Introduction

Jon Jordan: Hello and welcome to the Mobile Games Playbook. Thanks for tuning in for another episode. This podcast is all about what makes a great mobile game, what is and isn’t working for mobile game designers, and all of the latest trends. I’m your host, Jon Jordan, although in this special episode, my hosting duties are somewhat truncated.

In the host seat, asking the hard questions, we have Brendan Fraher, General Manager at Liftoff Intelligence. He will be talking to former Rovio Insights lead, Carlos Salvado. They’ll be discussing the indispensable role of player motivation and market intelligence in making a successful mobile game. Okay, Brendan, take it over.

Brendan Fraher: Hello everyone. Welcome to the podcast. I’m Brendan, General Manager here at GameRefinery, and today we’re diving into some of the biggest topics shaping the mobile gaming world in 2025 and beyond.

I have a very special guest with me today: Carlos Salvado. We’ve known each other for many, many years. I know you have unique skills and experience from many different areas and teams, but can you first introduce yourself to the audience so they can understand a little bit more about you?

Meet Carlos Salvado: Insights from 15 years in gaming

Carlos Salvado: Absolutely. My name is Carlos Salvado. I’ve been a professional in gaming for the last 15 years, across mobile, PC, and console. I’ve worked in several crafts such as advertising, product management, game design, and economy design, so I know my way around games inside and out.

Basically, I’m here to tell you that with all the experience I’ve accumulated, the mobile game ecosystem is evolving constantly. You always need to relearn everything you knew in the past. New business models, new tech, new AI integrations, and new opportunities that can actually drive revenue for most companies are not only focused on the products themselves but on the whole ecosystem that the games provide—IP licensing, et cetera.

Hopefully, I can share a little bit of that information with you today, and let’s see how it goes.

Why do all games look the same? Hybridization explained

Brendan Fraher: Wonderful. As always, every time it’s a great conversation with you, Carlos. I know we’ve got a great agenda today, touching on many of the main challenges top of mind for developers; web stores, live events, and so on. But one thing we were speaking about off-camera was game hybridization. You had a very interesting phrase, which many audiences ask, ‘why do all games look the same?’

Carlos Salvado: I think the mobile games industry recently is going through a creative bankruptcy to some extent. We’ve foregone trying to be unique to trying to make things work dynamically similar across several different games, sometimes even across genres.

This is not just on mobile; you can see this across the board. There’s a lot of talk of Company X copied from Company Y, et cetera, but we need to be upfront and understand that imitation is a way forward, a way for developers to learn how to create better products for their own audiences. What keeps them around? What keeps them engaged? How can you make known and unknown audiences actually opt into those products and continue to play across the board?

This doesn’t mean you’ll be fixated only on one particular game. It can be your available portfolio, it can be cross-platform, it can be digital content. At the end of the day, we’re making products for new clients and old fans—people that don’t know the brand, people that want to tap into the brand, people that just want a different experience.

Carlos Salvado: So, I like to give an example of hybridization just to clarify exactly what I mean. I like to use the match-three souls-like type of game. That’s two genres that usually do not mix.

Brendan Fraher: Not the first thing that usually comes to mind, right?

Carlos Salvado: But it raises the question of casual audiences versus core gamers. Would it be possible to create that game if you design it consciously? You can find that sweet spot where two worlds meet, and you have an awesome product that you can provide, with a lot of creative space for people to tap in and experience something new.

That is what I defend, at least: the creative process around the imitation itself.

Brendan Fraher: I agree… even surprise breakout hits like Vampire Survivors show how unexpected combinations can resonate. Luck plays a role, but so does identifying a niche and timing.

Audience understanding and market timing

Carlos Salvado: I can even add onto what you were saying, Brendan, with one example. Recently there’s been a big boom with the remaster of Oblivion from Bethesda Softworks. A lot of younger gamers saw the game for the first time through the remake and are now on board with new experiences.

So once you have a concept or an app, you just need to cater that same product toward the audiences you want to reach.

Oblivion engages older fans who loved the original and younger players discovering it for the first time. You can actually be creative even with an old product—you just need to add the features those audiences are looking for.

Basically, context matters. Adapt to it, and you will see a big impact on whatever IP you have.

Brendan Fraher: Absolutely—but “just understand your audience” is easier said than done. Where should people start?

Direct-to-Consumer, web stores, and the future of monetization

Carlos Salvado: Let’s segue into an example. On mobile right now there’s a big topic of direct-to-consumer. Studios want solutions that help provide cheaper experiences to players by offering platforms where they can buy at a large discount.

This can be good or bad. On the good side, a web store lets a publisher control what they put in front of players—products, bundles, portfolio titles, even merchandise. You also get direct communication with your audience instead of relying on a third party.

Most companies nowadays are offering steep discounts on every purchase through these platforms. That’s the good part.

But then there’s the murky part:

How will platform holders react?

How will payment processors handle refunds?

What about compliance?

It’s complex, especially at scale across a portfolio.

Brendan Fraher: And yes, for listeners, we’re talking about web stores here. And you’re right—the evolution is happening fast. Companies are experimenting, and nobody has fully cracked the payment experience yet. But it’s definitely not going away.

Carlos Salvado: Absolutely. And regional cases like what’s happening in Japan with anime and manga payment processors is a preview of how these tensions may play out globally.

But again: know your audience. Tailor your offering. Use the data.

Knowing your players: motivation, CRM, and evolving audiences

Brendan Fraher: Right—and that’s why we built audience insights tools. Motivators help guide UA and creatives. But audiences evolve constantly, and trends shift. That’s hard for developers to keep up with.

Carlos Salvado: It is. And only now is the mobile industry catching up to other industries in how they engage with customers.

CRM isn’t just a marketing tool. It’s central intelligence.

It helps you talk to players, understand what resonates, and build trust—inviting them into early access, asking for feedback, and turning them into long-term fans.

This emotional connection is the foundation of personalised service.

Brendan Fraher: And it’s fascinating that definitions like “gamer” have changed so much. The biggest audience in gaming is casual mobile players—female, 35+.

Meanwhile, core genres skew male, 25–45.

User bases are diverse and growing.

Carlos Salvado: Exactly. And launching a game is not the end—it’s when the real work begins. Studios must constantly engage, iterate, and understand what motivates their audience.

