Tilting Point’s Sylvain Etard talks rewarded platforms, retargeting and the "UA jungle"

"There are a lot of challenges to UA in 2025. First, obviously, is competition. It’s super high and keeps increasing year-over-year," said Tilting Point associate director of growth Sylvain Etard.

He gave a talk on surviving the UA jungle at Pocket Gamer Connects Barcelona, in particular giving tips on navigating the landscape without relying on big players.

He started by discussing rewarded platforms.

"There are a lot around and they are really, really good to work with," said Etard.

"Currently they represent a big chunk of our traffic for a few reasons. Firstly, they highly engage users with good retention. They can offer a pretty strong audience segmentation. But there is a high risk that users churn right after the rewards."

Knowing your users

Etard suggested that seasonality has a growing impact on UA and that there are more cash restrictions in the current climate.

"You should definitely allocate some budget to testing, but don’t overspend," he said.

He also discussed retargeting, which can be "a super-great tool" because it reaches users who already know the brand. "You know the users and you know how to talk to them," Etard said.

But, on the other hand, he acknowledged that those users may have returned eventually even without a retargeting campaign.

RTB House gaming account director Vera Manhoso also spoke about retargeting at the conference, highlighting that 77% of users are lost three days after install. She argued that preparing retargeting tactics could be seen like "sorting your gear loadout before a boss fight".

Pocket Gamer Connects has expanded into China this year with an inaugural Shanghai summit taking place today, July 30th.