Let’s dive in.

The problem nobody in the MMP world wanted to solve

Here is how buying an MMP works if you are an enterprise: you talk to sales, sit through a demo, wait for the contract, sign a one or two year commitment for anywhere between $50K and $100K a year, wait for your CSM to onboard you, read the documentation, install the SDK, and somewhere between week six and month two you finally see your first attributed install.

That was fine when apps took a year to build. It is completely broken now.

AI changed the math on shipping apps. According to a16z, the number of new apps hitting the market grew at least 60% year over year. Solo founders and two-person teams are shipping subscription apps in days, not quarters. They need paid UA immediately because organic is dead, and distribution is the moat. And to run paid UA properly, they need measurement.

But the measurement industry was still selling like it was 2018. Multi-year contracts, sales calls, and two-month onboarding. For a founder who expects an AI image tool to deliver in two minutes, that is not a product; that is a hostage negotiation.

Enter Core Plan

I sat down with Roi Nam, CEO and founder of Airbridge, at MAU to talk about exactly this. Airbridge has been an MMP for 10 years, classic sales-led motion the entire time. Core Plan is their first self-serve product, and it is built for a very specific person: a small team (one to twenty people), running paid ads mostly on Meta, Google, Apple Search Ads, and TikTok, somewhere below $10M ARR. Primary target: subscription apps, especially the AI-native wave.

How to win on Meta & Tiktok

The honest framing: this is not a stripped-down demo designed to force you into an upgrade call. Roi told me directly that most PLG products from sales-led companies are lead gen machines in disguise. Core Plan is designed so you can stay on it as long as it fits. You upgrade to Growth when you genuinely outgrow it, around the point where you need custom events, Meta CAPI, non-SAN networks like Unity or ironSource, or fraud detection. Until then, everything core is in the box: all standard events including Start Trial, Subscribe and Unsubscribe out of the box, the four channels where 80 to 90% of early-stage ad spend actually lives, cohort analysis, SKAN, audience creation and sync, deeplinking with custom domain tracking links, and up to two third-party integrations (RevenueCat, Adapty, Amplitude, Mixpanel, GA4, Braze and friends).

For a subscription app, that Trial to Subscribe conversion visible by channel is the entire game. That is the question you are actually asking every morning: are my paid ads turning into subscribers, and which channel is doing the work.

The pricing, and why it changed

Here is where it gets interesting, and where I have to correct something from our own podcast episode. When we recorded, Core Plan pricing was based on attributed installs. Since then, Airbridge changed the model. It is now based on data points.

Current pricing: 30-day free trial, no credit card. After that, a $40-a-month base fee covers your first 500,000 data points, then $0.0001 per data point beyond that. One data point equals one event your app sends. No annual contract.

Why this matters more than it sounds: with install-based pricing, every install costs you the same whether you track everything or almost nothing. With data-point pricing, you control the bill by controlling which events you send. Track only the key events that matter for your campaigns and the plan stays extremely cheap while you scale spend. That is a fairer deal for the marketer, and honestly a rare case of a vendor changing pricing in the customer’s favor. Credit where due.

$40 a month versus $50-100K a year for an enterprise MMP. That is not a pricing tier, that is a different universe.

Signal engineering, finally implemented instead of just discussed

Everyone talks about signal engineering. Conference talks, LinkedIn gurus, the works. Then you ask the founders who have actually implemented it, and the room goes quiet.

The classic example: around 20% of impulsive subscription purchases get canceled within 20 to 30 minutes. If you fire that purchase event to Meta and Google instantly, you are teaching their algorithms to find you more impulsive cancellers. What you send is what you get. Full stop.

Airbridge recently shipped a feature called Signal Hold that handles this for you. It holds your free trial and subscription events until a designated timeframe, so cancellations that happen in between never pollute the signal you send to the platforms. No custom backend, no engineering project. One real result Roi shared: a sleep tracking app in Japan, number one in its category, cut CPA by 27% just by removing impulsive cancellations from the signal. Twenty-seven percent from one toggle-level tactic. That is the gap between talking about signal engineering and doing it.

The SDK install thing is real

I was skeptical about the “hours not weeks” claim, because I have lived through enough MMP onboardings to have trauma. But Airbridge built an MCP and an AI pilot into the product, so you can install the SDK from Claude Code or your dashboard with the AI walking you through taxonomy and code placement. Their current stats: the average advertiser gets the SDK installed and running in under two hours. For context, their conservative enterprise onboarding timeline is two months.

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And yes, I actually use Core Plan for my own apps. Not a hypothetical endorsement. I do not want to care about the Facebook SDK versus whatever else; I want one SDK, ROAS, and cohort analysis, I do not get inside Ads Manager, and the freedom to experiment across channels without signing a 12-month contract to find out if something works. My apps are nowhere near $10M ARR, so I will be sitting comfortably in Core Plan for a while.

Brutally honest verdict

Is the Core Plan for everyone? No. If you are running Unity, ironSource or Mintegral, you need Growth. If you are a mid-core game spending seven figures a month, this is not your product, and it does not pretend to be.

But if you are a small subscription app team running Meta, Google, ASA and TikTok, and your current “attribution setup” is squinting at Ads Manager and hoping, this is the most sensible entry point into real measurement I have seen. The trial costs you nothing, the SDK costs you an afternoon, and the ongoing cost is less than what most of you spend on coffee for the team.

If you want to try it, use this link: https://abr.ge/xqaqqlu and enter code Matej26 when you add your payment method under Settings > Plan & Usage.

It takes 20% off the base fee, so $32 a month instead of $40.

That’s it. Give me some love (or hate) & subscribe.

🥃 Drink talk

Doing UA reviews since 2014.. here is how:

Kinoa turns your existing players into more revenue, in real time, without waiting on development. Same players. More revenue.

What Kinoa is

• One platform for Flows, Live Segments, In-App Messages, Push Notifications, Feature Settings, A/B Testing, Dynamic Content, and Webhooks.

• Engagement, retention, and monetization, run from a single place by the operators who own those numbers.

Why it works (the differentiators)

• Independent operators. LiveOps, monetization, and product managers launch and optimize without dev tickets.

