It’s not just a needle in the haystack anymore. Now the needle’s invisible, and the clock’s ticking.
Why you should listen
Most conversations about mobile growth focus on what to add. More tools. More spend. More signals. This one’s about subtraction—of waste, of silos, of bloated expectations.
Avi Das, CRO at Aarki, doesn’t just preach full-funnel. He breaks down how to actually make it work in a privacy-centric world. From rethinking retargeting to getting serious about SKAN 4.0, Avi shows how growth leaders can do more with less, and why pairing user acquisition with retargeting isn’t just efficient, it’s incremental.
And yes, he brings the proof. This Rovio case study says more about retargeting than a hundred dashboards ever could.
Whether you’re battling signal loss, rising CPAs, or execs asking, “why are we paying UA prices to re-acquire our own users?”—this episode has answers.
Top 3 takeaways
- User Acquisition + Retargeting From Day 1 = Proven Lift
Marketers running full-funnel from the start saw positive incrementality—measurable lift across both UA and retargeting, backed by a top global gaming publisher. It’s not theory. It’s working in-market for Aarki. - Being Entirely on SKAN 4.0 = More Signal, Less Waste
Most platforms are stuck on SKAN 3. Aarki went all-in on SKAN 4.0 to give marketers richer postbacks, faster feedback loops, and smarter spend, even in signal-sparse environments. - Deep Neural Network + Raw Infrastructure = Privacy-Safe Retargeting at Lower Cost
Aarki’s probabilistic retargeting is powered by its owned and operated data centers and deep neural networks trained on 5M real-time signals per second. With deterministic in its sunset years, probabilistic is paving the way forward.
The transcript
[00:00:33] Peggy: This is Mobile Groove, where I talk with the people who are the leading minds in AI marketing apps, you name it. And here at MAU, the biggest conversations. That brings me to the question: “Is retargeting an afterthought as it was last year, or is it becoming more of a secret weapon or a superpower, which is what we’re seeing more and more of now?”
So, looking at that. Where else would I find the answer to this deep question than to come back for an encore? Because one year ago, I was with you, Avi Das, CRO, at Aarki. We were discussing the same thing, but it feels different. It feels more vital, more critical, more relevant than ever.
[00:01:17] Avi Das: Hey, Peggy, firstly, thanks for having me back.
Uh, you’ve teed this up perfectly. It’s been a year. You used the word “encore.”
[00:01:23] Peggy: Oh, that’s right. I used the word
[00:01:25] Avi Das: you did
[00:01:27] Peggy: And I wasn’t even thinking that. Then you have the great brand. Exactly.
[00:01:30] Avi Das: So, for the folks listening in or watching this MAU is when we, uh, launch our new privacy-first platform and it’s called Encore.
So, I couldn’t have teed the better myself. So, I’m excited to talk about. What we chatted about last year is retargeting.
[00:01:45] Peggy: Exactly. And bringing it forward. Because when you bring together UA and retargeting, particularly in what you have, which is a privacy-first DSP.
[00:01:55] Avi Das: uh, let’s zoom out. You know we do what we do for the advertisers in this business.
[00:02:00] Peggy: Mm-hmm.
[00:02:00] Avi Das: Uh, at least on my side of the world. And we have to understand what their challenges are and how they’re evolving. Competition, uh, it’s more competitive now. Uh, there was a statistic I saw where, you know, less than, uh, I think, uh, 5% of top a hundred apps are now like new apps. Absolutely. I might be messing up the specific statistic, but it’s small.
[00:02:25] Peggy: Absolutely. It is small. It’s very small. Single digits and it’s dire.
[00:02:27] Avi Das: So, competition is, it is more competitive. It is difficult to have a breakout success. Um, and you know, just you look at what’s happening around you. The economy is tough, especially for our gaming advertisers. Growth has been challenging. And you put all of that together and you go, well, it’s not like there are, you know, an extensive number of new users, all of them valuable entering the market every year.
[00:02:57] Peggy: No.
[00:02:58] Avi Das: Um, but if it’s more competitive.
[00:03:00] Peggy: That you have to get more out of the users that you have. So, I wanted to dive into that. You know, talk about the myths, for example. You know, I talked about combining UA and retargeting. It’s a game that you’ve been playing in for a long time. ’cause when I look at the, your cred, right top-ranking DSP for Android retargeting for one, um, in gaming and non-gaming.
So, let’s start there. Combining UA and retargeting, how does that change the game?
[00:03:29] Avi Das: When we think about UA, we think about retargeting. These are, you know, names for products we have come up with. You talk to, you know, growth marketers. Um, you know, they don’t really care. They do, but what they care more about is growth.
