Studios before or in soft launch
Get tracking, onboarding and a first paid-acquisition test in place, so soft-launch numbers mean something before you commit to scale.
All solutions
Growth & Marketing
Your Mobile Game Growth Partner, From Core Loop to Paying Players
Engineered for studios and gaming startups that want one team across user acquisition, media buying, retention, monetization, and launch, instead of juggling fragmented creative and analytics vendors.
Who it's for
Studios and gaming startups that need acquisition, retention and monetization handled as one funnel.
Studios scaling after soft launch
Raise spend without losing payback: creative velocity, channel mix and retention work run against one set of cohort numbers.
Real-money, skill and tournament games
Funnels designed around store policy limits, with identity capture, retargeting and off-store conversion where the category requires it.
Gaming marketplaces
Two-sided growth for platforms that host many games or competitions: player acquisition, activation and repeat engagement.
The operational reality of growing a mobile game
Most growth problems in mobile games are funnel problems that show up as a media problem.
Rising install costs
Cost per install keeps climbing while targeting signals shrink. Paying for installs without knowing which cohorts go on to pay is how budgets disappear.
Day 1 and Day 7 drop-off
Most players are gone within a week. If onboarding and the first sessions do not land the core loop, every acquisition dollar is spent on a leaking bucket.
App-store policy constraints
Store rules limit what you can promote, how you can incentivize and, in some categories, whether you can be listed at all. Growth plans have to be designed around policy, not discover it at review.
Disconnected vendors
One agency buys media, another makes creative, a third runs analytics. Nobody owns the funnel end to end, so nobody can say why a channel is working or failing.
Growth partner vs. acquisition agency vs. in-house team
A technical growth partner earns its place when the problem spans more than media buying: tracking that cannot be trusted, retention that leaks, or an economy that does not pay back. If your funnel is already sound and you need volume, an agency may be enough. If spend and roadmap justify a dedicated team, hire.
| Technical growth partner | Acquisition agency | In-house team | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scope | Acquisition through retention and monetization, as one funnel | Mostly media buying and creative | Whatever you can hire for |
| Analytics and attribution | Builds the event tracking and attribution it reports against | Reports from the ad platforms' own dashboards | Depends on the seniority of the first hires |
| Retention and economy work | Part of the engagement | Usually out of scope | Strong once the team is established |
| Speed to start | Weeks | Weeks | Months to recruit and ramp |
| Cost shape | Scoped fee; ad spend billed separately | Retainer or percentage of spend | Salaries and tooling, fixed regardless of results |
| Best fit | Studios and startups that need a full funnel before they can justify a full team | Teams that already have a solid funnel and need more volume | Studios with steady spend and a roadmap that justifies a dedicated team |
What we run
Eight workstreams that share one set of numbers, so a change in one is read against the others.
Paid user acquisition & media buying
Campaign structure, budgets and optimization across Meta, TikTok, Google and Apple Search Ads, steered by what players do after install.
Creative testing & asset velocity
A repeatable pipeline for briefing, producing and testing ad creative, so winners are found and refreshed before fatigue sets in.
App store optimization
Listing copy, screenshots, video and keyword work, so the store page converts the traffic you are paying for.
Onboarding, retention & core loop
Analysis of the first-session path and early drop-off, and the changes that move Day 1 and Day 7 retention.
Monetization & game economy
Pricing, entry fees, payouts, offers and sinks designed against lifetime value rather than guesswork.
Owned-channel retargeting
SMS, email and push journeys that bring lapsed and free players back toward a paying relationship.
Analytics, events & attribution
Event schema, attribution setup and dashboards, so cohort cost and payback are measured the same way every week.
Launch, distribution & investor metrics
Launch planning, distribution partnerships, and the CAC, LTV and retention data investors ask for in diligence.
The funnel we own, stage by stage
Awareness through to lifetime value, with one owner and one set of definitions.