• Hours to integrate. Lightweight SDK or API, with AI mapping your events and data model automatically.

• Built for games. LiveOps, remote config, and CRM in one platform instead of three to four tools stitched together.

Proof

• Carry1st: +43% ARPDAU, 32% less development time.

• Playstudios (Tetris Block Party): +31% revenue, +46% payer conversion.

• Trailmix, Brainium, PlaySimple, PlayStudios, MTG all run on Kinoa.

Explore Kinoa NOW

🦩Tip of the week

Team size should follow spend and complexity, not ambition. Here is the rough progression I keep seeing, and where teams tend to stall.

Under $50k/month. One strong UA generalist is usually enough, someone who can brief creative, buy media, read a dashboard, and think about retention. Pair them with an external creative supplier for volume. Don’t build a team yet. Every extra head at this stage adds coordination cost faster than value.

Buy UA playbook for this person

$50k to $200k/month. This is the single most common failure zone. You have enough spending to need serious creative volume and real channel diversity, but still not enough to fund a full team. The one UA generalist might need a bit more breathing room. Think about splitting the role into two: one person on media buying + setup, one on creative strategy.

Or 1 person + creative bible

$200k to $500k/month. Dedicated creative strategy ownership is non-negotiable. The team needs someone whose only job is to think about hooks, concepts, test pipelines, and creative depth, not to squeeze it in between campaign management. A dedicated UA analyst starts paying for themselves in this range. Typical shape: one senior UA lead, one or two channel specialists (Meta/Google plus SDK networks), one creative strategist, shared analytics support.

$500k/month and up. Specialization by channel cluster becomes useful one person for self-serve (Meta, Google, TikTok, ASA), one for SDK networks (Applovin, Unity, Moloco, Mintegral), plus a creative strategy lead, a UA analyst, and clear escalation to the product team. The product team matters at this scale because you are hitting LTV walls and need LiveOps, monetization, and retention fixes to keep unlocking spend.

A really good senior UA manager can handle $1-1.5mil/month spend, but need creative + analytical help.

This newsletter is brought to you by FastSpring.gg:

• Stop Playing D2C Like an NPC: Play in legendary mode with FastSpring. Enjoy an innovative enterprise-grade platform coupled with advice from industry experts who help you learn, grow, and lead in D2C.

• Unique Expertise: Unlike many D2C providers which ignore even basic ecommerce best practices, FastSpring is the only provider that couples deep game monetization expertise with decades of high-trust ecommerce and payments expertise.

• Frictionless Player Experience: Go beyond cookie-cutter stores and deliver a web store that feels like an extension of your game with a suite of easy-to-use and flexible web store and checkout solutions.

• Trust MATTERS: Careless or shady D2C providers can harm your reputation and relationship with players and global payment providers. Leverage a trusted provider with strong anti-fraud measures, a bullet-proof reputation, industry-leading approval rates, and sound fiscal responsibility.

• Elite Global Scale: Join companies like Rovio, Tech Tree Games, Starform, and over 3,200 other customers who trust FastSpring’s enterprise-grade platform, consultative support experience, and global team.

Stop managing payments, start scaling your game. Get a personalized D2C strategy session at FastSpring.gg!

🐊​ Cornelius: The Suspicious Investi-gator

True detective-like exploration of creative trends and historical influences. Delving deep into the world of creatives to uncover hidden patterns and inspirations:

𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗿𝗶𝘅 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗱𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗚𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗽𝗲𝘀. Yes, THAT Playrix. With NO ADS GAME creatives. What’s up? Well, I will call this 𝗨𝗔𝗺𝗮𝘅𝘅𝗶𝗻𝗴 🤷‍♂️ 👇

The company that spent a decade proving you don’t need ads. The company that left an estimated $250M in annual ad revenue on the table because IAP was working just fine.

𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲’𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴:

Gardenscapes downloads in India and Indonesia are up almost 5x. These are not your regular IAP markets. Nobody scales Gardenscapes in Indonesia to sell IAP packs.

Then look at the creatives. Heavily inspired by SayGames’ My Perfect Hotel. Broad appeal, hybrid-casual energy. AI slop here and there!

𝗔 𝗟𝗢𝗧 𝗢𝗙 𝗡𝗘𝗪 𝗦𝗧𝗨𝗙𝗙

So, let’s put it together:

• Download spike in non-core, low-IAP markets

• Creative strategy borrowed from a hybrid-casual hit

• User reviews in India and Indonesia mentioning rewarded AND interstitial ads

That’s not a coincidence. That’s a blended ROAS test. And the most likely reason is AppLovin or Dream Games, with their interstitial test, Felix pointed out some time ago. 𝗜 𝘄𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗯𝗲𝘁 𝗼𝗻 𝗗𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘁..

Blended monetization has become too powerful as a UA tool to ignore, even for a company printing billions on pure IAP.

Ladies and gentlemen, UAmaxxing...

https://payhip.com/b/tu4nk

Yours truly, Cornelius.

💀 Dr. Doom is not amused

One of my industry friends amused me with his direct and honest TL;DRs, so we agreed to share it here, too! My friend remains anonymous as Dr.Doom!

“More sweet doom from Microsoft, as it seems the guys behind the literal game Doom are surprised that their headcount got cut in half and they are tasked to produce the next game in the same quality. Who could have known that creating the next Doom would be literally doomed? Shocker 🤣” Sincerely, Dr.Doom (https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/dev-at-id-software-says-microsoft-burned-a-lot-of-bridges-in-the-industry-they-fundamentally-dont-understand-art-they-dont-understand-games/)

🎉  “Ha-ha” moment

Because life is too short to be serious.