You know, these, they’re revenue drivers, they’re performance marketers, they’re driving ROI, right? So, everything else is a means to an end, and the end being ROI and in a world that’s evolving, you’ve gotta ask yourself the question: what gets me the best ROI?
That’s why user acquisition plus retargeting, that combined portfolio effect is so important that in conjunction with the fact that we are in a privacy-first world
And that world is not going away, um, makes a UA plus retargeting player in a privacy-first world, uh, that much of an opportunity. Aarki’s looking to fill that opportunity for our customers,
[00:04:30] Peggy: The privacy-first world, and being a privacy-first DSP. Let’s just unpack that for our audience a bit more because I get it. You get it. But I’d like to break down why that is such a significant factor here.
[00:04:43] Avi Das: Yeah. You know, for the past now few years, we have been living in the post-ATT era. Where, you know the single most important deterministic way for platforms like us to help identify, find valuable users, which is the advertising ID, it no longer exists.
Yes, it doesn’t exist at scale. We are now, we now inhabit a world where, you know, less than 70%, depending on various factors there, but about less than 70% of users opt to share that information, which means we are now looking to find. In a game, which is already finding needles in hay, a needle in a haystack, you’re now, you don’t even know what that needle looks like.
So, you’re finding an invisible needle, if you will, in a haystack. Um, that just meant that people withdrew. People just said, “Ah, well I’m not gonna do it. It sounds stupid. How am I gonna find an invisible needle in a haystack?”
[00:05:43] Peggy: You dunno what you’re looking for.
[00:05:44] Avi Das: You just don’t know what you’re looking for. So, um, that, uh, is, was a problem, which we look at it as an opportunity. Uh, and you know, that’s why we are, we’re talking about privacy-safe, uh, UA plus R team.
[00:05:58] Peggy: When I think about last year, we were talking about 2.0 this year we’re talking about Encore. What is it that brings these two together? The thinking around privacy-first, privacy-first DSP, the challenges to marketers.
Where does that find itself in shaping Encore?
[00:06:17] Avi Das: You know, when, when we spoke last year, we were talking about the rebirth of Aarki, Aarki 2.0.
[00:06:24] Peggy: Yes, I remember.
[00:06:25] Avi Das: And, um, the people who are building Aarki now, we are rebuilding it in a way where we, we wanted to bring like, true value to our advertisers. Um, prior to the launch of Aarki 2.0, there was a period of almost a year when we stopped doing sales. We did not acquire a single new advertiser.
And the reason was very intentional. We do not want to pedal. Pedal being, I think, an intentional word also. In products that do not drive a lot of value for our advertisers.
[00:06:54] Peggy: ‘Cause they will see it, will see it and it’ll come back to you.
[00:06:54] Avi Das: They will see it. And we respect the advertisers too much to do that.
And again, not to say that anything in this business is a sure shot, um, ever. But, uh, within reason, we want to ensure we put our best foot forward, which is why last year we said, “Hey, we know we’re gonna do really good job at, uh, retargeting.” Uh, and that’s where, that’s how we relaunched Aarki.
We brought back Aarki with the promise of delivering top-notch Android retargeting. And that showed in both the performance we’ve seen with our advertisers, partners like AppsFlyer and Singular. Yeah.
[00:07:23] Peggy: Yeah, I was gonna say the ranking
[00:07:24] Avi Das: Exactly. Partners like AppsFlyer and Singular, um, have, validated that in their own rankings.
As we get into MAU this year we’re talking about Encore, and now we are confident that we are bringing to market a, the next variation of Aarki. And for a company that believes in only working with advertisers to deliver their best, we are now ready to talk about that iteration, which is the privacy-safe UA plus platform called Encore.
[00:07:52] Peggy: It’s interesting because you have the cred in the retargeting. The marketers, on the other hand, they were focused on UA, primarily. Now it’s turning around and we’re also seeing that you layer UA over retargeting in Encore. What’s driving that? What’s the thinking there?
[00:08:11] Avi Das: You know, at the end of the day, uh, like I said, we know that our users care about generating the most ROI from the base of users that they have or want to acquire.
And, uh, we always knew that it was never gonna be just a retargeting, um, play for us. Uh, we launched with the retargeting play. But we’re never gonna be just a retargeting platform. Uh, the goal is to be an end-to-end growth marketing platform. And to do that, we are now saying, “Here’s how we can help you on, on user acquisition.”
[00:08:43] Peggy: Because that’s where the mind is, I mean, the marketer, as you said yourself it, they’re not saying, “Oh, I wanna do retargeting, I wanna do UA. And they’re like, no, I want to grow.” And how that happens, that’s what’s important, is the strategy, the holistic strategy. Maybe you have some examples of what that looks like in a real-live campaign.
