Paul Bowen

Here is the link to the original article. ​​Why your incentivized F2P UA campaign failed (And how to fix it) Imagine dedicating countless hours to launching your incentivized user acquisition campaign - negotiating terms, signing contracts, aligning on creative, and meticulously setting up attribution - only to watch it underperform. As a user acquisition manager, you know the sinking feeling of seeing the data trickle into your BI system, hoping for a turnaround that never comes. A month in, the decision is made: pause the campaign. It’s frustrating, disheartening, and feels like a colossal waste of effort. But why did it fail? Incentivized advertising campaigns can go wrong for several reasons - some within your control, others not. The good news? Most issues can be fixed, and with the right adjustments, a reboot of your campaign can succeed where the […]

Here is the link to the original article. Once dismissed as a cheap trick to game App Store rankings, incentivized advertising has transformed into one of the most sophisticated and data-driven strategies in modern user acquisition. Today, it’s not just about installs—it’s about aligning user intent with long-term growth, turning low-intent browsers into high-value players. Incentivized or rewarded advertising, as people like to rebrand it, has had a bad rap ever since Apple (and Techcrunch) went after early mobile f2p UA innovator Tapjoy in 2011. Incentivized advertising was blamed for sullying the App Store and making the App Store Top Charts something advertisers could buy to enter, not only gain a position because a game was popular. I was at Tapjoy in 2011, and it wasn’t that we were necessarily selling “App Store rankings” to our advertising partners, but it was a happy […]