The Mobile User Acquisition Show

Shamanth Rao
  • 5.0 (38)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Biweekly

Welcome to the Mobile User Acquisition Show, in which we talk about how to use mobile user acquisition strategies to grow your app quickly and capital-efficiently. Each episode includes strategies, tips and pointers from the leading edge of mobile user acquisition that can help you unlock tremendous growth for your app.The Mobile User Acquisition Show is produced by the team at RocketShip HQ. With 8 figure UA spends managed and over 10,000 ads produced, we deliver profitable growth for breakthrough B2C apps & help them navigate the brave new world of privacy-first, post-identifier marketing. See also: our live workshop series on marketing in a post-identifier world: https://mobilegrowthlab.com/

  1. 12h ago

    How to Design a Web-to-App Funnel That Converts

    Noom's onboarding funnel runs 120 to 140 screens. Some 3-screen funnels convert above 10%. "The length does not matter. Bigger is not always better," as Jacob Rushfinn put it. Part 2 of the FunnelFox panel gets tactical on how web-to-app funnels actually get built. Part 2 of the FunnelFox webinar panel, with Rocketship HQ as partner. Shamanth Rao moderates Jacob Rushfinn (CEO, Botsi), Andrey Shakhtin (CEO, FunnelFox), Patrick Stuart-Constant (CEO, Sociaaal), Mike Gadd (VP Customer Success, Singular), and Elise Zareie (Head of Paid Social, Lingokids). If Part 1 was about the shift, Part 2 is about the mechanics. Elise Zareie on why longer funnels convert better in weight-loss and health but fail on kids apps, where a parent just wants to hand the phone over. Andrey Shakhtin on Noom's 120 to 140 screen funnel as the industry ceiling. Mike Gadd on why your MMP, your ad network, and Google Analytics will never agree, and why that is fine once you pick a source of truth. Jacob Rushfinn on cohort-quality guardrails: ROAS alone gets gamed, so you need activation rate, D1, D7, and trial-cancel rates on the same chart. Patrick Stuart-Constant on a Liquid Death-inspired ad that mocked confused users and ran profitably for months. Video Chapters: 00:00 Recap of Part 1 00:45 Jacob: start with 10 to 15 screens, not 100 02:00 Elise on why funnel length is vertical-specific 04:00 Andrey on Noom's 120 to 140 screen funnel 07:00 Platform hell: MMP, ad networks, and Google Analytics 09:30 Mike on picking a source of truth, using SKAN as a check 11:00 Andrey on optimizing for ROAS over conversion rate 11:45 Down-funnel accountability for UA teams 12:30 Jacob on cohort-quality guardrails (activation, D1, D7) 14:20 Mike on tying campaign data to attribution and events 15:30 Elise on creative-quality health checks 17:00 Quick-fire: paywall and pricing wins 18:30 Quick-fire: standout creative wins 20:00 Closing advice from all 5 panelists Topics covered: - Funnel length: when longer converts better, when it kills conversion - Platform hell: MMP as source of truth, SKAN as check - ROAS over conversion rate as the campaign KPI - Down-funnel accountability and cohort quality guardrails - Creative wins from social listening and negative comments - Paywall wins: intro offers, multi-page paywalls, paid trials Learn more: - Original webinar recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYPDZlwLhNA - FunnelFox (webinar host): https://funnelfox.com - Rocketship HQ (partner): https://rocketshiphq.com - Jacob Rushfinn (Botsi): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-rushfinn/ - Andrey Shakhtin (FunnelFox): https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrey-shakhtin/ - Patrick Stuart-Constant (Sociaaal): https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-stuart-constant/ - Mike Gadd (Singular): https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-gadd-27a16427/ - Elise Zareie (Lingokids): https://www.linkedin.com/in/elise-zareie/ - Shamanth Rao (Rocketship HQ): https://www.linkedin.com/in/shamanthrao/