[00:09:04] Avi Das: Thankfully, I’m grateful that we have many examples of that, uh, play.
[00:09:07] Peggy: Yeah, I read one today actually. I was like, oh. ’cause I do so much work in gaming. You’ve got a fantastic, uh, case study that’s right from Rovio, just out today.
[00:09:15] Avi Das: That’s right.
[00:09:16] Peggy: I was like, wow.
[00:09:16] Avi Das: We’ve been very, again, grateful for the partnership that we have with customers like Rovio, apps out of Turkey and a lot more case studies that are in the pipeline. So, over the next month or so, you should expect to see a lot of, uh, other developers that have seen similar value. But to your question, you know, I think, we started by showing people the value that you can drive with just retargeting.
[00:09:37] Avi Das: We then, uh, paired UA with it. Uh, and the question we have to ask is, is this, is, is what everybody is asking is, is that gonna be incremental or, or are you cannibalizing your efforts? Um, and towards that, I think the real proof that marketers should care about that we care about, is the combined work of UA and retargeting when run for a leading, uh, global publisher of a very popular, uh, game. That’s as much as I can say about this.
They measured incrementality for our user revolution and retargeting efforts, and I am very pleased to say that we were one of the very few platforms that they saw positive incrementality with.
Um, and this is, I think. As vague as it sounds, because we can’t share more details, is the strongest proof for me personally that this is working. And we’re doing it right. It’s one thing to make it work. It’s quite another do it right. And I think we’re both doing it right, uh, and making it work.
[00:10:37] Peggy: Let’s dig a little bit deeper into that, because we were talking about impact. We’re talking about results. So, there are marketers who say they’re still very skeptical. You know, they’re talking about probabilistic, they’re saying it’s, it’s guesswork. So, what do you say to that?
[00:10:52] Avi Das: Lemme take a step back. I think. Let’s talk about why that’s important. Okay. Um, we talked about how when ATT happened, of course, as IDFA went away, people withdrew from the idea of being able to retarget users in privacy-first environments, because how would you do it? Right? They have the no idea phase. So, the invisible needle.
[00:11:11] Peggy: Yes.
[00:11:11] Avi Das: Um, now I’m gonna go along with that analogy and say, well, first of all, you’ve gotta see, uh, what you’re comparing this work against. You’re not comparing, um, probabilistic retargeting versus, let’s say, a better version of retargeting. You’re comparing it to the absence of retargeting.
Right. So, my first argument is that it gives you the ability to do something that you previously thought was not possible, um, and worse still or better still. Um, these are not users that you are not reaching via ads today.
Any advertiser. What you’re doing is if you’re not doing probabilistic retargeting, you are probably reaching them through your UA efforts. And you and I have talked about this on other podcasts as well. I would love for advertisers to not have to pay UA prices, uh, when they could get the same, uh, result by retargeting methodology. Right.
Now the question is, is there enough of retargeting methodology to find the invisible needle? Well, sure, we don’t know where the needle is, but we know contextual information about users in terms of their location, those kinds of devices they’re on. Uh, and without giving much o uh, much more away, uh, for a company like ours where we listen to over 5 million queries per second, that’s a lot of contextual information when overlaid with our ML models that are actually neural net based, very good at finding signal from data and, and separating that from noise, we are able to create contextual user graphs. And that is what we can use to find the users in these privacy-safe environments. And I know you are someone who likes proof points and data.
So, for a customer that we ran this with, the net impact to ROAS on the probabilistic retargeting campaign was, was positive. So about it, you know, like they recouped their investment in a span of two weeks. Now you have to think about that and you go, well, if I’m getting a hundred percent reward in two weeks’ time from base of users, the alternative would’ve been to try and get them by user acquisition efforts. And we’re arguing that it is more efficient to do it by a probabilistic retargeting,
[00:13:27] Peggy: Because it’s sort of like with, with anything, when you say, well, how effective is it? Well, how effective compared to what? To abject failure? It gives you something, a frame of reference is what I’m trying to say here. Yes.
What about the optimization goals here? You know, you have gaming customers. You have non-gaming, um, what do you say or what have you been able to say and tell them to improve how they approach the setup approach, the optimization approach, the goal setting?
[00:14:00] Avi Das: You know, the good thing about the baseline being zero is that, uh, you can, you can iterate towards what is the best outcome, right? Um, so if you’re not getting anything out of it, you know, can you generate something positive? So let’s start with non-gaming, uh, because these are interesting conversations we’re having with some very big brand named, uh, advertisers, non-gaming side, who are operating from the fact that they want to be able to reengage their iOS users who do not have IDFA shared.