AI’s expanding role in creatives, UA, and LiveOps

Brendan Fraher: And that gets us into UA and creatives. We now have AI-generated creatives… and AI-assisted UA. How do you view this shift?

Carlos Salvado: AI helps with faster iterations. More creatives. Faster testing.

But how it impacts UA costs is still unclear.

In LiveOps, AI can support content generation, but humans must still review everything to ensure quality and fit. Today, the most impactful work is still human creativity—AI just removes grunt work.

Brendan Fraher: Exactly. Especially for cross-platform HD games where assets are expensive. AI could be a massive force multiplier. Iteration speed matters.

Carlos Salvado: Yes. Faster iteration leads to better launches and more effective improvements. But again, you must understand your audience to know what to aim for.

Social currency, sharing, and cross-platform player behavior

Brendan Fraher: And then there’s another angle—player expression and social currency.

We’ve seen huge customization demand in mid-core and competitive games.

And casual genres have unexpected competitive behaviours too.

Carlos Salvado: It’s human nature. People want to show their achievements.

Steam profiles, screenshots, hours played—this is the new social currency.

Players want cross-platform visibility, ways to show off characters, mods, or moments in-game.

Hardware makers literally added “Share” buttons to controllers because this matters.

Brendan Fraher: Absolutely. And in an AI-driven world, authentic experiences—moments worth sharing—matter even more.

LiveOps, regulation, and the complexity of modern game development

Carlos Salvado: Almost every aspect of game development is now being regulated:

Digital fairness acts, monetization transparency, influencer marketing, and more.

Companies can’t just throw money at problems. They need to understand how platforms intersect—business, UA, product, LiveOps.

Influencer marketing is powerful, but attribution is weak. We still can’t fully track the user journey from influencer content to installs. This gap exists across gaming, movies, retail—every digital industry.

Brendan Fraher: Yes—and many companies try to “shout louder” instead of listening more. Surveys alone aren’t enough. Real audience understanding requires behavioural data, motivators, and analysis.

The power of audience insights, regional nuance, and IP activation

Carlos Salvado: Start with demographics and regions. Culture can kill a business if you ignore it.

Then layer on behaviours:

Are they collectors? Competitors? Completionists? Decorators?

Shape your LiveOps, economy, and features around that.

Studios must also recognize limits—audiences can only be convinced so many times. So LiveOps teams need constant feedback loops. Talk to your best players. Watch social media.

GameRefinery is an excellent starting point, but always verify insights across your own data and channels.

Brendan Fraher: And we can’t forget IPs and regional resonance.

Carlos Salvado: Absolutely. Price localization matters.

Cross-media activation—TV series, films—can skyrocket interest.

Fallout, Cyberpunk, Arcane—perfect examples.

Hybridization isn’t just mixing genres; it’s blending pop culture with game design.

When you combine audience understanding with the right cultural trigger, the results can be explosive.

Brendan Fraher: And that’s exactly why motivators and audience insights matter so much. Best-of-breed features work across genres if you understand why.

Closing thoughts and where to learn more

Brendan Fraher: I know we’re running out of time. There are always more questions than answers. Carlos, where can people reach you?

Carlos Salvado: LinkedIn is the best place. If you have challenges in market insights, advertising, product management—anything you want to brainstorm—feel free to reach out.

Brendan Fraher: Fantastic. You’ve worked across so many teams and disciplines, tying everything together—the ultimate cat herder.

And I love your advice: Shout less, listen more.

Carlos Salvado: Thank you for the invite. Always happy to help.

Brendan Fraher: Awesome. Thank you so much. Bye, folks.

Jon Jordan: Great work. Thanks to Brendan and Carlos for their insight. Don’t forget, every episode we are talking to the people who are taking the mobile games industry forward to new and exciting places. So, don’t miss out. Do subscribe, and we’ll see you next time.

Introduction

Jon Jordan: Hello and welcome to the Mobile Games Playbook! Thanks for tuning in for another episode. This is the podcast all about what makes a great mobile game, what is and isn’t working for mobile game designers and mobile game marketers, as we’ll be talking about today, and all the latest trends.

I’m your host Jon Jordan and joining me today to talk about mobile growth marketing and other things we have Saikala Sultanova. How’s it going?

Saikala Sultanova: Yeah, it’s going well. Thanks for having me!

Jon Jordan: We’ve talked a lot about UA, but it’s interesting in the discussion around growth marketing, which you think is a slightly different thing than UA. We’re going to get into that a little bit. We’ll also talk about the difference between game marketing and non-game marketing.

But to set the scene, I think it would be good to hear about your quite interesting career because it sets up what we’ll be talking about in this podcast. Would you mind spending some time just telling us what you’ve been up to in your career recently?

Saikala Sultanova: Yes, so what I’ve been up to over maybe 14 years or so is helping mobile games and apps grow at places like Huuuge Games, Product Madness, Ace Games, and some early-stage startups as well. I’ve learned how to bring teams together and solve real-world growth challenges.

With every product that goes live, so much preparation needs to be done, whether it’s launching a major IP, building data infrastructure with data teams, or figuring out fresh ways to tackle new markets. This includes new problems that might come up with measurement, creative production, or anything like that.

Saikala’s career journey in games and apps

Jon Jordan: You also have a video series which is related to that. Tell us a little bit about that.

Saikala Sultanova: I watch so many videos and podcasts out there, and I was curious how people actually do it. So I wanted to experiment myself: interviewing interesting people that I meet. Sometimes they’re not very easy to find time with, but they have interesting stories, inspiring stories; they’ve had challenges and failures. They have a journey in their life, both personal and business.

The idea was to connect with those people, give them a platform where they can share their story, and at the end of each episode, I ask them to give their two cents of advice to whoever’s listening. You hear their stories, wins, failures, and lessons learned, and what they could do better next time. Anyway, that’s me pretty much experimenting. I don’t know how to do podcasts.

Jon Jordan: Join the club! Exactly. We just have a good conversation. So, thanks for that introduction. We’ll pull out some of your expertise hopefully over the next 30 minutes or so.

