App Growth Talks: Gamelight’s Dmytro Vorobiev on User Acquisition

Welcome to App Growth Talks, where we dive into the insights and strategies of top professionals shaping the mobile industry.

Today, we’re thrilled to have Dmytro Vorobiov, User Acquisition Manager at Gamelight, joining us.

​​Watch the video or read the text version below.

What inspired you to become a user acquisition manager in the mobile gaming industry? Or was it a pure coincidence? Could you please share your story with us?

It was a coincidence, but I had two approaches (at getting) to the mobile industry and marketing. My first major career stage was when I moved from sales to campaign management and affiliate marketing. It was back in 2014-2015. At some point, when there was a lot of affiliate marketing on the market, and this part of the industry was slowly dying, I shifted my career to the product side. 

After working like half a year as a game producer, I felt that the only way for me to save the game which I was working on was to move to marketing. And from that point, around 2020, I was back to user acquisition again. 

So, unlike some user acquisition managers, I had experience on the product side as well, which was pretty valuable.

In your opinion, how is user acquisition for games different from user acquisition for mobile apps? Or is there no difference? What do you think about this?

Probably, when we are speaking about a technical side of the topic, the campaign setup and all the technical things will be more or less the same. But when we are speaking about the approach to promotion, it will be very different. 

Most of the apps I was facing had very specific targeting. Essentially, we are trying to promote a specific product for a specific group of people. And despite our desire, I cannot say that this product will be feasible for any citizen of any country. It will still have some specific approach to bring someone who is interested in something who can use this tool, this app, etс. 

And when we’re speaking about games, overall, there are many exceptions. The gaming companies, especially on the free-to-play market, are trying to make a good product which could fit all the markets at the same time. That’s why in many cases, we have more freedom than with apps promotion because we are trying different techniques to promote our apps, our games to a very broad market, to almost every citizen we could reach.

As far as I know, it’s not only about geography, it’s also about types of players. Some people play to relax after a hard day at work. Others like to entertain themselves, to compete, to win. So there are a lot of things to target, I think.

In this landscape, it’s more about how the game positions itself on the market and which approach we’re trying to use.

For example, we have a video editing app, and we know that there is a very specific niche, there are specific people who can be interested in it. It’s not for everyone. So, we know that the app is, maybe, for 20% or 10% of the market. 

But when we are speaking about most of the games, we will say that potentially we can cover 70% of the market, maybe 80%. So these are the key differences for me.

And what channels do you use as part of your user acquisition mix? If it’s not a secret, of course.

I don’t think it’s a major secret, but, of course, I cannot name particular partners we are working with. For the moment, I’m covering most of the types of publishing partners available on the market, including ad networks, social partners, and some other networks which are not falling into this category. For now, I’m covering most of the available options to promote games and apps.

What strategies and tactics have you found to be most effective in acquiring users for mobile games?

We will need to specify it a bit because when we’re speaking about any game or app, we will put the potential LTV in the first place. Depending on it, we will choose particular partners where we could fit into some limitations. 

We have some partners where we will have higher CPIs by default, and there are some partners where we can have lower metrics. Of course, it depends on the potential audience. If we can reach someone by a social channel, it will be a better product-market fit. This will be the best strategy to go to the market. 

If we’re speaking about the broad approach, we will try to scale and cover as much as possible. Mainly, the framework to go forward will be depending on either some historical data or our competitors’ benchmarks. When we’re promoting a new product or trying to extend the existing one, the first step is always exploring the market and competitors’ benchmarks. So, it highly depends on the particular product.

Campaign Optimization

So, you take a personalized approach here. It’s totally understandable about benchmarks. We at SplitMetrics regularly release benchmark reports for Apple Search Ads, for ASO, and these are highly-demanded materials, although they cover specific categories. With mobile gaming, this is even more specific because there are a lot of genres.

As part of your work, I know that you’re actively involved in campaign optimization. Could you please share what are major campaign optimization types? 

If we’re speaking about the market overall, then probably the number one will be the ROAS-optimized campaigns. For most of the publishers that we are working with and making the benchmarks through their portfolios and competitors, such campaigns usually make a pretty significant part of the best practices and suggestions. Again, it all depends on the partner.

The number two are the event-optimized campaigns. We can speak a lot about what’s better or worse, but it really depends on the specific product you are promoting and the correlation between reaching a particular milestone in the game versus the LTV and the LTV increase over particular timeframes.

And last but not least (and I really like them) are install-optimized campaigns because it’s better to have your media mix diversified. Unfortunately, not all the partners allow to have all the campaign types at the same time. Everyone has some restrictions. 

Still, it gives you a very good understanding of how your campaigns are doing aside from the broad market approach. Once you’re trying to move deeply to the ROAS funnel or event-optimized campaigns, in many cases, you are going with a slightly higher CPIs, and every next user becomes slightly more expensive than the previous one, while the install-based campaigns are giving you a pretty good benchmark of the market competition.

So I prefer to keep all the available optimization types with the partners. For every single of these optimization types, depending on the partner, you can have a much broader type of campaigns, such as ROAS and CPA campaigns optimized in different timeframes. 