That’s a business, uh, objective for them. Um, and what we are working on is experimenting with them. This is, you know, we are, we’re doing this. It’s new for a lot of people. What payback period works best for them if it’s non-gaming? You know, what, uh, cost of reacquisition works for them. And if you look, you cannot look at that in isolation. If you look at that as a portfolio between what they’re doing for UA, what they’re now doing with us for probability retargeting, and is the net impact positive and is the net impact increasing.
And they can validate this with first party data, the reach, uh, to users that they were otherwise not able to get to. And we are seeing very interesting things.
[00:15:11] Peggy: Talking about what marketers need to know. We want to optimize the results and we want to make it repeatable. Repeatable is always good, repeatable successes.
So, I’m gonna ask you a couple of rapid-fire questions to wrap it up. Quick hits on what marketers really wanna know because they wanna wash, rinse, repeat. So, all right. Ready? Yep. So how fast can you launch a SKAN campaign?
[00:15:37] Avi Das: Very quickly. You know, at this point, I think everybody. For the most part has done the work around conversion value mappings and, and their locked windows.
Once that’s ready, it can happen very quickly. Okay. Question is, should you?
I think that, uh, what we are gonna bring to the table is, sure, we can launch campaigns quickly, but I think there’s a lot of, uh, campaign strategy that goes into setting up a SKANcampaign. And I would actually say lean on us to help co-create that, even if it takes a little while.
[00:16:05] Peggy: Yeah. ’cause the strategy is what matters. That’s what matters. The quick hits. The quick wins, yeah.
[00:16:09] Avi Das: And with SKAN, you know, the cost of getting its wrong is, is pretty high because the way the conversion values are set up. So, if you, you know, you use up the digits to, to set up campaigns that you shouldn’t have the way you want it to, there’s a cool-off period. You’ve gotta wait before you can reuse those campaign source identifies again. So, so therefore there is, there is cost to getting it wrong and if we’d much rather get it right. So we can do it quick, but we’d much rather do it right.
[00:16:34] Peggy: What is the fallback if SKAN post backs are sparse, are delayed?
[00:16:40] Avi Das: We are on SKAN 4 right? Entirely on SKAN 4. And in speaking to advertisers, um, this is something that we are doing differently. Uh, a lot of larger players in this space are on, on SKAN 3, and I understand why, you know, larger organizations have to move with the speed that they have to. We’ve built this product completely on SKAN 4, which means that is your best bet when it comes to sparse data sets or sparse information. You know, you’re able to get more data back at least the two digits, if not three or four in a SKAN 4 environment. So, I would very much encourage you to, you know, come to us, let’s talk about how we can get more out of less when it comes to SKAN environment with a SKAN 4 model versus what are you losing out if you’re not on the SKAN 4 model. And one of the things you’re losing out actually is you’re have to put in putting in more investment to get, I would argue, similar amount of data, if not less.
[00:17:32] Peggy: You know, about where people are, who stays, who goes where they go next, what’s next in retention in 2025?
[00:17:40] Avi Das: So, I think the good thing is that everybody’s recognizing that you can no longer operate within, um, just the information that you have about your users on your own app. We released the Retention Radar, uh, earlier this year, which talks about how can we help. We have 5 million queries that we listen to per second.
That’s a lot of information about users in general. We may not know much about your first-party data, but we have understanding of the ecosystem when we pair those two things together, and you know, that, you know, one of the things I always talk about is, you know, partnerships and how can you do things better together.
I think if you partner with platforms like, like us. Uh, you’ll get to understand more about your users, not, uh, just what they’re doing on your app, what they’re doing outside of your app, and that creates an opportunity to figure out what can we do to, you know, augment retention in ways that you may not have tried before.
I will say to find out more, let’s have a chat.
[00:18:37] Peggy: Well, I love having a chat with you and I have to say that when I’m thinking about where it goes in 2025, you’re a first address that I’m thinking of, Avi. It has been great and one that will stay with us, I think is, it’s not about the quick wins, it’s about doing it right.
[00:18:54] Avi Das: Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Peggy. Absolutely. Peggy, hopefully we lose again next year.
[00:18:57] Peggy: Yeah, we’ll see next year. We have a date. I think the buzzword will be retargeting. What do you think?
[00:19:02] Avi Das: I think so. I think so. Mile 26. Absolutely. Let’s do it. Let’s do it. Alright, thank you.
[00:19:07] Peggy: And of course, if you’re tuning into in the Groove on YouTube, we’ll go ahead and smash that subscribe button.
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