Pilot testing in UA: Where to begin

Jon Jordan: We’re going to start off with something quite specific. We’ve spoken in the podcast about UA a lot in various contexts, but I don’t think we’ve ever spoken about how you do pilot testing and testing in user acquisition.

This is the first time you’re introducing a product and trying to find an audience, and that really sets the scene. When I think about user acquisition, I think about these big campaigns and the more established stuff, but setting the parameters for how you’re going to find an audience for your product is actually one of the important things. If you head up in the wrong direction, you’re going to find it difficult to fulfil your goal.

So when you’re working with teams, when you’re thinking about starting UA campaigns, where do you start? What have you found works best?

Saikala Sultanova: Everyone starts testing, and everyone goes with data first because in performance marketing, which is my strongest background, we believe that data tells you the truth. That’s true, but only partially. Because lots of gaming and app companies launch a product and ask, “Who is going to like my product?”

Some companies start with a hypothesis and do qualitative testing first, maybe interviews or surveys, trying to understand where the product-market fit is, or if their product hypothesis is a good fit for the market and can become a business.

Once that’s done, I always like to start with a clear hypothesis: What am I actually trying to prove or learn? In pilot testing, which is a bit earlier than the rollout testing, we work closely with teams to set up initial campaigns with controlled budgets, focusing on well-defined segments, whether it’s creative variations or different art concepts.

To me, the key milestones are, number one, getting clean data early so that you can see if it’s showing you some indication. Number two is hitting statistical significance, because you might see great results, but if it’s just five conversions, that doesn’t make sense. You need something that’s going to scale as a business.

And then finally, number three is understanding user behaviour, not just from the surface-level metrics, but how it goes a little bit further and how it’s going to help you make decisions.

You’re going to have multiple follow-up questions with the wider team, and it’s important to make sure there’s enough data to ensure you have only one hypothesis or you are answering one question. Once you have the results, share them with the wider team in the company; marketing, product, it doesn’t matter. Everyone should understand and learn, because that way you get everyone on board and can make a joint decision on the next step.

The role of qualitative insight in a data-driven world

Jon Jordan: It’s interesting you mentioned things like user interviews. Obviously, that doesn’t really scale, so do you still think that’s something people should be doing for every product, just to get some anecdotal ideas?

You say the big data is where a lot of the focus is, so maybe people think these days that sort of qualitative talking to potential users doesn’t really stack up in the same way; maybe it’s not so actionable. But do you think it still has a value in getting an idea of how you’re going to be doing marketing?

Saikala Sultanova: The application is twofold. One, in the earlier stages, it’s about product-market fit, and it’s predominantly on the product side to figure out whether their idea could have legs to walk on and become a business.

That’s one. But when it comes to marketing, people often jump straight into getting enough data and the statistical significance that I mentioned earlier. That is the correct way of doing it because it’s something measurable, something you can rely on, and something that you can make conclusions from.

However, one of the things that I’ve learned, and I’ve always been a quant person, is that once you run all the quantitative tests, it gives you an answer: this works, this doesn’t work, yes, no. It never tells you why.

So the qualitative part gives you the answer or can give you an indication of why.

I’ll give you one example. When I was at a previous company, we were preparing to run a TV campaign and to go big on a big screen in the US, for example, you need to do lots of preparation and testing, and it’s very expensive. So, the stakes and expectations from a business perspective are high.

How can you make sure that everything is as optimal as it can be, not just with the channel mix, placements, day parting, or the length of the creative, but how can you make sure that actually people in the US, your target audience, are going to engage with it?

Are they going to hear the voiceover, enjoy your creative, and actually follow up with their response or search by themselves to go in and download your product and play the game?

We did all the testing, we prepared everything. Everything was done. And then there was this gut feeling. Something in our creative just needed another reassurance. We’d done the quant testing like three times, and everything checked out apart from that gut feeling.

The advice was to go and ask people what they really think. And it was eye-opening. Literally, we were asking people who play competitors’ games, our games, and similar things, to watch the video trailer and tell us how they feel, what they think, and what they understand. Is it clear?

And the comments we got were:
“That voiceover was annoying.”
“Yeah, that’s great.”
“Here could be better, here could be better.”

But the voiceover was annoying. And this is something I couldn’t understand straight away because I’m not American, I don’t live there. So, for me, it just sounded good.

Then we realized a couple of other bits after listening to people’s qualitative feedback. The sample size was less than 10 people. And then it was like, “Okay, bingo, now it makes sense.”

So, we went back to the drawing board, adjusted the creative, made it better, tested again, and only then went live.

Crafting effective test plans and avoiding common pitfalls

Jon Jordan: It’s amazing that you don’t have to talk to 200 people. That would be quite a big effort. If you’re saying just start with a few people, maybe not for every product, you might get that feedback quite quickly that everyone’s saying the same thing.

Saikala Sultanova: Yeah, but you see it’s a different application. For a product, you need a bit earlier interviewing, a smaller sample size, and getting that quality information.

But for marketing, it’s about the application scalability. When it’s something like a big TV, or big screen, the stakes are high, and you have to do every kind of testing to make sure that the money you spend is going to be worth it.

Jon Jordan: There is still a place for those sorts of issues, but obviously the main thing is getting the data, getting the quantitative stuff. So when you’re looking at a test plan, what’s a good test plan? What sort of things are you looking for?

Obviously, there are tons of different KPIs that you could be using. What’s the sort of stuff that you think is best practice?

Saikala Sultanova: Well, a typical solid test plan is mostly about clarity. You want to have your test objectives, audience segmentations, creative variance, channel mix, timing, you name it. It’s all the same thing. It’s not rocket science, and we’ve known about it for more than a decade.

Defining metrics is pretty much similar across the board in gaming: CPI, retention (Day 1, 3, 7), ROAS, LTV, PLTV as well.

From my recent experience working with non-gaming companies, they don’t call it CPI; for them, it’s CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) because it’s not just an Apple launch. It’s a little bit more registration and maybe someone onboarding with payments and things like that.

The most important thing is defining the goal that you’re aiming to work towards, and then applying all of that.

Also, make it a bit of a habit and go through due diligence. If there are data gaps, attribution logic issues, or anything to do with goals or projections that you received from the product, based on whatever information they found online, or sometimes the information is outdated, it’s important to run a sanity check and flag these things.