🎮 two & a half gamers new episode

🎮 Smash Fest 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝗹𝘆 𝟱𝟬𝟬𝗸/𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗜𝗔𝗣 + 𝗔𝗗𝗦 🤑. A LiveOps Minigame became Its OWN new category in Puzzle Genre! 👇

Smash Fest (Flow Games) is a physics-based cannon puzzler, and the core is match-3 logic on a physics engine. The physics genuinely work, which makes aiming and structural knockdown satisfying, and it's more mechanic-dense than sort puzzlers. Its also very satisfying to play! And as you might have guessed: 𝗜 𝗟𝗢𝗩𝗘 𝗜𝗧! 😍

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆: it's a Toon Blast LiveOps minigame. Toon Blast (Peak) runs an event called "Cannon Fest" one-to-one the same cannon gameplay and visual design and Peak has been running it as both playables and creatives. GameRefinery first flagged the mechanic back in November 2024, so it's nearly two years old. 𝗦𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗲𝘅𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁, 𝗺𝗮𝗱𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝗮 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗲, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝘀 𝗮 𝗳𝘂𝗹𝗹 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁. Also, kudos to Jakub for investigating this from our end + kudos to Katerina for stepping up with the admon data!

Everything is good, well, almost. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗨𝗔 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁! Smash Fest scaled to ~300K downloads/day on just ~𝟱𝟬 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗲𝘅𝗰𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲, running ~90% AppLovin - then got abruptly pulled from Google Play right as it peaked.

Meanwhile, Royal Smash (Cypher Games) is overtaking the original it copied, with ~500 creatives in three days (𝟭𝟬𝘅 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝗺𝗲), more channels, better LiveOps, and smarter monetization (our ad-mon guest Katerina flagged a "double your coins" rewarded placement with a high opt-in rate that could add ~30% ad revenue).

𝗠𝘆 𝗯𝗲𝘁: Royal Smash wins (if Flow Games won't wake up on the UA front), because volume, velocity, channel diversity, and LiveOps beat first-mover advantage once a category is proven. 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗴𝗼𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻; 𝗯𝗲𝘀𝘁-𝗲𝘅𝗲𝗰𝘂𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗰𝗮𝗽𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲.

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🦄​ Diary of a Dancing Unicorn

Today was a good day.

Hey, excited to start working on this together.

Yeah, same here!

Perfect, here is an access checklist. Could you please check it out?

Uff, sure. But just FYI, the person who had all the accesses left, and we don't have admin access almost anywhere..

Wohooo, this is gonna be a fun ride..

Today was a good day.

Subscribe now

🤺​ Quote of the week

“I am not a fucking pen friend” - Matej, slack

Smash Fest review

👾  THE AI (R)EVOLUTION

The AI revolution is here, and it’s transforming the way we approach mobile games marketing.

From creating scroll-stopping ad creatives to optimizing user acquisition strategies, AI is the game-changer we can’t ignore

🥦​ Before you go

Ask Matej AI a question. It’s actually quite good!

We produced one more episode at 2.5 Gamers. Check it out now:

We started a new segment. Give it a go:

🍿 Fun starts in two & a half gamers Slack! Join now

We are opening up a Slack channel for everybody. It is the most inclusive slack for the gaming industry. Female, male, non-binary, juniors, mid-level, seniors, vendors, developers = EVERYBODY! We are waiting for you ♥️

Feel free to join here!

🧙 Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter!

Please do me a favor and share this with someone in your network who you think would benefit from the insights and brutal honesty. It would mean a lot to me!

Take care, everyone! See you next Monday!

Share Brutally Honest by Matej Lancaric

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Give me some love (or hate), & Subscribe everywhere! ♥️

Last week I audited a live account. $1.79M of spend, 10 campaigns, 19 geos, 27 weeks of data.

The dashboard said everything was fine. Blended ROAS healthy. Weekly syncs calm. The kind of account nobody feels the need to dig into.

Subscribe now

Here’s what a closer look revealed:

Five campaigns bidding against each other in the same auction for the same American users in two different channels. The nine best-performing geos in the account are sharing 19.8% of the budget, while one mid-table geo received 63% and is climbing. $55,838 spent on test campaigns, buying installs at 2-5x the price of the proven ones. And a D7 revenue multiplier that moved from 12.3x to 1.4x while the D0 dashboard stayed perfectly steady.

And that’s just one account. The same month, I reviewed a second one: a mature app doing $2.5M a month, where 89% of revenue comes from payers acquired months or years ago. They had cut UA spend by roughly 80% and were measuring the result with a metric that blended organic revenue into paid math. Separate the two, and the data told a much more hopeful story: the remaining spend was close to break-even and had real room to scale back up, at exactly the moment the payer pipeline needed it most.

That’s what a real review is for. Not to catch someone. To find what the dashboard can’t show you.

What you can find below: the full process, step by step, with the real numbers from both accounts at every stage. This is the exact audit I run for clients. You can run it on your own account this week, and I can almost promise you’ll find at least one thing worth acting on.

Let’s gooooooo.

Get the I AM Matej NOW Bundle

Executive summary

For the people who forward things to their CEO, here’s the whole essay in 60 seconds.

Read more

🥃 Drink talk

came home from ChinaJoy, energized and with a plushy Kingshot sword! Let’s get back to work..

Kinoa turns your existing players into more revenue, in real time, without waiting on development. Same players. More revenue.

What Kinoa is

• One platform for Flows, Live Segments, In-App Messages, Push Notifications, Feature Settings, A/B Testing, Dynamic Content, and Webhooks.

• Engagement, retention, and monetization, run from a single place by the operators who own those numbers.

Why it works (the differentiators)

• Independent operators. LiveOps, monetization, and product managers launch and optimize without dev tickets.

• Hours to integrate. Lightweight SDK or API, with AI mapping your events and data model automatically.

• Built for games. LiveOps, remote config, and CRM in one platform instead of three to four tools stitched together.

Proof

• Carry1st: +43% ARPDAU, 32% less development time.

• Playstudios (Tetris Block Party): +31% revenue, +46% payer conversion.

• Trailmix, Brainium, PlaySimple, PlayStudios, MTG all run on Kinoa.

Explore Kinoa NOW

🦩Tip of the week

How to succeed on Applovin?

Recent best practices heard in China

Recommended testing process:

• Test CPM vs CPI simultaneously.

• Launch multiple campaign types:

  • D7

  • D28

  • IAP

  • AEO

  • Bid ROAS

Budget recommendation:

• Each campaign should target 10+ payers.

• If fewer than 10 payers are achieved:

  • Increase budget.

