all out there — successes, struggles, and everything in between — felt vulnerable but also incredibly refreshing.

What I didn’t expect? The overwhelming feedback. Hearing how my story inspired so many people from different walks of life made it all worthwhile.

This journey isn’t just about business; it’s about growth, resilience, and figuring out what truly matters. And if sharing my experiences can help someone else along their path, it’s absolutely worth it.

To everyone who’s been a part of this ride — thank you — more learning, more sharing, and building something meaningful together.

Matej Lancaric: The Story of a Solopreneur

Hey there, fellow solopreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, and gaming industry peers! Today, I want to take you on an unfiltered and candid journey of seasoned solopreneur in the gaming industry — Myself! (HA!).

Read full story

How can humor & personal engagement boost newsletter subscriptions and sharing?

Humor & personal engagement are powerful tools for boosting newsletter subscriptions and encouraging sharing. Here’s how they can enhance the success of your campaigns:

Oh wow! You made it here! You must be very engaged. I like that type of players… Ehm, people!

Please share this article with your industry friends. It would mean the world to me.

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Also, subscribe to my newsletter. It’s so honest it might actually annoy you. If you are easily annoyed, please don’t subscribe. Subscribe now to podcast.

Subscribe to Brutally Honest Newsletter

Keep reading the tips to improve your UA. Simple, practical & efficient! That’s it, no bullshit & brutally honest! No fluff intro, straight to the point.

1. Google Ad groups performance

Always check Google Ad groups performance. Ideally, on 7 or 14 days window (depending on your conversion window setup)

I discussed how many active ad groups you should have in the previous newsletters. If I spend between $250 and $1000/day, I try to have 3 to 5 active ad groups. If you spend $1000+/day, then use five ad groups.

It should be a mix of different angles (gameplay, UGC, 3D, altered gameplay, upgrades, whatever else..). Check the creative framework below:

Creative framework: How to win in 2024?

Let’s just dive directly into the creative framework for 2024 without any fluff. This is what I am going to touch on in this article so you know why you should upgrade your subscription to paid:

Read full story

• try also different lengths (30–60 seconds)

But what to do if we have the scenarios below:

Scenario A

Adgroup №1 is questionable in the “not great, not terrible” area. In this specific case, I will leave it live another 3–5 days and then make a decision.

Adgroup №2 is performing well.

Adgroup №3 is going to be paused because of bad performance.

Adding Adgroup №4 and Adgroup №5 into this campaign with 2 different creative angles, as mentioned above.

Scenario B

This is an interesting case. Adgroup №3 takes the majority of spending, but ROAS is low. Adgroup №1 ROAS is also low. I am going to kill these two groups and leave the №2 live. This is what might happen to the Adgroup №2:

1. Adgroup №2 will get the majority of spend, but ROAS will drop significantly
2. The campaign might die because Adgroup no.2 is not getting enough events

Going to add 3 ad groups with totally different creative angles, as mentioned above.

Hybrid casual UA playbook — Real data inside!

Another month, another newsletter filled with hybrid casual Tips and tricks only for paid subscribers! Over the past few years, hybrid-casual games have become increasingly popular on mobile, with 5 billion downloads in 2022, a 3% increase from the previous year.

Read full story

Match 3D UA playbook — Real data inside!

Here we go again! Another paid newsletter filled with Tips & Tricks! Let’s dive into the Match 3D UA Playbook. While match-3 games have been around for years, Match 3D adds a more recognizable dimension. The game takes the proven match-3 gameplay and pushes it into 3D. The difference is more than superficial, it profoundly affects gameplay and the strategies players need to conquer the gaming table.

Read full story

2. Creative trends & inspiration

Where to get inspiration for creatives? What is the correct process?

Well, there is no correct process that suits everyone.

As discussed in our latest podcast about trends, I usually have a monthly exercise. Considering few industry leaders in creatives, I check their shit and its’s absolutely mindblowing every month.

Creative trends checklist:

• Township
• Royal Match
• Coin master (recent Beckham creative is awesome)
• Hero wars
• Pizza Ready / Outlet Rush
• Whiteout Survival
• My Perfect Hotel
• Gold & Goblins

I started doing it for you, so you can work on more important things:

Creative trends in Mobile Games — August 2024

As the UA landscape evolves, so do the creative trends that shape how games communicate with their audiences.

Read full story

Some recent trends!

Unconventional Elements: Supercell’s Brawl Stars is leading the charge with creative use of unconventional characters, like a poo character in a diaper. This unexpected twist grabs attention and differentiates the game in a crowded market.

Longer Video Creatives: Nexters’ Hero Wars has shifted to longer creatives, with lengths ranging from 2–4 minutes. These are designed to engage viewers in the news feed rather than the typical Rewarded Video ad unit, suggesting a strategic move to capture and retain attention in a different format.

Hypercasual Elements in Non-Hypercasual Games: We’ve noticed that Playrix, Dreamgames, and Supercent are incorporating elements from hypercasual hits like Bus Jam 3D and Park It into their creatives. This crossover technique leverages familiar themes to draw in a broader audience.

High-Quality, In-Game Engine Rendered Ads: The meta takeaway is the rise of high-quality ads rendered directly in the game engine. This approach produces superior creative quality and more realistic physics, enhancing viewer engagement and effectiveness.

3. UA is hard

Figuring out Facebook or TikTok is really hard. It requires time and lots of testing:

• GEO combination (US only, US+T1, ROW or WW only?)
• campaign optimization (AEO Purchase, AEO engagement events, VO or AEO+VO?)
• bidding (auto bid or cost cap/minROAS)
• creative formats (videos, statics)
• creative concepts (UGC, AI, CGI, story-driven, fake ads, progression, customization, collection, etc.)
• budget

It takes a while to figure out the best combination of the above. It took me a few months to get to a stable level of spending ($4–5k/day on Facebook or TikTok), but now those channels are pillars of the UA.

E.g game no.1 — Facebook (WW campaign AEO cost cap, 4k/day, AI static images, weekly creative refresh)

game no.2 — TikTok (iOS only, T1, VO, autobid, 5k/day, UGC creatives only)

game no.3 — Facebook (T1 iOS, WW Android, minROAS VO, 3.5k/day, AI static images + AI UGC Ads, weekly creative refresh)

How about you?

4. AI everywhere

if you are not working with AI on the creative side, stop everything you are doing and open mid-journey or ChatGPT 4o immediately. The prompt is obviously the most critical part. Prompt is the art!

Clear prompt = clear, direct output!

• AI statics work really well on Facebook!
• Engaging content — likes, shares, comments -> better position in the auction
• You always want to have something ridiculous/funny/unreal etc., to spark the conversation

AI Winning Creatives — Real data inside!

Producing a creative winner is not an easy job. There is this tactic when you create multiple different creative concepts — static images. You test them against each other. You take the winner and make a video out of that creative concept.

Read full story

• Always check cohort metrics of new visuals
• Retention numbers
• ROAS benchmarks

• Pro TIP Facebook — Use A+C campaigns for testing new statics
• Increase the campaign limit to run more of Advantage+ app
• This help you run more campaigns with the same country, language, operating system and optimization goal settings at the same time
• Possible launch TOP A+C campaigns with the same settings with new creatives or with creatives that didn’t get a chance in ongoing campaigns

Here is the video from the screenshot! Starting with AI statics and then transforming into easy video.

• Get inspiration from Midjourney library
• Use “search” to type specific keywords
• Find out interesting visuals
• Get inspired by different prompts in the library
• Pay attention to prompts!
• The more detailed the prompt, the better!
• Try negative keywords
• Combine different tools
• Start with static images then expand to videos
• Transform statics to videos easily by Adobe AI tools
• Test different people
• Male vs female / young vs old

5. TTCC as a source of inspiration

Use the TikTok Creative Challenge as a source of inspiration! Transform the best-performing ads into ads that you can use on other channels as well.

TTCC creators are using your own assets, so you can just replace them with AI people and recreate the same creative angle that works well on TikTok.

My go-to AI tool for this purpose is Synthesia. Works like a charm!

Thank you for reading Brutally Honest by Matej Lancaric. This post is public so feel free to share it.

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6. Google audiences FTW!

Audiences in Google Ads! It is an interesting targeting option that has not been discussed enough. Expect a picture dump for a step-by-step guide here:

Why should you care? Besides the Google case studies, it looks like for some games I manage it really works. Helped to improve performance quite a lot. (a lot = 10–30%)

Go for it right away, its definitely worth testing! Got another confirmation from our 2.5gamers fan!

Hell yeah!

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7. How to approach Steam UA?

Performance marketing for PC games is not so different from the classic mobile UA everybody knows.

You have the same campaign logic, budgets, geo structure, UA channels (to a certain extent), and creatives. The main difference here is the optimization goal on the campaign level.

You mainly use Facebook, Google, Twitter, TikTok, and Reddit as UA channels. Instead of running mobile app install campaigns, you have a few campaign options:

• pMAX on Google
• website clicks (everywhere)
• landing page views
• conversions (you have to implement a tracking pixel to your landing page)
• FB tracking pixel, TT tracking pixel and Google Analytics click tracking

Conversion targeting here makes a lot of sense. You can compare this to App Event Optimised campaigns. Your Landing page leads to the Steam page via the “Get on Steam” button. You track this button with your pixels; therefore, you can use it in your campaign optimization instead of just website clicks!

Conversions → website clicks

Enjoy!

Plug for Playablemaker

If you don’t have the capacity to build your own playable, try the tool I am building with my playable team. playablemaker.com

Ping me if you need more credits!

8. Cost cap vs Autobid

Cost cap on FB vs Autobid? I was always very skeptical about limiting the bids on the Facebook campaigns, but in the recent weeks I started experimenting with it and its actually bringing interesting results.

In the past, as soon as I put bidcap the campaign died. But I was doing it wrong. You should start with autobid, then look at the Cost per action and start putting 5–8xCPA you are seeing and then lower the bid to get traffic, but also limit the spend/aim for the quality traffic.

Stay Ahead in UA for 2024: My Top 43 Tips Revealed

I’ve decided to share all the top learnings from 2023. All those made the most impact on my UA ops! It’s quite a lot of learnings so buckle up & enjoy”! How to do a proper UA & Creatives review? Channel performance Campaign structure/campaign type (AAA vs regular)

Read full story

9. iOS shannenigans

Hi all! I’m scaling a game on iOS. But it’s such a challenge because I have to use SKAN and the data is delayed. Anyone has tips to optimize campaign with iOS, please give me some advice!

Thanks to the privacy changes on iOS, you won’t be able to see any installs coming through in the first 72 hours. Installs are happening in the meantime; you just won’t be able to see them. Don’t worry; you won’t lose any data.

What can you do?

Don’t make any changes in the first 72h => 0 installs = Facebook is not optimized at all. Wait until you get data, then make changes!

Also, the privacy threshold on Facebook is 88 installs per day per campaign. As you can see, the campaign above was not anywhere close to passing that threshold, which means we also don’t see the full picture in terms of postbacks. What can be done here?

• Slowly increase the budget until you hit 88 installs
• creative refresh!
• Add more countries into the mix (lower CPIs, more installs, more postbacks)

GEO expansion, performance & goals! Super important topic. I discussed the campaign tiers where you have Tier 1, Tier 2 (sometimes Tier 3), and Rest of the World to cover everybody.

You have to keep in mind that expanding from Tier 1 will definitely help you scale, but think about setting up new (most likely higher) goals because the LTV and retention curves are not the same as with Tier 1 countries.

Look at the overall Tier performance each quarter to move countries around. E.g.:

CA, AU underperforming in the last 90 days → move from Tier 1 to Tier 2

MY, PH, SA, SE, DK, BE, ID, RO, UAE, BR, PL, CH, KR → remove from iOS ROW. Create separate campaign on TikTok

ID, UA, IT, NL, ZA, CZ, AT, BR, RS → remove from Facebook iOS ROW.

10. KPIs

When it comes to deciding KPI goals, here’s what you need to consider:

Focusing on ROI over time is crucial. If there’s no gain, it’s just money down the drain. The data always shows that you need distinct D7 ROAS goals per UA channel. A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work. Applovin and Unity outshine Facebook and Google in long-term retention.

However, you also need to check your D60, D90, and D120 retention. You can’t set a D120 payback period when your D90 retention is 0%.

Each network demands unique KPI goals. That’s why you need detailed retention data at D60, D90, and D120, which are easily accessible in your BI tool or MMP. Not only retention data, but also ROAS/LTV curve.

Understand that higher goals typically mean lower spending. I always analyze how ROAS evolves over time, especially post-D90, to see the growth trajectory.

D90payback could be tight, but it could work. I always try to be cautious. Once you gather enough cohort data at D120, 150, and 180, you can adjust. Just play it safe!

So, what do you need to consider? Retention profile, LTV curve, and money in your bank account!

11. How do you utilize Google Ad Groups most effectively?

I usually separate ad groups by creative concepts, but there are also schools of thought for motivational segmentation and/or placement optimization.

With the absolute growth of Shorts, Google started pushing bumper ads, also known as short-form videos, to get more inventory on YouTube. Don’t forget to tick this box in the conversion tab!

So, how to think about different adgroups:

1. Text only (headline & description)
2. Text + statics
3. Short videos (vertical format)
4. Longform videos = 30+sec (ideally around 1 minute long)
5. Audiences (competitor games)
6. Audiences (broader mobile games interests)
7. Custom store listingsThanks for reading this piece!

