Noga Laron

Q&A with Noga

This Q&A reflects Noga's time as VP of Growth at PLAYSTUDIOS IL. Currently, Noga is CMO at SuperPlay.

Noga is VP of Growth at Playstudios, one of the largest social casino game developers in the world.

Over the past 5 years, Noga led growth for the Playstudio's most successful mobile game “POP! Slots”, taking it into the top 10 charts of the worldwide casino category. Noga has 8 years of experience in Digital Marketing and Growth Hacking for several gaming companies, with a proven track record of yielding a significant ROI while managing large budgets. Noga joined Playstudios in 2015.

In your own words, tell us about the app(s) that you manage?

I manage the marketing efforts for “POP! Slots”, a social slots app unlike any other.

The app includes group games, social slots tournaments, shared jackpots, and personal avatars that make it endlessly engaging. Vibrant graphics, an energetic look-and-feel and features like a virtual Vegas Strip take the gaming experience to the next-level.

How did you get started in mobile marketing?

At university I studied economics and psychology. And the field of marketing always intrigued me. I always believed that the combination of economics and psychology is a great background for understanding consumer behavior from both a micro and macro level. Getting into mobile marketing was very natural for me.

What do you like most about mobile marketing?

First, I get to play mobile games, which I love. I am responsible for playing the latest games making a buzz. Secondly, I get to work with creative people. My team and company is full of people that are eager to solve complex problems with creative solutions, which makes for a fun and dynamic work environment.

What does it take to succeed in mobile marketing?

Our industry is agile and rapidly growing. You have to move fast and learn new concepts every day, while also adopting new methods to measure your brand and budget. To succeed, you need sharp analytical skills and be able to clearly communicate your ideas to different stakeholders.

What strategies work best to convert installs into engaged app users?

A clean, holistic funnel to on-board new users is essential. Staring with the ad to the app store to the game itself, show users what they are going to experience when they download the app and how enjoyable the experience will be as they progress in the game.

In the past year, what is one tip you can share which made the biggest performance difference with UA or re-engagement of your app?

Always validate your data and update your KPIs. Our domain is very agile. Make sure that the marketing goals you are optimizing for are aligned with your current business targets.

For example, if your goal is to increase your Daily Active Monetizers (DAM), then optimizing only for short term ROAS goals (even ROAS day 14 or 30 is short!) will not necessarily get you to your goal. If you are aiming for revenue from new users per month - it is a completely different goal to chase with a set of different KPIs.

What advice can you offer marketers to successfully re-engage mobile users?

For starters, it is essential that you align your marketing KPIs with your goals. When it comes to retargeting, this can be tricky as it can be difficult to measure the incremental impact of re-engagement campaigns on revenue.

The first step is to understand your business objectives. For example, do you wish to increase your DAU? Convert non-payers to payers? Increase sessions amongst your VIP players?

Next, dig into your historical data and establish benchmarks for the audience segments that you want to re-engage.

Finally, you will need to determine the right message, and incentive, to deliver to these players in your creative that gets them to re-engage. Telling users to “install now!” won't cut it.

Once you’ve got your KPIs, benchmarks for success and tailor-made creatives, go live with your campaign and measure the incremental lift of performance. Hopefully you will see some positive results.

What’s your top tip when it comes to mobile ad creative?

Highlight what’s unique with your app. Mobile users see so many ads these days. It is a crazy battle for their ever shrinking attention span. Tell your story quickly, clearly, and in the most convincing way so they understand what they will get by downloading your app

What advice can you offer to help marketers combat mobile ad fraud?

Take it seriously. Partner up with a fraud detection solution that could help monitor the users you are buying (or develop a solution in-house).

What are your top 3 go-to resources for keeping up with the mobile ad tech industry?

• StoreMaven’s newsletter and online blog. They are our go-to advisers on ASO and mobile growth.
• UA society. One of the best UA online groups which provides a lot of great video sessions from their conferences.
• Linkedin newsfeed. It is still a newsfeed, but from time to time I can find interesting articles or posts.

READ NOGA'S BLOG