Everyone is an expert in their field, and growth marketing’s responsibility is to make sure that the latest and most accurate information available is communicated to the whole wider team.

Jon Jordan: It’s interesting that a couple of times already you’ve sort of come back to there’s what the growth marketing team are doing or the UA team—they’re getting all this data—but in and of itself, that’s not useful unless it’s feeding back into the wider organisation.

Things have to be joined up. You can’t just have a great UA team who’s doing all the work and coming up with these numbers if they’re not getting support or if they can’t talk to the rest of the product team. Then I guess it’s a bit useless.

Saikala Sultanova: It is useless, but it also makes it much harder for both teams. Hypothetically, the product team thinks the growth team does black magic or whatever with algorithms and bidding, which isn’t true, because there is no black magic.

And then the marketing team doesn’t speak enough to product and engage on expectations, or give enough information on what reality is. This is when misalignment happens.

What I’ve learned from past experience, good or bad, is that it’s really important just to have another conversation and align on expectations, and clearly, explicitly explain what expectations from both sides are, and then align.

Because most of the time they’re not aligned; both teams think different things, and then the data team thinks something else. It’s really important to come to a middle ground because nobody can have their cake and eat it.

It’s going to be a compromise on every single part to come to a joint agreement so that you can shake hands and go live.

Jon Jordan: So clearly another part of doing this is A/B testing, or the more complicated multivariate testing as well. What are your views on that? I guess A/B testing is something everyone has a good idea of.

Is that a bit outdated now, or are these new, more complex ways of testing taking over?

Saikala Sultanova: In growth marketing on advertising, UA, whatever you call it, I’m a fan of simple A/B testing. It gives an answer quick enough, and it’s a yes or no, basically.

It’s also a bit more cost-effective, and then you can move on, because time is the most important currency you have. Especially if you are an early-stage startup, you have your run rate, and time is the most expensive thing you have.

Of course, multivariable testing is possible, and it’s more complex and sophisticated and looks cool, whatever. But you only do that when you have a lot more money to spend on advertising or marketing testing in general, because multivariable testing is more complex, and it just takes a lot more money.

Jon Jordan: In this early phase, have one question that goes back to having it simple.

It’s very easy to get overwhelmed with all this data that’s coming in, and a lot of it is that you can change one variable and then that moves the other variable the wrong way, and then you find yourself in a bit of a pickle.

Saikala Sultanova: You know what the classic thing is that happens all the time? I’ve seen that in gaming all the time, and I didn’t know that other industries do the same, and now I’ve learned that they do.

Greediness. “Oh, we’re going to run this test, and we’re going to bring these 20,000 users, and we are going to analyse, and with these 20,000 users, we are going to answer questions A, B, C.”

It’s not going to give you the same sample size. And probably for testing something like this, you need a different mix of network, sample size, and maybe a different country, platform, and all of these kinds of things.

And then people go, “But why can’t we just do that? Because other companies do it.”

It’s like, “Okay, the other company is not doing it the right way.”

Because if you want to have a clear, conclusive answer—does it work? does it not work? and maybe why sometimes if you do a bit more research—then you need to have just one thing.

And it’s really hard to stick to it, because then marketing and product teams will start multiplying questions and costs of finding answers to those.

It becomes a lot, but this is when everyone needs to prioritise which questions are the most important and the most impactful on your product launch or making it a business, because some questions are just not that useful.

Jon Jordan: Coming to the end of starting off this marketing pilot testing of UA, what are the key learnings you think people should be aware of, and the mistakes that you’re seeing the most that people naturally fall into if they’re not thinking ahead?

Saikala Sultanova: One of the most common mistakes is testing too many variables at once. As I just said, this muddles their results, and you may end up with no conclusive answer, then you’ve lost time and have to do it again.

Other mistakes are attribution gaps, skipping pre-launch tech checklists, and launching without QA-ing your advertising flow. Having the product ready and having your campaigns ready doesn’t really mean that one of the campaigns isn’t going to fail because something has happened with configs.

And it’s very, very common. Or sometimes people forget to put the payment method into their ad account, or whatever.

So, you need to make sure all these small checks are done and that you communicate results and caveats clearly to the wider team so that nobody in other teams thinks it’s black magic, because it’s not.

It’s just very tedious, repetitive work.

I mean, thanks to it being 2025, there’s a lot of machine learning, lots of automation, and I’m going to say the AI word as well, which is a bit helpful for some of the mundane work. But still, there are lots of things we have to do ourselves, and doing the last tiny, annoying, small, mundane checks is always helpful.

Growth marketing across gaming vs. non-gaming apps

Jon Jordan: That’s sort of the first bit of the podcast today, looking at that. And now we’re going to sort of move on.

Again, something you mentioned: you’ve spent a lot of time in games, but also advising non-gaming apps, and you’ve worked on non-game apps as well.

Obviously, we generally talk about games in the podcast, but it’s interesting to see how the other side lives and maybe learn a bit from that as well.

So, I guess the core skills that you’ve been working on in the last 14 years are broadly the same in non-gaming apps. I guess the apps themselves obviously have a slightly different use case depending on what the app is.

They can have very different applications, from banking to social apps to travel, whatever.

What can you tell us about that difference?

Saikala Sultanova: I thought there would be a lot of differences, and when I’ve worked with some of the projects, one of them was mental health, and another one was a FinTech here in the UK, I found out the foundation of operational growth marketing—data-driven decision-making, creative production, ad tech integration, reporting, and budget management—translates directly.

The marketing mix with ad networks is pretty much copy-paste.

There are some differences because non-gaming is a lot more advanced with CRM and web-to-app marketing, and web in general. They are a lot more advanced, but everything mobile is pretty much copy-paste.

And I don’t think there is a big difference, no matter the industry. Probably e-commerce would be a lot more different; I haven’t worked with e-commerce yet.

But yeah, gaming pushes you to test fast and learn quickly from results, and deal with campaigns with agility. The difference with those non-gaming apps is that it takes a little bit longer.

You need to look at the conversion ratio, conversion windows that are a little bit longer, whether it’s FinTech, lifestyle, or health. And this is something that is different.

Other than that, pretty much everything is recyclable.

