30 mobile marketing influencers that actually matter

Jayne Peressini

Jayne has been at DraftKings, EA, and Gala Games. She’s now at Dapper Labs growing games, NFTs, and blockchain. Smart, opinionated, unafraid to share, and far too giving of her time for the benefit of others. Great humor, smart hot takes, and a take-no-prisoners attitude.

Superpower: eating snacks while intrepidly dropping knowledge on webinars.

Claire Rozain

Claire is super nice, super sweet, super generous, and super smart. She’s been at Match, led user acquisition at Product Madness, spent time at Gameloft, and is now a UA team lead at Rovio. Translation: she’s been places, and she’s going places.

Superpower: you literally can’t stop listening to her soft French accent while she drops insights on webinars.

Rose Agozzino

Harry Potter has nothing on Rose (yep, she’s got “marketing wizard” in her LinkedIn bio; I didn’t just make it up). She has worked her way up through multiple roles to marketing manager at Ludia, managing user acquisition for games like Jurassic World, Dragons: Rise of Berk, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Superpower: unassuming but deeply knowledgable.

Gabe Kwakyi

There is something super-valuable in people who have seen/built/grown/analyzed mobile user acquisition and mobile marketing at literally dozens if not hundreds of startups and enterprises, and that’s Gabe. Super smart, super analytical, he knows data, ASO, paid acquisition, organic growth … and how to grow his own company. Now with Phiture, growing mobile growth expertise in the U.S.

Superpower: has been there, done that, knows how to do it better in the future.

Thomas Hopkins

Nothing may be certain in life but you are almost guaranteed to enjoy a conversation with Thomas, generally from his home office: an Airstream parked out in the back yard. Thomas is a serial founder and marketing leader. He led UA at RockYou and Rocket Games, managed a Lyft division, ran performance and lifecycle marketing at MasterClass, founded a teach-and-share startup, and is now consulting.

Superpower: has been there, done that, knows how to do it better in the future.

Annica Lin

Annica has humor and chutzpah in equal proportions, and she uses both in conversation, webinars, and work. From marketing intern to VP of growth marketing, Annica has done it all. She’s led marketing at Stash and Thimble, and is now at Sable. And she does it all while running marathons and lifting weights, hopefully not at the same time.

Superpower: she will beat you up, then outrun you … all while teaching you how to do your job better.

Lomit Patel

Best-selling book on AI? Check. 30K followers on LinkedIn? Check. Multiple SVP roles at companies like IMVU and Together Labs? Check. Contributing writer at ClickZ? Check. Clearly this dude has a clone, but both have a sense of humor to go with an insatiable appetite for accomplishment.

Superpower: what, I can only have one?

Drew Frost

Do you need to be with a we-don’t-have-old-fashioned-things-like-offices startup or unicorn gaming company to really, really get it in mobile marketing?

Check out Drew, and the answer is obviously no.

While the rest of us are building million-dollar, maybe even billion-dollar businesses, Drew’s leading product and growth marketing for Sam’s Club, part of the yes-we-do-half-a-trillion-in-revenue-annually Walmart empire.

Superpower: ridiculous amount of brain power. Probably illegal, in fact.

Patrick Stal

Some CMOs can’t wait to do a rebrand. Must have a new logo. Are dreaming of new colors and brand expressions. Patrick’s got the logo and colors (check!) but he’s much more focused on relentlessly attacking the metrics that make his company grow. Formerly at Uber and TomTom, now VP of global marketing at fintech leader N26.

Superpower: focus, focus, focus on the customer.

Jon Hook

Some money is dumb. But Jon has not only been an investor through 5-6 roles, he’s the former chief revenue officer for Homa Games. He’s now at BoomBit and BoomHits, which I can never keep apart but which (I think) basically make mobile games go boom (in a good way, hopefully).

Superpower: knows what makes mobile games explode (this is a good thing).

Thomas Petit

Yet another French mobile growth expert, Thomas lives and works in Mallorca, which is already enough to make anyone insanely jealous. But he’s also super-connected and super-informed, and — like Gabe Kwakyi, has worked on SO. MANY. APPS that he has an amazing sense of what will work and what won’t.

Thomas has an abiding distaste for monopolies and monopolistic power and the way some of the major platforms through their weight around, and runs his own consultancy for seemingly half of the interesting companies in mobile.

Superpower: way more logos in his portfolio of clients than yours.

Matej Lancaric

Budgets in mobile marketing are big, but there are a lot more mobile growth experts who spend $250,000/year than millions. Matej has spent over 25 million Euros for 26 games in just eight years (!!!).

And apparently … that was profitable ad spend. That’s a bit of a wow.

One of the few on this list who I haven’t met or spoken to personally, he’s personally recommended by people I trust. Matej runs his own mobile growth consultancy.

Superpower: clearly, making it rain.

Warren Woodward

Warren’s been in the band. Now he is the band.

Look: I have moderated hundreds of webinars. And let’s be honest … your average expert drones on for about 175% of the time needed to convey his or her idea. Or answers questions better left to a different expert. Warren a) knows his stuff, b) condenses it marvelously, c) delivers it concisely … all while being pleasant and professional.

