Finding the right UA experts to follow is one of the fastest ways to sharpen your user acquisition strategy without waiting for your own campaigns to teach you the hard way. 

We asked six industry experts working in different corners of mobile UA (funding, campaign management, creative testing, ASO, channel strategy, and rewarded UA) to share the one piece of advice they think studios need.

Key takeaways

• UA funding is becoming a real alternative to burning cash reserves on scaling, but you need to understand the true cost of capital, not just the headline rate.

• Proactivity separates good UA managers from bad ones. Waiting for the algorithm to "learn" is a losing strategy against competitors who are already iterating.

• Creative testing, not creative production, is the real bottleneck for scaling UA. GenAI solved production. Most teams still test on a timeline built for a slower era.

• A stale store page can quietly cancel out good paid UA work. Store conversion rate is a lever most studios only touch once, at launch, when it needs ongoing attention.

• Channel diversification beyond Meta, Google, and TikTok is worth testing, including newer entrants like Snapchat and ChatGPT.

• Don't underestimate the power of rewarded UA. Adoption has outpaced how seriously most studios treat the channel; the studios who commit and trust their partner's event setup early see the biggest gains

María de la Puente (UA Consultant) Cofounder, Hubapps

ASO Matters: Treat your store page as a living channel, not a launch checkbox

In short: you can win the click and still lose the install. A stale store page quietly cancels out good UA work.

María de la Puente is the cofounder of our very own Hubapps, a specialist and embedded UA and growth consultancy that has worked with mobile game studios since 2011. 

Maria's point is about a pattern she says comes up constantly with new clients: solid paid campaigns, healthy creative IPM, sharp targeting, and a CPI that still keeps climbing for no obvious reason. The usual culprit is a store page that hasn't been touched since launch.

App Store Optimization works on two levels that most studios treat unevenly;

1. Discovery is how easily players find the game when they search. 

2. Conversion is how effectively the store page turns a visitor into an install. 

Most teams only think about conversion, and only after something has already gone wrong. By the time a user clicks an ad and lands on the store page, that click has already cost real money. What happens next, whether that visitor installs or bounces, is decided entirely by the page itself.

The metric that captures this is store conversion rate, the percentage of page visitors who install. A five percent improvement there lowers CPI meaningfully without spending an extra euro on ads. Run paid traffic to a weak page and the studio is effectively paying UA costs to lose people at the last possible step.

The elements that actually move that number: the icon, which has under a second to signal genre and quality in search and browse; screenshots and preview video, since most users decide from those alone and they need to show real gameplay rather than key art; the title and subtitle, which carry real weight for search ranking; and star rating, where the gap between a game sitting at 4.2 versus 3.7 shows up directly in conversion.

Her broader point is that a store page isn't a launch deliverable, it's a live channel. Icons should be A/B tested. Screenshots should get refreshed after major content updates. Keywords need revisiting as competitors shift theirs. Reviews need responses. Treating ASO as a box checked once at launch is how a studio ends up paying to send traffic to a page that's already working against it.

Janette D'Alessio (UA Funding) - Plan A Games

Understand the real cost of the capital, and choose the right growth partner to scale your game

In short: understand the true cost of the capital you're using to scale, and make sure your partner's structure and ambition match your own.

Janette D'Alessio is Head of Business Development at Plan A Games, a growth partner built specifically for mobile game studios. She works with studios that want to scale user acquisition without tying up their own cash reserves, and she's a regular presenter at mobile gaming events on UA funding.

Her advice for 2026 is about two questions she says come up constantly in her conversations with studios: 

1. what does UA funding actually cost you, and 

2. is your partner built for the growth you want to achieve?

Many studios look at the monthly interest rate on a deal and assume that's the full picture. It isn't. 

The true cost of capital comes from the whole shape of the deal: when you draw the money, how long it sits with you, how quickly you have to repay, and any fees layered on top. 