12: How to use Creative Assistant on TikTok?

TikTok Creative Assistant is an AI-powered virtual assistant designed to intelligently collaborate with brands and creators throughout their creative journey on TikTok. The latest evolution of creativity and productivity has led us to new paths of innovation. We’ve been working on a model that allows you to converse and collaborate with when creating for TikTok. It draws information from a wealth of TikTok-focused creative knowledge, providing you with the most relevant responses for when you’re creating ads or videos for TikTok.

TikTok Creative Assistant is designed to spark creativity and be a launchpad for curiosity. It works alongside you, integrated in TikTok Creative Center, the platform where TikTok creative ideas are born.

• If you’re new to TikTok, Creative Assistant can guide you through TikTok creative best practices and advise you on how to get started.
• If you’re conducting research on the creative landscape on TikTok, Creative Assistant can showcase and analyse inspirational and top ads based on data sources on Creative Center.
• When you’re facing writer’s block, Creative Assistant can brainstorm TikTok ideas with you, write and help refine your TikTok scripts.

With Creative Assistant, you’re now empowered to continuously create a meaningful and valuable presence on TikTok through never-ending ideation and brainstorm sessions. This tool means brands and creators worldwide can harness the power of artificial intelligence to better ideate and create TikTok creatives like never before.

See what’s trending

Creative Assistant searches and presents what’s trending on TikTok. Now, when you ask “what’s trending”, you will be able to:

• View concepts that have been trending in the past day
• Understand the concept and the potential reasons why it went viral
• View all related videos to this concept
• View all related audio to this concept

Please do me a favor and share this with someone in your network who you think would benefit from the insights and brutal honesty. It would mean a lot to me!

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👇 Reach out for feedback or questions, or say hi!

Give me some love (or hate) & Subscribe everywhere! ♥️

Softlaunch E-BOOK is live. Learn how to soft launch your game now!

Launching a mobile game takes loads of work. After months of development and production time, the soft launch period comes.

A soft launch will allow you to test your server infrastructure and ensure it can handle the load of a global launch.

For free-to-play games, especially those with in-app purchases, it is important to determine how well the game will do globally and if it has a good retention profile and monetization mechanics.

Simply put, this will tell you if your game will be profitable, and you should aim for a global launch or simply kill it.

If you plan on looking for a publisher for your game, you should know that many publishers will look for some soft launch data before committing to any monetary guarantee. Therefore, doing your own soft launch is highly recommended, as it will put you in a much better position during negotiations.

In this post, I’ll cover a few items that I believe are MUSTS for anyone in or about to enter a soft launch.

How to Soft launch your game in 2024?

What is the point of releasing a new game or app to a restricted audience market in advance of a full launch?

A successful soft launch is the best way to optimize your mobile game for global launch. The Build, measure & Learn loop is a product development principle that emphasizes iteration speed as a key component in product development.

When using this principle, the goal is to release your game to market as soon as possible, measure its performance, and then iterate based on user data, repeating the loop as often as required or possible.

Soft launch stages

I like to divide the soft launch into three stages: technical, retention, and monetization. Each stage serves a different purpose, and we measure different KPIs.

In the Technical stage, we mostly focus on data health, crash rate, and tracking. In general, you need to make sure your tracked data that will be used for evaluation and campaign algorithms are correct enough. This is essential for running campaigns effectively.

In the Retention stage, we measure D1, D3, and D7 Retention (duh!), FTUE, tutorial completion rate, and much more. Game developers are obsessed with achieving the highest D1 retention numbers, but D1 is not the holy grail. I’ve seen games with D1 retention of around 25% still being able to generate 2 million EUR a month. The magic was behind good D60 retention of 6–8%. Therefore, focusing on the ratio between D1, D3, and D7 is crucial. Joakim described multiple scenarios here; definitely check them out.

If you have already launched your app on iOS as well, you can check App Analytics. You can put your app’s performance into context by comparing it to that of similar apps on the App Store. Compare your results across several key metrics, including conversion rate, day 1, day 7, and day 28 retention rate, crash rate, and average proceeds per paying user to understand your app’s performance across the customer journey.

In Pre-Launch, you move gradually from one test to another, from Tech to Engagement, Monetization to Soft Launch testing.

Softlaunch E-BOOK is live. Learn how to soft launch your game now!

• Each step has benchmarks for specific KPIs that help you understand if the game shows potential.
• If the game is underperforming, you have the opportunity to improve and continue testing.

The Google beta program is gaining popularity amongst game developers. Google has done a pretty good job of giving game publishers the tools they need to make their games the best they can be. The benefits of beta testing are obvious: you can test your game with specific groups or open your test to Google Play users and these users are able to provide private feedback to developers both before and after launch.

At Google Play, they developed different Pre-Launch tracks to help developers test and optimize games before releasing them globally. Each track has its benefits and limitations; you can easily control them in the Play Console. The main idea behind these tracks is to help you test and optimize the game in a safe environment.

Available testing options include;

• Internal testing is available only to people inside your organization
• Closed testing is available to a larger set of testers but is not publicly available
• Open testing which will make pre-release versions of your app available on the Google Play store

Games in the beta testing program don’t get reviews on the store, which can be beneficial when something really breaks. A beta testing program is the way to go in a soft launch since you can do the same activities as if your game was live in a limited amount of GEOs.

But enough about retention. Let’s focus on the monetization stage, where the fun starts. Measuring ARPU, payment conversion, and Dx ROAS requires running purchase (ROAS)- oriented campaigns — AEO/VO on Facebook or tCPA/tROAS/AdROAD/HybridROAS on Google Ads.

Let’s not forget about Ad monetization. In this stage, you should already have cracked the rewarded video ad placement. Now you are playing around with setting up waterfalls and combining floors with bidders.

For videos, please check the original article on lancaric.me

If you’re not familiar with how to manage an ad waterfall or the mediation setup at this stage I would recommend relying solely on Unity ads. Once you’ve set up ads, the North Star KPI you should track at this stage is Impression per DAU. Generally, an IMP/DAU above 4.0 means the Rewarded Video (RV) placements you’ve placed in the game will impact your UA efforts in a meaningful way. If you’re coming in below this number you either have to change the RV placements, and RV rewards or accept that the Ad revenue will not make up a significant portion of your revenue. If you’re only using one ad partner at this stage, it is a good general rule of thumb that once you add a mediation platform you’ll increase your ad revenue by 100%. Then with a proper mediation setup, you’ll further increase the ad revenue by another 25%.

Softlaunch E-BOOK is live. Learn how to soft launch your game now!

Soft launch timeline

How long should we be in the soft launch? There is no correct answer to this. The goal of the soft launch is not to be in a “tweaking mode” forever and step by step improve the game. Not every time it’s possible.

How long your game can stay in the soft launch is influenced by multiple variables:

• CPI vs LTV or Dx ROAS goal hit
• Retention KPIs
• Monetisation KPIs
• Money in the bank account
• Kill the game, save your company

Soft launch countries

What criteria should you look for to discover which country is the best fit for your mobile game?

There is a wide range of different countries that seem quite suitable for a soft launch. When picking the most suitable GEOs, it is always important to consider your game’s target audience.

My favorite country for mid-core (male-oriented) games is Poland because it has a big Android penetration, high English proficiency, and a big male audience. Definitely check the allcorrectgames blog to check more insights from other countries as well.

But if I soft-launched a female-oriented game, I would probably skip Poland as a GEO. This is how we did it for the Darts Club:

Looking at multiple things like Facebook audience, potential CPI, and English proficiency, we did some calculations back in the days on the genre’s popularity.

This was all manual work, but I’ve done it for you in some countries here:

The most frequent question in soft launching: Is my CPI good? How does it compare to other games? While there was a Chartboost CPI benchmarks website, that is obsolete and far from the truth. Here are again some examples I can share to get an idea about how CPIs vary between GEOs and different optimizations and channels as well:

AppsFlyer also provides reports that rank the best markets to explore for user acquisition based on Game genre, OS, and country. This is great for the monetization stage of your soft launch.

App Store Optimisation

Even before the IDFA shenanigans happened, game developers launched their games in Soft launch on Android. Android was always the go-to platform thanks to the fast review processes and tools available in the developer’s console.

The algorithm in app stores always looks for keywords, a well-written description, and optimized titles. A soft launch is the best time to start keyword research and optimize your app store visuals.

Focus on Icons, screenshots, and feature images and test these at least once, but ideally, multiple times, to increase your chances of improving conversion rates and, therefore, decreasing the CPIs.

ASO should be a crucial part of your user acquisition strategy, so getting this right early on is important.

The soft launch is the stage where you can make sure you’ve got the most appealing app store pages possible.

Analytics

Game developers should approach soft launches with an open mind. During any soft launch, it’s vital that personal bias is removed and data alone is used to determine what is and isn’t working. We should be making data-driven decisions, but we all know that people make mistakes and let their emotions get in the way.

A soft launch is a time when you work with your data team to set up UA dashboards, integrate tools, monitor KPIs, and provide enough players for A/B testing. In the monetization stage, UA and data teams work hand in hand to create LTV predictions based on the acquired cohorts. I also suggest staying in soft launch for around six months so you have enough data to build those LTV models.

iOS14+

With the launch of iOS 14.5 in April 2021, the ATT era has begun to strengthen user privacy protection, and privacy policies have begun to affect the acquisition of IDFA (accuracy attribution) substantially. LAT started in 2006 has been gradually replaced by ATT (users below iOS 15 account for 6%). For users who upgrade to iOS 14.5 or above after LAT is turned on, the ATT era will continue to have LAT restrictions. Users whose version is still below iOS 14.5 can still obtain IDFA for accurate attribution if they do not turn on LAT. Users who are above iOS 14.5 and do not authorize IDFA need to use SKAN for attribution. However, it has also created significant challenges for marketers who have had to adapt to a completely new way of measuring UA campaigns.

Before iOS 14, marketers could measure in-depth and at length to determine user/campaign value. But in Apple’s SKAdNetwork, data is far less in-depth and at length…You get 64 combinations from 6 bits to map post-install activity and a few days at best of activity data.

Most games are driven by revenue conversion schema, with 84% of games utilizing revenue configurations.

Some game genres have a lower time to first purchase — particularly casual games — compared to mid-core or 4X strategy. It is absolutely crucial for UA teams to work alongside product/game teams to ensure the game can capture as many purchases as possible in the first 24 hours (without jeopardizing the game economy). This will enable UA managers to scale iOS campaigns.

User Acquisition strategy

My go-to UA channel in the soft launch was (and still is) Facebook. Given the recent quality fluctuations, I started introducing Google UAC and Unity ads early in the retention stage. How should your strategy differ when you have a PVP game vs a non-PVP game?

You need to keep in mind how many players you need to have statistically significant cohorts to make data-driven decisions. If you have a PVP game, liquidity is the key to your matchmaking, and therefore, the UA team needs to continuously provide a certain number of new users daily to make it work. As we know, if matchmaking doesn’t work, it can influence the game’s retention numbers and overall feel.

Days when Mobile app install (MAI) optimization was the only way to go are gone. While it can drive good-quality traffic, it won’t be sufficient for retention and monetization. When you enter the retention stage, sit down with a data team to identify events in the game (tutorial completion, level 10 achieved, 5 missions played, connect Facebook or share invite) that suggest player engagement and higher quality. Then, implement and use these events for optimization in App Event Optimisation (AEO) campaigns. Finally, as mentioned before, running AEO Purchase campaigns in the monetization stage will provide the necessary p(l)ayers to evaluate the monetization KPIs of your game.

Starting with broad campaigns using regular Facebook campaigns or Advantage+ App campaigns, the targeting will be continuously narrowed down to individual interests or lookalikes later down the road, depending on the results.

Creative testing

BAU campaign needs to use materials that have not run in the past because if you use old materials, they will be affected by the past machine learning history and create unfair competition with new creative strategy materials.

For effective creative testing, let’s create a separate campaign. All creative materials should remain the same size (1:1 or 4:5) and the same duration. The test needs to accumulate enough conversions to meet the minimum requirements of machine learning to produce convincing test results. During the test, do not shut down or reset the campaign because of temporary poor performance. At least each creative must achieve a total of 50 conversions in 4 days, and each creative must achieve 100 conversions in 7 days to make the results more credible.

What creative approach should they adopt to attract a substantial number of high-quality users? Once a best-performing concept is identified, explore diverse iterations to enhance performance. Additionally, consider testing meta-game components within your mobile game to identify additional incentives for new players. These can be interesting characters, mini-games, or social elements (e.g. multiplayer chat, or chat with an opponent).

For videos, please check the original article on lancaric.me

The times when one creative concept worked mostly on every channel are long gone. Always check the competitors.

Use the FB Ads library, TikTok Ad library, and Google Ads transparency center; on top of that, use Adscan.ai to spy on your competitors and see which creative is spending the most in Europe (the most spending creative is most likely their best performing creative at that moment). Take the inspiration and tailor the creative to your gameplay.

For videos, please check the original article on lancaric.me

Channel testing

Diversifying the UA portfolio is one of the most important parts of the marketing activities. In the retention phase, you should think about running at least two channels to benchmark them against each other. Which channels? It depends on your genre, but for example, if you have a merge game. I would go with Facebook and Unity.

