Hacking mobile games growth: the ultimate Growth Masterminds miniseries

What if you could get a mini MBA in hacking mobile games growth? A little pick-me-up with sweet tips from industry experts? Some fresh ideas over the coming holiday break to apply in 2025 as you get back to the task of growing your game?

Well, today’s your lucky day. You’ve won the lottery, you’ve scored the game-winning goal.

Because we’ve built a Growth Masterminds miniseries on hacking mobile games growth that is going to reinvigorate your mobile game marketing in 2025, and you can access it right now, completely free, right here.

Hacking mobile games growth: the 5 key topics we’re hitting

We picked 5 key topics for growth hacking your mobile games.

To win in 2025, you’re going to need game-changing creative that gets noticed AND gets results. You’ll still need to navigate iOS measurement as all the platforms bring in their own versions of AEM or TikTok’s Advanced Dedicated Campaigns, and AAK takes over from SKAN. When it’s time to grow, you have to look at channel — and partner — diversification, so we tackle that next. 

Sometimes you need to reinvigorate former players, so retargeting and re-engagement is session 4, and we end with probably the point of this whole enterprise: making more money with hybrid monetization.

Here are the 5 sessions, along with the experts for each:

1. Mastering the art of creative
   Jesse Lempiäinen, CEO & co-founder at Geeklab
2. Navigating iOS measurement and marketing
   Jesse Lempiäinen, CEO & co-founder at Geeklab
3. Scaling with channel diversification
   Majej Lancaric, user acquisition consultant
   Kyle West, senior director of marketing at Mistplay
   Brendan O’Oconnor, growth director at Moloco
4. Win them back: retargeting and re-engagement
   Günay Aliyeva, co-founder at GameLight
5. Making money: hybrid monetization
   Felix Braberg, ad monetization consultant & host of Two & a Half Gamers

Sneak peek: the art of the creative

We kick off our hacking mobile games growth journey with creative, featuring the CEO of Geeklab, Jesse Lempiäinen. 

Geeklab works with the best of the best: 

• Rovio
• Wooga
• Supercell
• A Thinking Ape
• And many more …

Their job: turning impressions into installs. That requires extreme creativity, innovation, insight, and execution. But as we learned in our chat with Jesse, creative ideas don’t just come from the stereotypically “creative” people.

In fact, one of the best ideas for a recent gaming customer came from their CTO. Watch this 30-second clip:

There’s much more in this segment, including:

• Creative Strategies for Game Growth
• Trends in Game Marketing
• The Role of AI in Creative Development
• Influencers and Celebrities in Game Marketing
• Challenges and Successes in Creative Marketing
• Future of Game Marketing: Predictions for 2025

Hacking mobile games growth: iOS measurement

If you want to hit high-value gamers, you pretty much need to have an iOS strategy. And if you want to have an iOS strategy, you pretty much need to achieve a level of excellence in iOS measurement.

(And yeah, you’re not alone here. We can help.)

So we hit iOS measurement with Jesse too and Niels Beenen, who leads partnerships for Singular in EMEA. 

As you’d expect, we chat about Apple’s IDFA changes, and the challenges with current attribution methods. Perhaps surprisingly, we end up with a fairly optimistic outlook for future measurement techniques. We also cover creative testing, AAK (the new SKAN), probabilistic methods that the big market players are coming out with, and how the industry is adapting.

Here’s Neils making a point about how your measurement needs to incorporate multiple signals, not just 1, because no single measurement methodology on iOS is perfect.

Check out his 35-second comment:

And, of course, there’s much more here too, including:

• Current Challenges in iOS Mobile Measurement
• Retargeting and Attribution Strategies
• The Role of SKAdNetwork and Advanced Measurement
• Probabilistic Attribution and Industry Trends
• Unified Measurement and Incrementality
• Web to App Campaigns and Creative Testing
• Future of iOS Game Marketing in 2025

Scaling with channel (and partner) diversification

If you’re successfully hacking mobile games growth, you’re probably growing. And when you’re growing, you’re going to out-grow certain partners and — if you get big enough — out-grow certain channels.

So now you need to start thinking about partner diversification and channel diversification: finding new potential players for your games in new places, and convincing them to give your game a shot.

Matej Lancaric, Kyle West from Mistplay, and Brendan O’Connor from Moloco helped us out here. We talked about the timing and testing required to add new channels and scaling strategies. We also hit the efficacy of rewarded ads, influencer marketing, and CTV as new channels for hacking gaming growth. 

One of the things we touch on: how much do you need to spend to test a new partner?

Here’s what Matej says:

The rest of our conversation adds much more insight, including:

• The Cold Start
• Expanding Your Partner Network
• Testing New Channels
• Scaling and Diversifying
• Geographical Considerations
• The Role of DSPs
• Exploring New Channels
• The Rise of Rewarded Advertising
• Influencer Marketing in Gaming
• The Role of Influencer Marketing Managers
• Celebrity Endorsements: Do They Work?
• CTV Advertising Trends
• Future of Ad Partners and Channels
• Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways

Retargeting and re-engagement: essential parts of hacking mobile games growth

People leave. Players stop playing. 

It’s a fact of hacking mobile games growth that marketers need to take into account, and do. But that doesn’t mean you can’t win some of them back. Sometimes, they’re just taking a brief break and you can coax them back with smart retargeting and re-engagement strategies.

So we dove into the future of retargeting and remarketing in mobile gaming with Günay Aliyeva, co-founder at GameLight. 

We talked about the importance of retargeting even with increasing privacy restrictions, best practices for Android, different expectations and strategies for user re-engagement versus new user acquisition, and the challenges posed by retargeting in the iOS ecosystem. Günay gave us some incredibly valuable insights on how to use segmentation and seasonal events in retargeting campaigns, and we talked about future trends in this space.

Retargeted users have much higher LTV and ROAS than your average newly acquired player, says Günay:

We also talk about:

• The State of Retargeting in 2025
• Best Practices for Retargeting
• Challenges and Common Mistakes
• Retargeting on iOS vs. Android
• Future of Retargeting

Finally: hacking mobile games growth by making more money

Last but definitely not least, we talked about making more money in your games with hybrid monetization, focused especially on ad monetization with the 1 and only Felix Braberg.

We chat about trends and strategies for optimizing game monetization: the nuances of hybrid monetization, the importance of A/B testing, the impact of ad duration on user experience, and the innovative tactics used by top gaming studios.

We also talk about the biggest reason games fail, according to Felix:

Finally, we dive into the complexities of measuring ad revenue, the significance of user acquisition strategies related to ad monetization, and how to balance monetization without alienating players.

All of that includes:

• Current Trends in Hybrid Monetization
• Building Effective Monetization Models
• Ad Monetization Strategies
• Innovative Monetization Techniques
• Challenges in Ad Measurement
• Future Trends and Tips for 2025

Hacking mobile games growth: check it all out right here

All of the above is available immediately and on demand right here.

Suggestion: bookmark it and come back during the holiday break to watch an episode a day. It’d be incredibly challenging to NOT come away with at least 1 good idea to try in your own mobile games marketing in 2025.