two & a half gamers

Solo news week, and the action is all on the platform and ad-tech layer. Miniclip launched AdSurge, a new ad network built with Tencent and Easybrain: Miniclip’s casual portfolio and addressable pool, Easybrain’s Sudoku-grade monetization data, Tencent’s scale behind it, landing exactly as AppLovin sits in legal trouble and Unity bets everything on Vector. It won’t dethrone anyone overnight, but a well-funded entrant with real first-party data means more auctions and pricing pressure, and that’s leverage for all of us. Matej is testing it the day he gets access and says you should too. Then the shutdown wave. Supercell is killing Squad Busters: pulled from stores December 1, servers off December 14, barely two years after a global launch Supercell almost never grants and almost never reverses. If the best hit-rate instincts in the industry can push a game to global and lose it this fast, the bar for worldwide launch is very high. Ubisoft is worse: Rainbow Six Mobile shuts in January, Helsinki studio RedLynx is poised to close with 52 jobs at risk, and the number that explains it all is $5.3M lifetime IAP from 13M downloads. Installs are a vanity metric; monetization is the business. Also: we broke it first, Luis de la Camara (ex-Rovio, King, Gameloft) is the new CMO of Smadex, go watch Felix’s episode with him. And the 30% fight boils over: Google defending Play Store commissions in a £1bn UK class action while the CEOs of Rovio and Sega say Apple and Google aren’t earning their cut. No shit.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 – Cold open: the shutdown wave00:25 – AdSurge: Miniclip, Tencent and Easybrain’s new ad network02:05 – Luis de la Camara joins Smadex as CMO02:20 – Supercell kills Squad Busters03:05 – Ubisoft: Rainbow Six Mobile, RedLynx and $5.3M from 13M installs04:00 – Apple and Google’s 30%: UK class action, Rovio and Sega speak up🎙️ HOSTMatej Lancaric – UA & Creatives👉 Got AdSurge access? Tell us in the comments👉 Felix + Jakub back next episode👉 Join the 2.5 Gamers Slack#MobileGaming #AdSurge #Miniclip #Supercell #SquadBusters #Ubisoft #AdTech #UserAcquisition #TwoAndAHalfGamers---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - [email protected] you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lancaric.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej LancaricDo you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Matej AI⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai

Luis de la Camara spent 20 years on the client side, six in AAA, then Gameloft, King, Scopely, and five years at Rovio through the Sega exit, and he left a few weeks ago. Felix got him on before the news broke: Luis is the new CMO of Smadex. So this is a conference-bar conversation on tape. The brand question first: even with Angry Birds and Candy Crush, nobody has cracked measuring brand on top of UA; broad awareness campaigns brought the same quality users at a much higher CPI, so the real power of brand is cheaper performance, and incrementality testing is the only way to know whether App Store search is growth or just defending your own IP. Felix’s thesis: the networks know your users better than you ever will, so stop fighting it and segment on their output. His hack: track eCPM decay per user; shallow curve means IAP-optimized traffic, steep drop means ad-ROAS traffic, and you can tell who will ever pay. ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 – Cold open: incentives that make rewarded cohorts perform01:17 – Who is Luis: AAA, Gameloft, King, Scopely, Rovio03:36 – Brand vs performance: the battle Rovio never fully won05:25 – “The networks know your users better than you”09:11 – Felix’s eCPM decay hack for spotting payers10:24 – UA Society takeaways: segmentation, rewarded users, Papaya14:29 – Retargeting, CTV and incrementality done simply21:30 – DSPs are winning: Moloco, Liftoff and how to work with them25:47 – The BREAKING news: Luis joins Smadex as CMO🎙️ HOST & GUESTFelix Braberg – Ad MonetizationLuis de la Camara – CMO, Smadex (ex-Rovio, Scopely, King)https://www.linkedin.com/in/luiscamaraking/This episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------Today's episode is brought to you by PvX Partners. Developers now have a new way to fund their marketing: PvX Card.If you're scaling your gaming business and need more capital for UA, here's the deal: your credit limit grows with your marketing performance — the higher your ROAS, the more credit you have available. Repayment terms run from 60 to 120 days and scale with your ROAS, so you can match repayments to your game's payback period.It's dynamic, it's flexible, and it scales as fast as you do.Check out PvXPartners.com/cards and scale your UA with PvX Card---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

