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  • two & a half gamers

    🧠 CloudX just hit 10-20% Revenue Lifts in 90 Days: The First AI-Native Ad stack for publishers

    18/05/2026 | 35 min
    The first AI-native programmatic stack for mobile publishers is real, and the early numbers are absurd. 10-20% revenue lifts across every publisher they've launched.

    Felix Braberg sits down with Dan Sack — Co-founder of CloudX, formerly MoPub, Twitter, Max, and AppLovin — for round two of their conversation, three months after CloudX went GA in February. The company now works with dozens of publishers, has five bidders fully live, a dozen more integrating, and a 35-person team. The pitch is "monetization as code" — a publisher platform where every setup lives in code and can be operated by humans OR AI agents.

    What's actually working today is the infrastructure
    layer: transparent fees, no competing ad network,
    verified auctions, and integration options that include
    first look, parallel, and standalone. The agentic
    capabilities are coming in Q3 — and that's the part
    that could reshape how publishers operate.

    ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

    ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

    00:00 Cold open — dating app publisher up 14% revenue
    01:19 Round two intros + Dan's torn ACL update
    03:30 What CloudX has shipped since February GA
    04:39 Monetization as code: human + AI agent operated
    07:28 Felix's example: "kill DT for IAP whale cohorts"
    08:43 First look vs parallel vs standalone explained
    14:27 The real reason CloudX delivers 10-20% lifts
    24:14 Felix's pickle: 3 weeks of manual tuning, no AI yet
    32:19 The Q3 automation + intelligence layer roadmap

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    📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS

    — CloudX is delivering consistent 10-20% revenue lifts
    across every publisher launched, regardless of
    integration type (parallel, first look, banners, full
    screen). Dan admits even he didn't expect lifts of
    this magnitude this quickly.

    — "Monetization as code" means your entire setup lives
    in code and can be operated by humans OR AI agents.
    Think Claude Code or Cowork but for ad operations —
    agents that monitor, recommend, and execute on your
    behalf.

    — Three integration types: first look (CloudX gets the
    call first with a floor, clears or passes), parallel
    (both platforms auction simultaneously in silos,
    winners compared), and standalone (CloudX called only
    for specific apps/inventory). Standalone is launching
    in the next few weeks.

    — Banners are NOT dead. CloudX is seeing real lifts
    there too — partly via dynamic price flooring (which
    many SDK networks underprioritize) and partly by
    bringing massive web/CTV banner demand into in-app
    through partnerships with buyers who historically
    ignored the channel.

    — Demand stack today: Meta, Liftoff fully live. Next
    wave (weeks away): Moloco, Pangle, Digital Turbine,
    MobileFuse, Verve. Big omni-channel buyers set for
    Q3. Twenty-plus bidders integrating.

    — Multi-round auctioning is the killer feature. Bidding
    + dynamic flooring + waterfall optimization in a
    single auction system, no hacks needed. Sophisticated
    publishers have been hacking this for years; CloudX
    productized it.

    — The AI agentic vision: dashboard becomes a Claude-Code-style
    conversation — "what's happening, what should I know,
    what's the recommendation, do it." Automation in Q3,
    intelligence layer following. The platform you log
    into shouldn't be a dashboard you operate, it should
    be an agent you direct.

    ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

    🎙️ HOST
    Felix Braberg — Ad Monetization consultant

    🎤 GUEST
    Dan Sack — Co-founder, CloudX (formerly MoPub, Twitter, Max,
    AppLovin)
    https://www.linkedin.com/in/dansack/

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    💬 Reach out to Dan: [email protected]
    💬 Comment below: would you try a programmatic stack that runs on AI agents?
    👍 Like the video if you learned something
    🔔 Subscribe for more deep-dive analysis

    #mobilegaming #admonetization #cloudx #mediation
    #programmaticads #aiads #f2p
  • two & a half gamers

    🚨📢 BREAKING NEWS: Royal Kingdom Adds Ads, Playtika Exits Social Casino, Mistplay Buys Mychips

    15/05/2026 | 11 min
    Dream Games swore they would never add ads to Royal Match
    or Royal Kingdom. In February 2026, they quietly did it.
    Here's the proof — and what it means for the rest of the
    industry.

