RESOURCES

Q&A with Silvia Albasini- Chief Operating Officer at GameChangerSF

Sep 24, 2019
By: Marissa Camilli

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Silva Albasini is the Chief Operating Officer at GameChangerSF. She has been with the company for nearly 5 years and leads the UA and creative services departments. Her team works with different clients and apps, mostly in the gaming category.

How long have you been working in Digital Marketing and what do you like most about your job?

I’ve been working in Digital Marketing for over 15 years now. I have started with online banner advertising and for the last 6+ years have specialized in mobile growth & mobile app user acquisition.

What advice would you share with someone looking to enter the digital marketing field?  

Find a mentor who can invest time in your growth and focus on your analytical skills. Don’t rule out joining smaller innovative companies like GameChangersSF where you learn fast and work with the best app developers on one of the leading growth teams in the industry.

What type of position would you recommend a new marketer to look into if their ultimate goal is to become a well-rounded Director of Growth or User Acquisition?

I think the role itself will differentiate based on if they join an agency, developer or if they enter from an SAP point of view. One important aspect to consider is the size of the company. When joining a large company a job can become very specific and kind of repetitive on a day to day basis. If there is an opportunity to join a slightly smaller developer or agency it can actually give someone the opportunity to learn more and be exposed to the entire UA lifecycle. Giving the person a better understanding of the full user acquisition and growth world. 

Just as an example we are a small agency but we have people that specialize on Facebook, media, or on Google. When I started working at GameChanger I was pretty much employee number one, after the co-founder. So I had the opportunity to work on Facebook, Media, and DSPs.  This gave me insight into the full differentiation between the different networks and the capabilities of the market. I had full visibility of how the market was changing (very quickly) and where the differences lay. 

I think flexibility and allowing employees to learn as much as possible is really important. There are so many differences and so many things are changing quickly that being limited to one role might not be the best solution. If someone is curious and wants to learn a lot, a small company might be the best choice for them.

When it comes to user acquisition and engagement, what challenges do you face?

We are always trying to balance scale and quality and helping our partners succeed with every title they launch – we never want to spend any money that isn’t ROAS positive and we want them to be as successful as they can be!

What strategies have you implemented to overcome those challenges?

One investment we’ve really seen pay off is investing in creative and creative innovation – its really the biggest thing that differentiates a campaign and grows performance. 

Can you talk more about how you’ve used creative innovation to overcome challenges?

Creative service is part of the GameChangerSF agency. These days a lot of UA is driven by AI and UA managers not only need to be creative but they also need their creative to be impactful. Creatives that advertisers were making a 1.5-2 years ago are no longer enough in terms of quantity or variety. One approach we have for creative is the ongoing iteration of creatives. We make several versions and see what works. We are continuously iterating to make the creative better and better, and we base all our decisions on data.

Where do you see the mobile marketing industry heading next?

More AI and less human input – I’m interested to see where the intersection of AI and growth creative takes us I think the possibilities combined with tech like AR will be very interesting to see.

Do you see a lot of apps starting to adopt AR technology?

I think the level of interaction a user can have with an app when AR is in place and integrated is a completely different level. Pokemon Go opened the world up to AR games and I think AR will be used more and more not just by the developer but also by the advertising world.

What conferences or trade shows that you would recommend other Digital Marketers attend?

MAU and GDC San Francisco are currently the most relevant conferences for me, in terms of content and industry people to meet.

What should UA or Growth marketers who plan to attend GDC or MAU check out during the conference?

I would suggest seeking out anyone that is leading the market and see if they have a booth/sessions. While we were building our creative services team a few years ago there were a lot of sessions about the topic and how some of the big developers were approaching creative. It was really informative to see the different points of view from different types of games and developers. 

Aside from the larger sessions that are held by companies like Uber, Lyft or bigger gaming developers, there are a lot of smaller sessions about UA that can be really interesting.



A full-service mobile marketing and data science agency, founded in 2012.

Marissa Camilli
By Marissa Camilli
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