Appi Camper is an interview series that shines a spotlight on today's mobile elite, showcasing their expertise and knowledge. Growth leaders share trends, strategies to navigate the current market, tips to overcome present challenges, and how they approach these impacts to successfully emerge as an Appi Camper.
Spotlight with Andrew Grillo
Andrew Grillo has been working in the mobile industry for over 6 years, working in AdTech for over 4 years. After living in California, working with gaming and e-commerce clients, Andrew moved to NYC to lead the User Acquisition Marketing team at the Mosaic Group, an IAC company.
Andrew has been focused on cracking down on mobile marketing fraud, working with clients, products, and partners to align and define what fraud is in the ever-changing space.
What are the trends you are seeing during this time? Any notable effects or strategies you can share?
Since COVID-19 and the global lockdown, we have been seeing overall CPMs in our marketing campaigns decrease from larger advertisers pulling their budgets. Across the Mosaic Group, I work with a variety of apps, from utility apps, spam call blocker apps, to at-home workout app Daily Burn. We have been able to spend on this and scale our marketing campaigns more efficiently, especially with Daily Burn.
On Daily Burn specifically, since gyms have closed, we have seen search queries like "gym closed" or "workouts at home" spike starting on March 15th. Both of our organic and paid install and trial volume, from the website, grew exponentially from this. It has allowed us to dive into some more "branding-type" initiatives, including both linear-TV and OTT. Since most of the larger advertisers (like movies) are not able to buy on TV, rates here have also decreased by more than 40%! This allows smaller advertisers like us to be able to spend here and see performance improvements.
What are some of the challenges of mobile marketing during this time?
The biggest challenge we saw initially was the uncertainty of our longer-term performance. Our products are subscription-based, so while we were seeing upper funnel metrics like install and free trials grow, our question was: what will the long-term retention curves look like?
Initially, we had believed that these users would not follow "normal" behavior, so there was uncertainty with how long a user would stay on and subscribe for. As we are starting to see some states and countries open up, thankfully we have not seen a huge impact in our retention and LTV. But, we still need to keep a close eye on this for the next few months.
How are you adjusting to working as a remote team? Are there any tips you can share about how to make it work?
Most of my team currently is already remote and living outside of the NYC area, so working from home has not had a huge impact on my day-to-day :). We use zoom video calls for all of our meetings, and try to stay in contact and have check-ins each day. Setting a routine is the most important part of working remotely effectively. Try not to wake up five minutes before your first meeting!
What are you doing to stay positive and balanced while working remotely?
Setting a routine both inside and outside of work has really helped. Even though you cannot travel or visit friends during this time, being outside, going on remote hikes, and working out more regularly has really helped. Having video chats with friends and family is also really great - even if you cannot see them in-person at this time, seeing faces of the people you love on a regular basis on the screen really helps!