You can have the ROAS campaigns which are bringing in-app purchases, ROAS, adROAS or a mix. It really depends on the primary partner you’re working with and the product itself, because some products cannot sustain on, for example, ads monetization side because it’s a minor part for them. Some companies are relying more on early stage indicators or retention even. So, it really depends on a particular portfolio.

When you’re talking about partners, do you mean ad networks, some lower funnel platforms to track the performance down the funnel once players have installed the game?

I’m calling our publishers our partners because still, anytime it’s a multi-beneficial cooperation. Any ad network or social network or others helping us with apps and games promotion, are our partners. We are in the same boat. 

I wanted to ask how you measure the success for your campaigns and what are the key metrics. But I think you listed them, like ROAS, CPI. You also previously mentioned LTV. Is there anything to add to this list?

I would say that any time when we are defining the metrics we are following, they are always driven by the product we are pushing. 

It’s always curious how different companies approach it. For Company A, ROAS can be the sole polar star, while for Company B who is dealing with multi-player games, you just need to sustain a certain number of players in the game on a particular date with specific engagement metrics. So, again, it’s always about the particular product which we are promoting. But still, I would say that the most widespread metric on the market is the ROAS one.

And how do you balance the need for user acquisition with the need for user retention in mobile game marketing? Both aspects are major. They are both important.

Probably, this is one of the biggest discussion points on the market when it comes to some cooperation between user acquisition or marketing and the product-related teams, because essentially this is a shared responsibility. We can say that any sort of marketing can bring amazing users for the product which is not aimed to be as good as it could be, and vice versa.The better the product itself, the easier it is to get certain retention metrics. 

I would say it’s always about the cost for me. If you’re getting a better cost per retained user than on other channels in the mix, it’s fine. If we see that our secondary metrics are falling down, this is a sign to change the approach. The retention for me is slightly more a product metric than a solely UA one.

Completely makes sense, especially given there are games, as far as I know, with LTV of three days or seven days. So retention is a question.

Of course. Different timeframes, different types of the product, and different development stages that every product is passing. 

There are particular games who are surviving on very low numbers. They’re trying to compete for a very broad audience, and vice versa. There are products where you need to find very special players. And, depending on the early retention, you can estimate the quality of your user acquisition and the way how users are doing things inside the product. 

Anyway, it’s a thing that we, UA managers, always treat as a starting point. What are our main KPIs to define that activity is successful? Retention can be one of them or it can be excluded. And again, the product will be fitted to users so we can acquire them.

Design Trends in Mobile Gaming

I wanted to ask you what are current design trends in general in the mobile industry, or probably you could name some trends for some specific gaming subcategories. Do you have something in mind?

Sure. The first one is the global shift to playables. It’s not a new trend, but it shows up more and more in particular networks, so they are pushing these creatives as a primary trend. 

At the same time, there are two big approaches. The real simplified gameplay, or, in some cases, it can be re-imagined gameplay with some core mechanics, such as collecting something, doing something. For many games I’ve seen, it’s very hard to reuse the existing gameplay in the playable because it’s either time-related, or too complicated. But still, this playable type of approach is probably one of the biggest trends of the last few years. 

The other trend is not something which we see only in this year, but probably it’s a trend of the last year and a half, up to two years, once AI voiceovers became widely accessible. I’ve seen this trend a lot in hyper-casual games. There are different kinds of voiceovers which are tied to particular gameplay, and they are giving more juice and more attractiveness to a particular game screen recording. So this is probably the number two trend I’ve seen recently. 

The third trend is less related to new products, but to the products which have been on the market for a while. It’s the gameplay improvements. If you have simplistic gameplay, many companies are trying to make their creatives look better. They’re trying to make them more complex with more details, which allows them to acquire a slightly better audience in a certain way. 

One more thing. UGC creatives. they’ve been on the market for a while, but they’re taking up a significant part of creatives. The biggest share of them are created for already mature titles. You can see them pretty often. But I see that apps are using them frequently because it’s very easy to translate your message and give it to the audience in a testimonial approach.

Custom Product Pages

Let’s discuss creative trends as part of one specific channel, Apple Search Ads. I wanted to ask, what current creative trends do you observe for this channel? In particular, I mean ad variations using custom product pages. Do you use them?

I use them less frequently because the products I’m working on are slightly more straightforward, and it’s not easy to diversify the product pages and user acquisition approach to them. Custom product pages have been on the market for a few years already. Anyway, they are a bit of fresh air for the industry, because, till a certain point, most of the companies were tied to a unified App Store product page approach. We had to choose the best performing one among all the possible channels. 

It has always been a part of a big discussion about how we should make custom product pages, how we should unify them, and how they will fit all the requirements at the same time. Now we and the market are moving away from this practice. It’s very interesting to observe how the mobile and mobile gaming markets in particular become more mature because we are using the big marketing practices of having market positioning strategies on-site. We can show different angles of the product, of the game to the market. Essentially, we can even diversify the way we are doing the user acquisition, the way we are doing Apple Search Ads while having a primary organic product page. For me, this is an amazing main trend which we see across the industry. 

