Tim Lenardo is the CEO and co-founder of JetFuel, a direct-response influencer marketing platform designed for performance advertisers. Before starting JetFuel, Tim was an engineer at Instagram, where he built Boomerang, the 11 most recent filters, and many of the photo editing tools, among other projects. He has a background in app development, performance advertising, and influencer marketing.

We caught up with Lenardo to talk about the state of influencer marketing and the changing trends in mobile gaming.

PocketGamer.biz: Can you tell us a bit about JetFuel?

Tim Lenardo: JetFuel is a direct-response influencer marketing platform designed for performance advertisers.

Why did you want to work in the games industry?

Everyone loves games!

What advice would you give to anyone wanting to get into it?

Make something people want!

What are your thoughts on the industry in the last 12 months?

The hypercasual market is heating up as more publishing houses enter the market. The ad networks (i.e. AppLovin) are making interesting plays into the publisher industry (i.e. Lion Studios), but the publishers (i.e. Voodoo) have been slow to launch their own ad networks.

What major trends do you predict in the next 12 months?

Across the App Store, there's a major trend towards subscriptions as a monetisation method. I suspect game developers will wise up to this, and start working this into their models. For example, imagine if Voodoo had a single subscription that removed ads from all of their games - recurring revenue!

How has the games industry changed since you first got into it?

As more publishers enter the market, the individual game studios have more leverage and are now able to extract better publishing deals. Also, as ad networks become more and more willing to fund user acquisition, studios increasingly have the option to 'self publish' with funding from the networks. This is really changing the dynamic!

Which part of the Connects event are you most looking forward to and why?

It's my first time so I don't know! Looking forward to all of it!

Could you give us a little more info on your talk?

This talk will discuss our frustrations with current state of affairs influencer marketing (which led us to launch JetFuel!) as well as some best practices we’ve discovered to achieve success in the dubious world of fake followers, bots, and algorithmic ranking.

With a focus on Instagram, we’ll talk issues that effect performance advertisers, and how we’ve found ways to combat them. Among other things, we’ll discuss how to ‘trick’ Instagram’s algorithm, the removal of ‘likes’, and how to efficiently scale campaigns across thousands of influencers.

We’ll also touch on the emergence of TikTok and the opportunities this presents to direct-response advertisers.

At Pocket Gamer Connects London 2020, Tim Lenardo will be giving one of the keynote speeches entitled "Influencer marketing sucks (And some best practices)". For more information, and to book your tickets for the event, click here.