Deepstash is “TikTok for smart people”: key ideas from books in bite-size, level-like chapters, now part of a portfolio (Paladin for history, Imperio for business) that founder Vladimir calls Smartheads. We had him on with Jeff Cohen from PvX to unpack how an education app scales like a game. The numbers: more than 50% of paid subscribers now come through web2app after “a billion iterations” that Vlad himself thought would never work, 3,000 creatives in the last 30 days from a 30-person UA and creative team, niche organic pages that surface what goes viral before it becomes an ad, and contextual cross-promo (read the Iliad in Deepstash, get Achilles in Paladin) converting 10x better than generic ads. Felix’s homework for Vlad: you’re on AdMob only, add two or three networks and watch ad revenue double or triple, then go the Duolingo route and show ads to the users you know won’t subscribe. Jeff explains why web2app fits subscriptions better than games (one purchase decision, then opt-out), why consumer apps are now half of PvX’s ~$40M/month in funded UA, and why he keeps telling Vlad to spend more. Plus GTA, Halloween and Dracula as cultural-moment content, tiered AI models for creative production, and the one gap Matej couldn’t let go: no AppLovin, no playables, yet.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 – Cold open: web2app01:17 – Meet Vlad (Deepstash) and Jeff (PvX)05:05 – The product: ideas as levels, Paladin, Imperio12:34 – Cross-promo that works: context = 10x15:15 – Felix: one network is “ripping your eyes out”18:58 – Web2app: 50%+ of subscribers, why games struggle30:00 – Seasonality, Q5 and where PvX came in41:35 – 3,000 creatives, 30 people, organic pages, AI tiers51:00 – No AppLovin, no playables. Yet.🎙️ HOSTS & GUESTSMatej Lancaric – UA & CreativesFelix Braberg – Ad MonetizationJakub Remiar – Game DesignVladimir Oane – Founder, Deepstash / SmartheadsJeff Cohen – Origination Lead, PvX Partners#Deepstash #Web2App #UserAcquisition #PvX #SubscriptionApps #MobileMarketing #TwoAndAHalfGamers--------------------------------------Today's episode is brought to you by PvX Partners. Developers now have a new way to fund their marketing: PvX Card.If you're scaling your gaming business and need more capital for UA, here's the deal: your credit limit grows with your marketing performance — the higher your ROAS, the more credit you have available. Repayment terms run from 60 to 120 days and scale with your ROAS, so you can match repayments to your game's payback period.It's dynamic, it's flexible, and it scales as fast as you do.Check out PvXPartners.com/cards and scale your UA with PvX Card---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]

Rotate Rings is two weeks old, already at 1M DAU and 500–600K downloads a day. The twist: the core mechanic was a UA creative first. Century Games ran rotating-ring fake gameplay for a year, Tasty Travels used it as a minigame, and now Nebula (Felix's "good authority" says Hungry Studio, the Block Blast team) turned the ad into the game. No timer, no fail state, "another Arrows," and still only $45–50K/day in ads because interstitials are delayed Block Blast-style: Jakub hit level 34 without one. 3,000 creatives in three weeks, AI IQ-test guys, Einstein, sunglasses to hide the AI eyes. UA is 70% of the success, and the clones are coming.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 – Why the traffic isn't pristine01:37 – A UA creative became a game03:08 – Gameplay: rotate, disconnect, shatter08:20 – 1M DAU in two weeks11:04 – Hungry Studio's delayed-interstitial playbook14:32 – Creatives: AI hooks, 3,000 ads, 90 playables23:12 – $50K/day verdict and clone predictionThis episode is brought to you by Kinoa — the AI operating system for mobile game operations: flows, live segments, in-app messages, push notifications, and A/B testing in one place, run by the operators who own the numbers. Carry1st saw +43% ARPDAU; PlayStudios saw +31% revenue on Tetris Block Party. Learn more at Kinoa.http://www.kinoa.ai?utm_source=MatejPodcast&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=Matej+Podcast&utm_id=100--------------------------------------Today's episode is brought to you by PvX Partners. Developers now have a new way to fund their marketing: PvX Card.If you're scaling your gaming business and need more capital for UA, here's the deal: your credit limit grows with your marketing performance — the higher your ROAS, the more credit you have available. Repayment terms run from 60 to 120 days and scale with your ROAS, so you can match repayments to your game's payback period.It's dynamic, it's flexible, and it scales as fast as you do.Check out PvXPartners.com/cards and scale your UA with PvX Card---------------------------------------For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.Our sponsor FastSpring:Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 yearsThey power top mobile publishers around the worldLaunch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - [email protected] you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lancaric.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej LancaricDo you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Matej AI⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai

https://www.segmenta-ai.com/ - Link for signup if you want bid floor helpFelix, solo from Istanbul, with the advanced ad monetization episode nobody makes: what to do once your game is earning $1,000 a day in ads. The core idea is that ad revenue stacks on top of itself, so tactics that were a waste of time at $100 a day are suddenly worth real money, and the networks know it better than you do. First, network coverage: at $1,000 a day you should be live on at least six or seven of the ten big networks (AppLovin, Meta, Google, Unity, Mintegral, InMobi, Digital Turbine, Pangle, Moloco, Liftoff, BidMachine on iOS), and at $3,000 a day on all of them, because each good network adds roughly 5–10% to revenue. And finally, bid floors: since the industry went bidding-only two years ago, every network runs a bandit model that keeps testing lower bids until one converts, dragging your average down, turning you from price setter to price taker. Bid floors, set at the right levels and updated at the right cadence, claw back 5–20%, and Felix's new SDK-less bid-floor service plugging into MAX showed one client earning nearly 30% more during the test window. Eleven games live, looking for the twelfth. Next milestone to plan for: $25–30K a day, where everything changes again.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 – Cold open: when spacing ads out is actually worth it02:32 – Why ad monetization stacks: what changes at $1,000/day03:30 – Which networks to run: 7 of 10 at $1K/day, all of them at $3K/day05:00 – app-ads.txt and reseller demand: why it's not a beer tap07:00 – The recency model: impressions lose 39–52% of value by the 12th09:30 – Policing ad length: timestamp every impression and confront the network11:30 – The pro move: load an interstitial in the rewarded slot13:00 – Bid floors vs the bandit model: from price taker back to price setter---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA---------------------------------------Matej LancaricUser Acquisition & Creatives Consultant⁠https://lancaric.meFelix BrabergAd monetization consultant⁠https://www.felixbraberg.comJakub RemiarGame design consultant⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar---------------------------------------Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!Please share feedback and comments - [email protected] you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lancaric.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej LancaricDo you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Matej AI⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai