Samet Durgun

Don't ask me why I wrote 9 but not 10 tips. 🤓

I’ve compiled 9 of my favorite takeaways from the past year about 𝐏𝐚𝐢𝐝 𝐒𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐀𝐩𝐩𝐬 (gaming and sub).Got any questions? Feel free to drop them below👇🏼𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦? 𝘐’𝘮 𝘚𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘵, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘱𝘱 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨. 𝘓𝘦𝘵'𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘤𝘵 🌟

Still struggling with number 4. 🤓

Folks, drop your performance marketing KPI slowly. We need to talk about one and only KPI that matters: The average age of your top performing creative. By age, I mean the first air day of your top-performing ad. I will explain why mobile marketing is broken (big responsibility here). And I hope you will join me in saving our fragile and beautiful business. Let me start by explaining our problem in a nutshell: Profits from user acquisition are thin. And mobile apps run very, very old ads. In one of my previous LinkedIn posts, I shared this: And it’s true. We can’t trust anyone’s success in this business; we can’t trust new top-grossing games because we don’t know their profit margin. Even for old games, this holds true (unless public data is available). But... There is a way to increase […]

𝑯𝒆𝒚 𝑼𝑨 𝒇𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒏𝒅𝒔, let's swap some wisdom! 🔄 I’ve got 4 ways to figure out organic iOS installs. How do you do it? Did I miss anything? Drop your methods below ⬇️

🫴🏼💀 To scale or not to scale (a campaign)? That's the question. And guess what? I've got a little strategy that might just help you answer it. Here's why and how:Introducing: Histogram to find a sweet spot in spend and CPA. 🎆✅ Why this matters Understanding the direct relationship between your daily spend and CPA is crucial. It shows you exactly how much a campaign can scale. (Assuming you won't be changing targeting, creatives, etc.)⁇ What to do:Pull Your Spend Data: Start with your daily spend. If the campaign's been running longer, weekly data can also give you a good picture.🔍 Observe the Relationship: You'll likely see a linear increase in CPA as spend goes up. But, be prepared for steeper climbs (think hockey stick curves) when you significantly increase your budget.🧐 Why isn't this standard? I wonder why MMP partners […]

Tips and wisdom on how to become better at mobile marketing every day. 3 Marketing Thoughts Product-Market-”Marketing” Fit: A sad story about app companies: Stellar team, product, great website, initial buzz. Yet, the app dies because of a lack of funding. This happens to both new apps and new gaming apps. Why? Because they miss “marketing-fit” and only focus on finding "product-market" fit. If you don’t know which channels and ads give you the best options, you will never see the true potential of your app. Bad marketing could cost you $20 CPI (excuse the top of the funnel), and great marketing can deliver you $1. Hard to believe, possible to achieve. Never enough creatives: I’ve never heard anyone saying, “We have enough optimization in the campaigns, and we don’t want to touch them until we need to.” Yet we […]

How do other apps collaborate with influencers for performance marketing? 📱💥 Are you missing out on something? Well, there's a whole spectrum of strategies out there, and they can even complement each other! And some miss the bigger picture. Let's dive in. 👇 1️⃣ Grow Organically with Influencers & Content Creators 🌱 Creating a community of influencers & content creators can be a game-changer. They share what they create for you on platforms like Instagram stories, TikTok, and Instagram Reels. This approach leverages the trust their followers have in them. But, there's a challenge—scaling the magic when you hit a viral video. Creating a community is valuable, and time-consuming, so it better scales. But how? 2️⃣ Combine Organic Growth with TikTok Spark 🚀 One way is this: Take the first strategy up a notch by adding TikTok Spark Ads. This […]

New ad concept production takes time. In this article, I will talk about exactly how to make the best of your time to maximize impact. That includes: 3 approaches to creative concept creationWhy thinking like an artist is the way to goAnd how I utilize tools for research 3 Approaches to creative concept evaluation There are two types of approaches I observe when it comes to ad production: number 1- usually, a freelancer: “Look at this random app that started making money, and here are the random ads I collected through their ads library. Please get inspired.” number 2- usually, an agency: “Here is an endless list of customer emotions and motivations chart. We will pick 5 combinations among 12.000.000 possibilities and create something that (hopefully) works.” These approaches are distinctly different, but they have one thing in common. ---- […]

Thoughts Bidding for CPA is better than bidding for CPI. That’s how I always believed, and it repeatedly proved itself. Until this week. One of my partners has a lower CPA with a CPI-optimized campaign, and this has been going on for a few weeks now. The identical campaigns deliver vastly better results in install optimization. 🤔 One can speculate many things as to why. And I couldn’t pin down any solid reason yet. Speaking of bidding for CPA, one of the biggest -not talked about- phenomena is Google driving fraud traffic for the top of the funnel. Example: Install-optimized vs. Registration-optimized campaigns. What sorcery is this 🧙🏻♂️ Speaking of fraud, I stumbled upon sound research by Lunio , IAS & Scope3 this week. There must be a way to hold these corporations more accountable. Yet to be discovered. Source: […]

💡 Picture this You scroll your feed, you see an ad from a competitor app, and you have the urge to share it with your colleagues on Slack. This is the life for the majority of people. It happens to everybody (including past me), and it is okay that you leave this habit after reading this post. Samet, you are being too harsh. This is not my intention. But here is the thing: If that ad you shared didn't get thousands of likes or millions of views, you are distracting everyone. But Samet, how do I inspire people to create more ads? The real question is *not* creating more ads (tho, definitely better than not creating anything). The question is: Where can I find the ad that the competitor is spending tons of 💰? ---- Btw, if you are new […]