  2. 13h ago

    How to Build a Web-to-App Funnel Without Torching $20K

    82% of top-grossing apps now take payment outside the app store. Patrick Stuart-Constant's team at Sociaaal ships 4,000 video ads a month, scaling to 10,000. The shift to web-to-app monetization isn't coming. It already happened. Part 1 of a two-part panel from a FunnelFox webinar, with Rocketship HQ as partner. Shamanth Rao moderated the conversation with Jacob Rushfinn (CEO, Botsi), Andrey Shakhtin (CEO, FunnelFox), Patrick Stuart-Constant (CEO, Sociaaal), Mike Gadd (VP Customer Success, Singular), and Elise Zareie (Head of Paid Social, Lingokids) on how paid acquisition teams design the path after the click. Andrey Shakhtin on why off-store attribution beats SKAN on speed, and how 2-5% payment fees unlock room to iterate. Patrick Stuart-Constant on scaling ad volume as a search space problem, and why cheaper AI creative grew his team instead of shrinking it (Jevons paradox). Elise Zareie on why web funnels only work with dedicated ownership inside the UA team. Mike Gadd on why the first renewal is the metric most teams miss. Jacob Rushfinn on the $1M revenue threshold before web funnels pay off, and the 10K to 20K monthly loss to budget for the learning phase. Video Chapters: 00:00 Introductions and format 02:40 The one shift teams have not priced in 07:50 Andrey on the 82% off-store payments finding 09:52 Mike on measurement across web and app, platform hell 11:45 Elise on creative: lift-and-shift vs TikTok-native 15:54 Patrick on the search space, 4K to 10K ads a month 18:07 Jevons paradox: cheaper ads, bigger creative team 19:30 Elise on where AI helps and where taste is still human 21:39 What separates web-funnel winners from teams that quit 25:27 Andrey on iteration pace correlating with revenue 27:00 Who should not try web funnels: payments complexity 28:42 Jacob on the $1M threshold and the learning-phase budget 29:36 Common learning phase mistakes and how to short-circuit them 32:00 Part 2 drops next week Topics covered: - The shift to web-to-app monetization and off-store payments - AI creative production at scale, 4,000 to 10,000 ads a month - Web funnels: dedicated ownership vs side project - The $1M revenue threshold for going off-store - Learning phase mistakes on acquisition, funnel, and paywall - Measurement complexity across web and app Learn more: - Original webinar recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYPDZlwLhNA - FunnelFox (webinar host): https://funnelfox.com - Rocketship HQ (partner): https://rocketshiphq.com - Jacob Rushfinn (Botsi): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-rushfinn/ - Andrey Shakhtin (FunnelFox): https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrey-shakhtin/ - Patrick Stuart-Constant (Sociaaal): https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-stuart-constant/ - Mike Gadd (Singular): https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-gadd-27a16427/ - Elise Zareie (Lingokids): https://www.linkedin.com/in/elise-zareie/ - Shamanth Rao (Rocketship HQ): https://www.linkedin.com/in/shamanthrao/

  3. Jul 16

    How to win with signal engineering: Itai Kafri

    Most mobile UA teams think the algorithm is something you set and surrender to. Itai Kafri doesn't. He engineers the signal. Itai leads product growth at Voyantis, a predictive LTV and signal engineering platform for mobile apps. He has been in mobile user acquisition since before Meta introduced oCPM, back when advertisers controlled every bid manually. Since then, he has spent years figuring out what actually replaced that control. The answer is not the model. It is the signal strategy built on top of it. In this episode, Itai breaks down signal engineering for mobile UA: how to send predictive LTV signals to automated channels like Meta Advantage Plus, Google UAC, and TikTok in a way that actually moves performance. Why timing matters more than accuracy. Why the channel needs rank, not dollar precision. And the three questions every growth team should answer before investing in a predictive LTV media strategy at all. If you run paid user acquisition for a mobile app and you are thinking about PLTV, value-based bidding, or tROAS optimization, this episode is the most practical breakdown of signal engineering available. Video Chapters:   00:00 Introduction 00:36 Pre-2014 vs post-2014: how automation changed acquisition 02:42 The seven-day conversion window ceiling 04:11 Why marketers and CFOs define a "good user" differently 07:00 Predictions, confidence, and the timing tradeoff 11:11 What actually feeds a prediction: the marathon analogy 16:26 Why proxies like "level 5" break down 17:42 How much data you need to build a model 20:15 Value-based bidding and the accuracy misconception 23:12 Managing outliers without breaking the strategy 25:11 Real client story: Google Search Partners going haywire 28:11 Whales vs outliers, and why hyper-whales backfire 32:03 Signal engineering vs RTB 34:05 User-level data, privacy, and reading the user mix back 38:57 How Black Friday and seasonality hit signaling 40:48 Why casual gaming is tricky for PLTV 41:16 Three questions to ask before investing in a prediction model 45:32 Where to find Itai and Voyantis Topics covered: - Signal engineering for mobile user acquisition - Predictive LTV and value-based bidding on Meta, Google, and TikTok - Confidence thresholds, latency trade-offs, and signal timing - How automated channels use signals: Advantage Plus, UAC, PMax - When D7 ROAS is already your best signal and PLTV will not move the needle Learn more: Episode Page : https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-win-with-signal-engineering-itai-kafri/ Connect with Itai on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ekafri/ Voyantis gap analysis - https://www.voyantis.ai/signal-engineering-gap-analysis