    Felix Braberg flies solo this week to break down the three
    biggest stories in mobile gaming: Playtika officially
    walking away from social casino to chase Disney Solitaire
    (with D2C revenue now at 62% of their IAP), Mistplay's
    acquisition of Mychips as the rewarded UA M&A wave begins,
    and the most interesting story of the week — Dream Games
    caught adding ads to Royal Kingdom via Wayback Machine
    forensics, generating an estimated $170-190K/day in
    interstitial and rewarded revenue while 6x'ing downloads
    in markets like Brazil.

    If Dream Games breaks, Playrix is next.

    ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

    ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

    00:00 Cold open — Royal Kingdom's $190K/day ad revenue
    01:25 Playtika exits social casino, casual is now 76% of business
    03:10 The D2C dark pool — Playtika now at 62% off-platform
    04:45 Mistplay acquires Mychips — the rewarded UA M&A wave
    07:00 Royal Kingdom's secret ads — Wayback Machine forensics
    08:30 The Brazil test — 25K to 150K downloads/day, IAP also up
    09:30 Top charts wrap — Magic Sword, Grand Games, Monopoly Go

    ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

    📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS

    — Playtika is officially out of social casino. Casual games
    are now 76% of business per CEO Robert Antokol; Slotomania,
    Bingo Blitz, and World Series of Poker are in "managed
    decline." The legacy social casino CPIs are too high for
    the return profile to justify the spend anymore.

    — D2C is the real story underneath. Playtika's D2C revenue
    is now 62% of IAP, up from 42% the last quarter they
    reported. They're one of the few public companies in
    mobile that discloses this, and the trend is the litmus
    test for how much IAP revenue is now invisible in Sensor
    Tower's "official" charts.

    — Mistplay just acquired Mychips (a Math subsidiary).
    Rewarded UA is consolidating fast — Felix estimates 14-25
    players have meaningful revenue right now, and this is
    the first of many acquisitions coming. Watch Agio, Mistplay,
    and similar platforms make moves.

    — Dream Games quietly added ads to Royal Kingdom in February
    2026. Detected via Wayback Machine showing their app-ads.txt
    file expanded, plus user reviews complaining about
    unskippable ads. This contradicts years of public brand
    positioning around "premium IAP, no ads."

    — The numbers explain why they broke: Royal Kingdom went
    from 100-300K daily downloads to 600K. Brazil went from
    25K to 150K downloads/day. Brazil IAP also went from
    $12K/day to $17K/day — IAP revenue grew alongside ads,
    not in spite of them. Estimated incremental ad revenue:
    20% lift, or $170-190K/day.

    — The mechanism is AppLovin blended ROAS campaigns —
    targeting users for both IAP purchases AND ad watches in
    a single campaign. This is the new playbook, and it
    works because ads done right widen the funnel without
    cannibalizing IAP.

    — Playrix is next. Dream Games breaking the "no ads"
    posture is the canary in the coal mine. The big
    IAP-only studios that have publicly resisted ads will
    start looking at Dream's numbers and folding.

    ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

    🎙️ HOST
    Felix Braberg — Ad Monetization consultant

    🙏 SPONSOR
    This episode is brought to you by FastSpring — the no-drama
    D2C partner scaling with mobile publishers for 20+ years.
    Visit fastspring.gg to set up your web store today.

    ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

    💬 Comment below: which "no ads" studio breaks next?
    👍 Like the video if you learned something
    🔔 Subscribe for the next weekly news drop

    #mobilegaming #useracquisition #admonetization #royalmatch
    #dreamgames #playtika #mistplay #f2p
  • two & a half gamers

    The Mistplay Audience Network: Smartest UA Expansion of 2026! 3X reach, same quality

    14/05/2026 | 36 min
    Rewarded UA used to be a test bed. In 2026, it's a third of your UA spend. Mistplay just made it easier to scale.

    We sit down with the full Mistplay leadership team — Tricia (CEO), Aaron (CCO), and Mark "Bear" Bearman (GM, B2B) — to unpack the launch of the
    Mistplay Audience Network. The conversation covers the state of rewarded UA in 2026, validating rewarded as a core channel, why the category is consolidating, what the MyAppFree acquisition actually unlocks for advertisers, and how the audience network expands Mistplay reach to MyAppFree and Connected Rewards inventory with a single check-box.

    If you've been treating rewarded UA as a tactical add-on rather than a core part of your stack, this episode is the wake-up call.

    ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

    00:00 Cold open — what the audience network means for UA
    01:33 Welcome + guest intros (Tricia, Aaron, Bear)
    02:55 The state of rewarded UA in 2026
    06:23 Survey data: rewarded UA at 20-30% of budgets
    07:29 The scale-vs-performance tension and the "patient path"
    13:17 What the audience network actually is, in plain English
    17:51 Brand budgets and the value-exchange opportunity
    23:00 The "tick a box" advertiser experience explained
    30:31 Where rewarded UA goes next — discovery + retention

    📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS

    — AppsFlyer's 2025 Performance Index validates what UA
    managers already see in their dashboards: roughly one
    third of the top UA sources are now rewarded. Three to
    four years ago, rewarded was 1-3% of spend; today it's
    6-10% average and climbing.

    — Matej's own UA survey: rewarded UA is now 20-30% of
    budget for most respondents, and 80% are planning to
    increase it further next year. That makes it core, not
    tactical.

    — The Mistplay Audience Network = one campaign, three
    inventory sources. The same Mistplay buying engine now
    extends to MyAppFree and Connected Rewards (Mobvista)
    inventory with a literal check-box. Tricia's framing:
    "same key, more doors."

    — Why MyAppFree matters specifically: brand advertisers
    finally want value-exchange placements (not just gamers),
    which means a third inventory stream that wasn't
    monetizable through gaming alone. This is genuinely new.

    — The performance-quality bar isn't being lowered to add
    scale. Mark Bearman: a high-quality DAU/MAU ratio and
    engagement filter still applies; the audience network
    expands reach without compromising the cohort signal.

    — Rewarded UA consolidation is real and rapid. Three to
    five years ago, every studio was launching a rewarded
    platform; now the market is consolidating around the
    platforms with sustainable foundations. Tricia's
    intentional framing: "platforms our partners can count
    on for trusted ROAS delivery."

    — Future direction: Mistplay is shifting from a closed
    loyalty platform to a UA layer that handles discovery,
    acquisition, AND retention as a continuous loop. The
    audience network is the first piece of that vision.

    ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

    🎙️ HOSTS
    Matej Lančarič — User Acquisition consultant
    Felix Braberg — Ad Monetization consultant

    🎤 GUESTS
    Tricia — CEO, Mistplay
    https://www.linkedin.com/in/tricia-han-920649/
    Aaron — Chief Commercial Officer, Mistplay
    https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronthandi/
    Mark "Bear" Bearman — GM, B2B Solutions, Mistplay
    https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwbearman13/
    ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
    #mobilegaming #useracquisition #rewarded #mistplay
    #liveops #f2p

    ---------------------------------------
    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.
    Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠
  • two & a half gamers

    🧠 MVP UA template AXON: How to set up your Applovin for Success by Matej Lancaric

    13/05/2026 | 26 min
    The AppLovin setup playbook. No micromanaging, no manual optimization, no bullshit. UA template for you! Applovin UA explained!

    Solo for episode three of the MVP UA Template series (after Facebook and Google), this time breaking down AppLovin / Axon end-to-end. Tracking setup, campaign structure, bidding, ROAS targets, the new CPM-vs-CPI billing change, creative strategy, the real Axon dashboard with real numbers from his own game, and the patience required to actually scale.

    The headline lesson: AppLovin is a beast, but it really matters what you feed it. Garbage MMP signals = garbage results. Playables aren't optional. And the geo-bucket strategy that works on Facebook and Google does NOT work here — worldwide campaign with geo targets is the only sensible setup.

    If you've been avoiding AppLovin because it feels like a black box, this is the episode that demystifies it.

    ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

    00:00 Axon dashboard preview
    02:20 Why AppLovin and what this episode covers
    04:14 Budget, MMP signals, and the "garbage in, garbage out" rule
    07:42 Worldwide campaign + geo targets (NOT geo buckets)
    10:58 D7 vs D28 ROAS — which attribution window to pick
    12:57 CPM vs CPI billing — the new setting most teams miss
    14:40 Creative strategy: 80% playables, 60 new per month
    17:59 Push budgets hard when something works (30-50%)

    ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

    📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS

    — AppLovin is not Facebook and not Google. The geo-bucket
    structure (US / Tier-1 / RoW) that works on those
    channels does NOT work here. Run ONE worldwide campaign,
    split by attribution window and platform only, and use
    geo-level ROAS targets to steer traffic — never geo-level
    budgets (they don't work the way you think).

