Michal from Pixel Federation joined Josh to share his experience settling in as CMO, working with AI on creative, ASO & translation, exploring AI use in data efficiency and a love for Diggy’s Adventure.

Josh: Welcome Michal! Thanks for joining us, can you briefly introduce yourself?

Thanks, Josh, for having me! I’m Michal, the Chief Marketing Officer at Pixel Federation, the largest game developer and publisher in Slovakia. Our primary focus is on mobile free-to-play games in the tycoon/simulation and puzzle/adventure genres, with our most successful titles being Train Station 1/2 and Diggy’s Adventure.
On a personal level, I’m a husband, father of two, food lover, coffee nerd, and a huge fan of cycling and fitness in general 😊

Josh: Talk to us about your journey in gaming so far.

The journey has been quite a ride so far. I’ve just started my second decade in the industry, and funny thing is, the same applies to my tenure at the company. I joined Pixel right after university when I decided I didn’t want to pursue a career in investment banking (it seemed to me like a super boring career choice). I started as a Game Data Analyst on Diggy’s Adventure (later being the most successful game) where I primarily worked on price segmentation of special offers. When we launched the title on mobile, I transitioned to marketing analytics, which started to play a key role in the marketing department as we scaled up the budgets significantly. Later, I began to pick up more and more of the marketing agenda, and the rest is history.

Josh: Congratulations on the recent promotion! What is in store for Pixel Federation with you at CMO?

Thank you so much! I take this opportunity with great humility since we’re experiencing challenging times not only as a company but as the industry in general. But to name a few, there will be a much more focus on efficiency, making data-driven decisions, utilizing AI and automation wherever it gives us an edge, and last but not least, much closer collaboration between marketing and product.

Josh: I want to talk about some defining UA & Growth challenges. First let’s talk privacy, what advice do you have for compensating for negative impacts of privacy changes?

Privacy changes have had a tremendous impact on our activities due to the nature of our games. We used to make games with an extremely strong long tail and high LTV, which became increasingly difficult or almost impossible without proper user-level tracking. There were basically two approaches to tackle this issue - change the product strategy to appeal to much broader audiences and/or get significantly more sophisticated with personalization.

Josh: At Gamesforum Barcelona, you joined us to share some of your work exploring AI within Marketing & Analytics at Pixel Federation. Can you dive into how teams are using AI?

The most prominent application of AI in our marketing department is the most common one in the industry - image asset generation. We use those assets as static creatives in campaigns, as an idea generation tool for new concepts, as well as assets for further video production. Outside of the image generation, we use AI, and primarily GPT, for creative concept ideation, translation of ad copies, and within ASO. Currently, we’re exploring how we can utilize AI for campaign management and working with marketing data more effectively.

Josh: Creative optimisation has also been a hot topic. What are creative teams doing differently to stay ahead of competition? Are you employing AI in creative processes as well?

Surprisingly, one of the key changes in the creative process that we implemented over the last couple of months was to keep up with the speed of competition. We monitor the competition, and if there’s something new trending in the market, we adapt to it more quickly, also thanks to AI. For the creative process itself, we use image generation to create assets that we use as static creatives in campaigns, as an idea generation tool for new concepts, as well as assets for further video production.

Josh: Final question, what are your favourite mobile games?

Diggy’s Adventure. I’m not joking, I’ve spent a lot of months (and my own money too) playing it 😊 But to name a couple that I really enjoyed recently or am enjoying right now - Eatventure from Lessmore and the newest Supercell game, Squad Busters.