Jon Jordan: And I guess to some degree, over the last 10 years, we’ve had this idea of gamification.

So even health, and particularly health, but even sort of FinTech apps, have been influenced by game-type features, which probably also plays a little bit into the marketing so that they’ve converged in some aspects.

Saikala Sultanova: In the last couple of years, it became almost like a trend with subscription apps to gamify the experience because that brings engagement.

If it is a subscription app, you pay your monthly subscription or whatever it may be.

The conversion to your net purchase isn’t necessary for you because you don’t sell single packages all the time.

Therefore, one of the most important measurements for you would be engagement: How often is your app used by your customers? Is it helpful? Is it engaging? Do they feel valued as a customer?

Transferable skills and advice for marketers exploring new verticals

Jon Jordan: When you’ve worked on non-gaming apps compared to gaming apps, what have you thought are the opportunities that people with experience in gaming can bring to a new role if they’re trying to do this growth marketing on non-gaming apps?

What really shines?

Saikala Sultanova: You mean what really shines from non-gaming, or…?

Jon Jordan: Yeah. Well, if people have been working in gaming and are trying to say, “I’ve got these transferable skills that I’ve learned in gaming over the last few years, and I can help you with your non-gaming apps,” what things do you think they can really leverage?

Saikala Sultanova: Quite a lot, actually. I was pleasantly surprised when I tried for the first time.

It is quite a lot, especially on user acquisition. Go-to-market plan is very similar; I would say 70% is the same, and 30% is something that is outside of gaming.

When it comes to creative production, it’s exactly the same—creative production, testing, and improving iterations and all of that. So it’s exactly the same.

Channels are exactly the same, maybe for non-gaming it’s a little bit wider than for gaming, which is great.

The only difference in creative production and testing is—well, testing is the same, actually—but in creative production for non-gaming, static creatives are important.

It could be as important as 40 to 50% of the total ad spend, and they convert.

That’s pretty good because the way the product is perceived is different, and the level of trust or level of information, level of accuracy, is a lot more important.

What else?

Ad tech, attribution, measurement, anything to do with creative labelling, AI tools—pretty much all of that is transferable 100%.

Non-gaming apps like to have fancy tools as well, so anything to improve their work life and make it more efficient, of course they will utilise that.

Reporting is exactly the same.

The only thing with non-gaming is that they go further down the funnel because CRM is part of the marketing team, and then there is additional product marketing, web-to-app search, and SEO is important.

So that becomes a much wider scope and, therefore, a much longer time and funnel where you need to report for a long period of time, and not just regular ROAS or whatever it may be.

It’s more than that.

But apart from that, I would say probably 70 to 75% of what we learn and do every day in gaming is pretty much transferable.

Jon Jordan: I guess for games, as you say, you have your D1, D7, maybe D30, but games are often disposable in a way that non-gaming apps are not.

They just don’t have that same relationship. A bank, hopefully, has a different, long-term relationship with its users than maybe a game, where people are just cycling through games all the time.

Saikala Sultanova: Right. It depends what kind of game. If it is hyper-casual, the one that has a return on investment target of 30 days, 60 maximum, and retention is terrible after that, then of course, those are throwaway games, and they are lots of fun.

But then there are some games that people play for years and years, and those are the games that may not have advertising in them.

If you’ve already spent a thousand bucks in that game, buying in-app purchase packages and progressing in your level, you want to stick to it.

You might be there for a year or two until something better comes along.

Jon Jordan: What sort of advice would you give to people who are marketing professionals, UA professionals, and have experience in the games industry?

How have you found it working with those two different things?

I mean, I guess everyone always thinks games are the really fun part of the industry, and obviously, to some degree, I agree with that being a gaming podcast.

But most of the world is not gaming, and I’m sure there are lots of fun companies doing non-gaming apps.

So what advice would you give people about that?

Saikala Sultanova: I’d say keep an open mind and lean into what makes each vertical unique, respecting the pace of learning.

Don’t just assume what worked for games will transfer as is. It wouldn’t be 100%, but lots of those skills are transferable, especially if you’re curious.

It’s important to find mentors in the industry on both sides, in gaming and non-gaming, and experiment a lot.

Make friends with your analytics and product teams, making sure that you’re really into something that matters.

Celebrating wins is important, even if it’s a small win. With every test, you learn something. It’s really important.

And don’t be afraid to challenge the playbook because playbooks get written all the time, and they also get outdated all the time.

Therefore, refreshing your knowledge is really, really important.

To your comment, actually, that gaming is more fun. Gaming is more fun! I can say that now.

There are fewer limitations, less boundaries, and you can be a bit edgy and you can do stuff according to brand guidelines, or if there are no brand guidelines, even better.

With FinTech, you can’t, because you’re a regulated business. With some of the health apps, you can’t as well; it’s regulated because you need to make sure the advice or whatever the product is communicating to the user that is to do with your health is careful.

So gaming is more fun.

You know what else is more fun right now and trending among subscription apps?
The AI apps, AI face apps, and lots of other things like even podcast-making apps.

Those, I think, are on the rise already, and I’ll be looking forward to learning from them because I think very quickly they’re going to be much better than gaming.

Jon Jordan: You got it. But it is like you say, no matter how much experience you have in this, there’s always new stuff coming up.

We always have to be learning.

Obviously, the more experience you have, the better foundation you have, and maybe you can understand what the important or new things are, but it’s never a case of just sitting back and going, “Well, I’ve done this for 10 years, so I’ll just keep doing the same old thing.”

Saikala Sultanova: It’s okay for some, and it’s okay too because we need those kinds of people also.

You can’t just have a hundred percent of your team or a hundred percent of your company always wanting to run wild.

You need to have a diversity of different thoughts and people and culture, and it’s important to have a bit of everyone.

Somebody needs to do the mundane thing every day, and you need those people; somebody’s comfortable with that, and somebody’s not.

I think the most important thing is to stay curious and keep learning.

Closing

Jon Jordan: Good advice. Well, thank you so much for your time. That’s really fascinating. We covered a lot of different stuff there. I think there were some good headline things: make sure you’re not just a team on your own; you have to talk to your entire team, not just the UA team; keep things simple, certainly in the early stages; and keep learning, keep curious.

So thank you so much for your time.