    — Garbage MMP signals = garbage results. AppLovin doesn't
    know if you're sending the right event. If you're sending
    free trial signals labeled as subscriptions, AppLovin will
    optimize for free trials and your ROAS will look great in
    Singular while your real revenue dies.

    — Skip the CPI / D7 warm-up phase. AppLovin no longer
    requires it. Go straight to D7 or D28 ROAS, ideally D28
    for higher quality and longer-cohort optimization. Pick
    D7 only if your payback period is short and cash flow
    matters more than cohort quality.

    — New CPM vs CPI billing setting: start with CPM (spends
    evenly across the day), then switch to CPI only after
    you have winning creatives identified and want to scale
    aggressively. CPM billing eliminates the old "budget
    capped in 2 hours" problem.

    — Playables are non-negotiable. 80-90% of spend should go
    to playables. Top-grossing games ship 60+ new playables
    per month — that's the bar. Video length: 30-60 seconds,
    best results in the 45-59 second window. No hook needed
    on AppLovin (user must watch 30+ seconds anyway).

    This episode is brought to you by Potensus — the premium
    ad network with direct deals to Amazon, Apple, Coca-Cola,
    and Vodafone (no programmatic middlemen), partnered with
    PlayableMaker for native gaming creative formats.
    Head to potensus.com to get started.

    📌 MVP UA TEMPLATE SERIES
    1. Facebook setup
    2. Google setup
    3. AppLovin setup - you are here

    Full AppLovin setup guide linked in show notes.

    #mobilegaming #useracquisition #applovin #axon #mvpua
    #liveops #f2p

    Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA

    Matej Lancaric
    User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant
    ⁠https://lancaric.me

    ---------------------------------------
    Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!
    Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!
    Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]
  • two & a half gamers

    🌺​Cozy Florist Deep Dive: 4,000 AI-Generated creatives in 30 Days

    11/05/2026 | 32 min
    A Chinese-developed Farmville replacement just shipped 4,000 AI-generated creatives in 30 days. And it's only making $30K/day. What's actually going on?

    We dig into Cozy Florist by Rift Sky Games — the Western counterpart to
    "My Garden Tale," which is already doing $10M/month in China. The game is a remarkably polished Farmville without the annoying resource puzzle, with stacked cores including flower-merging mechanics, Solitaire-association customer orders, gacha-style flower rarities, social raids, and
    TikTok Live integration baked into the metagame.

    But the puzzle is the creative volume. 4,000 ads in 30 days
    is Forex-scale UA output. The game is testing primarily in
    Philippines despite being released globally in December.
    And the revenue isn't moving in proportion. The hosts spend
    half the episode trying to figure out what's happening —
    and the conclusion they land on is uncomfortable for Western
    UA: this is what "second generation" Chinese UA looks like,
    and the West isn't ready.

    ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

    ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

    00:00 What's going on
    02:55 Cozy Florist walkthrough — Chinese fonts, sad-story onboarding
    05:21 Stacked cores — flower merging, Solitaire customers, gacha
    13:00 TikTok Live integration baked into the metagame
    16:44 Revenue reality — 90% China, 2% US, $30K/day
    21:31 4,000 AI creatives in 30 days — Forex-scale output
    25:21 Why this game isn't soft-launching like a Western game
    27:55 The "second generation UA" gap Chinese studios are opening

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    ---------------------------------------
    For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.
    Our sponsor FastSpring:
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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.
    Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠

    Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA

    ---------------------------------------
    Matej Lancaric
    User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant
    ⁠https://lancaric.me
    Felix Braberg
    Ad monetization consultant
    ⁠https://www.felixbraberg.com
    Jakub Remiar
    Game design consultant
    ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar
    ---------------------------------------
    Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!
    Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!
    Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]
    ---------------------------------------
    If you are interested in getting UA tips every week on Monday, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠lancaric.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & sign up for the Brutally Honest newsletter by Matej Lancaric
    Do you have UA questions nobody can answer? Ask ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Matej AI⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - the First UA AI in the gaming industry! https://lancaric.me/matej-ai
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À propos de two & a half gamers
This is a no BS gaming podcast. We share insights, knowledge and fun gossip relating to the topics of User Acquisition, Game Design and Ad monetisation. You will find here actionable insights in a fun and relaxed atmosphere. A safe space where we mimic the honesty of a 4am conference discussion. Enjoy & let us know your feedback!
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