Warren is the co-founder and chief growth officer at Upptic, but I bet he still jams a bit here and there.

Superpower: clear, concise, information-dense communication.

Ido Naim

Sometimes you chat with someone and you just know immediately … this person gets it. Knows his stuff. Or is an expert in her field.

That’s Ido, times 10.

The amazing thing about Ido, who is a great webinar guest by the way, is that he’s super smart and analytical and data-driven, but also has a massive appreciation for the creative, je-ne-sais-quoi parts of marketing that don’t show up on a spreadsheet or in your BI system but … still make a massive difference.

Superpower: Data and heart.

Seb Joseph

Look, most journalists don’t get marketing or advertising at any deep level. I once spent literally 70 minutes on the phone with an Ad Age reporter who used literally nothing from the interview … because they just couldn’t understand SKAdNetwork.

That is not Seb Joseph.

Seb has written some of the most insightful commentary on privacy and mobile user acquisition that you can find outside of the thinker category (coming below).

Super-smart, he’s been at Marketing Week, The Drum, and is now an editor at Digiday.

Superpower: a brands person who gets tech

Peggy Anne Salz

Okay, I know I’m dating myself with the “rolodex” thing, but in my defense, I never had one either. In any case, if we actually had these things that measured the sizes of our networks, Peggy’s would be massive. No desk could contain it.

I’m biased because I work with Peggy on a bunch of video podcasts, but if there’s someone interesting in mobile or marketing … she probably knows them. Or knows someone who knows them.

Superpower: aggressively but somehow sweetly persistent. If Peggy wants something from you, she’s gonna get it. (Hint: save yourself some trouble, just give it to her right away.)

Shamanth Rao

Shamanth interviews people, obviously, on his Mobile User Acquisition show, but he’s also a good interview when you have him on yours. And Shamanth runs Rocketship HQ, leveraging his experience from Zynga and InMobi and FreshPlanet and multiple other companies to help mobile app companies grow faster.

Superpower: connector, cheerleader, learner, sharer. (Wait, that might be too many.)

Dean Takahashi

Forever known to insiders as Dean the Machine for the frequency with which he churns out 10-story days at GamesBeat and VentureBeat, Dean’s first love is games. That love has led him to often write about the business of games, and how games grow.

Boom: Dean’s in the mobile user acquisition world.

He has appeared in cosplay on-stage at in-person pre-COVID conferences as game characters, and has a very, very big heart. He’s also a pretty bloody good writer and games journalist.

Superpower: words flow from Dean’s fingers like rain in Seattle.

Allison Schiff

The club of clueful mobile marketing journalists is very, very small. But Allison is a charter member. She takes the time to understand, get the real deal, and present it factually and insightfully.

Allison is also a ridiculously nice person (I’m tempted to make her an honorary Canadian) who doesn’t let that innate kindness block her from asking the tough questions and excavating the excrement, metaphorically speaking, when she meets PR-speak obfuscation.

Superpower: actually answers her email. (Allison … how?!?)

Susan Kuo

Exec of a company acquired by Facebook? Yup. Former head of marketing for InMobi? Sure. VP of sales for multiple tech companies? Uh-huh. Founder and COO of a successful marketing measurement company (shhh … it’s Singular) … also check.

Susan is a major connector and benefactor for women in tech, but if you want her insight, you’ll be very lucky to get it on a webinar or at a conference. One on one or more intimate groups is where Susan shares her insight much more frequently.

Superpower: sweating the details and getting it right.

Andrew Chen

300,000+ followers on LinkedIn, one of the most influential newsletters on growth, a new book out on the biggest problem for network effect companies (starting)? Andrew’s got all of that, and more.

He led Uber’s most important growth team, is a partner at the hottest VC over the past decade, Andreessen Horowitz, and one of the most strategic thinkers on growth globally.

Superpower: Big brain, creative thinker, super connected

Eric Seufert

Eric is not evil. (I mean, just look at that smile.)

But like Dr Evil, his tentacles extend everywhere. Founder of MobileDevMemo, the website and Slack channel for mobile growth professionals, Eric sees everything that happens in mobile and growth and analyzes, reports, and consults on it with the wisdom and perspective you’d expect from someone who led growth at Rovio.

Which is why private equity firms hire him to guide their acquisition efforts.

Superpower: Spidey senses triggered by the highest-value collective of mobile growth talent anywhere … all feeding data into a big brain. Plus the ability to aggregate and synthesize that data, and ultimately express the resulting knowledge with clarity.

Alex Bauer

Much like the ancient Roman god Janus who had two faces and could look in all directions, Alex sees a lot. Thanks to his previous roles in consulting and growth, as well as his time as a developer advocate, he’s able to bring a ton of perspective and insight to his current gig as head of product marketing and strategy for Branch.

Then he shares that data generously with all who ask on Slack or in webinars or on LinkedIn.

Superpower: X-ray data.