  4. Jul 7

    How to Build a Web-to-App Funnel Without Torching $20K

    82% of top-grossing apps now take payment outside the app store. Patrick Stuart-Constant's team at Sociaaal ships 4,000 video ads a month, scaling to 10,000. The shift to web-to-app monetization isn't coming. It already happened. Part 1 of a two-part panel from a Funnelfox webinar, with Rocketship HQ as partner. Shamanth Rao moderated the conversation with Jacob Rushfinn (CEO, Botsi), Andrey Shakhtin (CEO, FunnelFox), Patrick Stuart-Constant (CEO, Sociaaal), Mike Gadd (VP Customer Success, Singular), and Elise Zareie (Head of Paid Social, Lingokids) on how paid acquisition teams design the path after the click. Andrey Shakhtin on why off-store attribution beats SKAN on speed, and how 2-5% payment fees unlock room to iterate. Patrick Stuart-Constant on scaling ad volume as a search space problem, and why cheaper AI creative grew his team instead of shrinking it (Jevons paradox). Elise Zareie on why web funnels only work with dedicated ownership inside the UA team. Mike Gadd on why the first renewal is the metric most teams miss. Jacob Rushfinn on the $1M revenue threshold before web funnels pay off, and the 10K to 20K monthly loss to budget for the learning phase. Video Chapters: 00:00 Introductions and format 02:40 The one shift teams have not priced in 07:50 Andrey on the 82% off-store payments finding 09:52 Mike on measurement across web and app, platform hell 11:45 Elise on creative: lift-and-shift vs TikTok-native 15:54 Patrick on the search space, 4K to 10K ads a month 18:07 Jevons paradox: cheaper ads, bigger creative team 19:30 Elise on where AI helps and where taste is still human 21:39 What separates web-funnel winners from teams that quit 25:27 Andrey on iteration pace correlating with revenue 27:00 Who should not try web funnels: payments complexity 28:42 Jacob on the $1M threshold and the learning-phase budget 29:36 Common learning phase mistakes and how to short-circuit them 32:00 Part 2 drops next week Topics covered: - The shift to web-to-app monetization and off-store payments - AI creative production at scale, 4,000 to 10,000 ads a month - Web funnels: dedicated ownership vs side project - The $1M revenue threshold for going off-store - Learning phase mistakes on acquisition, funnel, and paywall - Measurement complexity across web and app Learn more: - Original webinar recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYPDZlwLhNA - FunnelFox (webinar host): https://funnelfox.com - Rocketship HQ (partner): https://rocketshiphq.com - Jacob Rushfinn (Botsi): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-rushfinn/ - Andrey Shakhtin (FunnelFox): https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrey-shakhtin/ - Patrick Stuart-Constant (Sociaaal): https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-stuart-constant/ - Mike Gadd (Singular): https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-gadd-27a16427/ - Elise Zareie (Lingokids): https://www.linkedin.com/in/elise-zareie/ - Shamanth Rao (Rocketship HQ): https://www.linkedin.com/in/shamanthrao/

  5. Jun 23

    How to Scale TikTok to 50 Million Views and Produce 200 TikToks a Day: with Ankit Nayal,Founder & CEO of Flamme