Two offers with the same headline rate can cost you very differently once you run the full cash flow. But cost is only half the decision. Cohort lenders fund a return on their own UA spend; a growth partner bets on scaling your game alongside you. And flexible, revolving capital you can draw, repay, and redraw lets you fund UA and grow the studio at the same time, instead of waiting on cohort payback.

If you're a studio weighing UA funding to scale in 2026, ask your partner to walk you through the full cost of the facility over its life, not just quote you a monthly rate, and to show that their flexibility and ambition truly match yours before you sign anything.

Read more on our interview on UA Funding with Janette.

David Vargas (Scaling UA) - Growth Expert

Stop waiting for the algorithm to save you, build your backup plan first

In short: stop waiting for the algorithm to "eventually learn." Build your backup plan before you need it, not after.

David Vargas Montiel is an independent App Growth Consultant specializing in UA and ASO, based in Madrid. He's worked across paid acquisition, CRM, and app store optimization for mobile apps and games.

His advice cuts against a habit he sees a lot in UA management:

"Proactivity is a must in today's market if you work as a UA Manager. If you're hoping your campaigns will start working just because the algorithm will 'eventually learn,' I'm sorry to say you're miles behind your competition. 

Meta doesn't need 2 weeks to show you that you're far from your targets. In my opinion, that's just you being a lazy professional (and I think I have a decent enough background to say that). I shared this step-by-step thinking/iteration process because struggling in UA is completely normal. What separates a good UA manager from a bad one is the backup options you start building in your mind as you go."

The takeaway is less about any specific tactic and more about a mindset. Struggling with a campaign isn't the problem. Not having a plan B, C, and D ready when the first approach underperforms is.

Peter Fodor (UA Creative) Founder & CEO, AppAgent

Fix your creative testing speed before you fix your creative

In short: creative production isn't the bottleneck anymore. Creative testing is, and most teams are still testing on a timeline built for the pre-GenAI era.

Peter Fodor founded AppAgent in Prague in 2016, an agency that has worked with mobile game publishers including Supercell, Scopely, Plarium, and Outfit7. AppAgent was named User Acquisition Company of the Year in 2022.

Peter's point is about a shift that's happened underneath most teams without their process catching up:

"Why do 80% of mobile gaming ads die within 24 hours of launch? Not because the creative is bad. Because the way most teams test creatives is outdated. Creative production is no longer the bottleneck, creative testing is. 

GenAI made it easy to produce more ads. Most teams still test them with a system built for a slower era. 

• They wait 7 days for signals the algorithm gives in 48 hours. 

• They test in cheap geos and trust false winners. 

• They refresh the same motivation until the portfolio gets tired. 

• They 'protect' the algorithm from bad ads it has already judged. 

That's the real issue."

Creative strategy matters but creative testing matters even more.

For studios producing more creative volume than ever thanks to GenAI tools, this is worth sitting with. More ads without a faster, more honest testing process just means more noise, faster.

Andre Kempe (US Channel Expert) - Founder, Admiral Media

Allocate budget to testing channels your competitors haven't found yet

In short: Meta, Google, and TikTok still work, but they're not the whole map anymore. Test the channels your competitors haven't gotten to yet.

Andre Kempe founded Admiral Media in 2019, a performance and creative marketing agency based in Marbella, Spain, that became an official TikTok Marketing Partner in 2024.

Andre's advice is about not treating the big three channels as the ceiling:

UAs should strongly test other UA channels. Of course Meta, Google, and TikTok work, but there are more channels to test. Advertisers and UA teams looking for growth should be testing additional channels like Snapchat and even ChatGPT.

The logic here lines up with something we see across our own client work: channels that are still early in their ad maturity tend to have less competition bidding up your CPMs. That window doesn't stay open forever, which is exactly why it's worth testing now rather than waiting until everyone else has already priced it in.

