🎯 20 years' experience: Luis de la Camara on WHY the networks know your users better than YOU!

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.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – Cold open: incentives that make rewarded cohorts perform

01:17 – Who is Luis: AAA, Gameloft, King, Scopely, Rovio

03:36 – Brand vs performance: the battle Rovio never fully won

05:25 – “The networks know your users better than you”

09:11 – Felix’s eCPM decay hack for spotting payers

10:24 – UA Society takeaways: segmentation, rewarded users, Papaya

14:29 – Retargeting, CTV and incrementality done simply

21:30 – DSPs are winning: Moloco, Liftoff and how to work with them

25:47 – The BREAKING news: Luis joins Smadex as CMO

🎙️ HOST & GUEST

Felix Braberg – Ad Monetization

Luis 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

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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

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