    How Ankit Nayal scaled organic TikTok to 50 million views with an AI content factory, and why half of them were wasted until conversion came first. Most founders who burn through their paid ad budget pivot to organic with one or two accounts and hope something works. Ankit Nayal pivoted to organic and went to 150 to 200 TikToks a day. He runs this for his app Flamme. He has crossed 50 million views. He told me more than half of those views were wasted, because conversion was not in his framework yet. The episode is about what he built once that became obvious. The path there started in a cave. After losing his ad budget in 2025, Ankit scrolled TikTok for four hours a day for two months. He compared it to having McDonald's every meal. Out of that came the VSC framework. Viral: an under-5,000-follower account with a 100K-view post that is still picking up trend score. Scalable: a format that replicates cleanly across accounts. Convertible: a video that actually pulls downloads. Memes pulled 0.1% conversion. A girl reacting to a hook pulled 0.5%. A 100K-view reaction beat a 2M-view meme on bang for buck. The system around the framework is more cumbersome than most posts about it admit. He started by filming himself and concluded that a brown man with an Indian accent was not the best fit for the American market. He moved to Russian creators sourced through Kwork.ru at one dollar a minute and twenty-five cents per ten-to-fifteen-second reaction. ChatGPT translation overhead killed that workflow. He moved to Sora 2, then to Seedance. Every clip gets broken into five-second blocks because the model starts hallucinating past five seconds. A CapCut filter layer with ten effects scrubs the plastic skin off AI faces. Phones get lined up on physical farms because the TikTok API gets content flagged. The funnel sequence he ends on is the part that stuck with me. Organic first, then UGC, then paid. Most founders run it backwards. Video Chapters:   00:00 Introduction 03:00 Losing the paid ad budget on a dating app 06:00 Four hours of TikTok a day for two months 11:00 The VSC framework 14:00 Why memes converted nothing 18:00 Russian creators on Kwork 20:00 Moving to Sora 2 and Seedance 22:00 The CapCut plastic-skin filter 23:00 The five-second hallucination limit 26:00 Why lip sync breaks scale 31:00 The phone farm 38:00 Which products should not run organic TikTok 39:00 Organic, then UGC, then paid Topics covered: - Organic TikTok at scale for consumer apps - The VSC framework: viral, scalable, convertible - AI UGC production with Sora, Seedance, and CapCut - Creator sourcing on Kwork and the limits of real UGC - Phone farms and TikTok content flagging - Why B2B founders should not run organic TikTok Learn more: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/[slug]/ - Episode page  https://www.linkedin.com/in/annayal/ - Connect with Ankit on LinkedIn  https://www.annayal.com/ - Ankit's website  https://intelligentartifice.kit.com - Newsletter

  6. Jun 2

    Three numbers decide whether AI sends users to your app. Simon Thillay on the one most teams aren't tracking yet.

    How does an ASO specialist with 10+ years of experience think about AI visibility in 2026? In this episode of Intelligent Artifice, Simon Thillay from AppTweak shares what the data actually shows about how AI tools like ChatGPT are discovering and recommending apps today. ChatGPT owns the platform. Grammarly is outranking it inside its own answers. Simon knows exactly why. This conversation covers what is actually changing in app store optimization, how AI visibility works differently from traditional ASO, and why the gap between apps that show up in AI-generated answers and those that don't is already opening up. AppTweak's research found that the most cited domain in ChatGPT answers for app-related queries is the App Store itself. Simon's team tested the same intent across ten different phrasings and found Grammarly consistently outranking ChatGPT for business writing app recommendations inside ChatGPT. The difference was not product quality. It was how Grammarly positioned itself for specific user contexts across its app store presence. Simon also points to one specific part of the App Store listing that most ASO teams have never touched, and explains why it is now one of the strongest levers for AI visibility in 2026. Video Chapters: 00:00 – Introduction & Podcast Technical Mishaps 00:46 – How AI is Changing App Store Visibility 01:42 – Pre-searching Apps via LLMs (ChatGPT Traffic) 02:14 – The Role of App Store Optimization (ASO) in AI Answers 02:40 – Optimizing Long Descriptions for AI Search 03:19 – Writing for Humans vs. Writing for AI (User Personas) 04:08 – Structuring Content & Entity-Based Writing for AI 05:07 – Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) & The Open Web Ecosystem 06:26 – How to Audit Your App's AI Visibility (Intent vs. Prompts) 07:11 – Case Study: Grammarly Outperforming ChatGPT on Niche Intents 07:54 – Measuring AEO Impact: Coverage, Rank, and Sentiment 09:02 – Where to Find Simon Thillay Topics covered: App Store optimization and AI visibility in 2026How ChatGPT and LLMs discover and recommend appsAEO strategy for mobile appsEntity-based writing for app store listingsMeasuring AI visibility across coverage, rank, and sentimentAppTweak research on AI-driven app discoveryLearn more: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/aso-for-ai-simon-thillay/- Episode page https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-thillay-58b95997/- Connect with Simon on LinkedIn