How about iOS? When should it be added? Honestly, I do it after a few months of testing and running UA on Android. After you get the initial data on Android, you improve the game, and then you add iOS.

Ideally just before starting the monetisation phase. So you can configure your conversion schema and start the first tests.

In the monetization stage, different channels yield different LTV curves. Understanding this before the global launch is crucial for setting up the global launch strategy.

The same applies to Android vs iOS campaigns. While Google Ads is an important part of Android UA activities, for iOS, it sucks balls but depends if you have unlocked tROAS optimization for iOS it can be game-changing for you. On the other hand, Facebook could work well for iOS but not for Android. Be sure to test multiple ad networks before going global. If your soft launch budget doesn’t allow it, run Facebook, Google, and Unity as minimum viable UA portfolio.

Challenges

Almost nothing goes according to plan. CPIs are increasing rapidly because you have been in the soft launch in limited countries for too long — how can you tackle increasing CPIs? Find out in my creative framework here! Other challenges have already been covered above. Soft launch is not easy, but you can make it!

A successful soft launch is the best way to optimize your game for global launch. There is no doubt. Soft-launching allows developers to collect data, identify bugs, and receive early feedback from players. But the soft launch period isn’t just for testing the product. UA teams should use this time to test and optimize every aspect of marketing.

There is no optimal soft launch strategy for everybody, but by now, you should know how to do it.

When to kill a game in soft launch and move on?

The challenging determination of when to terminate development on a game during its soft launch phase resembles the delicate process of contemplating the conclusion of a long-standing relationship.

Here’s the deal: If your last 2–3 builds didn’t improve the KPIs and your game is consistently underperforming, not showing any signs of improvement, and your user feedback is as scarce as unicorn sightings, it may be time to say goodbye.

But before you do, make sure you’ve exhausted all your options, tested different UA channels, and mercilessly optimized creatives. And remember, sometimes it’s better to cut your losses and move on to a new adventure. Especially in this tough market. Previously, you had 6–9 months to figure things out. Now, it’s more like 3–6 months.

But hey, don’t be too hard on yourself. We can’t all create mobile gaming masterpieces. It’s like trying to make a gourmet meal out of instant ramen.

So, my advice? Trust your gut, and don’t be afraid to hit that “uninstall” button. Your company (cash flow) will thank you.

What do you think?

Hey there, fellow solopreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, and gaming industry peers! Today, I want to take you on an unfiltered and candid journey of seasoned solopreneur in the gaming industry — Myself! (HA!).

Buckle up and get ready to dive into my raw and real experiences of navigating the world of solopreneurship. Today, I want to share a story that’s all about the ups and downs of being a solopreneur. You know, those brave souls who venture out on their own to build something from scratch. It’s not always rainbows and unicorns, but hey, sometimes it is!

This is not going to be my traditional UA shit, but a brutally honest solopreneur ride. And, oh boy, it has been a ride. It’s still quite challenging. Sometimes, I feel like I’m on a rollercoaster, but it’s definitely worth it!

What could you expect? I will walk you through the ups and downs, how to work efficiently, how not to waste time, what are my main motivations and what I think is a wrong motivation, my revenue numbers, and some takeaways.

Why talk about it? My idea is to inspire you to do great things. I mean if I can inspire people with this shit:

Why not with something valuable?

Origin story

The transition from a full-time job to becoming a full-time consultant wasn’t just about leaving a company; it was about stepping into the unknown and embracing the uncertainties of being a solopreneur.

Ditching the 9-to-5 for the thrilling life of a full-time consultant? Oh, it wasn’t just a career swap; it was more like jumping without a parachute into the solopreneur abyss. Why? After years of moonlighting these consultancy gigs, while I was a full-time employee, I thought, “Life’s too short. Let’s stir the pot!” Not your typical safety net move, but hey, magic happens outside of your comfort zone!

But let’s not spill all the beans just yet. More juicy details another time. Right now, let’s get to the meat of the story.

Approach to work & Mindset

Going solo and juggling clients, writing articles, podcasting, and parenting? It’s a piece of cake. Some folks Netflix & chill; I blog and create to recharge my brain batteries.

Sounds tough, but it’s a breeze. Back in my “cubicle” days, I’d wrap up the day’s work (plus some) in just a few hours while the others were deep-diving into YouTube rabbit holes or on their umpteenth coffee run.

I opted to hustle on the side, boosting not just my skills but also pulling off some of the biggest mobile launches for my then-employer. It sounds hard, but it’s actually easy. When I had a 9-to-5 job, I did all the work and some additional work that I didn’t need to do in 3–4 hours. While waiting for numbers, my colleagues watched YouTube videos or just had never-ending coffee breaks.

I chose to work with other companies on the side. That helped me evolve professionally and helped the company I worked at experience its biggest mobile launches ever.

Just don’t waste time — it’s the most precious thing you have in your whole life! But, to be completely brutally honest with you, I also waste time. But when I do, it’s my choice, and I don’t complain about it. I’ve had colleagues who constantly complained but didn’t do anything to change their lives.

I want to be happy, and I am happy where I am now. My mindset was always — Let’s try & experiment to see what happens! If you think there’s a magic formula for success, you are wrong.

I will disappoint you heavily; there is nothing. Only hard work and grind — but not the “let’s work 16h/day grind.” That’s not healthy. It’s a combination of obsession, focus, and happiness. Getting rich quickly without work doesn’t happen! Getting lucky does, but it rarely happens. Luck happens when preparation meets opportunity! Simple as that.

How do you even define success? For me, it is the flexibility of spending most of the day with my daughter while working in the morning or after she goes to sleep.

My brain is always thinking, working, creating. And it’s okay!

I tried to fight it in the past because I was told, “You have to rest, you have to switch off. Go offline, that’s how you rest” Let me tell you something: I am sick of people telling me what to do. What is right or wrong?

I found a way how to regain mental strength. I don’t want to shut down. I need a quiet time for myself. This means I just don’t want to talk to people for a certain time, but I can/will work here and there to keep myself busy. My brain doesn’t like the idea of not working.

People often ask me when I rest. When? Well, when I pay 100% attention to my daughter. 100% attention = all notifications off, but I will leave that for later. That is my rest at home or during vacations/holidays. You are constantly pressured to give people or/and projects your attention.

You just need to be sure you allocate your resources in a way that is consistent with your priorities!

I am just built differently. My mind is always working. It’s okay If you are too! It is actually your biggest advantage

Only work with nice people

So when Katarina was younger, when she was sleeping during the day, I just put her in a carrier, and then I had work calls because as soon as we started talking about UA, she just fell asleep.

And then I was on calls and a few people, they were like:

oh, well, is this a good time for you to talk to us? You have the baby there.

That’s fine, I can talk.

Oh, well, let’s reschedule for tomorrow.

Well, if we reschedule for tomorrow, I’m going to be in the same position. I’m usually trying to schedule calls for this time slot. So she sleeps, I have her in the carrier, and my wife gets some rest. So this is it.

So “we will get back to you” was sometimes an answer, but never got back to me. That was a filter for me as well. So that’s why I always say when someone asks me: what’s your requirement?

My answer always is: I only work with nice people. That’s it. I just want to stay away from assholes because it’s time-consuming. And if I need to just spend my time-solving things because someone is not exactly nice to me and prefers money, I don’t care.

I just don’t have time for that type of drama anymore.

Workflow

Ties a bit to the previous part. A few companies started thinking I was their full-time employee recently. Well, honestly yeah I am part of the team, but let’s call it an extended arm that is not available 24/7. And I don’t have to be since I am still an external partner. Nobody should ever work 24/7 and be expected to be always online. Full Stop!

My notifications are always off on all communication platforms so I can actually focus on work or spend quality time with my daughter without being disturbed nonstop by Slack or Discord. This behavior pisses some people off but helps me do my job better and pay attention to my little one.

My workflow changed a lot when my daughter was born a few years ago. Thanks to the consultancy I can be a bit more flexible during the day or night.

The flexibility of doing things and being able to take care of my daughter during the day, that’s amazing. That’s perfect.

Some days I work at night when she’s sleeping, and it’s not like an ideal scenario, but then, on the other hand, well, what’s an ideal scenario?

Me working during the day, 9 hours, and then spending very little time with her? Hell no! I would sacrifice working during the day so I can work at night, honestly. And that’s way better for me.

Oh, by the way, did you know men can carry babies at work? Did you know men can take care of their children? They should! Kids grow so fast. I can’t imagine spending only 2–3 hours per day with my little one.

Thanks to her, my time management evolved so much. Everything needs to be planned ahead of time so I know what do do and when. One thing collapses, oh boy …

Skills

People think this is all rainbows & unicorns (pun intended!)

The truth is — the job is really difficult and changes so quickly. Whatever worked yesterday won’t work today. Here are a few high-level challenges you may face:

• Working with fragmented data
• Ensuring your data is trustworthy
• Managing upwards and effectively reporting
• Ad creative production (resources, scheduling, ideation)
• Navigating quickly changing post-IDFA rules
• Optimizing and testing the SKAN conversion schema

bla bla bla, obviously much more ..

Recently, I saw this post by Anton. Such a truth.

I would even say it’s more than two jobs rolled into one. The thing is, you don’t need to be the best UA expert in the world. You just need to be different. Different, in my case, means honest, transparent, authentic, oftentimes weird, and controversial. Yes, I am experienced and very good at what I do (yeah, humble too). That goes without saying.

Motivation

Let’s be real, the whole “money makes the world go ’round” spiel? Not really my jam. I’ve had folks preach the gospel of equity, shares, the whole shebang, trying to get me to buy into the whole “skin in the game” hustle. My reaction? A big ol’ yawn. Chasing after that cash carrot never really twisted my arm or swayed my stride.

You’ve got those dreamers launching startups, eyeing that million-dollar exit like it’s the holy grail. If stacking up dough is your be-all and end-all, cool. But let’s not sugarcoat it — if cash rules your decision-making, you might not always end up wearing the white hat.

“Go start an agency; you’ll rake in buckets!” That’s the chorus from The Peanut Gallery. Been there, led teams, and got the thumbs up from the crew, which is nice. They think I’m some sort of guru, and hey, I’m not complaining. But the agency life? It’s a whole different ballgame where managing people overshadows managing campaigns. And here’s the kicker — I dig the campaign hustle more. So when faced with the “but think of the money!” mantra, I’m like, “Chill, life’s got more flavors than just green.”

People are chasing more, working 24/7 to get to the C-level suite, and forgetting about the most important things in life — mental and physical health and family. Investing time and energy in relationships with your kids doesn’t offer the same immediate sense of achievement that a fast-track career does. You often see a sobering pattern when looking at the personal lives of many ambitious people. Though they may believe that their family is deeply important to them, they actually allocate fewer and fewer resources to the things they would say matter the most.

I’m not here to throw shade. Sure, chasing that higher paycheck is tempting, but at what cost? Is it worth parking your soul in a spot you never wanted, just for a fatter wallet? That’s the million-dollar question, folks.

From where I stand, betting your happiness on the dollar bills is like building castles on quicksand. Just my two cents, but hey, who’s counting?

Layoffs

People are sad about getting laid off, and don’t get me wrong, it is a sad moment. I will keep happening to people over and over again. This is nothing new. I am just really surprised by how much people talk about it when they are hired internally. I guess being an employee should give you a sense of security. Let me bring this to you. It’s not.

Company owners will always protect their profits over the people they hire. That is just a fact. Kudos to exceptions! Anyway, I just wanted to say welcome to my world. Here comes the hardest part. I am laid off almost monthly from a company/project I work with for different reasons: restructuring, cutting costs, and hiring an internal person. It is what it is — the life of a consultant. It took me a while to get used to this rollercoaster, especially when 50% of your monthly revenue disappears in a day.

It was an eye-opening experience, and I am super grateful for it. I learned a lot about who I am, what is really important to me, and what I can achieve.

Thanks to this, I could spend more time with my daughter and family, start our amazing no-bullshit gaming show, and think.

I turned this into a positive experience and learning. Let’s not forget that life is hard, but it is great. Enjoy it!

This happened first time in 2022, and that year really taught me one important thing. Everything is possible! Being „busy“ and not having time is just a state of mind. If you are struggling to find time, sit down, think about your processes and activities, and organize your time better. It’s a game of priorities!

If I can be the second fastest-growing technology company in Slovakia, start a newsletter and podcast, and write frequently while spending 70% of the day with my little daughter, you are doing something really wrong.

A healthy mind and body help at work and with all the pressure. Love what you do to excel. Because it’s not work anymore. There is no work-life balance. There is only life.

Life

Navigating life, I’ve always been a bit weird, visualizing myself in scenarios that seemed more like daydreams than actual situations. From academic lecture halls to the newbie grind at my first gig to the glitzy, unpredictable gaming industry, it’s been a ride.

I saw myself on a stage giving a speech at a marketing conference in Slovakia, then at different gaming conferences around the world, and eventually at a GDC, different (higher) positions at work, working with large gaming companies, etc.… I always thought it was super weird to see myself at a point in the future. Then I realized it was something I had been working subconsciously towards until I was in that spot.