Stage 1: Awareness & community events
Events and partnerships that give the launch a moment, with sources tagged so reach can be traced to signups.
Stage 2: Acquisition & store installs
Paid and organic installs by channel, campaign and creative, with cost tracked per cohort.
Stage 3: Activation & identity capture
Getting players through the first session and capturing a contact identity so they can be reached again.
Stage 4: Multi-channel retargeting
Paid social, SMS, email and push journeys aimed at the players most likely to convert.
Stage 5: Store / off-store conversion
The first purchase or paid entry, in-store or through a policy-compliant route outside it.
Stage 6: Monetization & LTV optimization
Offers, economy tuning and win-back, measured against payback and lifetime value.
Engagement models, timelines and cost drivers
Pick the shape that matches your stage. Exact scope and fees are set on the scoping call.
Embedded growth team
Our growth engineers work as part of your team on a continuing basis, owning acquisition, analytics and retention experiments alongside your product and live-ops people.
Ongoing, reviewed monthly
Fixed-scope funnel audit
A defined review of your tracking, funnel, creative and economy that ends with a prioritized plan your team or ours can run.
A few weeks, fixed scope
Ongoing acquisition management
We run paid acquisition and creative testing against agreed targets, with reporting built on the attribution setup we put in place.
Ongoing, reviewed monthly
What drives cost
- Ad spend is paid to the ad platforms and billed separately from our fee.
- Channel volume: the number of channels and campaigns being actively managed.
- Creative iteration speed: how many new assets are tested each week.
- Analytics depth: whether tracking and attribution exist already or need to be built.
- Scope beyond acquisition: retention, economy design and launch support.
Proof from prior work
An engagement delivered by members of our team, with the funnel stages, channels and metrics published as a case study.
Prior work by our team
Mobile Game Funnel: Turning an App-Store Ban Into Paid Signups
A real-money tournament app the app stores would not host, split into a free tier that acquired players and a paid app distributed outside the stores.
- Paid signups
- Thousands
- Community event
- 1,000 → 15,000+
- Funding
- Pre-seed closed
Delivered by members of our team before Canvas Labs Partners was founded. About this work
Frequently asked questions
A mobile game growth partner is a team that owns the whole player funnel with you: user acquisition, creative testing, store presence, retention, monetization and the analytics underneath. It differs from an ad agency, which usually covers media buying and creative only, and from an in-house hire, which covers only the skills you can recruit.
Yes, where you want us to. Spend is paid to the ad platforms from your accounts and billed separately from our fee, so you can see exactly where budget goes. Your accounts and data stay yours.
Retention first, in most cases. Scaling acquisition into a game that loses most players by Day 7 raises cost without raising revenue. A funnel audit shows where the biggest leak is, and that sets the order of work.
We work on mobile games and gaming marketplaces on iOS and Android. How a funnel is built differs by genre, whether casual, midcore, tournament or marketplace models, and by monetization model, so we scope against your genre on the first call rather than apply a template.
Pricing follows the engagement model: a fixed fee for a funnel audit, and a scoped monthly fee for embedded or ongoing acquisition work. Ad spend is separate. The main drivers are channel volume, creative iteration speed and how much analytics work is needed first.
Three things: your genre and platform, your main goal (cheaper installs, better retention, first revenue, a launch or a fundraise), and your current stage (concept, soft launch, live or scaling). Any existing analytics access and recent channel spend helps too.
Often, yes, within the rules. Prior work by members of our team on a marketplace blocked by app-store policy used a free-to-play tier the stores would host to acquire players, then retargeted them to a paid app distributed outside the stores. Whether a similar route fits depends on your category and the policies that apply.
Tracking and creative testing show first signals within weeks, but retention and economy changes need cohorts to mature, so judge them over a longer window. We agree what to measure and when before work starts, and we do not promise specific figures in advance.
Ready to scope growth for your game?
Talk directly to the growth engineers who would run it. Bring your genre and platform, your main goal and your current stage, and leave with a scoped plan.