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Ad Network & Growth Strategy
Operator-side growth strategy across channel economics, signal quality, payback, and the product constraints on scale.
Explore the engagement →Topic 02 · Growth economics
Gaming expertise. Impact that travels.
UA & Payback.
A campaign does not become healthy because the dashboard turns green. Sustainable acquisition depends on signal maturity, cohort quality, cash timing, creative reach, and the product’s ability to hold increasingly marginal users. The work here is grounded in mobile gaming, where those constraints surface early, but the economics travel to subscription apps and other paid-growth businesses.
Diagnostic frame
Start with the questions behind the metric.
- Has the cohort matured enough to support a budget decision?
- Is the next block of spend still earning, or is the average hiding the edge?
- What spend level can the product and cash cycle actually sustain?
Selected writing
Read the field notes
- Sep 2026 D—01 · Gaming 3 min
AI in Mobile Game User Acquisition: Where It Helps and Where It Misleads
AI has made ad creative cheap to produce. That moves the bottleneck to briefing, testing discipline and reading cohorts — which is where UA teams should put their attention.
- Sep 2026 D—01 · Gaming 3 min
Google App Campaigns vs Apple Search Ads vs Meta for Mobile Game UA
The three self-serve giants buy different things: Google’s algorithm finds more of the conversion you define, Apple Search Ads captures stated intent, Meta’s models find people like your best users. Use each for what it is.
- Sep 2026 D—01 · Gaming 3 min
Mobile Game Growth Conferences and Events, Late 2026 to 2027
The events where mobile game growth, UA and monetization people meet — with dates as published by organisers, and how to decide which are worth the trip.
- Sep 2026 D—01 · Gaming 3 min
Mobile Game UA Agencies: A 2026 Shortlist and How to Choose
A shortlist of agencies that specialise in mobile game user acquisition and creative, how they differ, and the questions that separate a good fit from a good pitch.
- Sep 2026 D—01 · Gaming 3 min
What Is Marginal ROAS — and Why Blended ROAS Misleads Scaling Decisions
Marginal ROAS is the return on the last block of spend. It is the number that should decide whether a UA budget goes up again — and the one most dashboards never show.
- Sep 2026 D—01 · Gaming 3 min
When to Scale UA Spend: A Decision Framework for Mobile Games
Scaling is a sequence of evidence-sized bets, not a switch. The question at each step is whether the data you have can support the size of the decision you are about to make.
- Sep 2026 D—01 · Gaming 2 min
What the Last Video Teaches the Next One
A new game video needs a purpose beyond being new. The brief should say what the team wants, what the last video taught, and what the next one is meant to learn.
- Sep 2026 D—03 · Analytics 2 min
D1 Retention Is a Promise-Keeping Metric
When one scaling creative made the wrong promise, blended D1 drops — not because the game broke, but because one cohort swamped the average.
- Sep 2026 D—05 · Networks 2 min
App Campaigns Are Not Google Search for Apps
With Search you control the query. With App Campaigns you define the conversion and its price, and the system finds more of it — cheaper installs are not automatically better users.
- Sep 2026 D—01 · Gaming 2 min
Linking Discovery and Monetisation in Mobile Games
More discovery outside the store and cheaper payments through web stores are both useful. If you cannot connect the two, you still do not know what the player is worth.
- Aug 2026 D—01 · Gaming 2 min
A Healthy Blended ROAS Can Hide a Bad Scaling Decision
Blended ROAS is reporting. Marginal ROAS is allocation. The average can stay flat while the economics of the newest spend get worse.
- Jul 2026 D—01 · Gaming 2 min
A Small UA Increase and a Scale Decision Need Different Evidence
Stable CPI and encouraging early ROAS can justify a capped increase. They do not yet prove the campaign can absorb a much larger budget.
- Jul 2026 D—01 · Gaming 2 min
Cheap Installs Can Still Produce an Expensive Growth Problem
Reading the India Gaming Growth Outlook 2026: the yield gap between India and global markets is only slightly larger than the acquisition-cost gap. Cheap CPI buys learning, not an answer.
- Jun 2026 D—04 · Revenue 8 min
The Scale Ceiling Loop
Every product has a ceiling past which it can't scale. The only way to find it is to push against it deliberately.
- May 2026 D—03 · Analytics 11 min
The Green Dashboard Problem
Soft-launch metrics can be green for the wrong reasons. The question isn't whether the numbers are healthy — it's what made them healthy.
- Apr 2026 D—03 · Analytics 10 min
The Maturity Illusion
Most teams don't lose money because their data is wrong. They lose it because they treat immature data as mature truth — and pivot before the numbers have finished baking.
- Apr 2026 D—05 · Networks 5 min
The Algorithm Saw It Before You Did
When a ROAS campaign loses delivery for no visible reason, the first question is not what changed in the campaign. It is what shipped in the last 72 hours.
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