Then, along came Arnold Schwarzenegger, courtesy of Netflix, dropping wisdom bombs hit me like a ton of bricks. That’s it. That’s me. I had been mirroring Arnold’s blueprint all along — harboring a crystal-clear vision of my ambitions and relentlessly charging towards them, come what may.

My recent vision is for the two and a half gamers podcast to become the biggest gaming podcast/show. Honestly, we are already heading there, and I will do everything it takes to make it happen.

And let’s not forget my brutally honest newsletter, aiming to be the insider’s bible for User Acquisition and a side of laughs because, seriously, who decided industry insights had to be as dry as stale bread?

So, here’s to the visionary paths we carve, the audacious goals we set, and the spirited journey that unfolds. Here’s to crafting a legacy that’s not just seen but felt — a testament to the power of clear vision and unwavering determination.

Data-driven stories you tell yourself

It actually goes both ways. I just mentioned the visions, but negative stories you tell yourself can harm your growth and influence your life badly.

• Stories you tell yourself always become true (negative or positive)
• “I am not good enough.”
• “I won’t make it.”
• “It’s too difficult for me.”
• “What am I doing here? I don’t have the skills.”
• etc..

You get the idea!

Joey: She’s healed!
Rachel: That’s weird.
Joey: No, it’s not weird. It’s a miracle.
Rachel: It’s not a miracle, Joey. I’m sure there’s some explanation.
Joey: Oh, there is. If you want something enough and your heart is pure, wondrous things can happen.

Always think about Joey! Hah. Jokes aside, if you tell yourself, “You are going to make it,” it will eventually become true, and you will make it like a piece of cake.

Goal setting

The gospel of goal-setting has been preached far and wide, echoing through the halls of every corporation and startup alike. You know the drill: weekly, monthly, and quarterly targets are set as the golden path to progress and self-improvement. It’s almost a corporate mantra, a security blanket for the workforce to cling to, ensuring they’re marching in the “right” direction.

But here’s a hot take: Goals? Not for me.

Yes, you read that right. No typos here. Just a bold, underlined, and italicized NO to the whole goal-setting fiesta. And before you dismiss it as sheer rebellion or a whimsical flight of fancy, hear me out.

What a bullshit!

The Great Goal Myth

We’ve been spoon-fed the idea that without goals, we’re essentially ships without rudders, aimlessly drifting in the vast ocean of potential. Goals are touted as the beacons of purpose, guiding us toward our personal and professional North Stars. But what if they’re actually more like shackles, limiting our journey to only the paths we’ve envisioned at the outset?

The Limitation of Linear Paths

Goals inherently demand a linear trajectory toward a predefined destination. They nudge us into narrow pathways, often blinding us to the myriad of possibilities that lie just beyond our goal-focused blinkers. Life, with its inherent unpredictability and boundless potential, is anything but linear. So, why confine ourselves to the straight and narrow when we can embrace the wild, untamed beauty of exploration without boundaries?

The Pressure Cooker of Perpetual Goal-Chasing

Setting goals transforms life into a perpetual chase, where the finish line perpetually shifts just beyond reach. Each achievement becomes merely a stepping stone to the next target, trapping us in an endless loop of “what’s next?” This relentless pursuit often leads to burnout, overshadowing the joy of the journey and the richness of the experiences along the way.

Freedom in Fluidity

Imagine, for a moment, a life unbound by the strictures of specific goals. A life where curiosity leads, and growth is organic, sprouting from the seeds of experiences rather than the rigid frameworks of objectives. This approach doesn’t just open the door to unexpected opportunities; it demolishes the walls that confine us to predetermined paths, allowing us to live in full color, beyond the black and white of goal-oriented thinking.

The Paradox of Limitless Limitations

In the irony of ironies, eschewing goals doesn’t limit us; it liberates us. Without the constant pressure to hit the next benchmark, we’re free to explore, learn, and pivot with the fluidity of water, adapting to the ever-changing landscape of life with agility and grace. It’s in this boundless space of possibilities that true innovation and creativity flourish, unencumbered by the fear of missing the mark.

Crafting a Life Unscripted

Ditching the goal-setting script doesn’t mean meandering through life without purpose or direction. Rather, it’s about crafting a narrative driven by passion, curiosity, and the intrinsic desire to grow and evolve, goals or no goals. It’s about finding security not in the predictable milestones of achievement but in the robustness of our adaptability and the depth of our willingness to embrace the unknown.

So, here stands an invitation to step off the goal-setting treadmill and into the expansive, uncharted territories of a life lived without limits. Because, at the end of the day, the most profound journeys are those not confined by the narrow lanes of goals but enriched by the limitless landscapes of possibility.

Brand

Brutally honest, transparent, lots of humor, making fun of myself, dancing unicorns and shit. At this point, it’s not apologetic on my end.

Funny enough, this whole being “me” thing wasn’t some grand strategy. It’s just… well, me. Back in the day, I’d often hear, “You can’t say that you can’t do this,” ringing in my ears like some sort of corporate mantra. Then, the moment I bid adieu to the “suit-and-tie brigade”, everyone’s tune changed.

Suddenly, my brand of straight talk and raw honesty was the flavor of the month. “We need more of this!” they cried. Go figure.

So, here’s the big reveal: I’ve not changed. I’ve been this brutally honest soul all along, and now it’s suddenly in vogue? I’m not complaining. If anything, it just proves my point — life’s too short to be serious (and muted.)

In a nutshell, I’m all about keeping it real, with a healthy sprinkle of absurdity for good measure. Because, let’s face it, who has the time for anything less?

Being yourself, it’s like you know that you also will displeased by what you stand for. That’s inevitable. When you are yourself, that doesn’t mean you have to be an asshole.

Everybody is a consultant now

For me, the journey has always been about enlightening others with information and giving back to the community that has given me so much. I consider myself incredibly fortunate to be where I am today, and because of that, I feel a strong desire to share my knowledge as freely as I can.

This drive to share isn’t just about shining a spotlight on myself or indirectly boosting my consulting gig — though let’s be real, we all know some folks who are all about that brand-building life. But hey, who am I to throw stones? My aim is simply to provide value through brutal honesty and clear transparency, offering insights that can genuinely help others.

Embracing the reality that you can’t be everyone’s cup of tea is crucial. Some will vibe with what you’re putting out there, and others won’t. And that’s perfectly fine. Realizing this sooner rather than later can save you a lot of stress and energy.

I’m a firm believer in not fixing what isn’t broken. Instead, it’s about recognizing your weaknesses not as flaws, but as opportunities to reach new heights. Sure, playing to your strengths is smart — like building upon your knack for public speaking, if that’s your thing. As for me? Not so much. I’d much rather hunker down at home, write my heart out, and steer clear of the stage spotlight. It’s not about avoiding challenges; it’s about knowing where you shine the brightest and making the most of it.

Even though it’s not my jam, you will still see me on stage overcoming the fear and jumping out of my comfort zone while talking about some creative trends or other UA shit!

Building a 1.4mil EUR ARR company alone

Building a $1.4 million-a-year company might sound like a journey paved with high-tech innovations or glamorous product launches. Yet, the real secret sauce to this level of success is often found in the most unassuming places. It’s the non-sexy aspects of business that often hold the key to substantial, sustainable growth. Let’s dive into how focusing on the less glamorous, more practical strategies can lead to a profitable venture, especially when targeting small to midsize companies rather than chasing after big, flashy names.

Embrace the Non-Sexy

The allure of creating something visually stunning or market-disrupting is undeniable. We’re talking about the sexy stuff: sleek website designs, eye-catching sales decks, and products that promise to revolutionize the industry. However, the real money-makers are often found in the less glamorous tasks: increasing your hourly fees, charging more in general, and expanding into new verticals. It’s about recognizing the value you bring to the table and not being afraid to ask for what your service is genuinely worth.

I left Pixelfederation in 2018, where you can see the revenue increase. Then the real breakthrough happened in mid-2020. Do you know what it was? I became my own boss! No bullshit, just brutal honesty!

For years, my company didn’t have a website or a sales deck. Guess what? Nobody cared. Why? Because my focus was on delivering exceptional value and solving real problems (honestly, some days I thought I am not even solving any problem), especially those small and midsize companies that are often overlooked by the giants in the industry.

Family First

Adopting a family-first approach doesn’t mean cutting corners or sacrificing quality. Instead, it means making strategic decisions that ensure your family, mental & business’s financial health is always at the forefront. This means passing on the temptation to give discounts and just bend over to every penny. Instead, I was (and I still am) opting out of any discounts or any speculative models. I really value my time, and as I mentioned, I spend the majority of my day with my daughter. Why? That time is way more valuable to me than working for a lower fee.

The Rollercoaster Journey

Building a company to this level of revenue is anything but a smooth ride. It’s a rollercoaster of highs and lows, successes and setbacks. What keeps this journey on track? A steadfast focus on being true to oneself and the business’s core values. The moment I stopped trying to conform to what I thought the industry wanted and started focusing on what I knew we were great at, the numbers began to increase. It wasn’t about being everything to everyone but about being the best for someone. The thing is, you don’t need to be the best. You need to be different! Yep, that’s it.

Why the Focus on Non-Sexy Works

So, why does focusing on the non-sexy aspects of business work? Because it’s where the real value lies. It’s about solving genuine problems, filling gaps in the market, and providing services that businesses truly need. When you shift your focus from trying to impress with aesthetics to impress with substance, you create a foundation for sustainable growth.

David vs. Goliath

#justforfuncomparison on the two biggest companies in the local gaming market in Slovakia and me.

Lancaric.me = 1 person = 1.4Mil revenue in 2023 = 700k profit

Pixel Federation = 230 people = 42.Mil Revenue in 2023 = 1 mil profit

Powerplay studios = 49 people = 2.87 Mil revenue in 2023 = 422k loss

In conclusion, building a company with a $1.4 million annual revenue is less about the outward glitz and more about the inward grit. It’s a testament to the power of focusing on what truly matters: providing undeniable value, adopting a profit-first mindset, and embracing the journey, rollercoaster and all. So, here’s to the non-sexy side of business — it might not always look pretty, but it sure does pay off.

Takeaways

In the grand, unpredictable game of life (and business, for that matter), here’s the deal: aiming to be the best in the crowd? Overrated. Striving to be the odd one out, the unicorn among horses? That’s where the magic happens.

Remember, time isn’t just money; it’s your life currency. Spend it wisely, not on endless scrolling or fretting over the unimportant. It’s all about what you value on your to-do list. And let’s be honest, if you’ve got happiness in your corner, it’s like hitting a triple jackpot — happy you, happy family, happy clients, and voila, your business is on the up and up.

Speaking of priorities, let’s not forget the golden rule: family first, mental peace a close second, and then, somewhere down the line, work slots in. This isn’t your typical corporate ladder — it’s the ladder to a fulfilled life.

Now, for the soloists out there thinking you need an army to make a dent in the universe, think again. Sometimes, a one-person army is all it takes to storm the castle. And as for advice? Take it with a grain of salt. Your gut’s been with you since day one, trust it to guide you right.

Embrace the oops moments and the aha moments equally. After all, a smooth sea never made a skilled sailor. And if your job’s making you dread Mondays, it’s time to swipe left on that career and find your true love in the work world.

Ditch the goalposts. Instead, paint your future with broad, visionary strokes. Consistency is your best friend here — stick to your guns, and the universe will eventually get with the program. While you’re at it, forget the whole comparison game. Just do you because everyone else is already taken.

Shortcuts and secret sauces? Myths, the lot of them. The only real spice is elbow grease. And lastly, when it comes to the people around you, a simple mantra: don’t be a jerk. It’s not just good manners; it’s good business.

Started this tradition three years ago, half drunk after the Christmas dinner when I saw a lot of predictions flying around. I sat down and wrote about what I’d learned that year. Here we go again since you can’t predict almost anything in our ever-changing gaming industry!

Sit back, relax, grab a Christmas Margarita or eggnog, and enjoy the learnings of 2023 with my lovely comments!

But where to start? There were so many important things that worked so well. I already shared a bunch of them in my previous tips, so this time I am going to mention those that made the most impact on my UA ops! It’s quite a lot of learnings, definitely get that eggnog. Here you go:

The Anatomy of Great Performing Video

Producing a creative winner is not an easy job. Thank you, captain obvious! What a great start to the article. Nevertheless, So let’s look at the anatomy of a well-performing creative:

• Hook
• Meat
• Call to Action

The hook:

The first 1–4 seconds of your ad are the most important part. Make the most of this time window by captivating your audience with a powerful, attention-grabbing hook that draws them in to keep watching. Ensure the hook is related to your game at least in some way. This will ensure a smooth transition from the initial hook to the following key message of your creative.

To see videos, check out the original article by Lancaric UA consultant

Meat

Attractions of the game itself are highly effective selling points of the game. Show gameplay recordings and share strategies, extraordinary characters, and your unique artistic style. Reveal the elements within your game that make it memorable and unique to new audiences. Also, you can use altered gameplay in your creatives. Not every level you show in the creative needs to be in the game.

Call-to-Action

Don’t forget to add a compelling call-to-action at the end of your video ad. Use your game slogan, a catchy slogan, and a clear button to direct users to the next step. Keep up the momentum and transfer your audience’s attention to the next action — try next level, achieve level XYZ, purchase?!