• Test 2–3 creatives per video concept.

• Use multiple creative variations.

Recommended Testing Framework

Workflow:

Step 1

New product test

↓

Step 2

Choose billing method

CPM

Suitable when:

• No historical data exists.

• Strict budget control is required.

• Testing real monetization potential.

CPI

Suitable when:

• Historical performance data already exists.

• Stable optimization can begin.

• Scaling campaigns.

↓

Step 3

Optimization window

D7

• Quickly validate product quality.

• Discover issues early.

• Accelerate optimization.

D28

• Evaluate long-term value.

• Optimize ROAS.

• Best for scaling.

This newsletter is brought to you by FastSpring.gg:

• Stop Playing D2C Like an NPC: Play in legendary mode with FastSpring. Enjoy an innovative enterprise-grade platform coupled with advice from industry experts who help you learn, grow, and lead in D2C.

• Unique Expertise: Unlike many D2C providers which ignore even basic ecommerce best practices, FastSpring is the only provider that couples deep game monetization expertise with decades of high-trust ecommerce and payments expertise.

• Frictionless Player Experience: Go beyond cookie-cutter stores and deliver a web store that feels like an extension of your game with a suite of easy-to-use and flexible web store and checkout solutions.

• Trust MATTERS: Careless or shady D2C providers can harm your reputation and relationship with players and global payment providers. Leverage a trusted provider with strong anti-fraud measures, a bullet-proof reputation, industry-leading approval rates, and sound fiscal responsibility.

• Elite Global Scale: Join companies like Rovio, Tech Tree Games, Starform, and over 3,200 other customers who trust FastSpring’s enterprise-grade platform, consultative support experience, and global team.

Stop managing payments, start scaling your game. Get a personalized D2C strategy session at FastSpring.gg!

🐊​ Cornelius: The Suspicious Investi-gator

True detective-like exploration of creative trends and historical influences. Delving deep into the world of creatives to uncover hidden patterns and inspirations:

𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗿𝗶𝘅 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗱𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗚𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗽𝗲𝘀. Yes, THAT Playrix. With NO ADS GAME creatives. What’s up? Well, I will call this 𝗨𝗔𝗺𝗮𝘅𝘅𝗶𝗻𝗴 🤷‍♂️ 👇

The company that spent a decade proving you don’t need ads. The company that left an estimated $250M in annual ad revenue on the table because IAP was working just fine.

𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲’𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴:

Gardenscapes downloads in India and Indonesia are up almost 5x. These are not your regular IAP markets. Nobody scales Gardenscapes in Indonesia to sell IAP packs.

Then look at the creatives. Heavily inspired by SayGames’ My Perfect Hotel. Broad appeal, hybrid-casual energy. AI slop here and there!

𝗔 𝗟𝗢𝗧 𝗢𝗙 𝗡𝗘𝗪 𝗦𝗧𝗨𝗙𝗙

So, let’s put it together:

• Download spike in non-core, low-IAP markets

• Creative strategy borrowed from a hybrid-casual hit

• User reviews in India and Indonesia mentioning rewarded AND interstitial ads

That’s not a coincidence. That’s a blended ROAS test. And the most likely reason is AppLovin or Dream Games, with their interstitial test, Felix pointed out some time ago. 𝗜 𝘄𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗯𝗲𝘁 𝗼𝗻 𝗗𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘁..

Blended monetization has become too powerful as a UA tool to ignore, even for a company printing billions on pure IAP.

Ladies and gentlemen, UAmaxxing...

https://payhip.com/b/tu4nk

Yours truly, Cornelius.

💀 Dr. Doom is not amused

One of my industry friends amused me with his direct and honest TL;DRs, so we agreed to share it here, too! My friend remains anonymous as Dr.Doom!

“We cover here mostly Free to Play, but behold, directly from the Pope - Click to Pray. The app is so divine that you can get all the 700K user data of all its users. Some sweet divine doom this week 🙏thanks God 😜”.” Sincerely, Dr.Doom (https://www.pcgamer.com/software/vatican-scrambles-to-patch-phishing-goldmine-app-promoted-by-the-pope-prayer-infrastructure-on-the-framework-you-learn-in-week-2-of-a-node-js-bootcamp/)

🎉  “Ha-ha” moment

Because life is too short to be serious.

🎮 two & a half gamers new episode

🐜 Colony Flow is an ant-themed "destroy the picture" puzzler doing an estimated 🤑$250K/day, and it's 𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝗯𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝘂𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗼 it "allegedly" cloned. The Android version was already 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗻 down from Android 👇

𝗧𝗟;𝗗𝗥: Colony Flow is a sort puzzler where a colony of ants slowly carries colored cubes off a picture into your bench. It's an iteration on Pixel Flow — the giveaway is the ant pathfinding, which walks all the way around the picture searching for matches, exactly like Pixel Flow's conveyor logic. But the standout is the monetization, and it's genuinely clever: the ants are deliberately, painfully slow, and that friction is the entire engine. The game constantly dangles a rewarded-video speed-up (and later a premium-currency one). Slow-on-purpose isn't a bug it's the monetization mechanic, and it's smart enough that 𝗜 𝗶𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗮.

The numbers back it: ~200K downloads/day declining towards 50k/day, most likely due to the lawsuit. ~$150K/day IAP after 2 months, with likely 40-50%+ more on top from ads, since the friction drives so much rewarded viewing. So I guess we might be sitting on $𝟮𝟱𝟬𝗸/𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗲!

Two lessons for the UA. First, the channel story that keeps repeating: ~𝟲𝟬𝟬 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀, ~𝟵𝟬% 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗟𝗼𝘃𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗹, and literally zero Facebook - because blended IAP-plus-ad campaigns just don't work on Meta, while Mintegral is the reliable #2 for casual puzzle (same as it always was for the big match-3 games). Funnilly enough, the original (Food Hunt Pixel Puzzle) 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘃𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗱, appealing creatives.

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🦄​ Diary of a Dancing Unicorn

Today was a good day.

Hello, please meet the unicorn. You can take it from here re: UA.

Sure, hello. Whats up?

We would need help with UA.

yeah no problem. Here is the deck I usually use. Lets talk sometimes next week?

