App Growth Talks: Jevgen Tarasenko

This is an episode of App Growth Talks, interviews with experts on mobile marketing and growth. This episode’s special guest is Jevgen Tarasenko, Head of ASO at Tilting Point. Jevgen is an expert on mobile gaming, app store optimisation and growth. 

From this interview, you will learn everything about promising genres in mobile gaming, how to scale with creatives, steps before a new game title’s launch, if it’s possible to re-use visuals, what Jevgen thinks of Apple Search Ads, how ASO interacts with UA, whether it affects lower funnel metrics and much, much more!

Below, you will find timecodes and some insights Jevgen shared during the App Growth Talk, while other interesting thoughts and insightful tips you will find by watching the interview or listening to the podcast. 

01:07 Jevgen, you’re Head of ASO at Tilting Point, but also you’re a drummer of Nug, Ukrainian band. How do you manage to balance these two activities? Does your hobby help you to get inspiration for your work?

Hobby actually helps Jevgen to draw inspiration for his work. 

05:12  Also, you’ve won Google Play’s users’ choice awards with your game SpongeBob: Krusty Cook-Off and also were listed among top 50 gamemakers by PocketGamer. How do you at TiltingPoint handle competition and achieve such great results? 

• Share insights and collaborate. 
• Recipe: a lot of hard and consistent work. There is not secret sauce to that.
• Good communication between departments, being organised and as automated as possible. 
• Dedication in setting ambitious goals.

07:07 Tilting Point has a lot of offices around the globe, including Barcelona, NY and also Seoul, South Korea. I think this is a progressive approach and wanted to ask you: how to attract users on Asia’s markets? What is ASO specificity for them?

Watch the interview to find the answer.

10:43 What game genres are most popular and promising today?

• Casual and hypercasual 
• There is an issue for generation Z: short attention span

Watch to find out how to capture user attention.

13:20 What’s your advice for those who’d like to scale with ASO/creatives? Please name three-five key moments to pay attention to 

You need the proper strategy. Depending on the situation you have, you may either stick to the iterative approach – define general direction you will be moving and do small changes to the creatives.

Or else – which is another common approach – do very different kind of things that no one has ever done before.

Check if you’re going in the right direction and adjust strategy.

15:03 What are some creatives’ design trends for specific game genres? Or probably you’ve noticed that smth works well for a particular category

• Creative should be specific to the category and main game features.
• For casual & hypercasuals all the graphics should be pretty much simple.
• Simple screenshots without calls to action and inscriptions.   

Another feature working very well for multiplayer games is highlighting the existence of the multiplayer and putting this information on the first screenshot. 

17:17 What are your best practices in terms of mobile A/B testing? 

• Research the competitors, trends, even colors that are trendy this year.
• Test through as many iterations as possible.

20:26 Creatives recycling. Have you ever reused creatives? For example, they became effective again – or for some other platforms

22:26 Do you take advantage of app store updates? 

Watch the interview or listen to the podcast to learn Jevgen’s opinion.

24:30 Do you track the correlation between your ASO efforts and what happens down the funnel – retention, LTV? Overall, can you affect these metrics with the help of product page visuals?

Visuals with good potential are able to improve Retention, LTV and other metrics. 

26:10 Is it possible to grow a game just organically, without paid UA?

• The short answer is yes.
• Oftentimes it’s a game of chance. 
• It was easier a couple of years ago when the market was not so crowded. 

28:41 What do you think of Apple Search Ads?

Watch the video to find out how you can utilise Apple Search Ads for the purposes of ASO.

29:24 Is app store optimization more about data or creativity, in your opinion?

• 80% – data and 20% – creativity.
• You need to measure everything.

31:45 What changes and trends in general should we expect in 2021 in addition to what we already have today (ATT introduction, etc.)?
Listen to the podcast to find out.