There are some good points for UA managers, and there are some points we need to keep in mind since there might be a lot of different store pages across the portfolio or for a particular product. It can add work — either for the product team, the Apple Search Ads or ASO manager, or whoever is handling the store.

But I see it as an opportunity for many UA managers who haven’t yet faced this unified funnel approach, where they can try their best to create a great user journey to the product. For me, when I first approached it, it was a very interesting experience. Until a certain point, you are only controlling the user until they reach the store. But now, you have many leverages to make different user acquisition campaigns work much better. You can collect particular keywords in groups by a particular topic, and forward users to a dedicated store page. 

I agree that custom product pages provide a huge opportunity for both ASO managers and user acquisition managers for growth teams who act jointly. Because yes, on the one hand, you can reflect various features of your app or game, characters of your game, say, targeted at different audiences. It works for the organic side and also, of course, for bad user acquisition when you can attract the audience and personalize your App Store page for this segment.

I totally agree.

Campaign Measurement

How do you measure the effectiveness of creatives in your campaigns? Are you running some A/B tests? Or are you looking at these core metrics? For example, you’ve updated creatives, and you are looking at a target metric, target KPI install rate, for example, or CPI. So could you please share a bit about this?

When I’m working with creatives, the thing I’m usually looking at is the scale. So, for me, a creative is something that can break the performance, which can lead us to a certain level. But when we’re speaking about the secondary metrics, I review them from the angle of defining what’s working or what we can improve. Every particular secondary metric can give you a very specific answer.

If you are measuring the view time and the drop of users on particular time, you can see if your creative is catchy enough. For someone, it’s more important. For someone, it’s less important. If we’re speaking about the metric of, for example, the conversion on the store, we’re tracking the way how the creatives are matching the overall user journey. It’s part of a deconstruction of this flow. Depending on the goals, we can measure some secondary metrics which will fit the best. Again, the correlation between the retention and creative might be relatively weak. This is a point which we also need to take into consideration.

So it’s always about the multiple factors. Many things depend on the product and approach. My guiding star is scaling. We are always trying to find creatives which will enable us to increase the scale and to broaden the reach of our products.

Key Mobile Gaming Trends

Scale is a huge topic for all user acquisition specialists. Wrapping up our productive conversation today, we have already discussed creative trends, but I cannot but ask you about key trends in mobile gaming in general that you observe for the industry or probably for the whole mobile marketing. 

And also a second question about this, how do you stay up to date with these latest trends? Because I think it can be tough at times because trends are emerging and you need to just quickly adjust to stay ahead of the curve.

It’s hard to range from low to high, because it depends on your specific situation. I was facing different situations during my career. 

When you’re working at a bigger company, it’s much easier for you because you’re having the direct connection with most of the top market players who are eager to share some insights with you because it will allow you to scale up your activity significantly. And it shows this increase will give both parties a pretty incremental increase in their business scope. 

For me, one of the big points is essentially the communication with partners. For example, when you are at a smaller company and you are a part of a smaller team with more conservative budgets, you need to be more creative in finding the information and keeping up to date. In such conditions, I would always move to some communities first. 

We have a lot of selected channels. We have LinkedIn groups where you can find peers across the industry and discuss some particular topics. At the same time, no matter how big the company you are working for, I still suggest many of my fellow UAMs, both super senior and those just starting their career, to look closely through partners’ documentation.

There is always a point that we are focusing on how to do UA, how to do marketing, etc. Many people are often forgetting that we are tight to a product. You need to play games and use other apps just to make sure you know what happens inside of the product you’re promoting at the first glance, and to use the products which are becoming the market leaders, even if your product is far from new or freshly released titles which are gaining traction on the market. 

Anyway, it can be a huge benefit, and it can be a big field for discovery. Some hooks which are used directly in the gameplay can be easily transferred to some playable context, or to the new acquisition strategy, or even to some closer cooperation between the production and marketing teams.

It’s a part about being up to date. If we are speaking about the particular trends in the gaming industry, again, for me, the last few years were a very interesting journey, and the industry itself was, I would say, unstable. We’ve seen different trends, starting from cutting the marketing budgets to getting them back after the recession period at the end of 2022 or 2023.  There is still a lot of uncertainty how the industry will evolve. But we already see the signs of pretty widespread hybrid monetisation, which still affects the way we promote apps, how we are setting up the goals, etc. So it’s probably a point of a particular top branch or sub-industry.

Thank you so much, Dima, for sharing your tips also about networking, Slack groups, LinkedIn groups. I think networking is huge. It cannot be overestimated.

Also, the tips you shared about checking what’s going on, about keeping your finger on the pulse, because if you are a user acquisition manager for games, you should track what’s going on the market every day, checking out not only statistics for your products, for your games, but what competitors are doing, what are some new market trends you could incorporate, as you mentioned, into the gameplay et cetera. For example, the new colors, the new color of the year too, probably. 

Thank you for this insightful App Growth Talk. I believe everyone will find something valuable in this conversation. 

Thanks a lot. I really hope that our cooperation will give someone a lot of fresh thoughts and maybe help grow as well.