Stop optimising user acquisition and monetisation in isolation

• A mobile game can look like it’s performing well, while the underlying business is getting weaker.
• This can happen when user acquisition and monetisation are managed as separate systems.
• The goal is to acquire players whose expected value exceeds what it costs to bring them in.
• This is not a UA strategy followed by a monetisation strategy - it is one connected growth strategy.

David Ruggiero, business development director, Europe with BIGO Ads, explains why developers need to look at the entire player journey as one connected growth model, rather than optimising each part in isolation.

A mobile game can look like it’s performing better even while the underlying business is getting weaker.

The UA team may be meeting its short-term ROAS target. At the same time, the monetisation team may be increasing eCPM and immediate ad revenue. Both dashboards are moving in the right direction.

But it doesn’t necessarily mean the game is healthier. Retention may be falling. High-value players may be exposed to too many ads, while new cohorts generate revenue early but leave before the business has earned back what it cost to acquire them. As a result, overall player margin can still decline.

This often happens when user acquisition and monetisation are managed as separate systems.

They are often owned by different teams, measured against different targets and optimised over different timelines. Players, however, don’t experience them separately. They see one continuous journey: the creative that brings them in, the onboarding experience, the game itself, and how and when they are asked to spend money or engage with ads.

Developers therefore need to look at the entire player journey as one connected growth model, rather than optimising each part in isolation.

CPI measures cost, not player quality

Low-cost acquisition is not necessarily efficient acquisition.

CPI tells a developer how much it paid for an install. What it does not tell you is whether that player is actually valuable - whether they complete onboarding, come back after day one, engage with the core loop, make a purchase or generate meaningful ad revenue.

A player who costs more to acquire may still be the better investment if they stay longer and generate more value over time.

UA decisions should therefore be assessed through cohort-level outcomes such as retention, engagement, payer conversion, advertising revenue, LTV, ROAS and payback period.

The goal is not to find the cheapest players. It is to acquire players whose expected value exceeds what it costs to bring them in.

This becomes especially important when teams are under pressure to scale. Paid acquisition can help a strong game grow faster, but it cannot make up indefinitely for weak onboarding, poor retention or an immature monetisation model.

If the underlying cohort is weak, scaling simply gives you more of the same problem.

A higher eCPM can hide a weaker business

The same problem exists on the monetisation side.

eCPM is useful, but it only shows how much revenue is generated per thousand impressions. It doesn’t tell you whether total revenue is increasing, whether players are seeing fewer impressions or whether ads are affecting retention, engagement or purchase.

For example, a developer could remove lower-value impressions and report a higher eCPM while total ad revenue actually falls.

It could also increase ad pressure and improve short-term yield, but at the cost of shorter sessions, weaker retention or lower purchase conversion.

A more complete view should include fill rate, ARPDAU, impressions per player, session behaviour, retention and total LTV. For hybrid games, developers also need to understand how advertising interacts with IAP and subscription revenue, rather than looking at each stream separately.

The real question is not whether one advertising metric improved. It is whether advertising increased the total value of a player without damaging their experience or engagement over time.

Monetisation is a product decision

Advertising is sometimes treated as something that is added after a game has been designed.

In reality, where an ad appears, when it is shown, which format is used and which players see it can all change the player experience.

These decisions should not be left to the monetisation team alone. Product and business intelligence teams need to be involved because they can assess the impact across placements, player segments and lifecycle stages.

A player showing strong purchase or subscription intent should probably not receive the same advertising experience as someone with consistently low purchase intent.
Too much ad pressure could reduce a more valuable purchase opportunity or cause a promising player to leave altogether

Advertising may play a larger role for non-paying players, but timing and format still matter. A rewarded placement tied to a clear in-game benefit feels very different from an interstitial that interrupts the player at the wrong moment.

The most effective approach is not to choose between ads and IAP at an app wide level.

It is to find the right monetisation mix for different types of players, and adapt that mix as their behaviour changes.

More demand does not always mean incremental revenue

Adding another demand partner may increase competition in an auction, but more competition does not automatically mean more revenue.

A new partner should be assessed on whether total revenue increases, not only on the eCPM shown in its own reporting.

Publishers should test new demand against a control group and evaluate ARPDAU, bid rate, win rate and performance across the markets and ad formats that matter most to the business.

They also need to understand whether the new partner brings genuinely new advertiser budgets, or whether it is mostly competing for spend that existing partners were already able to access.

The operational impact matters too. Latency, ad quality, SDK maintenance and the workload created for internal teams all affect the real value of an integration.
If total business performance does not improve, the additional demand is not genuinely incremental.

Privacy changes the evidence, not the objective

European UA teams are operating with fewer user-level signals and a measurement environment that is becoming harder to interpret.

This does not remove the need to make confident budget decisions. It means teams need to rely on a broader set of evidence.

No single attribution signal should determine whether a campaign is scaled or reduced. Privacy-safe attribution should be combined with first-party product data and cohort performance.

Early indicators such as onboarding completion, Day 1 retention and important in-game events can reveal initial quality. Over time, those decisions still need to return to revenue, LTV, ROAS and payback.

When user-level data is limited, incrementality tests and geo experiments become more valuable. They help teams understand whether spending actually created additional players and revenue, rather than simply claiming credit for activity that would have happened anyway.

UA and monetisation need one definition of player value

The greatest risk is that both teams improve their individual metrics while weakening the overall business.

UA may acquire players who reach an early ROAS threshold but do not retain. Monetisation may increase advertising pressure and improve short-term revenue while reducing engagement.

Neither team is necessarily doing a poor job. The problem is that each may be optimising against only one part of the picture.

The solution is a shared LTV model that includes:

• Advertising revenue
• IAP and subscription revenue
• Retention
• Acquisition cost
• Payback period
• Long-term player margin

This model should allow teams to compare what each cohort costs to acquire with the total value it creates over time. It should also account for the fact that monetisation decisions can increase or reduce the value of that cohort long after acquisition.

Instead of asking only whether CPI is falling or eCPM is rising, teams can ask a more important question: are the margin and long-term value of acquired players actually improving?

Paid UA should amplify strong fundamentals

Developers should stop treating paid UA as something that can continue scaling simply because short-term ROAS looks acceptable.

Growth needs to be evaluated across the full player journey, from the first creative impression and store page through onboarding, retention and monetisation.

Paid UA remains an essential growth tool. But it works best when it accelerates a product that already does a good job of retaining and monetising players.

It cannot be relied on to hide weak product fundamentals.

The same applies to monetisation. A higher bid or an extra ad placement cannot fix a broader player-value problem on its own.

The next stage of efficient growth will come from connecting both sides: acquiring the right players, giving them the right experience and measuring the total value they create over time.

That is not a UA strategy followed by a monetisation strategy. It is one connected growth strategy.