Most UA teams look at competitor ads the wrong way. They open an ad intelligence tool, scroll through what’s trending in their category, find the creative everyone is running, and then either copy it or get discouraged because a competitor seems to be spending more than they are. Neither of those is the point. Competitor […]
The playbook that worked in 2021 is not the playbook that works today. Back then, you could run a single creative concept on Meta, optimize toward installs, and scale a game into a real business. The signals were clean, the targeting was precise, and the feedback loop was fast. That world is gone. What’s replaced […]
Rewarded user acquisition doesn’t get talked about the way Meta and TikTok do. It’s not as flashy. It doesn’t dominate conference panels. And a lot of teams either dismiss it as “incentivized junk” or quietly use it without fully understanding why it works. Both are mistakes. When rewarded and loyalty-based UA is set up correctly, […]
Most mobile growth teams treat CTV like a bigger version of Meta or TikTok. Same creatives. Same hooks. Same expectations. That’s the mistake. CTV isn’t just another channel you plug into your UA mix. It’s a completely different creative environment, where your ad is full screen, unskippable, and sitting right in front of someone on […]
D7 ROAS is everywhere. Dashboards. Reports. Investor updates. Slack screenshots. It’s fast, it’s clean, and it gives teams something to react to. It’s also one of the most misleading metrics in mobile growth. Not useless. But dangerous if you treat it as truth. If you’re running gaming or iGaming, D7 ROAS will tell you a […]
Everyone says they care about incrementality. Very few teams actually run clean tests. Why? Because incrementality sounds simple, but in practice it feels slow, expensive, and messy. And when you’re under pressure to hit numbers, “clean measurement” often gets pushed aside for “what looks like it’s working.” This post is not about perfect experimentation. It’s […]
For a long time, the north star for mobile growth teams was simple. Installs. More installs meant more scale. Lower CPI meant better performance. Dashboards filled with green arrows when install volume climbed. That mindset made sense in the early years of mobile gaming and app marketing. User acquisition was still expanding, inventory was cheaper, […]
Most teams don’t have a creative shortage right now. They have a clarity problem. There are more tools than ever to produce ads quickly. Gameplay cuts, UGC-style edits, stat overlays, voiceovers, AI cleanups. You can spin up a batch of variations without a production crew or a massive budget. So naturally the next move becomes, […]
Everyone can make ads now. Not good ads. Not strategic ads. But ads. Lots of them. AI tools, template libraries, UGC cloning, gameplay editors, auto voiceovers. A small team can crank out 100 variations a month without hiring a production crew or blowing up a budget. Two years ago that was an edge. Now it’s […]
Work Dog Studios at Tokyo Game Show 2025