Absolutely. Could you please share what would your UA strategy look like? Which channels, experiments, or priorities would you focus on before thinking about scaling?

100%. This is exactly the work that Iam doing after we sign the contract. Please share your contract template for inspection.

Before moving forward, could you share how you work and the strategy? So we can talk internally and make a decision..

…….

Today was a good day.

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🤺​ Quote of the week

“Blockblast doesn’t matter” - Kress, podcast

👾  THE AI (R)EVOLUTION

The AI revolution is here, and it’s transforming the way we approach mobile games marketing.

From creating scroll-stopping ad creatives to optimizing user acquisition strategies, AI is the game-changer we can’t ignore

🥦​ Before you go

Ask Matej AI a question. It’s actually quite good!

We produced one more episode at 2.5 Gamers. Check it out now:

We started a new segment. Give it a go:

🍿 Fun starts in two & a half gamers Slack! Join now

We are opening up a Slack channel for everybody. It is the most inclusive slack for the gaming industry. Female, male, non-binary, juniors, mid-level, seniors, vendors, developers = EVERYBODY! We are waiting for you ♥️

Feel free to join here!

🧙 Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter!

Please do me a favor and share this with someone in your network who you think would benefit from the insights and brutal honesty. It would mean a lot to me!

Take care, everyone! See you next Monday!

Share Brutally Honest by Matej Lancaric

👇 Reach out for feedback, questions, or say hi!

Give me some love (or hate), & Subscribe everywhere! ♥️

How to leverage AI in UA

But here’s the thing, everyone who’s been to ChinaJoy knows: the expo floor is maybe 30% of the value. The real deals happen at side events, happy hours, and bars on the Bund at 1am. So instead of another “how to get a BTOB pass” article, here’s my actual calendar. Steal it.

Let’s dive in.

🦄 The main event: we’re speaking

IntelliChain Global 2.0: Decoding the New Ecosystem of Global Gaming in the AI Era Hosted by Sensor Tower, Liftoff, AppLovin & Adjust 🕒 Friday, July 31 | 1:30 PM – 4:45 PM 📍 Kerry Hotel Pudong (right next to SNIEC - zero excuse) 🔗 Scan the QR on the poster to reserve a seat

Two and a Half Gamers is the closing special guest. Me and Jakub, live on stage, 4:05–4:45 PM: “The AI Era of Game Growth: Creative Strategy, LiveOps, and Global Scaling.” Everything we rant about on the podcast - AI creative pipelines, LiveOps that actually move revenue, scaling beyond Meta and Google - condensed into 40 minutes, in person, no editing.

The rest of the lineup is stacked too: Sensor Tower on global gaming trends, Liftoff on Cortex, 罗斯基 on product strategy for Chinese devs, AppLovin on going-global playbooks, Adjust on measurement, and Supercent’s publishing methodology from prototype to global scale. Four platforms and one podcast in one room.

If you’re a Chinese developer going global — or a Western one trying to understand how Chinese devs are eating your lunch — this is THE Friday afternoon slot. Come say hi, come heckle us, come argue about playables. That’s why we flew here.

The rest of my calendar

Thursday, July 30 — warm-up day

GamingonPhone UNITE Shanghai 2026 Sponsored by PayerMax & PvX Partners 🕒 3:00 PM – 7:00 PM 📍 Shanghai (invite-only business networking) 🔗 RSVP via waitlist: https://luma.com/z7pi11g1

“Bridging the Gap Between East and West” - which is literally why you fly to ChinaJoy in the first place. Invite-only, so RSVP on the waitlist and they approve you. I’m confirmed, Jakub too. Come say hi before the madness starts.

Friday, July 31 — expo opens

Doors open at SNIEC. BTOB halls are where you want to be - bring business cards, WeChat QR ready, and comfortable shoes. Friday is the day everyone still has energy. Use it.

Then at 1:30 PM, walk over to Kerry Hotel for IntelliChain Global 2.0 (see above — we close the show at 4:05). Expo in the morning, session in the afternoon, done by 4:45 with the whole evening free for meetings. Perfect Friday.

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Saturday, August 1 - the big one

Three events. One day. Plan your logistics or die.

1. Almedia LINK Product Launch ⭐ 🕒 1:30 PM – 4:00 PM 📍 Shanghai Kerry Hotel, VIP Suite (yes, Kerry Hotel again — basically our second office this week) 🔗 Register: https://jsj.top/f/DFs0kf

Almedia - the people behind Freecash are launching LINK, their new in-game rewarded monetization solution. If you’re an IAA or hybrid publisher, this is the one presentation actually worth leaving the expo floor for. CEO Moritz Hollander and VP of LINK Iskander Pataudi on stage, and the pitch is simple: new incremental revenue channel that lifts LTV without wrecking the gameplay experience.

Rewarded offerwall-style monetization is quietly having a moment - if you haven’t looked at this category since 2019, you’re leaving money on the table. I’ll be there.

Register: https://jsj.top/f/DFs0kf

2. DataEye LINK “Summer Wanderlust” — AI Short Drama x Games Mixer 🕒 Doors 4:30 PM, official program 6:30 PM – 10:00 PM 📍 HALO Xinghuan, 7F West Bund AI PLAZA, 683 Yunjin Road, Xuhui (address confirmed after approval) Co-hosted with Tencent Cloud. 150 C-level seats only.

No panels, no keynotes - the whole concept is “get game people and short-drama people in one room with drinks.” Games x short drama crossover, emerging markets, M&A opportunities. Tencent, Douyin, Hongguo, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu, B站, Xiaomi, 37 Interactive, miHoYo, and more on the guest list. Approval-based, so apply early.

3. ThinkingAI Next Party 🕒 7:00 PM – Midnight 📍 TOR Bar, 9F Asia Building, Bund No.1, Huangpu District

Invite-only party on the Bund. This is the “close the night” spot - start at Kerry Hotel, hit West Bund for the mixer, end at TOR Bar with a view of the river. West Bund to the Bund is a 25-minute Didi. Doable. Barely. Haha, that’s me planning to do all three anyway.

