Milan, for those who don’t know you yet, can you give a quick intro to yourself and your podcast, Pixel Papas?
First and foremost, I’m a dad.
Professionally, I’ve been in mobile games marketing for 7 years. I started as a User Acquisition Manager and later became a Growth Director.
In 2024, I co-founded AdSpawn, a platform for creating mobile game ads. In 2025, I also co-founded Pixel Papas, a podcast to share the know-how with industry experts.
What inspired you and your co-host to start a podcast together?
People in real life often told us that we should share our expertise publicly.
At first, we ignored them. As marketers, we know that making good content takes time and effort. But eventually we thought, “Why not give it a try?”.
And yes, it is hard, especially if you want to stand out. Not to mention doing it while being new parents and running a startup!
You’ve been recording for over half a year now, with 14 episodes already out and a steady audience building. Looking back, is there one episode that really stood out, either for your listeners or for you personally?
For me, it’s Episode 8 with Rau Dosymbetov, Creative Lead at Nexters, which is known for a game called Hero Wars. Their wild ad approaches always baffled me, and it was great to spend 30 minutes with him, digging into the strategy behind the scenes.
In one of your recent episodes, you and your co-host talked about common UA setup mistakes. From your perspective, if we look more generally at UA, what’s the mistake you still see people making the most?
Testing creatives the wrong way. There’s no single method that works for every game, which makes it tough to get right. But doing it wrong comes with enormous costs: wasted production, wasted ad spend, missed scaling opportunities, and misleading learnings.
On the flip side, where do you see the biggest opportunities for UA right now?
Rewarded UA channels. There are so many out there, and you just have to test and see which ones fit your game.
Since you started the podcast to open up more conversations around UA, where do you think there’s the biggest gap between what UA pros are talking about and what they should be talking about?
There’s a lot of talk about the biggest games and the trends they set. In reality, there’s so much behind the scenes that we don’t know. Even if a game reports 7-figure monthly revenue, we have no idea if it’s actually profitable or what its real goals are.
I’d love to see more pros openly talk about what they tested that didn’t work, their failures and their learnings.
What’s a lesson you’ve learned in UA that you wish you had known earlier in your career?
Not everything is about ROAS. Many times, the things you learn are more important.
A few years ago, I worked on a top-grossing title where I managed a $5 million monthly budget on Meta. In every cohort, ROAS would hit 30% and then stop growing. I was really nervous because I was transparent from day one, but the client’s response was always, “It’s okay, just continue.”
After three months, I realized that $5 million was pocket money for them. What they really wanted were insights that could drive product changes.
Since then, I’ve always tried to dig deep to figure out what the real short-term goal is …and most of the time, it’s not ROAS at all.
Looking ahead, what excites you most about the future of UA and mobile games?
Engaging and creative ads. We’re slowly moving from the sloppy AI-ad era into one of high-quality AI ads. Creatives are more important than ever.
I believe mobile game ads will move toward being more brand-oriented, focusing on long-term returns.
Thank you for all your interesting insights so far! To wrap up the interview, if you could invite any guest to Pixel Papas, who would be your dream guest, and what would you discuss?
The people behind the marketing of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft. At the time, it was the biggest online game, and I played it a lot.
The trailer for that expansion is still the best game trailer of all time. I get goosebumps watching it even after 100 views. I’d love to know what it was like to work in digital marketing on such a huge game at that moment.