To see videos, check out the original article by Lancaric UA consultant

Unlocking TikTok with Creative challenge

Unlocking TikTok? Seems like a big challenge. Oh wait, have you said challenge? Do you mean TikTok Creative Challenge (TTCC)? Badumtss! Jokes aside. If you are not listed for a TTCC, you are missing out heavily.

TikTok is transforming the way people discover new ideas and products while creating a new way for games to engage with creators to reach and connect with diverse communities around TikTok.

TikTok Creative Challenge is a new in-app feature that allows creators to submit video ads to brand challenges and receive rewards based on video performance. Creators can browse through the list of challenges, read the challenge’s brief, which displays the reward pool and details rules and requirements, and submit their video ad.

The Creative Challenge gives creators full creative freedom over their ads, unlocking more opportunities for creators to collaborate with brands in a way that’s most authentic to them.

Easy! Sit down, write to your TikTok rep, and get on this ASAP. Then you prep a creative brief for creators. Don’t forget! Brief is the key to receiving quality videos!

To see videos, check out the original article by Lancaric UA consultant

I must say, I saw some pretty weird shit in the TTCC for many games. But there is also gold in there. Your performance (and scale) improves heavily when you find that gold!

Hooks!

Hooks make a difference in your creatives. There are masters of hooks at Century Games using real-life hooks combined with their game Whiteout Survival. How could you leverage hooks a bit more in your creative strategy? Which one of these grabbed your attention?

I would say the last one, right? There is definitely a story behind it you would like to explore. Run these as static images in the creative testing and take the winner, and connect it to the video creative showing a similar gameplay. Voilá! One of the best videos in my campaigns at the moment!

Take videos, use the first 1–3 seconds, and bam.

To see videos, check out the original article by Lancaric UA consultant

Crazy idea for a hook? Is anyone out there with a train game? *wink wink*

To see videos, check out the original article by Lancaric UA consultant

Test the pace of your creative

How to improve creatives? There are 2389273872362 ways how to make that happen. What is not discussed too often, but has a significant impact on the performance (at least in my view) is the pace of the creative. What do I mean by that?

Different audience segments resonate with different creatives, right? Yeah, we know that.

Same thing with the pace. Females like to see slower, calm & relaxing creatives whereas males like to see fast, action-packed creatives that catch their attention. Is that so? I usually like to test these hypotheses, so here you go:

Slow

1. CPI: $1.23
2. IPM: 8.2
3. CTR: 1.54%

To see videos, check out the original article by Lancaric UA consultant

Faster

1. CPI: $1.76
2. IPM: 7
3. CTR: 1.14%

To see videos, check out the original article by Lancaric UA consultant

Where to get creative inspiration?

Where to get creative inspiration? That is always the hard question. Maybe the hardest one! Lets dig a little bit deeper:

• competitors (no shit sherlock)
• but don’t copy their ads 1:1, use them as an inspiration and try to add +1 in the concept
• on the other hand, if you are a small studio with not a lot of resources. You can copy 1:1, it’s okay!

• non-direct competitors A.K.A different genres
• you can go two different directions in here:
• look at your target audience interests overlap/affinity and look into the other genres your players play (E.g., Match3 vs. Merge, shooters vs. strategy)
• you can look outside of your genre for inspiration
• hypercasual mechanics
• yes, I know, I know. I am talking about this for ages already. Still works like a charm. Some games started even adding whole (hypercasual) GAMES into their games
• Youtube vs TikTok trends
• ASMR (eating), save the dog, chest opening, dancing, etc.
• Memes & hype (+AI shit)

This category is endless inspiration. Use it wisely!

To see videos, check out the original article by Lancaric UA consultant

ASMR trend

This tip is focused on one creative concept I mentioned before. Could you guess what it is? Check the creatives below:

To see videos, check out the original article by Lancaric UA consultant

Yes! ASMR. I was talking about this multiple times last year on our two & a half gamers podcast! There was hype around the concept when the ASMR slicing game hit the top 1 in US downloads ranks, but then slowly faded off.

The trend is still pretty big, btw:

To see videos, check out the original article by Lancaric UA consultant

There are so many ASMR variations:

AdROAS UA channel mix

In the last few games UA reviews we did on the Two & a half gamers no bullshit podcast, we saw a strong performance of Applovin. It was on the top of the spending and share of impressions. It was paired with a strong performance of the playable ad format. Then we saw Google and Unity in the UA channel mix.

There is a pattern. All three games were strong on Ad revenue. How does the UA playbook for ad revenue-based games look like? It depends on the IAP vs. Ads revenue split, but let’s say its 50vs50:

Applovin AdROAS + IAP ROAS campaigns

1. US + T1 geos (add WW after stable performance of US+T1)

Google AdROAS + tROAS

1. US + ROW

Unity AdROAS + ROAS

1. US

Diversify the UA as much as you can!

Communication is key to UA’s success!

Communication is key to success not only in User Acquisition, but because it allows individuals, teams, and organizations to effectively share information, ideas, and feedback.

Effective communication promotes understanding, builds trust, and fosters collaboration between user acquisition, creative and product teams, all of which are essential for achieving goals and making progress.

As simple as it sounds, sometimes we just forget to communicate. Communication always helps to clarify expectations, delegate tasks, and coordinate efforts.

Tell your colleagues what are you working on, what are your struggles or wins, help them understand which UA channel & creative currently performs. Don’t stop and tell this to your product and creative teams. They will appreciate it.

Here are some tips for communicating effectively:

1. Be clear and concise: When communicating, make sure to get to the point and be concise. Avoid using overly complicated language or jargon that may confuse the listener. I often forgot that not everybody knows what IPM, CTR, ROAS or CPI is.
2. Listen actively: Effective communication is a two-way process. Listening actively to the other person helps to understand their perspective and ensures that the conversation is a dialogue rather than a monologue.
3. Be honest & transparent: When you make a mistake, admit it. When you feel something is wrong, speak up. Always tell the truth!
4. Be empathetic: Empathy involves understanding and acknowledging the feelings of the other person. Showing empathy can help build trust and understanding, which can lead to more effective communication. Very tied to the previous point!
5. Choose the right medium: Different communication channels, such as email, slack/discord, hangout/zoon, or face-to-face, have their strengths and weaknesses. Choose the right medium for the situation and make sure that the message is conveyed clearly. I usually don’t have to jump on a call to discuss things, but some people prefer having a call!

Communicate! Tell people what you (dis)like, tell them if they do a good (or a bad) job.

Communication is a very important skill of every Senior UA manager. As simple as it sounds. I know I can do better in communication!

Creative team composition

I’ve been talking about how to identify trends in creatives multiple times. What I didn’t talk about too often is the creative team structure and the number of creatives they need to produce for a certain level of UA budget.

There is no best practice! Thank you very much for reading …

Ok, jokes aside. There is no best practice, but this is how I usually structure it:

Monthly budget & number of new creatives:

0–50k per month

• 4 new unique creative concepts per month (+ iterations)

50–250k

• 4–10 new unique creative concepts per month (+ iterations)

250k-500k

• 10–16 new unique creative concepts per month (+ iterations)

500k-1Mil

• 16–20 new unique creative concepts per month (+ iterations)

1mil+

• 20+ new unique creative concepts per month (+ iterations)

What should be your creative team structure?

• 1 motion designer
• 2 illustrators
• 3 graphic designers
• 4 flying unicorns
• 5 flamboyant flamingos

Ok, ok, ok, stop with the bullshit. Ideally, you want to have a mix of 2D & 3D motion designers, character animators & riggers. Illustrators & graphic designers are really nice to have, but you can live without them.

As a pair of new eyes, you should be working with an external creative agency. Not because they are going to steal your job but because they have a lot of experience & can produce concepts you would not think about.

I have 10 motion designers on my team — mixing 2D & 3D motion design, character animation & rigging. We have done some crazy shit!

To see videos, check out the original article by Lancaric UA consultant

Memes

When thinking about creative ideas, look around — ideally outside of gaming. Maybe browse a little bit on Facebook or Instagram. What is your go-to website for memes?

Try to leverage hype and buzz. Have you see a great meme or video that you could recreate for your game? Use it!

There are multiple other examples, but you get it right? The same applies to AI-generated images. Short & dirty, but super efficient!

Happy iOS-ing

“ I don’t see data on iOS! (in the first 72h)”
”CPIs are really high, there must be something wrong?!”

Well, yes & yes. You are not able to see any installs coming through in the first 72 hours thanks to the privacy changes that happened on iOS. Installs are happening in the meantime, you are just not able to see them. Don’t worry, you won’t lose any data.

You just need to be prepared for something like this will happen:

This is how it works now and its completely okay. CPIs are really high! Yep, welcome to the world of UA. As you see, the CPI is going down when you get more data and will come down to stable levels in 5–7 days since the start of the campaign.

What can you do?

Don’t make any changes in the first 72h => 0 installs = Facebook is not optimized at all. Wait until you get data, then make changes!

Also, the privacy threshold on Facebook is 88 installs per day per campaign. As you can see, the campaign above was not anywhere close to passing that threshold, which means we also don’t see the full picture in terms of postbacks. What can be done here?

1. Slowly increase the budget until you hit 88 installs
2. Add more countries into the mix (lower CPIs, more installs, more postbacks)
3. creative refresh!

So again: What could you do to start getting post-backs and meet the privacy threshold?

• increase budget (DUH!) (if I add “increase bid” advice I automatically become Google rep)
• Run campaigns with considerably high budgets. Look at your CPIs on Android, multiply them 5–8x and calculate the budget.
• Simplified, if you run $150–200/day on Android, on iOS you need to start at least on $500–600/day.
• add countries

Consolidate countries and create geo-tier buckets. My current Tiers example:

T1: US, UK, CA, DE, FR, AU, KR, JP, CH

T2: DK, FI, NO, SE, NL, ES, IT, HK, SG, NZ

T3: PL, CZ, SK, BE, AT, IE, TR, UAE, SA, TW, TH

ROW

I usually group all tier 1 countries together not looking at the language, but only LTV (lifetime value), then create tier 2 segment and Rest of the World. This is based on LTV for a specific game.

Don’t copy, do your own homework!

broader targeting strategies

Use broad targeting as much as possible, and consolidate lookalikes, interest or behavior with high overlap into larger groups.

experiment with campaign optimisation

With Facebook consider switching campaigns to AAA (Automated app ads) structure to help overcome the privacy threshold and start getting postbacks.

Use AAA campaign with MAI+Purchase optimization. As such, 50% of the time the campaign will optimise for installs and other 50% will optimise for purchase. Using this campaign type especially on iOS to get lower CPIs, but also quality players.

!!! Important !!!

Don’t make campaign adjustments in the first 72 hours after launching the iOS 14 campaign.

Wait until you see first data, then when evaluating overall campaign performance, please wait for an additional 24 hours (ideally 72 hours) so that the campaign can fully receive all SKAN conversion post-backs.

Expect a longer learning phase for the iOS14 campaigns due to SKAN delays and IDFA loss.

Let’s see what happens when SKAN 4.0 is fully live.

How to write a creative brief

Alright, buckle up because I’m about to give you a crash course on writing a killer creative brief for your mobile app or game.

First, start with a clear and concise project overview. This is like the opening cutscene that sets the stage for your creative team.

Next, define your target audience. Who are they? What makes them tick? This is like choosing the character class that your game appeals to.

Then, lay out your objectives. Are you looking to increase installs, boost engagement, or monetize like a mobile mogul?

After that, provide insights and inspiration. Think of this as the secret level that unlocks creative brilliance. Fire up those external creative tools (and some internal benchmarks) to prepare with numbers and trends!

Finally, include any guidelines, specifications, or requirements. These are like the rules of your game that ensure a smooth gameplay experience.

Remember, a good creative brief is like a well-crafted tutorial level — it guides your team towards success.

Example:
We have a mid-core game about to launch globally. The main target audience is males 35+ from Asia. We want to use these creatives during the global launch, focusing on the effective budget increase rather than a Big splash. We have some data from the soft launch about the best-performing creatives and would like you to stay relevant to the gameplay as much as possible. Our main competitors are Survivor.io, Legend of Slime, and TopWar. Please come up with 5–6 creative concepts.

UA channels for early-stage

Which UA channel to use for early-stage F2P mobile games and selecting appropriate UA channels for each launch phase? This question appeared recently in our 2.5gamers slack channel.

I know I bitch about Facebook all the time, but I still use it for early testing and especially in Softlaunch. Obviously combined with Google and other channels like Unity, TikTok, and Applovin.

Why Facebook? What gives you better targeting options?

Yes, still Facebook. Facebook is still very strong on the global launch day but fades off afterward. And this brings us back to the question if we should not use other channels like Unity or Applovin.

First of all, for Unity or Applovin, you need to implement MMP. With Facebook testing, you only need to implement Facebook SDK.

Second of all, as before mentioned, better-targeting options and the ability to benchmark your KPIs with the games you’ve done before or with other peers that usually use Facebook too.

Super effective creative research

Super effective creative research?

1. Find a very strong competitor and look into the audience overlap.
2. Put a target on their back and assess all their creatives with the most impressions.
3. Look for recent winners (last 30 days) and evergreen concepts in the last year.
4. Don’t reinvent the wheel.
5. Produce 3–5 creatives (could be 1:1 exact copy)
6. Iterate winners from there!

