Advertising reports and market data
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State of the Brutally Honest UA by Matej Lancaric
The 2025 user acquisition landscape is defined by a fundamental shift toward creative-led strategies, where the ability to produce high-volume, iterative content determines market success.
- Creative production is now the primary driver of UA performance, requiring teams to generate at least five new videos per week to combat rapid audience fatigue.
- 68% of industry professionals now utilize AI for tasks including scriptwriting, thumbnail optimization, and the generation of synthetic user-generated content.
- The UA manager role has fundamentally shifted from manual campaign administration to a hybrid function focused on creative prompt engineering and data analysis.
TikTok Advanced Dedicated Campaigns (ADC) for Mobile Apps
Advanced Dedicated Campaigns (ADC) represent a specialized, automated solution for mobile app advertisers on TikTok, specifically designed to navigate the complexities of iOS attribution and tracking.
- Advanced Dedicated Campaigns (ADC) utilize machine learning to optimize ad delivery via SKAdNetwork signals, effectively automating targeting to improve CPI and ROAS for iOS mobile app campaigns.
- The primary trade-off of ADC is a loss of granular audience and demographic data, as the platform prioritizes conversion scale over manual targeting control.
- Campaign performance is heavily dependent on high-volume, native-style creative assets, specifically requiring a consistent rotation of user-generated content (UGC).
Stop Ignoring these 6 ad placements in 2025 by Felix Braberg
Effective ad monetization in mobile gaming relies on strategic placement and sequencing to maximize average revenue per daily active user (ARPDAU) and drive engagement from both non-payers and high-volume ad viewers.
- Implement a 'convert-or-die' sequence at natural gameplay breaks by offering a rewarded ad first, defaulting to an interstitial only if the user declines, to train users toward higher-value rewarded engagement.
- Utilize step-offer chains that sequence free items, a rewarded ad, and a paid offer to create a mental ladder that nudges users toward monetization.
- Capture lost revenue from non-payers by triggering a rewarded ad pop-up specifically when a user exits the in-game store without completing a purchase.
Meta Ads 101: Mobile Apps
Effective mobile app advertising on Meta requires a sophisticated balance between algorithmic automation and rigorous strategic oversight.
- Shift from granular audience segmentation to broad targeting using Advantage+ placements to allow Meta’s machine learning to identify profitable inventory.
- Consolidate campaigns to provide sufficient data for the learning phase while isolating creative testing in separate environments to protect scaling performance.
- Prioritize down-funnel conversion events occurring within the first session, aiming for a 70-80% match rate between reported events and actual conversions.
Google Ads for Mobile Apps: Choosing the Best Optimization Event
Optimizing mobile app campaigns requires a strategic shift from prioritizing low-cost installs toward focusing on high-value, predictive in-app events.
- Prioritize optimization for high-value, predictive in-app events rather than low-cost installs to align campaign performance with long-term metrics like lifetime value and monthly active user growth.
- Select optimization events that occur at a minimum frequency of 30 times per day to provide sufficient data for machine learning algorithms.
- Target events that manifest within a short 24- to 72-hour window post-install to ensure the feedback loop is tight enough for effective campaign optimization.
Inside In-App Ads: Past, Present, and What’s Next?
Mobile advertising has undergone a profound transformation, evolving from rudimentary banner placements and incentivized installs into a sophisticated, machine-learning-driven ecosystem.
- The global mobile advertising market is projected to reach an annual spend of $1 trillion by 2030.
- Publishers can achieve revenue uplifts of 8% to 20% by implementing specialized solutions to streamline the bidding process.
- Intermediary costs and platform fees can consume up to 30% of a publisher's total revenue, necessitating a shift toward direct SDK integrations and data ownership.
Panel: How To Create Your Own Retargeting Strategy.
This panel discussion explores the strategic implementation of retargeting in the mobile gaming industry, emphasizing its role as a vital complement to user acquisition (UA).
- Retargeting should be considered as soon as a game launches to capture churned users, as waiting too long results in missed opportunities to recover acquisition investment.
- A recommended budget allocation for retargeting is 5% to 10% of total spend; exceeding 10% is considered risky because many churned users are permanently disengaged.
- The 7-day inactivity window is the standard starting point for initiating retargeting campaigns, as users inactive for longer periods are significantly harder to re-engage.
One bad integration, $20,000 gone in minutes. Fraud is real! Rewarded UA is not dying, it’s evolving
Rewarded user acquisition remains a vital growth strategy, provided advertisers transition from vulnerable client-side tracking to secure server-to-server (S2S) event reporting.
- Insecure rewarded UA integrations can lead to $20,000 in losses within minutes due to fraud from faked events, cheat engines, and emulator hackers.
- To prevent attribution fraud, advertisers must implement server-to-server (S2S) tracking, secure MMP integrations, and use protocols like Adjust’s Signature V5.
- Rewarded UA strategy must be tailored to game genre: playtime offers are effective for casual titles, while multi-reward structures are essential for strategy games that can support high-value bids.
Southeast Asia: Mobile Game Market Insights 2025
Southeast Asia solidified its position as the world’s second-largest mobile gaming market by downloads in early 2025, reaching 1.93 billion installs.
- Southeast Asia is the world’s second-largest mobile gaming market by volume, recording 1.93 billion installs in early 2025, while ranking seventh globally in revenue at $625 million.
- Indonesia is the region's primary volume driver with 870 million installs, whereas Thailand leads in monetization, generating $162 million in consumer spending.
- Publishers based in Singapore and Vietnam have become a dominant global force, contributing over 5.8 billion installs to the international market through hypercasual and competitive titles.
Python for Marketing 101
Marketers can significantly enhance their operational efficiency and strategic capabilities by integrating Python into their daily workflows.
- Python enables marketers to bypass expensive third-party software by using browser developer tools to extract proprietary data directly from platforms like Apple Search Ads.
- Automating data collection with Python allows for the creation of custom, cost-effective databases that track specific metrics such as keyword volume, competition, and relevancy.
- Programmatic access to the Facebook Ad Library API allows marketers to retrieve and analyze competitor ad performance metrics at a scale that is impossible through manual interfaces.
GOAT: Paul Bowen on Ad Network Wars & Future of UA
The mobile advertising landscape has transitioned from a fragmented, high-growth environment into a mature, consolidated market dominated by major entities such as Meta, Google, and AppLovin.
- The mobile advertising landscape has undergone significant consolidation, leaving AppLovin as a dominant force in the ad network space alongside the walled gardens of Google, Facebook, and TikTok.
- The incentivized offer market, popularized by Mistplay, has a low barrier to entry that has led to a surge of new, non-defensible business models relying on gift card rewards.
- Allegations of fraud regarding AppLovin's auto-downloading of apps are largely misunderstood, as iOS technical constraints make such actions impossible and the ecosystem remains a matter of buyer awareness and contract transparency.
⚠️ The Industry’s Dirty Little Secrets: Confessions from the UA Underground
The mobile gaming industry is currently characterized by a systemic reliance on unsustainable user acquisition strategies that prioritize short-term valuation over long-term profitability.
- Chinese game studios are outperforming Western competitors by utilizing massive creative teams, with some companies employing over 300 people specifically to iterate on ad assets and lower acquisition costs.
- Mobile user acquisition (UA) has become increasingly simplified since 2020, shifting the primary focus for many managers toward creative testing and bidding rather than deep algorithmic understanding.
- Internal UA reporting is frequently subject to 'window dressing,' where managers manipulate data or highlight specific metrics to secure bonuses and satisfy management, often misleading founders who lack a deep understanding of UA mechanics.