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PocketGamer.biz Podcast – Unravelling the alchemy of user acquisition

Trailmix’s Philippa Layburn reveals the routes to winning user acquisition strategies and creatives

PocketGamer.biz Podcast – Unravelling the alchemy of user acquisition

Ad creatives can make or break your UA campaign. They also have a massive impact on the quality of players you attract, which is why most studios are splashing out the cash to produce data-driven creatives and the teams that can scale them. Can smaller studios and indies create leading UA strategies and creatives that truly stand out?

In series 2, Episode #7 of the PocketGamer.biz Podcast, Brian Baglow and new co-host Peggy Anne Salz speak with Philippa Layburn, senior user acquisition manager at Trailmix, on the material, tangible ways you can improve and measure the performance of your ad creatives. Layburn, a Mobile Hero recognized for her marketing mettle, also explains her approach on her dedicated page.

We weren’t getting any new insights from our creative tests. We were only seeing that the same creatives were winning over and over again
Philippa Layburn

On this week’s podcast

Layburn outlines how you can balance hard metrics and flexible creative attitudes. These include:

• Precisely identifying the appeal and impact of your videos: “We were testing a lot of different concepts, like mystery ads versus romance ads versus gameplay ads.” A new approach needs new metrics. “This is where hook rate comes in […] Are people just scrolling past your ad, or are they stopping because of your intro or concept?”

• The value of iteration and bringing a flexible mindset to A/B testing: “We gain new ideas because we have the mindset of iteration. We’re already testing things like changing the animation style of our ads from 2D to 3D […] things like that are really going to shift the needle this year.”

• Knowing when to ask the uncomfortable questions: Her past experience working on Google campaigns suggested scaling budgets in increments of 20 per cent was a good idea. Layburn went her own way. Instead, she produced two campaigns with the same optimisation goals – “which is also against one of their best practices, but I found this as a way to scale much quicker than if I was just using their 20 per cent rule.”

About our guest

Layburn joined Trailmix as a user acquisition manager in August 2021, following a three-year tenure at King. Layburn turned a passion for Candy Crush into a career in games. Her educational background in psychology includes exploring bias in market efficiency, and she continues a professional focus on ad operations, sales support, and performance marketing.

London-based casual mobile developer, Trailmix, was founded in 2017 by Tristan Clark and Carolin Krenzer. Despite being a relative newcomer in the mobile games industry, Trailmix ranked in PocketGamer.biz’s 2022 Top 50 Game Makers, following the success of its solo release, Love & Pies, and Supercell acquiring a $60 million majority stake in the company in May 2022.

Listen. Learn. Love

Join Brian and Peggy as they find out how every developer can innovate ad creatives and the metrics to measure success. Listen now.

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Enjoy!

 


Editor - PocketGamer.biz

Daniel Griffiths is a veteran journalist who has worked on some of the biggest entertainment media brands in the world. He's interviewed countless big names, and covered countless new releases in the fields of videogames, music, movies, tech, gadgets, home improvement, self build, interiors and garden design. Yup, he said garden design… He’s the ex-Editor of PSM2, PSM3, GamesMaster and Future Music, ex-Deputy Editor of The Official PlayStation Magazine and ex-Group Editor-in-Chief of Electronic Musician, Guitarist, Guitar World, Rhythm, Computer Music and more. He hates talking about himself.