To see videos, check out the original article by Lancaric UA consultant

Just look at what Kingdom Guard is doing nowadays. They put a big target on Rush Royale, started copying their ads, and are almost on a third or fourth iteration of winners. Looks like it’s working well — See for yourself!

Soft launch device performance

When in soft launch, be sure to think about the whole picture.

Run UA & evaluate.

But dig deeper into your data.

Be sure you are running campaigns targeted at players eligible to play your game on their devices.

What do I mean?

There is a shit ton of Android devices and I am pretty sure games soft-launched in 2023 have high requirements.

Dig deeper, and look into the device performance. Exclude the devices based on RAM, not only OS.

I used to exclude 3GB RAM devices from the campaigns and performance improved quite heavily.

How do you do that? My former colleagues Martin & Tomas did the hard work for you and compiled this list — Request access! Add these to your campaigns and voila, exclusion list is there.

But we are in 2023, excluding 3GB RAM is not enough anymore. After doing some research, there is a hack. Pretty obvious one.

How to exclude older devices that don’t have 6GB RAM? Target only Android OS12!

Google Android 12 Requirements:

At Least 6GB RAM, 1080p Display

At least a 12-megapixel rear camera with support for 4K30 video recording.

With this, you can improve your D1 retention from 20% to 40%. You will stop acquiring players that can’t play your game. Easy!

Always dig deeper!

(I love) Seasonal creatives

Yeah, it is that time of the year when every rep in the world tells you to adjust your creative process to produce Halloween & Christmas creatives.

Honestly, such a waste of time and resources if you don’t do it right. Never worked for me in my whole career and I tried really, really hard. The UA god is my witness!

It’s actually very similar to the fake ads experience I have been talking about in the last couple of years

You need to create a seamless expectation flow for your players:

• players see Halloween creatives
• they land on your app store page -> they see a Halloween/Christmas screenshot (1st screenshot is enough)
• don’t forget to use the Halloween/Christmas icon & feature image
• players install the game and they see Halloween/Christmas content
• Yay! everybody is happy!

if you know you are going to skip even one step from this list, don’t waste time and resources. Just skip the seasonal bullshit and stick to what works for you.

There is always the additional question: How long should I run Halloween/Christmas creatives?

Well, as long as you see a good performance and you are hitting the goals.

Soft launch KPIs

Soft launch KPIs are always tricky. What kind of retention should you aim for?

It’s not always easy to hit industry benchmarks 40/20/10 (D1, D7, D30 retention)

What if you have lower retention?

• It’s all about the ratios between the D1, D7, D30 and even D60. I’ve seen games with shitty D1 retention (as low as D1 28%) hitting D60 retention 6–8%.
• This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t aim for high retention profile.
• Healthy retention profile helps you retain players and monetize them afterwards

What if you are have super high CPI?

• What does super high CPI even mean? Different genres have different CPIs. If you have a puzzle game and you see $40 CPIs in tier1 or Tier2 countries, that is pretty high.
• But, we need more information. What UA channels are you running? What is the campaign optimisation you are running — MAI / AEO or VO?
• I always look on the CPI evolution (increase through time in SL) — What is the starting CPI, how does the CPI looks like after 7days, how does it look like after 30days?
• if your CPI increases rapidly in first 7days, you most probably have very niche game and you will have hard time scaling.

Can you grow my game? Could it be ROI positive?

• It can be ROI positive, potentially yes.
• But again, what will be the daily spend. If your KPIs suck, you won’t be able to spend a lot of money per day.
• What I actually want to say here is, you can have a profitable game with not being able to spend millions on a monthly basis.
• Some companies are spending few thousands per day, making few thousands on top of it and they are okay.
• You don’t need to spend millions to run a successful business.
• There are always pros and cons.

Building a mobile game with marketing in mind

Creative production is super important part of the UA. Not all creative concepts are easily created.

Starting the production of a game with outsourcing capabilities in mind can be very hard, but also very helpful for your marketing efforts.

Because let’s face it, your game won’t get any traction without User Acquisition.

What should you think about?

• If your game is in 3D, preparing for a 2D asset pack you could be sharing with agencies and consultants is a very nice bonus.
• build your game with dev console in mind (or GOD MODE)
• think about cheats, toggle off HUD, change camera angles

Organize your assets beforehand! There is nothing more beautiful than a folder with organized game assets. This is what you should prepare:

• Brand rules (does the brand have some non-go zone? / How to use the logo / what colors to use .. etc.)
• Legal lines
• Logos
• Fonts
• Gameplay videos
• End screen/packshots/outro (if you already have them)
• UI game elements (buttons, characters, icons, menu etc.)
• PSD files and source files

If you are not thinking about this in advance, it’s not the end of the world. But! If you do, it will speed up the creative production and help your outsourcing partner quite heavily.

Bullshit tips fact check

Be careful what you read and what advice you follow. Always try to think about the motivation of the author who provides tips and the context why he/she it doing it. E.g:

Marketing agency tells you you need to have different creatives on different channels, because it doesn’t work.

But is that really true? How come survivor.io uses the same creatives on all the channels and makes $2mil/day?

Why would they tell you a different story? To charge you more for those additional creatives.

Some blogs or articles are just puff pieces from an agency. Usually starts with super long intro and then you can see a fragment of the article where you actually read a few vague tips without providing any value

These articles always end with “blablbla, you should use our service — please contact us here. We will help you”

If you read this at the end, you know it’s a trap! Plus, you are never going to get any insightful tips only upsell.

When to start using Fake ads?

Should you even consider those?

There is no right answer to this question. Maybe it is in here. But if you are considering using something not completely related to your gameplay, wait until you are done with the retention tests in the soft launch. If you start using fake ads too soon, your retention will look like shit. And not because your game sucks, but because your creatives are misleading. They are setting different expectations, which in the retention phase is not very appreciated.

To see videos, check out the original article by Lancaric UA consultant

When you are entering the monetization phase, you are still using the gameplay-related creatives. But when you have enough data to improve the game, you start experimenting heavily on the creative side. I’ve talked about having at least 4–5 different creative concepts in the soft launch multiple times. Don’t forget about it!

One of these concepts could be a fake ad (misleading) that can drive low CPIs but low retention. How do you mitigate this? You combine fake ads with Purchase or Value optimization on the campaign level. This down funnel optimization takes care of complete “trash” quality traffic you always get and optimizes only for high-value players.

What do you get with this combo?

fake ads = low CPIs, high amount of players, lower retention

Value optimization = high CPIs, high quality, high purchase power, higher retention

Do you see the Venn diagram right there? If yes, please share it in the comments!

To see videos, check out the original article by Lancaric UA consultant

Deconstructor of Fun event in Istanbul

This was definitely a highlight of the year for me — AGAIN! I was invited to have a talk at Google x DOF event in Istanbul..

Oh boy! What a great event full of awesome speakers and content. Well, check it out! This time I talked about how easy is to run campaigns on iOS:

To see videos, check out the original article by Lancaric UA consultant

Starting at 3:19:40. Big scarf, big success! Enjoy as much as I enjoyed..

Subscribe to the Brutally honest newsletter

Funnily enough, I started sending a weekly newsletter last year. I thought I would never have time to do it or ideas/insights to write about. What started in March with 0 subscribers, is now in late December sitting on almost 8500 subscribers (8427 in fact) with an average open rate of 42%. Thanks a lot! Last year, when I published learnings of 2022 — subscriptions were at 2500!

If you haven’t done it yet, please subscribe to my newsletter. It’s so honest it might actually annoy you. If you are easily annoyed, please don’t subscribe.

I also just started a paid subscription where I share insights, special UA tips, and creative hacks monthly. Check it out here!

Matej AI

No bullshit gaming podcast two & a half gamers

This little baby has experienced explosive growth this year. Oh my fucking god! We did not expect such a great feedback. Our no-BS podcast is growing thanks to all of you and it pushes us forward. Please subscribe to our channel, if you didn’t already. It would make the world to us since we are putting a lot of effort to produce high-quality content. It’s also so much fun!

Reaching also 8200 subscribers this year across all the platforms is just out of our fucking minds. We were at 1000, maybe max 1500 subs last year. BIG THANKS TO YOU!

Here is also our best podcast:

To see videos, check out the original article by Lancaric UA consultant

This is exactly when we introduced our stunning intro. You can say by looking at Felix and Jakub’s face!

Two & a half gamers slack

Yes, we actually did this too. We opened up a community space for everybody. Juniors, seniors, developers, marketers, sales people, vendors. The most inclusive community in gaming! Join us here.

Personal shit stuff

The year 2023 was wonderful, but for different reasons than you might think. It was a fucking hard year! As I mentioned in my Linkedin post below:

The fact that I started last year with 50% less monthly revenue was really hard. But it was an eye-opening experience, which I am super grateful for. I learned a lot about who I am, what is really important to me, and what I can achieve. This year it was very similar. The life of a consultant is a constant roller coaster. That why I wrote about the reality of a UA manager:

The Mobile User Acquisition manager’s job is to make gaming companies a lot of money by driving installs. If you’re good, your salary has no bounds. And if you’re average, you can probably have a steady job for a few months before you hop to another (turnover is very high for this job) and it can be pure chaos sometimes. Here’s an example of one of my calls this past year:

Today was a good day!
Hey hey, long time no see. Could we jump on a call ASAP? We have new UA activities, but we don’t have the internal team to do it. And we would like you to manage it.

Sure thing, let’s discuss.

We have a client with solitaire games. We manage affiliate marketing and other stuff for them. They just approached us to take over the UA as well. Obviously we agreed, because we can’t lose this client.

Alright, how many games?

All of them. They have 3 games right now.

How can you say yes to 3 games, when you don’t have the UA team? 😀

Again, we can’t lose this one. It’s super important, so we will do whatever it takes to keep them. Can you do it for us?

Okay then. I can definitely help. Here is the pricing. Let’s kick it off.

Oh, but we have really small margins on this one. Can you give us a discount?

huh? You don’t have internal team, you approached me, you want me to start ASAP and when I said yes, you ask me for a discount?

(3 weeks passed)

Hey! So we decided to start hiring internally. Thanks a lot.

Today was a good day!

Yeah, most people don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. But that’s okay!

The good news is that phones, apps, and games rule the world, so while the job market is plenty, a true unicorn requires you to be both knowledgeable about the industry and a practitioner (more on this later).

The truth is — the job is difficult and changes so quickly. Whatever worked yesterday won’t work today. Here are a few high-level challenges you may face:

Working with fragmented data
Ensuring your data is trustworthy
Managing upwards and effectively reporting
Ad creative production (resources, scheduling, ideation)
Navigating quickly changing post-IDFA rules
Optimizing and testing the SKAN conversion schema
bla bla bla, obviously much more ..

Let’s not forget, life is hard but great. Enjoy it!

Everything is possible. It’s a state of mind!

This year, everybody asked me how I can handle all the things at the same time. Work, podcasts, blogs, newsletters, daughter. Last year taught me one important thing. Everything is possible! Being “busy” and not having time is just a state of mind. If you are struggling to find time, sit down, think about your processes, and activities, and organize your time better. It’s a game of priorities!

If I can be 2nd fastest growing technology company in Slovakia, run a (paid) newsletter, start my own AI, podcast and write frequently while spending 70% of the day with my little daughter, you are doing something really wrong.

I guess that’s it for 2023! All of the above is what I’ve learned. But a lot was happening in my world.

What about your 2023?

Oh wow! You made it here! You must be very engaged. I like that type of players… Ehm, people!

Please share this article with your industry friends. It would mean the world to me.

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Keep reading the tips to improve your UA. Simple, practical & efficient! That’s it, no bullshit! No fluff intro, straight to the point.

#1 Unlocking TikTok with creative challenge

Unlocking TikTok? Seems like a big challenge. Oh wait, have you said challenge? Do you mean TikTok Creative Challenge (TTCC)? Badumtss! Jokes aside. If you are not listed for a TTCC, you are missing out heavily.

TikTok is transforming the way people discover new ideas and products while creating a new way for games to engage with creators to reach and connect with diverse communities around TikTok.

TikTok Creative Challenge is a new in-app feature that allows creators to submit video ads to brand challenges and receive rewards based on video performance. Creators can browse through the list of challenges, read the challenge’s brief, which displays the reward pool and details rules and requirements, and submit their video ad.

The Creative Challenge gives creators full creative freedom over their ads, unlocking more opportunities for creators to collaborate with brands in a way that’s most authentic to them.

Easy! Sit down, write to your TikTok rep, and get on this ASAP. Then you prep a creative brief for creators. Don’t forget! Brief is the key to receiving quality videos!

I must say, I saw some pretty weird shit in the TTCC for many games. But there is also gold in there. Your performance (and scale) improves heavily when you find that gold!

#2 Hooks!

Hooks make a difference in your creatives. There are masters of hooks at Century Games using real-life hooks combined with their game Whiteout Survival. How could you leverage hooks a bit more in your creative strategy? Which one of these grabbed your attention?

I would say the last one, right? There is definitely a story behind it you would like to explore. Run these as static images in the creative testing and take the winner, and connect it to the video creative showing a similar gameplay. Voilá! One of the best videos in my campaigns at the moment!

Take videos, use the first 1–3 seconds, and bam.

Crazy idea for a hook? Anyone out there with a train game? *wink wink*

Easier said than done! Happy exploring..