Saikala Sultanova: Thank you for having me.

Jon Jordan: No, it’s been a pleasure, and thanks to you for watching, listening, however you are consuming the podcast. Remember, every episode we are delving into what’s going on with mobile games, which is increasingly expansive in the topics that we cover, and having to be curious about it because it’s all changing all the time. So don’t miss out. Do subscribe, and we will see you next time. Bye-bye.

Introduction

Jon Jordan: Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Mobile Games Playbook. Thanks for tuning in for another episode. This is a podcast all about what makes a great mobile game, what is and isn’t working for mobile game designers and all of the latest trends.

I’m your host Jon Jordan, and I’m very pleased to have joining me today—in fact, joining me and coming back for the second time on the show—we have Kentaro Sugiura, who is the lead User Acquisition (UA) Manager at Rovio. How’s it going?

Kentaro Sugiura: It’s good to be back here, and I’m ready and happy to discuss mobile games again.

Jon Jordan: Good. Yes. Raring to go. So, last time, obviously, you were talking about your main job in marketing and user acquisition, and today it’s indirectly linked, talking about Intellectual Property (IP). So, obviously, that’s a key part of a product in mobile games and has a very strong link through into user acquisition. So, you’re sort of using your foundational knowledge there and going to talk about how IP works.

The rise of IP in mobile games

Jon Jordan: So, why have we seen an acceleration in mobile games using IP, typically external IP? Why are we seeing this massive trend? What’s it doing to the mobile games business? How’s that helping you in terms of user acquisition?

Kentaro Sugiura: I think there are two scenarios when it comes to mobile games using external or existing IP. The first scenario is the game with IP. The biggest benefit of licensing the IP is lowering marketing cost. Now, this happens through stronger UA metrics such as a higher Click-Through Rate (CTR) or conversion rate, which is nicely reducing the Cost Per Install (CPI), as well as higher traffic driven by brand recognition. That is the first scenario.

And the second scenario, which we see more often nowadays, is a LiveOps or game event with IP. So, when you develop or license an IP for a limited period, the main benefit is boosting revenue through LiveOps. This means a limited-time event with IP. Typically, the IP content is only available for a very limited time or a set duration, which uplifts game revenue. We often see additional organic installs or returning user uplift happening because of the LiveOps event with IP.

UA vs. LiveOps: Two approaches to IP

Jon Jordan: Broadly, in my head, those two become the UA part that, I guess, is targeting new players. And then the second part, which is more the LiveOps events, is more to do with the existing player base. Would that broadly be the case? Or, I mean, how much crossover between those two audiences can you get with using IP?

Kentaro Sugiura: Yeah, I think the first case is more new-user-oriented or more of a revenue prospect through user acquisition. And the second is a kind of mix. Sometimes you unlock your untapped audience by having LiveOps or game events with IP, but also you expect a lot of returning users because you do something new, something special.

That’s one of the benefits of having IP in your game for a limited length of time.

Jon Jordan: I guess there is a bit of a crossover in the sense that you could have a live event, and then you can obviously use the IP you’re licensing for that event. You can also put that into your main UA marketing funnel for at least the period of time in which that’s happening. So, there is some synergy between the two, even if broadly they are seen as being different.

Kentaro Sugiura: Yeah, exactly.

Jon Jordan: I guess the other main thing, if you’re thinking about these two different use cases, is that the UA thing would be more about a longer-term marketing effort. So, you might be doing a game and using other IP in that game, whereas the live event stuff tends to be like a faster turnover where you’re having live events every month or something. So, I guess that’s the difference in terms of the broader new users and the existing users, which relates to retention and monetization.

Kentaro Sugiura: Yep.

Evaluating and selecting the right IP

Jon Jordan: So, when it comes to IP, it is kind of funny. I was thinking that probably when games started out, even some successful games weren’t really seen as IP, and now everything is IP. So, it’s interesting how media works these days, and there are so many different channels to put IP in that everything just becomes IP.

So, the question is not really, is there good IP and bad IP? I guess the question we are thinking about if we have a product is, how can we get the most return on investment on that? How is that IP best suited to our audience?

So, how do you think game developers or people running mobile games should be thinking about finding good IP that works for their product and their audience? What’s the sort of process you go through? Do you go through looking at demographics? Is it just obvious that if you’re doing this sort of game, this sort of IP is going to work? What sort of process would you go through for that?

Kentaro Sugiura: So, from my experience and my observation, I see two key directions when evaluating potential IPs for mobile games and collaborations. The first direction is affinity. This means collaborating with a brand that already shares strong similarities with your existing audience. And this strengthens engagement and monetization with your core audience base. That’s the first direction.

And the second direction is expansion. This means you do a partnership with a brand that allows you to reach a new or untapped audience. That will broaden your market and help acquire new users beyond your current demographic.

Balancing affinity and expansion

Jon Jordan: Where do those two sit in your previous example where you’re doing one more focused towards new users? You said there’s the affinity, sort of reinforcing what you’ve got, and then expansion. Do they fit easily into those buckets?

Kentaro Sugiura: Yeah, I think it’s really case-by-case, IP by IP, and game genre by genre. Maybe if your game audience is, let’s say, female, 45 plus, the affinity you may find is some brands or IPs which are appealing to that core audience. That’s one example.

When it comes to expansion, it means if you do the partnership with an IP which is appealing to a different demographic. That’s a separate direction. And sometimes it can be a mix of these two directions. Sometimes affinity with a little bit of expansion. So it really depends on the IP and your core audience.

Jon Jordan: I’m imagining the expansion part is the harder one to do because the affinity one is, everyone knows the people who like this are going to like that. I mean, I’m sure there are some edge cases there, but basically, it seems like people can work that out.

Whereas the expansion, because it’s just a wider opportunity—how do you… because you want it to be expansive. You want an expansive IP collaboration. You don’t want an IP that sort of appeals to your existing community; you do want to reach out. But obviously, you don’t want to go massively reaching out to something that’s too far and has no affinity at all. So you still need some affinity.

What’s the process you work through on that? Because it seems that could really be where you optimize things by finding an IP that really expands your audience that maybe other people haven’t used if they’re in that same game genre. Is there anything you can sort of explain about that process?

