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Who is Milan Strba, and what is Pixel Papas?
Why did you start a podcast about mobile game UA?
What's the most memorable Pixel Papas episode so far?
What's the biggest mobile UA mistake you still see today?
Where's the biggest opportunity in mobile game user acquisition right now?
What's the biggest gap between what UA pros talk about and what they should be talking about?
What's a lesson you wish you'd learned earlier in your UA career?
What excites you most about the future of UA and mobile games?
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Mobile user acquisition (UA) moves fast, and the playbooks that worked last year rarely hold up as-is today. That's part of why podcasts have become such a valuable format for the industry – they capture the reasoning behind a decision, not just the result, and that context is what actually transfers to your own campaigns.
Milan Strba has spent the last seven years living that shift firsthand, first as a user acquisition manager, then as a growth director, and now as a founder building tools and media for the UA community.
Today, we sit down with him to talk about mobile UA, the creative journey behind his podcast, Pixel Papas, and what it's like to balance it all while being a full-time dad.
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 my UA industry know-how with other industry experts.
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!
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.
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.
Rewarded UA channels. There are so many out there, and you just have to test and see which ones fit your game.
👀 Related reading: Rewarded advertising: The complete guide for mobile marketers
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.
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.
👀 Related reading: Your guide to ROAS optimization in mobile UA
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.
Milan's take ties back to a theme we hear often from UA leaders: the channels and the creative matter, but the willingness to sit with what didn't work is what actually moves the needle.
Conversations like this one are also why we keep coming back to the podcast format. The mistakes, the pivots, and the "it's not actually about ROAS" moments rarely make it into a case study, but they're often the most useful part of the story for anyone building their own UA strategy.
To close things out, we asked Milan who his dream Pixel Papas guest would be: the team behind the marketing for World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King expansion. At the time, it was the biggest online game, and Milan played it constantly. He still gets goosebumps watching the trailer after 100 views, and he'd love to know what it was like working in digital marketing on a game that size at that moment.
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