Refer a friend

#3 Memes

When thinking about creative ideas, look around — ideally outside of gaming. Maybe browse a little bit on Facebook or Instagram. What is your go-to website for memes?

Try to leverage hype and buzz. Have you see a great meme or video that you could recreate for your game? Use it!

#4 Happy iOS-ing

“ I don’t see data on iOS! (in the first 72h)”
”CPIs are really high, there must be something wrong?!”

Well, yes & yes. You are not able to see any installs coming through in the first 72 hours thanks to the privacy changes that happened on iOS. Installs are happening in the meantime, you are just not able to see them. Don’t worry, you won’t lose any data.

You just need to be prepared for something like this will happen:

This is how it works now and its completely okay. CPIs are really high! Yep, welcome to the world of UA. As you see, the CPI is going down when you get more data and will come down to stable levels in 5–7 days since the start of the campaign.

What can you do?

Don’t make any changes in the first 72h => 0 installs = Facebook is not optimized at all. Wait until you get data, then make changes!

Also, the privacy threshold on Facebook is 88 installs per day per campaign. As you can see, the campaign above was not anywhere close to passing that threshold, which means we also don’t see the full picture in terms of postbacks. What can be done here?

1. Slowly increase the budget until you hit 88 installs
2. Add more countries into the mix (lower CPIs, more installs, more postbacks)
3. creative refresh!

Thank you for reading Brutally Honest by Matej Lancaric. This post is public so feel free to share it.

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#5 How to write a creative brief

Alright, buckle up because I’m about to give you a crash course on writing a killer creative brief for your mobile app or game.

First, start with a clear and concise project overview. This is like the opening cutscene that sets the stage for your creative team.

Next, define your target audience. Who are they? What makes them tick? This is like choosing the character class that your game appeals to.

Then, lay out your objectives. Are you looking to increase installs, boost engagement, or monetize like a mobile mogul?

After that, provide insights and inspiration. Think of this as the secret level that unlocks creative brilliance. Fire up those external creative tools (and some internal benchmarks) to prepare with numbers and trends!

Finally, include any guidelines, specifications, or requirements. These are like the rules of your game that ensure a smooth gameplay experience.

Remember, a good creative brief is like a well-crafted tutorial level — it guides your team towards success.

Example:
We have a mid-core game about to launch globally. The main target audience is males 35+ from Asia. We want to use these creatives during the global launch, focusing on the effective budget increase rather than a Big splash. We have some data from the soft launch about the best-performing creatives and would like you to stay relevant to the gameplay as much as possible. Our main competitors are Survivor.io, Legend of Slime, and TopWar. Please come up with 5–6 creative concepts.

#6 UA channels for early-stage

Which UA channel to use for early-stage F2P mobile games and selecting appropriate UA channels for each launch phase? This question appeared recently in our 2.5gamers slack channel.

I know I bitch about Facebook all the time, but I still use it for early testing and especially in Softlaunch. Obviously combined with Google and other channels like Unity, TikTok, and Applovin.

Why Facebook? What gives you better targeting options?

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Yes, still Facebook. Facebook is still very strong on the global launch day but fades off afterward. And this brings us back to the question if we should not use other channels like Unity or Applovin.

First of all, for Unity or Applovin, you need to implement MMP. With Facebook testing, you only need to implement Facebook SDK.

Second of all, as before mentioned, better-targeting options and the ability to benchmark your KPIs with the games you’ve done before or with other peers that usually use Facebook too.

#7 Super effective creative research

Super effective creative research?

1. Find a very strong competitor and look into the audience overlap.
2. Put a target on their back and assess all their creatives with the most impressions.
3. Look for recent winners (last 30 days) and evergreen concepts in the last year.
4. Don’t reinvent the wheel.
5. Produce 3–5 creatives (could be 1:1 exact copy)
6. Iterate winners from there!

Just look at what Kingdom Guard is doing nowadays. They put a big target on Rush Royale, started copying their ads, and are almost on a third or fourth iteration of winners. Looks like it’s working well — See for yourself!

#8 Best-performing UA channels

Should you be doubling down on your best-performing UA channel rather than exploring new channels and diversifying?

You should focus on the channel(s) where you have the most impact and balance the work behind it.

The bus factor applies here too! What if you rely only on one channel and that channel for some reason gets destroyed (by Apple or some other company .. xixi) This is really dangerous. Please don’t listen to loud CEOs (or anyone outside of UA) who don’t have the UA experience, it will get you in trouble.

What you can do instead is try to have a healthy balance like this:
UA channel A — 20% of your spend
UA channel B — 25% of your spend
UA channel C — 25% of your spend
UA channel D — 10% of your spend
UA channel E — 10% of your spend
UA channel F — 10% of your spend

Is this easy? Of course not! Especially when UA channel B is able to scale and get 80% of your budget with AMAZING ROAS! Take advantage of that, but think about the future. These numbers won’t last forever. Your competitors know this; they are already thinking two steps ahead.

#9 When to start using Fake ads?

Should you even consider those?

There is no right answer to this question. But if you are considering using something not completely related to your gameplay, wait until you are done with the retention tests in the soft launch. If you start using fake ads too soon, your retention will look like shit. And not because your game sucks, but because your creatives are misleading. They are setting different expectations, which in the retention phase is not very appreciated.

When you are entering the monetization phase, you are still using the gameplay-related creatives. But when you have enough data to improve the game, you start experimenting heavily on the creative side. I’ve talked about having at least 4–5 different creative concepts in the soft launch multiple times. Don’t forget about it!

One of these concepts could be a fake ad (misleading) that can drive low CPIs but low retention. How do you mitigate this? You combine fake ads with Purchase or Value optimization on the campaign level. This down funnel optimization takes care of complete “trash” quality traffic you always get and optimizes only for high-value players.

What do you get with this combo?

fake ads = low CPIs, high amount of players, lower retention

Value optimization = high CPIs, high quality, high purchase power, higher retention

Do you see the Venn diagram right there? If yes, please share it in the comments!

#10 When to start UA?

What to do when your game has a shit ton of organic downloads? When a game receives a high level of organics, it is usually a question of whether or not to start UA.

I don’t believe there should be a question IF you should start. I think you should definitely test it out and see what your CPI vs. LTV equation looks like. Because you are not in control of organic downloads, but you can control how much and where you spend your money. In the worst-case scenario, you will quickly see that your CPI is higher than your LTV and you can only afford to spend 0 dollars to earn money since the LTV is very low. This is still a business case; if your CPI is $0 and LTV is $0.10 you can still make some money (if you are getting hundreds of thousands of organics)

Anyway, then the question is when to start. Well, as soon as your cash flow allows you to do so. Be very strict and set goals to avoid a “not great not terrible” situation where it doesn’t look bad, but not good. Similar to the soft-launch situation where you are still not there with KPIs, but you will push one more iteration out!

Set your goals/scenarios examples:

• target CPI in US $1.5
• target CPI worldwide $0.3
• LTV D7 in the US is $1
• LTV D30 in the US is $2

You get the point, right?

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#11 Placements

Placements, placements, placements. Either Google or Facebook. Go to your campaign, break it down by placements and check what do you have there?!

Something like this, right? Omg, Facebook Video feeds is looking super well! I should run that placement only which will improve my numbers significantly.

Yeah, that’s not really the case. Unfortunately! It is not going to be scalable and if you put more budget behind this placement, its going to get worse. The same happens to your creatives (we can discuss this later)

Manual placements give you more control and allow you to specifically choose where your ads will appear. It’s like having a sniper rifle in a game, aiming for those high-value targets.

On the other hand, automated placements utilize Facebook’s algorithm to optimize ad delivery across different placements, giving you more reach and potentially better performance. It’s like having a trusty AI companion that knows the ins and outs of the game.

So, it’s great to start with Automated placements, narrow down these placements, and get the best out of it. This is for all of you who start with a shoestring budget and try to get as much out of your spending as possible.

When scaling, manual placements are shit. It limits your potential reach which has an impact on algo and your campaign dies quicker. You should always aim for potential reach like this:

Mobile App Install Optimisation: 1mil users

App Event Optimisation: 2–5 mil users

Value optimization: 5+ mil users

Anything that I missed?

Oh wow! You made it here! You must be very engaged. I like that type of players… Ehm, people!

Please share this article with your industry friends. It would mean the world to me.

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Pay attention, but be aware. This is not your usual mobile game soft launch. This is Blizzard, similar to the Supercell soft-launch approach. Very different.

Warcraft Rumble Overview

When the game was first announced, Blizzard promised a single-player campaign with over 70 missions, as well as PvP matches. The game has been refined and polished, but one of the biggest things to change was the PvP system. It was really just, if you’re in the queue and someone else is in the queue, you fight against each other and the winner gets some XP. That was pretty much it. Once the bare bones were set up and the mode was declared appropriately fun and balanced, the team built a fully featured PvP mode, including matchmaking, a ladder system, rewards, and a seasonal structure.

Warcraft Rumble is designed around leaders; some of these are characters from Warcraft lore, like Sylvanas Windrunner or Grommash Hellscream, and others are “upgraded” versions of iconic units like the footman. Apparently, they didn’t want everything to be about playing your leader, but wanted to make sure that mechanically they didn’t overshadow all the other parts of your army. The leader’s abilities don’t make the leader itself stronger — it influences your army in general.

Warcraft Rumble is a mobile action strategy game where collectible Warcraft Minis come to life to clash in epic melee battles. Whether you choose to play in the massive single player campaign or compete head-to-head in epic PvP battles, prepare to experience the true meaning of joyful chaos! As google play description says:

WARCRAFT AT YOUR FINGERTIPS
-Take control of an army of Minis to defeat bosses and characters from the Warcraft universe
-Play with iconic heroes like Jaina Proudmoore, Grommash Hellscream, and many more
-Defeat enemies from across the Warcraft universe in familiar and new settings
-Discover new maps and bosses as you fight your way across Azeroth

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COLLECT OVER 60 WARCRAFT MINIS AND CHARACTERS
-Collect dozens of units and characters from across Azeroth
-Build armies within 5 playable families: Alliance, Horde, Beast, Undead, and Blackrock
-Unlock new skills and upgrade your minis as you level up

FAST-PACED MOMENT-TO-MOMENT STRATEGIC ACTION
-Every Mini and hero you play matters when it comes to winning
-Cast spells like Blizzard and Chain Lightning to defeat your enemies and turn the tide of battle
-Exploit enemy weaknesses: deploy ranged units against flyers, or use magic against infantry
-Use your Minis’ unique powers to build a team for any opponent you come up against

USER ACQUISITION & NUMBERS

Look at those downloads vs. revenue numbers!

Getting 10k+ day revenue is quite nice in a monetisation stage.

Your typical game won’t make $1.4mil during soft launch = (800k x sadness multiplier).

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Soft launch strategy

In a soft launch since May 2022, going from the Philippines to Tier 1 countries. Looks like the Retention and monetization stage started in August 2023. What should you focus on in different stages?

Based on the lower installs during the soft launch, I would assume the CPIs increased quite heavily, mainly in Nordics. Getting 2k players per day in the strategy category is not a cheap exercise. I know, I know. Warcraft IP is doing its magic. Well, yes and no. Even with a Warcraft IP, if you run UA in a few countries without a creative iteration, you will hit quite high CPIs. Quite high = $15–20+, especially in Nordics. The main spend goes to CA + AU, but the CPIs won’t be that different in there. Maybe within the $10–15 CPI range.

I would add more countries to the mix. To capture the male audience with quality and low CPIs — definitely at least Poland and the Netherlands. Looks like the servers are in America, so LATAM wouldn’t work here. Also, what about ASIA? Don’t you want to get some KPIs from that region? In terms of monetisation, I wou

ld definitely add Germany (and potentially the United Kingdom). These countries are way bigger than CA + AU combined and provide a better understanding of the CPI and ROAS curve.

Looks like they are following the Google play Soft launch playbook. Not seeing any reviews and ratings by now, which means they went through Open Beta track to Pre-registration where thy are sitting at the moment waiting for global launch!

Soft launch Updates & Socials

Approaching game updates from a different (AAA) perspective. What was added in the latest update? Well, check it out in this video:

To be honest, the social media strategy around Warcraft Rumle is most probably way more structured and prepared than the whole UA part of the equation. Let’s just look at ALL the FANPAGES they have:

Also, discord can’t be missing in this mix:

Warcraft Rumble’s soft launch strategy is all about community building rather than anything else. UA is completely sidelined; let’s take a look.

UA Channel mix

They have been running Applovin & Google for a long time. Added Unity very recently and tested a few networks. The funny thing is the really small spending on Facebook.

TOP IAP SKUs

CREATIVE STRATEGY

Looking into the Mobile action ads gallery for creative research. These are the types of creatives they run:

• 3D CGI
• few hooks (3D hooks + headlines)
• trailer-ish

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First of all, I have to say the quality of the creatives is absolutely amazing. It’s from a different universe. On. the other hand, there are just not enough different creative concepts running at the moment. I understand we might be just at the end of the soft launch, but this would be the best time to test the different concepts pre-global launch. Why? To double down on the multiple creative winners! I don’t see that here..

Warcraft Rumble creatives

To watch the rest of the videos, visit Blizzard’s Soft Launch Playbook

Most of the videos are 30 seconds long, and very few shorter ones (even the short ones are just cuts from the long 53 sec. video).