  7. May 27

    He led growth at Twitch and Discord. Now he runs solo on Claude: with Justin Gerrard

    How does a growth operator who built and managed large teams at Twitch and Discord work today as a solo fractional CMO? In this episode of Intelligent Artifice, Shamanth Rao sits down with Justin Gerrard, fractional CMO and former growth lead at Twitch and Discord, to talk about how he uses Claude day to day to plan his week, build GTM plans, and deliver work for multiple startups at once. Justin shares where AI genuinely saves time, where human judgment is still the difference maker, and why letting AI run on autopilot is a trap most teams fall into. If you work in growth, GTM, or performance marketing, this is a practical and honest look at what working with AI actually looks like in 2026. Chapters: 00:00 Intro: Justin's background at Twitch and Discord 01:21 Building performance marketing at Twitch 03:22 AI Speed: Weeks of work vs. a few hours 05:54 AI as an Operating System 06:33 Justin's Monday Morning AI routine 08:05 The 60/70 Rule for AI productivity 09:12 Why 100% AI work is a hiring red flag 10:11 Case Study: A localized GTM plan 14:52 Creative Strategy: Automated UGC at scale 16:30 The Trap of Autonomy in AI content 18:13 Brand Safety: The 18 Curses story 19:15 The Librarian vs. The Author 21:35 Human Creators vs. AI Avatars A/B Test 24:55 Where to find Justin online Key things we cover in this episode: ✅ How Justin structures his Monday morning using Claude Desktop and MCP connectors ✅ Why he caps AI contribution at 60 to 70% on every GTM plan ✅ Why AI is a fast librarian but not an author ✅ How he A/B tested AI creators vs human creators in a paid ad campaign and what the results showed ✅ Why fully automating content output does not drive real results ✅ What experienced operators still bring to the table that AI cannot replicate Learn more:https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/ai-gtm-strategy-justin-gerrard/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-gerrard/ - Connect with Justin on LinkedIn

  8. May 20

    How to build winning web-to-app funnels (with Elise Zareie)

    Web funnels are like teenage hex. Everyone claims they are crushing it. Almost nobody really has a clue. Elise Zareie spent last year actually building them. She has been in UA since 2019. Last year she became a part-time product manager just to ship funnels herself. That meant learning Figma, coordinating designers, front-end developers, back-end developers, and analytics teams. Running QA. Shipping it. Then using AI to test faster than she ever could before. In this episode she talks through what the process actually involves, the three levers that move the needle in any funnel, the one benchmark she watches obsessively on landing pages, how she uses Claude to generate full funnel copy from screenshots of top-performing creatives, and why AI visuals are making consumers more suspicious, not less. Key topics Why web funnels are harder to build than most people think and what the process actually looks likeHow to identify the dominant funnel in a vertical before building anythingThe 40% page-one to page-two benchmark and what to do when you fall below itHow to match landing page copy to ad creative using UTM tagsHow Elise uses Claude to generate funnel copy and assessment questions from top-performing creativesHow AI helped her launch a male-specific funnel in two weeks for an app with 80% female usersWhy AI-generated visuals are creating consumer suspicion and what to do about it

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About

Welcome to the Mobile User Acquisition Show, in which we talk about how to use mobile user acquisition strategies to grow your app quickly and capital-efficiently. Each episode includes strategies, tips and pointers from the leading edge of mobile user acquisition that can help you unlock tremendous growth for your app.The Mobile User Acquisition Show is produced by the team at RocketShip HQ. With 8 figure UA spends managed and over 10,000 ads produced, we deliver profitable growth for breakthrough B2C apps & help them navigate the brave new world of privacy-first, post-identifier marketing. See also: our live workshop series on marketing in a post-identifier world: https://mobilegrowthlab.com/

Information

  • Creator
    Shamanth Rao
  • Years Active
    2019 - 2026
  • Episodes
    283
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Mobile User Acquisition Show
  • Show Website
    The Mobile User Acquisition Show