Sunday, August 2 – Monday, August 3

Expo floor, follow-up meetings, and recovery. Also keep an eye out for the Global VIP Happy Hours running at partner booths (2F) - more on those once times are confirmed.

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Brutally honest survival tips

• WeChat or you don’t exist. LinkedIn QR codes get polite smiles. WeChat gets deals.

• Book Didi rides 20 minutes before you need them on Saturday evening. Everyone is moving between the same 5 venues.

• Don’t schedule 8am meetings after TOR Bar. You know who you are.

• The Kerry Hotel lobby is the unofficial meeting room of ChinaJoy. If someone says, “Let’s grab a coffee,” it’s there.

See you in Shanghai. Come say hi, I’m the tattooed one talking about playables, UA, creatives, and the recent hot tips.

Give me some love (or hate) & subscribe.

🥃 Drink talk

I have known Pedro for a long time. We worked together on a few projects, and now he has come up with this! Pretty cool stuff.. Guess who is featured..

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For those who read only summaries, here are the playable trends for June in a nutshell:

• XP Hero – Township-style playable for an action RPG

  • XP Hero is a pretty straightforward action RPG, yet the team went with a Township-style playable that has almost nothing to do with the core combat fantasy.

• Fish Eater.io - Evolution of eating

  • Fish Eater.io’s playable is basically a fully scripted evolution funnel – and I mean that in a good way. You start in pure “almost eaten” panic, and no matter what you do, you keep evolving upwards until the ad hands you off to the promise of fighting the big boss in the real game.

• Meowdoku – turning the in‑game tutorial into a playable

  • This Meowdoku creative is a nice blueprint for “tutorial-as-playable”: roughly half of the ad is a guided lesson, and the rest is you finishing the puzzle on your own so you feel ready to play the real game.

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🥃 Drink talk

…. no comment ….

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🥃 Drink talk

3 weeks’ traveling streak is over. Let’s get back to hustling!!

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🥃 Drink talk

Sailing in Croatia is going well! Crew with my best friends: Michal TUNA Bubernik & Tomas Belak!

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Get your UA together

This is the essay where I try to fix that. We covered a lot of this on the latest “3.5 Gamers” episode with Chip Thurston from FastSpring, so you’ll get his take alongside the data. Let’s dive in.

First, the proof, because I don’t do vibes

I’ve been tracking direct-to-consumer disclosures from every public mobile publisher, quarter by quarter, back to Q1 2024. Here’s what the data actually says.

For all of 2024, D2C was flat. Playtika, the most mature web shop operation in the industry, posted $171.5m, $173.7m, $174.4m, and $174.6m in DTC revenue across the four quarters of 2024. Four quarters, less than 2% total movement. As a share of revenue, it actually went backward: 26.3% in Q1 2024, peaking at 28.1% in Q3, then sliding to 26.9%, 25.4%, and bottoming at 25.3% in Q2 2025, their lowest share in over a year. MTG sat at exactly 19% of group revenue for three straight quarters. Stillfront bounced between 33% and 34% of bookings all year. Huuuge was at roughly 12% in Q3 2024. The conference panels said “D2C is the future,” and the numbers said, “not yet.”

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Then the wall came down. US courts killed Apple’s anti-steering rules in April 2025, and Apple has been losing appeals ever since, all the way up to a Supreme Court that refused to even hear the case.

Japan’s Mobile Software Competition Act went live in December 2025. The moment publishers could legally tell players the web shop exists, every chart bent upward in the same two quarters:

• Playtika: $175.9m in Q2 2025, then $209.3m (+19% Q/Q), then $250.1m (+19.5% Q/Q), then roughly $292m in Q1 2026 (+16.7% Q/Q, +62.8% Y/Y). From 25.3% of revenue to 39.2% in four quarters, now a $1.2bn annual run-rate. Meanwhile their third-party platform revenue declined every single quarter of 2025, down 9.9% Y/Y to $428.7m in Q4.

• MTG: 19%, 19%, 19% through 2024, then 24%, 24%, 26%, 32%, 39%. The share doubled in five quarters. Their Midcore District went from 32% to 49%, so half of that business is now off-store.

• Huuuge: ~12% in Q3 2024 (15% by October), 20% in Q1 2025, 37% in Q4 2025, 41.2% in Q1 2026 and roughly 42% in April. In dollars: about $12.3m in Q1 2025 to $23.28m in Q1 2026, up 89.8% Y/Y.

• Stillfront: 34% of bookings in Q4 2024, then 36%, 39%, 44%, 45%, settling at 44% in Q1 2026. D2C now matches the app stores, with another 12% from ads. Apple and Google are minority partners now.

• SciPlay: 13% of sales in Q4 2024, ~18% ($35m) in Q2 2025, 25% ($48m) in Q4, 27% ($50m) in Q1 2026. Dollars up 85% Y/Y.

• DoubleDown: 12.8% of social casino revenue ($9.0m) in Q1 2025, 33% in Q4, 44.2% ($34.0m) in Q1 2026. Nearly 4x the dollars in twelve months.

• G5 Entertainment: G5 Store at 13.2% of revenue in Q4 2023, 19% in Q4 2024, 22.6% in Q1 2026, with store gross revenue growing 38.5%, 30%, 20.1% and 18.9% Y/Y across the last four quarters. Distributor commissions down 24% Y/Y.

• Playstudios: D2C from $5.0m in Q1 2025 to $12.4m in Q1 2026, up roughly 150%.

Nine companies. One inflection point.

Chip’s framing on the pod was useful: think of it as three cohorts. Social casino (SciPlay, Playstudios, Huuuge, DoubleDown) runs 27 to 44% of revenue through D2C, because it is so VIP-concentrated that shifting a small percentage of players moves a huge share of revenue. Midcore (MTG, Stillfront, Ten Square) runs up to 44%+ on community-heavy games. And before you say, “Fine, but my genre is different,” there’s the casual cohort.