I don’t get this. No playables at all. Hello?! Welcome to UA in 2023.

Creative ideas

As you can see in the videos above, there is a big emphasis on headlines. Try to use different styles of headlines! (yeah exactly, hypercasual style)

I miss more gameplay-oriented videos. There is this 53-second-long video with the pre-registration CTA, but where was this in the soft launch?

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Strategy elements! Jesus Christ, it’s a strategy game. Why not show the different strategy scenarios when you have to use different strategies to outsmart enemies?

Quick brief idea — STRATEGY DECISION:

The champion is the main character on each side’s team. Since we have to make a strategic decision, this will be the main topic of this creative. We have to decide — going back and attacking from defense? Or jump with our champion on an enemy field with a heroic win (or lose)

Scenario:

• We are zoomed in on our champion.
• The camera zooms out so we see the whole map
• The scene goes dark, only our hero is visible.
• The headline will show up as “CRUCIAL STRATEGIC DECISION”
• Option 1: Attack from defense
• Option 2: Attack with all power
• We click on Option 2
• We see gameplay and our hero jumps on the enemy’s field and dies after a battle :(
• The screen goes dark again with the headline “WRONG X”
• Endscreen with the headline: “Can you do better?” Button: Try no/End screen if win “The best defense is a good offense” Button: Play now/

Progression concepts:

Quick brief idea Day 1 vs. Day 30
This creative is showing progress in a game.

• The screen is divided into 2 parts.
• On the left side, we see literally first-day gameplay:
• heroes & troops are on a basic level
• there is a headline DAY 1 in a creative
• On the right side is exactly the opposite with the headline DAY 30

There is so much more to try!

To get some creative insights, check out this episode:

Takeaways & last comments

• Creative depth. Global launch is around the corner. You need way more creative concepts to win the global launch. Start yesterday!
• Playables, playables, playables. Unity & Applovin will thank you. Or me.
• Country mix! Add more countries to get better KPIs before the global launch.
• Community building is really important but should be one of the soft launch pillars alongside User Acquisition and creatives.

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Keep reading the tips to improve your UA. Simple, practical & efficient! That’s it, no bullshit! No fluff intro, straight to the point.

#1 How can AI make your creative process more effective? How to find a creative winner quickly?

Producing a creative winner is not an easy job. There is this tactic when you create multiple different creative concepts — static images. You test them against each other. You take the winner and make a video out of that creative concept.

With the rise of AI, this can be even more effective. For two reasons:

• You can build different static concepts super fast and move to video
• You can be inspired by what others made and iterate until you find a winner

Examples:

So many different views, angles, places, backgrounds, and ideas that you can use to find a winner quickly.

Thanks to this method, we were able to generate 36% more creative winners. (AHA! 36% is totally made up! No bullshit, I said it)

Does it work for every game? Nope!

Should you try it? Absolutely yes!

Check what others are creating in the mid-journey gallery or other AI tools and get inspired now!

#2 Everything is about your creatives (and their formats)

Everything is about your creatives, we already know that. You also need to think about the right combination of creative types, game genres, and UA channels. Okay okay okay, let’s bring up a few examples:

Racing games

Strong performance on Facebook and TikTok thanks to gameplay-oriented video creatives. Gameplay combined with leaderboards, tricks, and showcasing skills!

Cooking games

Strong performance on Facebook thanks to static images! Showing various views of the kitchen, food, and customers. Just read the tip above again! Google video creatives are oriented mainly on serving annoyed and pissed customers!

Idle games

Playables on SDK networks like Applovin, Unity, or Ironsource. Do you remember what we discussed in the recent reviews?

to see videos please visit the original post here!

or

to see videos please visit the original post here!

Think about the right type for your game and UA channel. That will help to get those IPMs up and unlock higher budgets!

#3 Good old (dead) Facebook

I started working recently with a few games, and guess what?! Facebook was paused because it was not performing at all.

When I look around, I am not even surprised. Facebook should wake up and start doing something because advertisers will just leave the platform and spend elsewhere.

I usually bitch about Facebook a lot, but I still keep this UA channel in the mix. It’s a great channel when it works. So I obviously restarted Facebook with very questionable results at the start. After 2 weeks, it started to get better and better. What have I done?

Completely changed the GEO mix — according to the LTV (IAP vs IAA) and tested it against Worldwide!

Tested multiple campaign optimizations — AEO Engagement events, AEO IAA events, AEO Purchase, and eventually VO as well

Oh. Creatives! As mentioned in the previous brutally honest newsletter, IMHO Facebook requires a different approach. Facebook favors polarising content (that’s why a lot of fake ads get so much attention & engagement) — so I changed the creative strategy!

Results improved heavily, and they are moving in the right direction. It requires a few more steps to get where we want to be, but we will get there!

And you will get there as well!

#4 US for a soft launch is a bad idea

Why would you ever want to expose your unfinished game to your core audience? I know you believe your game is ready after a long time in development, but no. It’s not.

You should always open up Tier 2 or other Tier 1 geos when you have all your retention features (and some early monetization) in the game and moving to monetization.

But Tier 2 retention sucks. Maybe, so what? The retention curve should be very similar in all GEOs. Yes, e.g. Poland will have different retention metrics/KPIs than the Netherlands, but the shape of the curve will look the same. And the CPIs are going to be lower in PL too.

But Supercell goes to the US right away! Yeah, so what? Are you Supercell? They softlaunched their games previously on iOS too which was a terrible idea, a different approach than 99% of mobile companies. Now they do close betas like Blizzard with Diablo IV. Should everybody do this? Hell no. Look at the FloodRush. Already killed!

Why no?

1. You don’t have the context of why other companies do things they do (if you don’t have context, you will fail miserably)
2. You are not a big, well-known company that can do weird shit and get away with it (think about your cash flow and how many shots on the goal you have left)
3. Get inspired, but don’t copy — find your own way that works for you!

First UA campaigns have always the best KPIs since they attract the initial batch of high-quality users which you will not be able to tap into again after the global launch.

#5 How to pick countries in a Soft launch for your game?

In order to discover what country could be the best fit for your mobile game, what are the criteria to look for? English proficiency, device penetration & payment behavior!

There is a wide range of different countries that seem quite suitable for a soft launch. It is always important to think about your game target audience when picking the most suitable GEOs.

My favorite country for mid-core games (male-oriented) is Poland, because it has really big Android penetration, high English proficiency, and a big male audience. But if I soft-launched a female-oriented game, I would most probably skip Poland as a GEO and go to France, Spain or Italy. This is how we did it for Darts Club back in the days:

Looking at multiple things like Facebook audience, potential CPI, English proficiency and we did some calculations on the genre popularity. This was all manual work, but I’ve done it for you in some countries here:

The most frequent question in soft launching: Is my CPI good? How does it compare to other games? While there was a Chartboost CPI benchmarks website, that is really obsolete and far from the truth. Here are some examples I can share to get an idea about how CPIs vary between GEOs and different optimizations:

The last tip in terms of countries, look at the competitor games and their top 20+ countries in terms of downloads & revenue.

#6 How should you approach a soft launch of your game?

I like to divide soft launch into three stages — Technical, Retention, and Monetisation. Each stage serves a different purpose and we measure different KPIs.

While in the Technical stage, we are mostly focusing on data health, crash rate, and tracking in general, in the Retention stage we measure D1, D3, and D7 Retention (DUH!), FTUE, tutorial completion rate, and much more..

Game developers are obsessed with achieving the highest D1 retention numbers they can, but D1 is not the holy grail. I’ve seen games with D1 retention of around 25% still being able to generate 2 million EUR a month. The magic was behind really good D60 retention, which was 6–8%. Therefore, it is absolutely crucial to focus on the ratio between D1, D3 and D7.

But enough about retention, let’s focus on the monetization stage where the fun starts. Measuring ARPU, conversion to payment, and Dx ROAS requires running purchase (ROAS) oriented campaigns — AEO/VO on Facebook or tCPA/tROAS on Google Ads.

Let’s not forget about Ad monetization. In this stage, you should already have cracked the rewarded video ad placement. Now you are playing around with setting up waterfalls and combining floors with bidders.

If you’re not familiar with how to manage an ad waterfall or the mediation setup at this stage I would recommend relying solely on Unity ads. Once you’ve set up ads, the North Star KPI you should track at this stage is Impression per DAU.

Generally, an IMP/DAU above 4.0 means the Rewarded Video (RV) placements you’ve placed in the game will impact your UA efforts in a meaningful way.

If you’re coming in below this number you either have to change the RV placements, and RV rewards or accept that the Ad revenue will not make up a significant portion of your revenue.

If you’re only using one ad partner at this stage, it is a good general rule of thumb that once you add a mediation platform you’ll increase your ad revenue by 100%.

Then with a proper mediation setup, you’ll further increase the ad revenue by another 25%.

#7 When to start adding new channels and iOS in Soft Launch?

In the retention phase, you should be thinking about running at least two channels to benchmark them against each other. Which channels? Depends on your genre, but for example if you have a merge game. I would go with Facebook and Unity.

How about iOS? When to add it? Honestly, I do it after a few months of testing and running UA on Android. After you get the initial data on Android, you improve the game, then you add iOS.

Ideally just before starting the monetisation phase. So you can configure your conversion schema and start the first tests.

Don’t forget — Soft-launching your mobile game on only one UA channel is not enough!

Go with 2–3 into the monetization phase to get the read on Purchase campaigns.

#8 When to kill a game in soft launch and move on?

Last soft launch tip in this edition!

The dreaded decision of when to pull the plug on a game in soft launch. It’s like deciding whether to break up with someone you’ve been dating.

Here’s the deal: If your last 2–3 builds didn’t improve the KPIs and your game is consistently underperforming, not showing any signs of improvement, and your user feedback is as scarce as unicorn sightings, it may be time to say goodbye.

But before you do, make sure you’ve exhausted all your options, tested different UA channels, and mercilessly optimized creatives. And remember, sometimes it’s better to cut your losses and move on to a new adventure. Especially in this tough market. Previously, you had 6–9 months to figure things out. Now, it’s more like 3–6 months.

But hey, don’t be too hard on yourself. We can’t all create mobile gaming masterpieces. It’s like trying to make a gourmet meal out of instant ramen.

So, my advice? Trust your gut, and don’t be afraid to hit that “uninstall” button. Your company (cash flow) will thank you.

to see videos, please visit the original post here!

#9 Expanding GEOS!

GEO expansion, performance & goals! Super important topic. I discussed the campaign tiers where you have Tier 1, Tier 2 (sometimes Tier 3), and Rest of the World to cover everybody.

What this usually means is lower CPI on Tier 3, but also usually lower LTV. When running UA in Tier1 countries like the US, UK, FR, DE, CA, AU, etc..… you have certain goals (D0, D1, D3, and/or D7). You have to keep in mind that expanding from Tier 1 will definitely help you scale, but think about setting up new (most likely higher) goals because the LTV and retention curves are not the same as with Tier 1 countries.

Look at the overall Tier performance each month to promote or demote countries. E.g.:

CA, AU underperforming in the last 30 days → move from Tier 1 to Tier 2

CZ, SK, PL, BR performing great in the last 30 days → move from Tier 2 to Tier 1

AR, CO, MY, PH performing great in the last 30 days → move from ROW to Tier 3

#10 Localization doesn’t move the needle

It can help you improve numbers by 10–20% on the CPI side and conversion rate. But don’t expect more. As we understood from our KR visit, it makes a lot of sense in Asia (No shit, Sherlock!) Yeah, I know, what a revelation. So how should you go about the localization of your creatives and game?

Look at your top 10 countries in terms of revenue. Look at your resources and money. Then add the 10% “uplift” on the revenue side and try to calculate the costs vs potential gain. Calculated profit? Good.

Do you have a very strong community in France, and your game is text-heavy? In this case, you could maybe add a 20% “uplift” to the equation.

It’s actually as simple as that. Don’t put too much effort into localizing the game. If it’s not hitting the goals, localization won’t help you too much.

#11 Someone said UA diversification?

UA diversification is super important. How many times have you heard this? Most probably at least 1438764387463x.

Diversifying the UA also means moving away from channels that don’t work. I still see teams dwelling on Facebook (or Google or whatever else) for too long before they pause it completely. And it’s okay to pause one channel and move the budget elsewhere where it makes sense.

I also thought I didn’t need to add any new UA channel until I spent $1mil/month on Facebook. That was me a few years ago. Now I know its important to start exploring new channels ASAP. What does your UA mix look like?

• Facebook & Google
• Facebook, Google & TikTok
• Google, Applovin & Unity
• Applovin, Unity, Tiktok & Google
• Google
• Facebook
• Facebook, Google, Applovin & Moloco
• Applovin, Unity, Tiktok, Ironsource, Google, Facebook, Mistplay, MyAppFree, Adjoe, Mintegral

Here are a few examples from my UA portfolio. Pretty wild mix, but you have to experiment and add new channels frequently.

Cooperation between the external partner and the internal team is always essential. You always want to work with people who love their jobs and love working in their team. And when this happens, everything is so much easier, and if there is a mistake, everybody knows about it.

Don’t forget to check out the latest creative trends:

to see videos, please visit the original post here!

Anything that I missed?

Oh wow! You made it here! You must be very engaged. I like that type of players… Ehm, people!

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