In the dynamic and competitive realm of mobile user engagement, Influence Mobile distinguishes itself by specializing in connecting brands with high-value customers through incentivized interactions. Through their flagship app Rewarded Play, they’re redefining how brands can forge meaningful connections with consumers, particularly in mobile environments where capturing attention — and keeping it — is both an art and a science. In this partner spotlight, we chatted with Brett Patterson, VP of User Acquisition at Influence Mobile to understand their unique customer acquisition model and explore the value of rewarded advertising formats in a shifting economy.

1. What is your position and what do you do at Influence Mobile?

I am the VP of User Acquisition and I run the UA team here at Influence Mobile.

2. What are some example brands that Influence Mobile works with?

We work with a variety of different brands in gaming, dating, fintech, and entertainment.

3. How does Influence Mobile help brands acquire customers?

Influence Mobile helps brands acquire users through our flagship app Rewarded Play. We use an Incentivized Engagement model to promote a brand’s product or service to a user. Players engage with Rewarded Play to discover new games, and when they do they can earn points and redeem them for gift cards to any number of retailers like Amazon, Target and Walmart.

4. What is the value of rewarded ad formats/advertising? How are users acquired through rewarded play more valuable/unique to others?

Rewarding users to try new apps is a tried and tested method of acquiring users. Users like some form of incentive to try something new and rewarded formats help facilitate this.

Rewarded Play takes incentivization of users 1-2 steps further, providing real rewards while pushing users deeper into our partners apps with multi-reward strategy.

5. Are mobile games the only category that can benefit from rewarded inventory? What other app categories can take advantage of this model?

Gaming companies make up the bulk of our current partners, but we’ve seen success in many other verticals (as mentioned above) and customize our strategy/product to non-gaming clients.

6. Have there been any insights or results from rewarded app-to-app campaigns that consistently surprise your team/your partners?

I am always surprised by how many users are playing/using similar apps. Users who like one thing, are often playing another version of the same genre.

7. What’s your advice for non-gaming apps that want to leverage rewarded inventory to find engaged users?

Test it. You can make some portion of it work if you have a successful product. Between an app like ours or a DSP like Lifestreet, you are able to take advantage of the inventory for incremental scale.

8. What are some best practices for running successful mobile rewarded campaigns?

Know your customer. The faster you can provide targeting, the faster you will find success. TEST, TEST, TEST. Things don’t always work immediately, but through testing, we have found success.

9. How important are effective partnerships to successful mobile rewarded campaigns?

A partnership can be key with any ad partner. They know how to work their system/product. Working with them on a regular basis will help you accelerate your campaigns’ success.

10. How do you expect mobile habits to change in today’s economy? How should advertisers be approaching acquisition to best respond to these shifts?

I believe users’ expendable budgets will continue to tighten (with the economy) and folks will look to rewarded channels to help maintain their gaming behavior.

11. What is a top problem apps need help solving when it comes to user acquisition in today’s digital marketplace?

On iOS, the lack of data from privacy changes is the biggest issue to someone in user acquisition. On Android, too many buyers are only looking at the short term metrics and need to look further into the future to determine success. For example, What does ROAS/Retention look like on D30+ for your campaign?