Paid UA for mobile games, run by someone who has done it at scale. I ran more than $1M a month in UA budget at Wooga, where Pearl’s Peril passed $86M in lifetime revenue and Jelly Splash passed $39M. The method has not changed: find the cohorts that pay back, kill the ones that do not, and keep the creative pipeline full.
This page is for a studio or publisher that needs paid acquisition run properly, from soft launch through scale. It explains what a game needs that an app does not, what was built on an account that doubled its D0 ROAS over two years, and where the first stage of the creative testing method that ran there is written out step by step.
What a game needs that an app does not
Volume. A game lives on creative velocity, and most ads tested lose. So creative is made as test versions first, run in a dedicated install campaign with every ad starting the race together, and only remade properly once it wins. The elimination round is written out step by step, with the campaign structure, the budgets and how the losers get cut, and it is the method that ran on the account below.
Harder measurement. Day zero value on iOS goes through SKAN and AEM, and the cohort you are optimizing for is the payer, not the installer. At Horse Racing Solitaire that meant value optimization on Meta across iOS and Android, the cohort stack on Adjust and Tableau, and the SKAN and AEM setup done before spend went up.
A market plan. Tier 2 markets are usually worth it for testing and sometimes for scale, and the account decides which. If you are still deciding whether the game is ready to scale, what a soft launch has to prove is written out first. If the open question is who should own UA past soft launch, I compare an in house lead, an agency, a network's own team and a fractional Head of UA.
What that looked like
Two years with Salto Games, soft launch through scale. On the creative side, 175 ads went through the account from December to April, fourteen came in under £1.00 per install and the best at £0.65, and the same account put my ads up against an outside studio.
Those install costs come from one install campaign in one country. Across the whole account, day one payer conversion rose 50%, and the table shows what else changed and over what period.
| Metric | From | To | Over |
|---|---|---|---|
| D0 ROAS | 8 to 12% | 17 to 23%, roughly double | Two years, soft launch to scale |
| Blended CPI | £9.43 | £5.38, 42.9% lower (my arithmetic) | One month |
Who it is for
- Studios in soft launch that need the measurement right before scaling
- Games with a live economy and a paid budget around $100K a month, or funded to reach it
- Publishers that want creative volume with a test method behind it
- Teams that have used an external studio for creative and want to compare it against a testing system
What you get
- Value optimization on Meta, iOS and Android, with SKAN and AEM set up first
- A cohort stack on your MMP so payback is visible by market and channel
- Structured creative concept tests, with the ads made by my network when you add creative production
- Tier 2 market testing before Tier 1 spend, where the economics call for it
- Weekly numbers against target
Questions people ask
Do you make the ads for games too?
Yes. Gameplay capture with captions and motion graphics is the workhorse, a creator on camera when the reaction sells it, and AI footage to test a hook before anyone films. The prices are published.
How do you test creative for a game?
Test versions first, in a dedicated install campaign where every ad starts together and spend picks the winners. Only what wins gets remade properly. The first stage, with the budget math, is written out in the creative testing playbook.
Why did value optimization stop working for us?
Usually because the signal underneath it changed or thinned. I have written up the common causes, and the fix is almost always upstream of the campaign.
What does paid UA for a mobile game cost?
A monthly retainer scoped to involvement, for games spending around $100K a month on UA or funded to get there. What sets the price is here. Creative production is priced separately and can be bought on its own.