Omer Gerzon
Omer: head of performance teams at Playtika-style studio Play Studios
Where to hear and read about Omer Gerzon1 episode or test
Omer Gerzon works on mobile gaming performance at Play Studios, where his team handles measurement after Apple's privacy changes. The most useful lesson from him is to design your SKAN conversion schema deliberately, because measurement became harder than budget.
the key to success with scan is work on on your schemas
How the Gaming Ecosystem is Approaching Growth in 2023
Omer Gerzon: the story and the lessons
1Omer Gerzon on building SKAN schemas
Gerzon's team spent months tuning its SKAN schemas. With no user-level data, reporting has to be built from aggregated points. Play Studios spent months optimizing its schemas to measure performance better.
He calls schemas the key to success with SKAN. Budget allocation within iOS changed only a little, while measurement changed most.
A schema packs player behavior into a small signal. A schema can track buckets of revenue, different events and different user levels. Some teams use binary coding to fit more into the limited signal.
Gerzon says you are a bit blind in how you build it. SKAN covers only the first 24 to 48 hours, a poor fit for games that optimize for long-term returns.
Gerzon is less excited about SKAN 4.0 than his peers. SKAN 4.0 adds a window in the first 72 hours and another after a week, and few publishers and advertisers have fully switched.
Everyone on the panel agreed measurement will not go back to how it was.
He sends budget to wherever the return is best. Gerzon says not every ad network moved well into SKAN, so money follows return on investment.
Teams now switch budget between networks and channels much faster than before, and test new channels that adapt quickly to SKAN.
2How Gerzon handles brand and non-direct channels
Play Studios uses top-down measurement only where bottom-up data is weak. The team does not run media mix modeling at the moment. It measures incrementality for branding and offline activities.
Influencer marketing is harder to measure and needs honest uplift readings.
Gerzon treats CTV as a marathon, not a sprint. His team tested CTV and found it hard to measure, because there are no directly attributed clicks or installs to judge it by.
His lesson is to keep campaigns running to build momentum even when users show no direct reaction. Smaller companies struggle to sustain that spend, and how to build it up over time is still open.
3Referrals and social features at Play Studios
Pop Slots lets players invite others to play together. Referrals are tracked through links built into the game. Players invite friends over WhatsApp or the phone's share sheet.
Some games use deep linking on these invites. SMS has not been tried.
How the Gaming Ecosystem is Approaching Growth in 2023
Three mobile gaming growth leaders explain how they handle SKAN, measurement across MMP, SKAN and MMM, Apple Search Ads, Google UA and organic channels after ATT. Their practical takeaways include treating SKAN as the source of truth, investing steadily in non-direct-response channels, and building ads around the classic hook, gameplay, call to action structure.
Gerzon's team spent months tuning its SKAN schemas. With no user-level data, reporting has to be built from aggregated points. Play Studios spent months optimizing its schemas to measure performance better.
He calls schemas the key to success with SKAN. Budget allocation within iOS changed only a little, while measurement changed most.
A schema packs player behavior into a small signal. A schema can track buckets of revenue, different events and different user levels. Some teams use binary coding to fit more into the limited signal.
Gerzon says you are a bit blind in how you build it. SKAN covers only the first 24 to 48 hours, a poor fit for games that optimize for long-term returns.
Gerzon is less excited about SKAN 4.0 than his peers. SKAN 4.0 adds a window in the first 72 hours and another after a week, and few publishers and advertisers have fully switched.
Everyone on the panel agreed measurement will not go back to how it was.
He sends budget to wherever the return is best. Gerzon says not every ad network moved well into SKAN, so money follows return on investment.
Teams now switch budget between networks and channels much faster than before, and test new channels that adapt quickly to SKAN.
Play Studios uses top-down measurement only where bottom-up data is weak. The team does not run media mix modeling at the moment. It measures incrementality for branding and offline activities.
Influencer marketing is harder to measure and needs honest uplift readings.
Gerzon treats CTV as a marathon, not a sprint. His team tested CTV and found it hard to measure, because there are no directly attributed clicks or installs to judge it by.
His lesson is to keep campaigns running to build momentum even when users show no direct reaction. Smaller companies struggle to sustain that spend, and how to build it up over time is still open.
Pop Slots lets players invite others to play together. Referrals are tracked through links built into the game. Players invite friends over WhatsApp or the phone's share sheet.
Some games use deep linking on these invites. SMS has not been tried.