Günay Aliyeva (Rewarded UA) - Co-Founder, Gamelight

Don't underestimate the power of rewarded UA

In short: don't underestimate the power of rewarded UA, and don't judge it against traditional UA benchmarks. Adoption has outpaced how seriously most studios treat the channel, and the ones judging it by the wrong yardstick end up writing off a channel that's actually working.

Günay Aliyeva is the founder of Gamelight, one of the largest rewarded UA platforms globally. 

Here are the two biggest mistakes, we see studios making in Rewarded UA:

1. The first is simply not taking the channel seriously enough. Rewarded UA has moved a long way past its reputation as a niche offerwall tactic. The sector itself has matured, with more competitors in the mix and partners increasingly moving toward purely rewarded inventory, a shift that reflects a broader move in UA overall toward valuing the quality and behavior of the acquired user rather than just the install itself. Studios that come across the channel for the first time are often hesitant, mainly because their prior UA data comes from traditional sources and the mapping work needed to run rewarded properly looks unfamiliar. But once they see the conversion and retention numbers rewarded actually produces, driven by its focus on long-term engagement rather than a one-off install, it tends to become a permanent part of the mix.

2. The second, related mistake is judging rewarded users by the same yardstick as traditional UA cohorts. Some studios expect rewarded users to look identical to traditional sources from day one, and when they don't, they assume the channel isn't working. Different acquisition channels produce different user journeys. The important question isn't whether a rewarded user behaves exactly like a paid UA user in the first few days, it's whether they become engaged, retained, and valuable over time. Studios that focus too narrowly on comparing early metrics miss the bigger picture, and that expectation gap usually traces back to the setup itself, most often a progression event that's mapped too rarely and leaves too much dead time between rewards.

The studios getting the most out of rewarded UA share a trait: they trust their partner's event adjustments early rather than second-guessing them against a traditional UA framework that was never built to judge this channel in the first place.

Checklist: putting this advice into practice

☑ If you're considering UA funding, ask for the IRR on the deal, not just the headline interest rate (Janette D'Alessio, Plan A Games)

☑ Build a backup plan for underperforming campaigns before you launch, not after day 14 (David Vargas Montiel)

☑ Audit your creative testing cycle length against how fast your ad platforms actually deliver signal (Peter Fodor, AppAgent)

☑ Treat your store page as a live channel, not a launch deliverable. Test the icon, refresh screenshots after major updates, and revisit keywords regularly (María de la Puente, Hubapps)

☑ Allocate a small test budget to at least one channel outside Meta, Google, and TikTok this quarter (Andre Kempe, Admiral Media)

☑ If testing rewarded UA, don't benchmark against traditional UA channels (Günay Aliyeva, Gamelight)

FAQ

Who are the best UA experts to follow in mobile gaming and apps?

There isn't a single definitive list, since UA spans several distinct disciplines. But experts worth following include María de la Puente on UA scaling, Janette D'Alessio on UA funding, David Vargas Montiel on UA campaign management, Peter Fodor on creative testing, Andre Kempe on channel strategy, and Oli Camilleri on rewarded UA. Each covers a different part of the discipline, so the most useful approach is following people who specialize in the specific area a studio needs help with.

What is the most important UA advice for studios?

No single piece of advice covers everything, but a few themes come up repeatedly among top UA experts: understand the real cost of any capital used to scale, build backup plans before a campaign underperforms rather than after, treat creative testing speed as seriously as creative production, keep the store page maintained as an ongoing channel rather than a launch task, test channels beyond the big three, and don't underestimate what rewarded UA can deliver when it's properly committed to and judged on its own terms.

How can a studio apply advice from multiple UA experts without conflicting priorities?

Most of this advice addresses different stages of the UA funnel rather than competing with each other. Funding decisions, campaign management mindset, creative testing speed, store page maintenance, channel selection, and rewarded UA setup can all be worked on in parallel, since they rarely pull a strategy in opposite directions.

This article compiles advice shared publicly by each expert. If you want to go deeper on any of these topics, UA funding, creative testing, or channel diversification, get in touch with our team.