Evolving UA for Games: Navigating Privacy, Automation, and New Channels with Saikala Sultanova
On this episode of Story Mode with Sanlo, Olya speaks with Saikala Sultanova, a seasoned growth marketing executive with over a decade of experience in gaming. They dive into today’s growth marketing landscape, what has changed the most in UA over the years, and how to navigate the current ecosystem to drive results. They touch on a wide range of insightful topics, including:
• An overview of the UA Society and some updates on their upcoming events.
• The biggest differences in UA (today versus 10 years ago), including evolution of marketing mix, privacy changes, improved automation, better creatives and the emergence of machine learning.
• How to approach building a growth marketing team for a gaming studio/publisher and which roles are most crucial.
• The emergence of new platforms like AppLovin that have cracked ROI-positive marketing across iOS regardless of privacy challenges.
• The stagnant growth of mobile gaming revenue and how that is impacting growth marketing and where marketers are experimenting.
• The role of rewarded play platforms and why they are becoming more prevalent nowadays.
• The new opportunities associated with 1st-party data and advertising platforms built on top of that data.
• The role of influencers in game growth marketing, the role they play in the marketing mix, and why they are becoming more popular with marketers.
• Tools and approaches that help developers understand product market fit and player insights.
• The importance of qualitative research to identify the reasons why marketing is working or not working.
• How UA approach differs based on the game and genre.
• The common mistakes and blind spots across UA and growth marketing.
• The importance of a single source of truth for marketing ROI data and clean, structured data analysis.
• Saikala’s recommendation for how teams with small budgets should approach UA.
• What Saikala is looking forward to in the near-future, including new methods for tracking and measuring marketing performance, the surge of hybrid casual games, the expansion of real-money gaming, and web shops.
• The need for more mature and polished AI tools for UA marketers.
• How game UA strategies can be applied to non-gaming apps and the power of gamification for consumer apps.
About Saikala
Saikala’s career spans leadership roles at top-tier companies like Ubisoft, Product Madness, Space Ape Games, and Miniclip, where she honed her expertise in user acquisition, mobile advertising, and growth strategy. Most recently, she served as SVP of Marketing at Ace Games, helping drive their vision of creating globally beloved mobile games.
Information
- Show
- FrequencyUpdated Weekly
- PublishedNovember 12, 2024 at 8:00 AM UTC
- Season1
- Episode34