Carolina Guimarães

This Q&A was conducted when Carolina was a Head of Performance Marketing at Wildlife Studios. Currently, Carolina is a Chief Digital Officer for eCommerce & Transformation at Riachuelo.

Carolina is Head of Performance Marketing at Wildlife Studios. She studied computer engineering and developed software for two years before joining Bain & Company, a top 3 management consulting firm, when she graduated. After a fast-paced business career at Bain and an MBA in CBS, Carolina found her path back to tech by joining Wildlife Studios. She started as Head of BizOps, with her scope soon expanding to Communications and Chief of Staff for the CEO. In 2021, Carolina transitioned to Marketing and she now leads their performance marketing department.

Carolina and Anel Ceman are the first advertiser and publisher duo of Mobile Heroes.

In your own words, tell us about the app(s) that you manage?

Wildlife created several successful casual and mid-core games in different genres over the years. Currently, we count among our largest titles Sniper 3D, Tennis Clash, Zooba, War Machines, Color By Number and Sky Warriors.

How did you get started in mobile marketing?

I lead the Product Marketing department, which is responsible for our games’ marketing strategy and performance. This is the connection between game teams and the distribution areas that work on different disciplines to attract players (e.g., paid UA, organic UA, creative production, platform relations).

In this position, I leverage my previous experience in management and business while learning marketing details.

If you could start in mobile marketing again, would you do anything differently? Why and what would you do?

I would have gotten closer to other industry leaders and partners earlier. It is impressive how much we can speed learning by bringing fresh perspectives.

What do you like most about mobile marketing?

I love how it mixes the need for strong analytics for performance optimization and creativity to reach the right players with the right message. 

What do you see as the next big thing in mobile marketing?

The primary trend changing mobile marketing is the shift towards less user-level data. Over the next couple of years, I expect a new wave of ad tech optimizations around privacy changes, with coming changes in SKAN and Privacy Sandbox.

In the past year, what is one tip you can share which made the biggest performance difference for your UA strategy?

The most important thing is doing the basics right: measure performance well and use the data to decide on a good campaign structure, set the right bids and produce good creative.

UA got trickier with iOS14 over the past year. Being closer to the market and preparing earlier to adapt to changes made a lot of difference. More recently, keeping the discipline in experimentation to find new sources of growth has also been a good lever.

What advice can you offer marketers to successfully re-engage mobile app users?

Find the proper setup that will allow you to measure the uplift with incrementality assumptions. Then, experiment with the right audience to get to a profitable operation.

What’s your top tip when it comes to mobile ad creative?

Find the right balance between exploring new concepts vs. doubling down on what works. Feed your production process what works for you, what is going well for similar apps, and what works best for each network’s audience. 

What advice can you offer to help marketers combat mobile ad fraud?

Track high-level parameters on what a healthy operation looks like for your channels (e.g. CTRs/IPMs, fraud detection rates from your MMP). If you’re operating with established channels, most of the value in detecting fraud will likely come from leveraging your MMP.

What are your top 3 go-to resources for keeping up with the mobile ad tech industry?

To keep up with trends and changes, I frequently read Twitter accounts and newsletters (e.g. MobileDevMemo) and earnings reports from AdTech (Meta, Google, Applovin, Ironsource). I find my conversations with Adtech partners and other industry leaders the best resources to find new levers in operation.