Apptivate: App Marketing Explained

James Dickins, Team Lead of Technical Support at Gamelight, joins Taylor Lobdell to discuss how rewarded UA and behavioral targeting shape user acquisition in 2025’s privacy-first landscape. From the company’s laser-eyed cat mascot to the mechanics of lookalike models, James explains how his team balances precision with ethics and how algorithms are trained on aggregated behavior data. He also discusses creative testing and when hu...

Shilpa Reddy, CMO of Down Under School of Yoga and former Marketing VP at Acorns, maps her journey from fintech to wellness and explains why the same principles drive both: make time-tested tools accessible, and build a community that keeps people engaged. She breaks down her three-stage marketing flywheel, and shows why marketers must dismantle the false divide between direct response and brand storytelling. The conversation moves...

Alejandro Hernandez, Senior CRM Notifications and Lifecycle Specialist at Babbel, explains how AI and human creativity intersect to drive retention in language learning. He shares how Babbel uses ecosystem segmentation, predictive models, and deep links to re-engage millions of learners worldwide. From predicting churn with behavior signals to ensuring that every push notification feels like a supportive nudge rather than spam, Ale...

Advi Bishnoi, Head of Consulting at Social Plus, argues that in 2025, retention has overtaken acquisition as the real growth engine for apps. From Ulta Beauty to Harley Davidson, Advi has helped brands turn community features into measurable revenue streams. In this episode, he explains why micro-communities and in-app social layers transform loyalty programs, how first-party data becomes indispensable in a privacy-first world, and...

Louis Tanguay, founder and managing director of App Growth Summit, traces his arc from music magazine founder to film marketer to architect of a global mobile industry community now marking its 100th event. Louis explains why mobile marketers keep missing the basics: custom product pages, team silos, overreliance on AI and how AGS forges authentic connection in a field where ‘networking’ usually means sales pitches. Louis argues fo...

Piotr Prędkiewicz, Senior Marketing Analyst at FORMEL SKIN, exposes the myth of ‘perfect data’ and charts the future of privacy-centric analytics in mobile growth. With a career spanning fintech, dating and health tech, Piotr unpacks how to track users legally, ethically, and creatively before they even register. He also discusses why device data is always noisier than you want, and where most marketers go wrong on privacy, attribu...

Seema Shah, VP of Research and Insights at Sensor Tower, dispenses with the industry’s fixation on superficial growth metrics. Her analysis exposes the fundamental asymmetry in e-commerce: scale without retention leads nowhere, and price wars favor only those insulated by infrastructure and sunk-cost bias. Shah parses the machinery of loyalty and why brands that depend on incentives or viral hacks collapse as soon as ad spend falte...

Moshe Even-Israel, Head of Business Development at Scrambly, unpacks the real stakes and shifting standards in the rewarded user acquisition ecosystem. From onboarding and fraud, to retention and data transparency, Moshe interrogates both the promise and pitfalls of incentivized platforms. This episode covers vendor selection, long-term retention strategies, KYC (know your customer) challenges, and the real metrics for measuring UA...

Udhara de Silva, who leads loyalty marketing for Singapore Airlines in Australia, walks through the launch and rapid growth of Kris+, the digital rewards app that enables members to earn and spend miles in restaurants and retail stores – a first for any airline rewards app outside of Singapore. The discussion tracks why Australia was chosen as the testbed, the challenges of localizing a QR-based payment app in a card-centric market...

Andre Kempe is the CEO of Admiral Media, a performance marketing agency based in Europe. He returns to Apptivate to discuss the role of AI in creative development for mobile app marketing campaigns. Find out what types of apps can leverage AI in their ads, where the human touch still outperforms the machine, and where AI makes the biggest impact from a mobile marketing standpoint.

Questions Andre answered in this episode:

Daniel Lupu is the Senior Marketing Manager at Skyscanner, a search engine for deals on flights, hotels, and car rentals serving 110 million users monthly. In this episode, Daniel shares lessons and results from the tests he’s run. He discusses his team's approach to navigating SKAN, the creative strategies they’ve implemented, and his observations of the relationship between paid and organic search ads on Apple.  

Questions Dan...

In this episode, we chat with Luca Stefanutti, the Director of Growth at adidas Running, the fitness app formerly known as Runtastic. They touch on the app’s role within the larger brand, key performance metrics, implementing new insights within large teams, and Luca’s point of view on some of today’s hottest app marketing topics, like AI, creatives, and the relationship between incremental and organic traffic.

Questions Luca an...

In this episode of our Apptivate podcast, we chat with Liam Branaghan, the Performance Marketing and Strategy Lead for Uber. Liam’s teams focus on driving growth for Uber Eats across EMEA, while supporting overall brand and business goals. In this episode, you’ll learn about the evolution of Uber’s regional marketing teams and how they merged into a single global team. You’ll also hear about their work to refine their localization ...

There are a lot of data sensitivities when it comes to marketing in the healthcare and wellness space. This week on Apptivate, we speak with Kevin Bell, the Performance Marketing Lead at Mochi Health, about navigating Facebook’s recent changes to events for advertisers in these industries. Kevin gives you the background on the platform’s changes, and how his team adapted their marketing strategy to meet Facebook’s new criteria unde...

In this episode of Remerge’s Apptivate podcast, we chat with Yoni Nijober, the Director of Partnerships at exmox, a platform that helps mobile gaming companies scale their user base through engagement-driven, rewarded user acquisition. You’ll learn why rewarded UA used to have a bad reputation, how it’s evolved, the benefits of working with a rewarded UA network for certain mobile games, how to pick your rewarded UA partner, and mu...

Joshua Javaheri is the CEO and founder of Lucky Day, the mobile entertainment company behind games like Bingo Stars, Solitaire Royale, and Blackjack Royale. In this episode, Joshua shares his story and the strategies behind Lucky Day’s success – from concept, creation, and the development of their flagship titles, to the hard lessons he’s learned along the way.

Questions Joshua answered in this episode:

• What inspired you...

Aaron Diaz is the Manager of Mobile User Acquisition at 2K, the American video game publisher behind NBA 2K, Borderlands 2, and other popular role-playing, sports, and strategy games. In this episode, Taylor quizzes Aaron on his keys to UA success across the big titles he’s worked on over his career, including how he reached 10,000 users in less than 24 hours for the soft launch of a new game.

Questions Aaron answered in this ep...

As the founder and CEO of Yodel Mobile, an international app marketing agency based in London, Mick Rigby brings over 20 years of experience in the industry. In this episode, Mick shares his insights on the evolution of mobile marketing and his approach to today’s greatest industry hurdles, from creative development and AI, to testing channels and diversifying your marketing mix. Mick also highlights the key challenges in retaining...

Remerge presents Apptivate Live – a podcast filmed on stage at the recent App Promotion Summit in Berlin. This episode features Pan Katsukis, the CEO & co-founder of Remerge, and guest, Oğuz Ayar, who leads growth and user acquisition for Voodoo, a Paris-based developer of world-renowned apps and mobile games. In the chat, they cover how to set up and optimize your mobile ads for both UA and retargeting campaigns.

Questions Oğuz...