Interview with Peter Fodor from AppAgent - Applause 2018 Skip to main content

Interview with Peter Fodor from AppAgent

Peter Fodor is the Founder an CEO of AppAgent, mobile marketing experts for hire helping companies such as Wooga or Malwarebytes with strategy, data, creatives and user acquisition. Peter started in mobile in 2011 when he co-founded Flow Studio Games. He blogs about mobile marketing at blog.appagent.co

Read the full interview and find out more about Peter Fodor šŸ˜‰
Peter Fodor

Quick quiz Peter Fodor – AppAgent

Do you want to know more about Peter? Keep on reading and don’t miss the chance to attend Applause 2018!

1. How and when did you arrive to the mobile industry? Why did you decide to stay and work on this sector?

Back in 2011, I got terribly tired of the advertising business and made a crazy career change. At the age of 30, with a child on the way coming in 3 months, I decided to quit my job and co-found a gaming studio to follow my passion for games as well as building things. Weā€™ve reached 8M downloads, created 12 apps and learned a lot. Later, I combined both “careers” and founded AppAgent ā€“ mobile marketing experts for hire – where I enjoy the strong business focus but still being close to the product.

2. What project are you working on now?

My mission is to help companies grow in mobile and therefore the main ā€œprojectā€ is to build the best mobile marketing team in the world. Itā€™s incredibly ambitious and weā€™re definitely not there yet but we work hard every single day to become better at marketing strategy, ASO, UA, data, growth hacking, etc. Right now, our main focus is on marketing analytics as we see it as the only way to help our clients compete with market leaders.

3. What problem do you face in your everyday as an app marketer?

Things which worked yesterday donā€™t work today. Itā€™s a constantly changing battleground. Just to name few ā€œtrendsā€ for this year: playable ads, GDPR, the rise of Snapchat for UA, Appleā€™s traffic attributionā€¦ Everyone is trying to grow but the overall size of the market, mostly in terms of monetization, isnā€™t infinitely expanding. This requires deep industry knowledge, more complex marketing tactics and intense testing of new growth opportunities as existing ones fade with performance over time.

4. What is the best option to monetize a mobile app?

It highly depends on the product itself, so thereā€™s no universal answer here. The best monetization is about providing the best value. People are willing to pay insane amounts of money if they get what they want in return. Sometimes itā€™s through in-apps, other times through subscriptions while some apps work best as premium ones. We have clients from all categories and I really see how diverse monetization strategies work on different target audiences.

5. What advice would you give to a company or startup before launching a mobile app?

To be brutally honest to yourself about the uniqueness of the product and its quality. Marketing wonā€™t save you if the product isnā€™t excellent, period. Also, think of the business, not the app itself. By business, I mean how you communicate the value, how much it can realistically generate revenue, if youā€™re leveraging the data to further improve the product and marketing etc.. Itā€™s an incredibly complex thing and leaders in your category are light years ahead so it is better to have an awesome product and a strong business mindset.

6. What are the biggest challenges facing the mobile app industry?

Currently itā€™s GDPR as it has a direct impact on the way how we work with the data. My main concern is the lack of details in the regulation and that every national Office for Personal Data Protection can interpret details in slightly different way.

7. How do you keep up to date with all the news in the app marketing industry? What sources do you consult?

Mobile Dev Memo and ASO Stack communities on Slack with tweets by Thomas Petit are all you need ā˜ŗ Just joking but these sources will realistically cover 80% of the important news and trends. Then I enjoy longer reads by Sean Ellis, Brian Balfour or Andy Carvell who always challenges my way of thinking and doing mobile marketing.

8. What will you talk about at Applause 2018? Why should the attendees not miss your workshop?

Hopefully I wonā€™t talk much as the plan is to mostly question my friend Antti Paikkala about media planning for a global launch. We will discuss how the acquisition evolves from the plan on a paper, over the soft launch phase to a global launch. Antti spent years at Rovio as a UA manager and now is in a smaller team at Small Giant Games. These two different experiences are why Iā€™m so happy he will come to Applause and will share his thoughts with others.

9. To finish, what apps or games have surprised you in the last year?

Last year in mobile? Thatā€™s like 10 years in someoneā€™s personal life! Iā€™m surprised by the rise of the battle royale genre in games and meditation tools in apps recently. Also, I truly admire how Match keeps Tinder in the top grossing apps, the same for King and Candy Crush or Supercell and Clash Royale/Clash of Clans. Itā€™s incredible how theyā€™re able to defend top positions in such aggressive and competitive space where thousands of publishers strive for the throne, itā€™s a true mastery!

See you on Friday 1st of June at Applause 2018!

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Daniel PM

Author Daniel PM

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