Get your UA together

The “D2C doesn’t work in casual” excuse is dead

This was the most common pushback for years, and the report quietly killed it. Playtika now generates 76% of its total revenue from casual, not social casino. They broke it out in the earnings report themselves: Slotomania is sunsetting, casual is the business. So when Playtika reports 39.2% of total revenue via D2C, that is mostly casual money. Disney Solitaire money. As Chip put it on the pod, any casual developer still skeptical of D2C should go look at Playtika.

And the geography excuse is equally dead. SciPlay and Playstudios are US/Israeli, Huuuge is European, and DoubleDown is Korean. It doesn’t matter where you’re headquartered. It matters where your players are. And if you have US players, which is literally everybody, the window is open for you right now.

One more thing before the playbook: this public data is the tip of the iceberg. Scopely, Dream Games, and every other private or PE-owned studio run D2C without reporting a cent. China has been doing this for a decade: Lilith and 37 Entertainment have run their own stores for years, invisible to Western dashboards.

Why the urgency: the window has an expiry date

Here’s what most people sharing the hockey-stick charts on LinkedIn don’t understand. The current state, where you can steer US players to web payments without paying any platform fee, is temporary.

The Epic-Google settlement, still awaiting court approval, sets a 20% fee on linked payments with a 24-hour attribution window. Google intends it to take effect on June 30, 2026, in the US and Europe. Whether the judge signs by then is, in Chip’s words, a coin flip. On the Apple side, Cupertino has exhausted nearly every appeal and is now negotiating linked-payment fees with Epic on a timeline running through October 2026. Chip’s read, and mine: Apple fast-follows whatever the Google settlement establishes, with new fees landing late 2026 or early 2027.

Meanwhile, Google is already laying the plumbing. The External Content Links program went into effect January 28, 2026, in the US: if you link out of your app, you must be enrolled, or your updates get disapproved. First enforcement cases showed up in May. No fees yet, because legally there can’t be, but the fee schedule is already written into the guidelines: 20% on linked payments, and the old 30% decoupled into 5% billing plus a 20-25% platform fee depending on install date.

Get your UA together

So the math is simple. Today: 0% platform fee on steered US payments. Sometime in the next 6 to 12 months: probably 20%. Still better than 30%, but a third of the prize evaporates for traffic you haven’t habituated by then. On the pod, I compared it to COVID UA: there were two schools then, too. One said, “This is temporary, stay cautious,” the other spent everything they had on the cheapest installs in history. Guess who won. This is the same kind of window. Limited time, closing soon, and the players you move now stay moved.

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The playbook: how to actually start

This is the definitive guide part. Eight steps. No fluff.

Step 1: Start with your VIPs, not your DAU. Your top 2-5% of payers drive the majority of revenue, they’re emotionally invested, and they’ll happily take a better deal directly from you. Social casino proves the leverage: shift a small slice of players, shift a third of revenue. Ten Square’s data shows the same pattern at game level: Fishing Clash, their most community-driven title, runs at 33% off-store while the group average is 20%. It’s the first time a publisher has named a per-game D2C number, and the lesson is: engaged communities convert.

I want to be Matej NOW

Step 2: Don’t build payments from scratch. Unless you’re Playtika-sized, use the stack that exists: FastSpring, or other providers. Web shop fees run around 5% per transaction with hundreds of local payment methods built in. Appcharge went from zero to a $200m run rate in two years; that’s how much demand there is. Your engineers should be improving the game, not rebuilding Stripe with extra steps. Integration is weeks, not quarters.

Step 3: Run the hybrid: direct checkout links now, web store habituation forever. This is the most tactical thing Chip said the entire episode. Direct checkout links emerged through 2025: instead of sending the player to a store, the buy button takes them straight to a hosted checkout page, saved payment info, one tap, boom, back into the game. It’s the most frictionless path that exists, and with it, 50%+ of revenue through D2C is achievable today. Chip has heard 70% floated as this year's target. But every direct checkout link is by definition a linked payment, which means it’s exactly what the future 20% fee will hit. So the strategy is a mix: use direct checkout to maximize revenue during the free window, while building web store awareness and habit, because a destination players know and return to on their own is the asset that survives any settlement. If you rely on direct checkout alone, the fee lands and you start from zero.

Step 4: Make the shop feel like the game, then build a flywheel. Same art, same currency, same vibe. The player should feel like they walked into another room of the same house, not a sketchy parking lot. Then steal the best mechanic on the list: Raid: Shadow Legends gives points on every web store purchase, redeemable only there. Every purchase increases the likelihood of the next purchase. That’s a retention loop for your cash register.

Step 5: Build the steering machine. The shop is the easy part. Traffic is the moat. CRM, email, Discord, social, push, and in-game messaging where the law now allows it. This is why D2C rewards live-ops discipline: the same muscles that run your events calendar run your web shop promotions. If you’ve been ignoring CRM because “we’re a mobile game,” congratulations, you now have a business reason to grow up.

Get your UA together

Step 6: Enroll in External Content Links today. Even though fees aren’t live. The integration isn’t trivial, there’s an API and hoops to jump through, and the publishers getting app updates rejected right now are the ones who ignored it. Do the prep while it’s optional so that when policy flips, you change your monetization strategy, not your codebase. Being caught flat-footed here is a choice.

Step 7: Use Japan as your soft launch for the fee era. Japan’s Mobile Software Competition Act, live since December 2025, allows steering on both platforms with fees. That makes it the first real laboratory for the post-settlement world. Run your steering playbook there now, learn when it’s worth incurring a fee versus avoiding it, and you’ll have the fee-era operating manual written before the US and EU even get there. Japanese players are extremely high spenders anyway; Monster Strike still does around a billion in its home market alone. Low-risk learning, high-value market.

I want to be Matej NOW

Step 8: Incentivize with discipline and measure net. Stillfront said the quiet part out loud in their own filing: aggressive incentives are “negative for net revenue but accretive to gross profit.” You’re paying players bonus currency to skip the store, and if you go stupid with the bonuses, you’re just moving the 30% from Apple’s pocket to your players’ pockets. Their D2C share even slipped a point in Q1 2026 on product mix; this share is managed, not magic. And remember the dashboards are blind: Sensor Tower doesn’t see web spend, which is how Playtika “declined” on third-party platforms every quarter of 2025 while growing 5.5% Y/Y to $744.7m. Track your own blended numbers and stop benchmarking icebergs by their tips.