Kentaro Sugiura: Yeah, so I think affinity often happens with entertainment content such as movies, anime, or comics, while expansion—yeah, it can happen within entertainment content—but it also can be happening with existing famous movie stars or football players. You know, it’s a little bit outside of entertainment content. So, it can also be some event, an offline event, or some organization.

The expanding IP landscape

Jon Jordan: We haven’t really talked about IP broadly, but now the range of IP is so enormous. Like you’ve been saying, individuals like sports stars are now at the same level as film stars, and there are loads more film stars and TV stars because there are loads more different channels. So you have all these different celebrities now who are just sort of famous for being famous, and that’s before you move through the movie IP, all the anime stuff. Obviously, enormous numbers there, being used more all the time.

How, as someone who’s sort of looking at what IP to license, do you just not get overwhelmed by just the massive range of what’s out there? Because it’s not just, you know, it used to be, ‘A movie’s coming out, so we’ll get the license for that movie and we’ll work on that content for the next six months, and when the movie comes out, our game will come out.’ People still do that, but I imagine most of the licensing that’s happening is not around big blockbuster movies anymore.

Kentaro Sugiura: Of course. Like, you know, if you can align a key beat with IP and, you know, you can capture the momentum, that is the best option. However, usually it’s a little bit challenging to do that because usually the negotiation of partnerships with existing IP can take so long that you might miss the momentum. Of course, that’s the optimal scenario, that you can align a key beat with the IP.

Negotiating and timing IP collaborations

Jon Jordan: All these things are sort of how long’s a piece of string, but the sort of level you’re working at, how long do those negotiations take? You imagine things have sped up a lot just because of the way intellectual property systems work now. But in terms of thinking about something and then getting something agreed and getting it into a game, is that still a process of months rather than weeks?

Kentaro Sugiura: Yeah, I think they’re months. So, I can share more of my experience from the UA side, because we need to prepare creative with IP and we need to get approval from the IP holder. So we usually spend three to six months in advance preparing the campaign from the UA side.

Maintaining player excitement

Jon Jordan: What do you think about this idea of how much new stuff can you get into your mobile game in a year? At what point does it just, you know, something at the start becomes exciting, there’s this new event coming or new characters or, or whatever IP your licensing comes into the game, and at what point does it sort of become, “oh, another one?”

Kentaro Sugiura: Yeah. It’s like you don’t feel something is special, is that what you mean? I think it depends on, you know, how you implement IP in a game and also how you structure the event with IPs. So it really depends on that.

From my observation, I see, for like, you know, one or two Japanese game developers, they’re constantly doing IP collaboration, like a LiveOps event. And, I see each time they announce the IP collaboration event, there’s some spike in terms of install uplift and revenue uplift.

Jon Jordan: I guess it depends a little bit on the genre ’cause there’s some genres who rely on having real world brands constantly in their game. So, you know, in a sense they are games that are fundamentally built on always having IP in their games. But there’s other games maybe, on the RPG side where it’s harder to get real world brands in there.

So there’s a different cadence that depends on what type of game you’re doing anyway.

Kentaro Sugiura: I think it also depends on how you collaborate with IP, is it just characters or do you prepare some special live event or stage, where people feel like “oh, this is the IP theme event.”

So this really depends on how you structure the event with IP.

Competition and reusing IP

Jon Jordan: What’s your view on games having IP that other games have used? Is there a point at which external IP has been used so much in so many games that you feel like, “Well, they’ve done it.”

You’re looking at what your competitors are doing all the time. They’ve used that IP, so now we can’t use it. Or, if you see a competitor has done a really good IP integration and had a massive spike, do you go, “Oh, maybe we should be looking at that”? I mean, how much of this is driven by competitive trends in the industry, where people are looking at what everyone else is doing, versus how much is it just that you’re focused on your product?

Kentaro Sugiura: Sometimes, for example, the IP holder will reject your offer because they already have a partnership with your competitors. So, this is something that we cannot control ourselves. It also depends on the IP holder. Some of them can say it’s okay to have similar partnerships or collaborations with similar products or a similar agenda. Some of them want to be limited in that sense, so it really depends on the brand.

But yeah, I think in general, you’d like to avoid a brand that already had a collaboration or partnership similar to your product because you might not see the result you are expecting.

Jon Jordan: And so, in contrast to that, if you have a really good collaboration with a brand, the point becomes, “Well, we should be doing this again,” because our audience really liked that; it really worked for us. So, I imagine to some degree you’re cycling through these collaborations—we think about this more on the live ops side. You’re cycling through these different collaborations, and some of them work better than others. If you find something that works, do you then think, “Right, we can do that again?” Or, do you think these are more sort of one-shot type things, where you’re going to create audience fatigue if you’re repeating the same tie-ins?

Kentaro Sugiura: I think it really depends on the contract you have with the IP, is it something you can do one more time, or do you need a new contract with them? And yeah, I also see it’s kind of a throwback event in some mobile games. So, it definitely can be an effective way to uplift revenue by doing that.

I also recognise that in some cases, they do different LiveOps events with the same IP, but with a different event structure, based on the learnings from the previous event.

The business impact of IP

Jon Jordan: And how closely do you focus on the financials of the overall thing? Because I guess that’s… I mean, mobile games are fun for people to play, but obviously, behind the scenes, there’s a massive business.

So, as you stated at the beginning, the point of using IP is in some ways increasing the efficiency of your business, either by reducing your marketing costs on a per-download or install level, or it’s increasing the revenue you’re generating. While these things are fun and exciting for the players, and maybe even the dev team, the economics of it is what’s running that. So, how does that sort of play into the way you think about using IP?

Kentaro Sugiura: I’m echoing what I just said. So, IP has two benefits, the first is lowering the marketing cost. That can happen by uplifting funnels such as CTR (Click-Through Rate) and conversion rate, which leads to reducing CPI (Cost Per Install). It’s also because, when you have an IP, you get better organic installs. That’s one part of the business impact.

Another part is uplifting revenue. This is generally a practice that happens during limited-lifetime events, like in-game events. So, I think it really depends on what you want and also your game’s genre. For some genres, they have less of a problem with generating revenue, and it’s less dependent on LiveOps. Then maybe it’s better to focus on the marketing cost side. Other games are okay with the marketing cost and CPI, so they focus more on the revenue play from LiveOps.