Andreas Naumann

The monk look is relatively new, but this monk is wired. Andreas has a very deep understanding on inauthentic traffic, fake clicks, fraudulent installs, and everything associated with cheating honest marketers out of their all-too-small budgets.

Currently director of fraud prevention at Adjust, Andreas has been at Glispa, Trademob, and Zanox and — who knew — was a bartender back in the day. (There is a little Friar Tuck to him, no?)

Superpower: Sherlock Holmesian powers of analysis and deduction.

Raja Rajamannar

CMO of Mastercard, huh? It doesn’t get much higher level than that. But Raja is shockingly down-to-earth and easy to talk to … even though he’s not just a super-successful chief marketing officer but also the Wall Street Journal best-selling author of Quantum Marketing.

Not, it’s not about quantum computing. It’s about the next generation of marketing as we are all bombarded by almost two dozen new kinds of technologies that are coming at us.

Superpower: a big heart to go along with all that insight.

Andy Carvell

A lot of people have many claims to fame in mobile marketing. Few are the originators of an iconic image like the mobile growth stack.

And, few can speak as graciously and insightfully as Andy on the mechanics and drivers of mobile user acquisition. Currently co-founder and partner at Phiture — which just expanded to the U.S. — he led growth and retention at SoundCloud, has his MBA, and led product or marketing Infospace, LikedBy, and other companies.

And, like Eric Seufert, he’s got dev chops too, with prior roles in game development.

Superpower: Synthesizing data into insight.

Offer Yehudai

Besides having the perfect name for a marketer, Offer has been embedded in mobile marketing for so long and with such great vantage points, he sees moves before they happen. Consolidation is accelerating in mobile adtech; he’s been doing that since 2017. From selling Inneractive (congrats on screwing up the world’s spellcheckers, Offer) to Fyber and then Fyber to Digital Turbine and becoming CMO of DT; Offer’s had a front-row seat on the evolution of adtech. And he hasn’t been sitting on the bench.

Superpower: just a little bit faster than you at picking up trends.

Gadi Eliashiv

How many CEOs still code in Python? Or contribute code to their company’s innovation efforts? Or code for fun? Answer: not many. But there is something special about companies with engineers as CEOs (perhaps Elon Musk is the best example). Gadi sees the machinations of perhaps the most technical vertical in business from a global all the way down to atomic scale, resulting in insights others can’t see and pivots in strategy, when necessary, on the proverbial dime.

If the best way to predict the future is to invent it, Gadi’s got a leg up on the competition.

Superpower: understanding adtech like a mechanic understands cars. Except with the ability to also drive one like Max Verstappen.

Abhay Singhal

Robert Frost saw two roads, took the least traveled one, and that made all the difference. Abhay has done something similar, helping cofound InMobi in 2006 and growing it in all kinds of unique and interesting ways in the 15 years since. An ad network with products for telcos? An ad network with a marketing cloud? An ad network that has grown as fast and as large as InMobi?

All those things are unlikely, and require unusual thinking. And part of that is due to Abhay’s unique perspective on how to succeed in mobile advertising, monetization, and user acquisition.

Superpower: global vision to see opportunity everywhere, not just in North America.

Sheri Bachstein

Sheri’s not just the general manager of IBM Watson Advertising, she’s also the CEO of The Weather Company, which IBM owns. That’s a significant mix of responsibilities, with some overlap, which requires multi-dimensional perspectives.

Good news: she’s got them. Even better news, she can communicate them — and the insights that proceed — extremely clearly. Also impressive: she’s quick, thanks partly to an early career stint as a live TV producer.

Superpower: makes diamonds under pressure.

Kieran O’Leary

Kieran is insane. Everyone says fail fast, but deep down, no-one actually wants to. Kieran legitimately enjoys failing and grinding and hitting his head on a metaphorical (I think) wall … as long as it ultimately leads to success.

There must be some method to his madness, however: Kieran deeply understands games, product, marketing, and mobile, and he’s been super-successful wherever he goes.

Confusing everyone with his Irish name and French accent, Kieran has a who’s who of global companies (especially in gaming) on his resume: Gameloft, Outfit7, Ubisoft, IBM, and of course Rovio, where he is currently the chief operating officer. Catch his insight on podcasts and webinars, and on LinkedIn, where he recently welcomed Ruby Games to the Rovio family. Err, flock.

Superpower: dumbfounds everyone with rapid progression.

Adam Foroughi

Imagine a conversation in the Foroughi household. “What’d you do today, honey?” Bought a company from Twitter for a billion dollars. “Oh, nice. By the way, the Joneses are coming over for dinner tonight.”

Applovin is a beast. Ad network, monetization, first-party content, user acquisition, growth strategies, marketing measurement (hey, that sounds familiar), and more. Plus 200+ games, studios to develop more games, and yep, that massive acquisition of MoPub. And if Applovin is the beast, the lion tamer is Adam, who has been sharing deep insights on mobile, growth, and the ecosystem itself for more than a decade.

Superpower: shocking the mobile world with massive acquisitions. Making everyone wonder … why they didn’t do that afterwards.