The two traps that kill it

Trap one: D2C doesn’t resurrect a dead game. Ten Square Games has run a web store for years, and the share is stuck: above 19% in March 2025, 20.3% in September, 18.7% in December, 20% in Q1 2026. Flat for a year, because Fishing Clash and Hunting Clash bookings are falling, and D2C falls with them. A web shop is a better cash register, not a better store. If your D7 retention is in the gutter, fix the game first. You can only scale your budget and your web shop as far as the LTV allows. Full stop.

Get your UA together

There’s a more interesting version of the same lesson, and it comes from the company that was doing D2C before it was cool: Nexters. GDEV has been running Hero Wars across PC, web, and mobile for years, launched their mobile web shop back in mid-2023, and their off-store share of bookings has lived in the 37 to 43% range ever since, with platform commissions to match. They earned their hockey stick years before everyone else. But in Q1 2026, while the rest of the industry was bending upward, their off-store share actually slipped from 41% to 36%. Not because the strategy failed: Hero Wars is a decade-old game with a mature, concentrated spender base (roughly 125,000 high payers drive 88% of bookings), and as that base shifts, the channel mix shifts with it. The takeaway isn’t that Nexters did something wrong. It’s that D2C share is not a ratchet that only goes up. It’s a live metric that tracks the health and habits of your paying audience, quarter by quarter. The pioneers prove the ceiling is real; they also prove you have to keep earning it.

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Trap two: copying instead of learning. Chip’s warning, and it applies to everything in this guide: don’t look at Disney Solitaire’s web store and clone it. Your players have their own tolerance for friction, their own purchase moments, their own incentive sensitivity. The nine companies above are a library of best practices, not a template. D2C is a live-ops surface. Iterate it like one.

And one meta-trap: don’t let UA quietly eat the whole prize. UA spend has exceeded app store fees industry-wide since 2020, and the early D2C winners are pouring savings straight back into Meta and AppLovin auctions. Take-Two posts record mobile D2C and guides opex up in the same breath. Reinvesting is the point, but decide deliberately how much goes to growth and how much to margin, or the auction decides for you. Because the competitive math is brutal: Playtika at 39.2%, Huuuge at 41.2%, and DoubleDown at 44.2% have structurally higher net LTV than you on the same user, which means a higher CPI ceiling, which means they outbid you in every auction you both enter.

Start this quarter

Here’s the thing about hockey sticks: the inflection already happened. You’re not early anymore. But you’re also not late. Huuuge went from 12% to 41% in six quarters. DoubleDown went from 12.8% to 44.2% in four. The distance between “we have nothing” and “D2C is our biggest channel” is about eighteen months of consistent execution. Not a genius. Consistency.

But the free-steering window is measured in months, not years.

Get your UA together

So: pick a vendor this month. Ship a VIP-only store next quarter. Turn on direct checkout links while they’re fee-free. Enroll in External Content Links before you’re forced to. Run the Japan experiment. Wire your CRM into all of it and iterate like it’s a live-ops event, because it is one.

The publishers on those charts aren’t smarter than you. They just started. So, like I said at the end of the episode: go and start your fucking web store. Right now.

BENCHMARKS sheet with real data from 2024 until today

I put together the real data from all the companies and their financial reports into a sheet, mapping 2024 until today!

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🥃 Drink talk

Yesterday, I was at a Linkin Park concert in Vienna. So emotional for me because I didn’t get a chance to see them before Chester died. It was 15 years ago, and I didn’t even have enough money to buy a ticket for myself.

I literally cried for the first 30 minutes of the concert.

Also.. going sailing with my daughter next…

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For those that read only summaries, here are the playable trends in May in a nutshell:

• It’s fashion time

  • More and more fashion - styling playable genres to support match3 or merge games. Pick the right choices and styles, and keep going till the timer goes off. And then impress your boyfriend or his mother. The games behind those playables? Match3 or Merge genre in reality.

• Playrix

  • Blueprint for publishing - use as much as possible from the template playable, or is it killing the brand recognition? Contemplating how clever it is to use the same template for 4 different games, or whether it is going against the brand recognition.

When the playable market suddenly became stylists.

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Here’s the synthesis from the field notes that mattered. The underlying message is clear: YOU SHOULD ATTEND MAU VEGAS…

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Here is the honest version. The data is g…

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🥃 Drink talk

Almedia is throwing its first Summit. I think it’s going to be a big deal.

Berlin, July 2-3. Invite-only. 100 people, all of them actual game devs and publishers, not the usual conference crowd that turns up for free coffee and a lanyard.

Here’s why I’m paying attention. This has the same DNA as Amplify had early: invite-o…

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🥃 Drink talk

Hard week after best week at MAU!

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🥃 Drink talk

𝗕𝗥𝗨𝗧𝗔𝗟𝗟𝗬 𝗛𝗢𝗡𝗘𝗦𝗧 𝗨𝗔 𝗥𝗘𝗣𝗢𝗥𝗧 - 𝗤𝟭 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 𝗜𝗦 𝗛𝗘𝗥𝗘 and I need your help. 40 UA pros have already filled the survey:

Fill the UA survey

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For those who read only summaries, here are the playable trends for April in a nutshell:

April, the month of long playables

• In April, short skippable playables finally met their match: long sessions. Campaigns across genres pushed interactive experiences that feel closer to “lite game demos” than to classic 15–30-second playables, often stretching to 1 minute or more of continuous engagement. Instead of a single quick action and a call to action, users now explore multi-stage levels, branching choices, and infinite loops that reset but never truly end.

• This shift signals that in April advertisers were betting on depth over brevity - using longer playables to pre-qualify users, improve post-install retention, and filter out low-intent clicks before they ever hit the store page

What “long playables” meant in April

Sessions routinely exceeded 60-90 seconds, with users completing several micro-levels or goal cycles within a single ad.

Many creatives adopted endless or “never-ending” formats: loops that continuously spawn new obstacles, waves, or merge/upgrade opportunities while the CTA stays visible but not forced.

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