Future trends and the Asian influence

Jon Jordan: What do you think are the trends that are happening over the next five years? Do we just see more and more collaborations because IP has become more fragmented, and so there’s more opportunity? Or are we starting to get to the stage where there is a bit of general fatigue around these mashups, not just in games, but in all of culture? What’s your view on how that trend is going to develop over the next five years?

Kentaro Sugiura: I have no idea, but I’m just saying this based on my observation. IP collaboration is a very popular LiveOps strategy among Asian game developers. I see many Japanese mobile game companies have regular, frequent LiveOps events with anime or manga IPs.

It is very popular in Japan, and IP-based games are really popular there. Now, I see more and more Western mobile games having LiveOps events with IPs. We do see a lot of this with Brawl Stars or Monopoly Go. So, that’s my observation, and based on this, I expect that this will be happening more often.

Jon Jordan: I think that’s a good point because even in my limited experience, we have really seen over the last few years a sort of global expansion of what was at one point quite niche. Japanese manga and anime characters have progressively become much more widely viewed across the West, through services like Crunchyroll and all that sort of stuff.

And because that genre of media is really all about collaboration. The history of anime and manga is all about coming up with new things and cross-pollinating them. So, if you are in that genre, like you say, the JRPGs, it’s almost like it’s expected that you have this very fast pacing of collaborative IP because that’s what the underlying medium is all about. So, it is interesting. For some genres, I think, they will probably, as you say, just keep accelerating, but maybe not for all other genres.

There was one other thing I was going to say, particularly around meme culture, which is obviously a similar thing to Japanese anime, where it just explodes so fast. And we’re seeing this in things like Roblox now. I wonder if those IPs just get so popular and then the next thing comes along. Can those IPs be used by more traditional mobile games? They burn so fast, and it’s hard to judge how long they’re going to last. So, you have that issue.

Kentaro Sugiura: I think you’re having a really good point. I think from the Japanese anime and manga perspective, collaborating with different IP and other entertainment can reach an untapped audience, especially in our Western market. This is because Japanese anime or manga have really limited distribution channels.

One example: in Japan, if you turn on the TV, you can see anime all the time. While in Western markets, you probably need to go to a special channel or pay for cable TV, or maybe you need to subscribe to one of the streaming sites. So, the distribution of Japanese anime content is very limited in the Western market. And we are collaborating with different games. It can be a good distribution channel to reach their potential audience.

Jon Jordan: The history of gaming has shown that the trends that happen in the Japanese market tend to be the ones that flow globally. So, I guess from that point of view, we would think that the trends are going to end up more like the Japanese market than less like the Japanese market, because that’s just historically how the games market has developed over time.

Kentaro Sugiura: It might be, but still, it’s very difficult to predict what’s going to happen in the future. But yeah, so far, we kind of see this trend is mostly moving from the Asia market to the Western market.

The case for building your own IP

Jon Jordan: To sort of flip it the other way: Do you think there is any space for people to still run successful mobile games where they are trying to almost keep a purity of their vision and not want any external IP? Can that work from a user acquisition point of view where you just decide, “My IP is what I want to focus on. I don’t want to dilute that with anything else. I really want to build my IP, at least in the early stages”? So, you sort of go the exact opposite of maybe what the trend is and just go, “My game is my IP, and that’s what I want to focus on.” Does that make any sense at all?

Kentaro Sugiura: I think so, yeah, because some of the genres don’t require external IP, or maybe the effect of such IP is very minimal. Some of the genres are more about your experience in the game; they are not about the IP. You can say that classic, evergreen games like Sudoku don’t really collaborate with IP—the effect is quite minimal compared to other casual titles, like Match-3 or other casual genres.

AI and the future of original IP

Jon Jordan: And I guess, because we can’t have any podcasts going out without mentioning AI, the interesting thing if we are thinking about building your own IP from the ground up is something like Gen AI and user-generated content. That, in some ways, is allowing your community to create their own IP from the IP that you are creating.

So, in a sense, maybe the converse trend to more IP licensing and media going everywhere is some people creating their own striking brand and then allowing their community to expand upon that in a way that they couldn’t have done previously, because most of them wouldn’t have had the art or production skills to do that. So, you do have this sort of flowering of IP, even if it’s a mashup of external IP or people really expanding their own universe of IP. So, in a sense, everything becomes a Marvel universe, which is the end result. We get IP everywhere. So, maybe that’s the counter-argument.

Kentaro Sugiura: Maybe next time, you know, in one or two years, we can talk about how we have a completely different opinion on IP!

Wrapping up and key takeaways

Jon Jordan: Okay, well, I know we’ve painted some broad strokes across what’s going on in the use of IP. I guess as with every tool in the business toolbox, people should definitely be thinking about it if you’re doing mobile games, even if you’re not going to use it.

I suppose that would be the conclusion of this, that there are lots of big brands, and there are lots of little brands. Maybe some companies are not big enough to interact with the bigger brands, but you should be thinking about at least how this could interact with your audience. Because it’s clear that for companies like Roblox and for pretty much every mobile games company, you are using IP to improve your business and make your players happier. So, everyone should be thinking about it. I guess it’s just the question of exactly how you want to deploy it. Would you agree?

Kentaro Sugiura: Yeah, I agree.

Jon Jordan: Any sort of final advice for people who are thinking about IP? What are the things that have resonated with you that are the best working practices?

Kentaro Sugiura: It’s always good to have a high affinity with IP. If you’re looking for more affinity-type IP, then do some user research and try to understand which brands are the most familiar to your core audiences. And maybe, for expansion, what is the audience you’d like to bring in? And yeah, that’s the most important thing: You have a hypothesis, and you make a business case based on that, so you have a clear business goal.

Jon Jordan: Good. Good. Well, thank you very much, Kentaro, for your advice and your expertise.

Kentaro Sugiura: Yeah. Thank you for having me. I hope this helps to understand IP and mobile games!

Jon Jordan: And thanks to you for watching, listening, however you are consuming the podcast. Never forget to subscribe so you don’t miss any episodes. Come back next time to see what we are talking about in the world of mobile games. We’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.