The networks know your users better than you do. So the creative is the targeting.

TL;DR. On the two & a half gamers podcast in October 2026, Luis de la Camara, 20 years in games across Gameloft, King, Scopely and five years at Rovio, said the quiet part: "they're experts in building algorithms to find the best users... the DSPs and the ad networks really know how to find the right users." The host went further: "the UA networks know simply way more about the users than you ever will." Both were talking about media buying. The consequence for creative is the point they did not make: if the network picks the audience, the only input you still control is the ad, and the ad is what tells the network who to go and find. Here is the conversation, and the production decision it leads to.

Who said it, and where

Luis de la Camara, former CMO roles across mobile free-to-play, most recently five years at Rovio through its sale to SEGA, in conversation with Felix Braberg on the two & a half gamers podcast, October 2026. Quotes are from the recording.

The admission

Felix: "You need to realize as a gaming company today that the UA networks know simply way more about the users than you ever will. And if you accept that fact, that essentially means that you can dive super deep on segmentation."

Luis: "Are we trying to fight... they're experts in building algorithms to find the best users, right? And the most high-quality users."

Then the evidence from Rovio's own experiment with broader, awareness-style campaigns: "our CPIs got inflated... the users that we did get were very similar to the players that we would have gotten, in terms of high quality... But the difference was that we were actually paying a much higher cost because we were serving impressions to a much wider audience with a lot of people that did not install."

Going broad did not find different users. It found the same users at a higher price, because the algorithms were already finding them. "The DSPs and the ad networks really know how to find the right users."

The consequence nobody on the call said

If the network picks who sees the ad, then the advertiser's targeting has moved from the audience settings into the creative. Two ads with the same budget and the same settings reach different people, because the model learns from who responds to each one. Who is on screen, what they say in the first two seconds, which motivation the ad speaks to: those decide who the algorithm goes looking for. Creative is the targeting.

That is not a slogan. It is a production constraint with three consequences:

1. Brief to a motivation, not a demographic. The network will find the demographic. Your job is to give it an ad that only the right motivation responds to. See brief to motivation, not to demographics.
2. Make enough variants for the network to learn from. One ad teaches the model one thing. A concept system built to vary opening, performer and problem frame teaches it which pocket of the audience each argument finds. On AppLovin the published working number is 182 active creatives per top campaign, and the guidance is not to pause them. See the AppLovin creative guide.
3. Read what the network funded, then brief again. The result of a creative test is a map of who exists. Every result goes back into the next brief.

The segmentation point, and where it leads

Felix's practical examples were about what happens after the install: a player bought from a rewarded network has been paid to play and should see ads early; a player from an in-app-purchase-optimised campaign should not. "If you know the average percentage of decrease between users, you can basically work out if they made purchases in the past or not."

The creative version of the same logic runs before the install. The ad that brought a player in is a label on that player. A fail-state puzzle ad, a before-and-after builder ad and a "the board is the ad" merge ad each recruit a different kind of player, and the game can greet each one accordingly. Our genre-by-genre read of which ad recruits whom is in the mobile game creative teardowns.

Where Luis's harder problem lands

Luis's last battle at Rovio was "how do we go beyond just pure UA... multi-touch attribution... the full funnel." He was honest that it is unsolved: "I don't know we'll ever fully crack."

Our view is that the part of that problem which is solvable today sits inside the creative. Brand effect and direct response are not two campaigns; a 30 to 60 second fullscreen ad on AppLovin creates both at once, which is why AppLovin's own CEO says the platform "prices that for free." The way to see it is a holdout, measured in your own numbers, not in any platform's dashboard. Method in incrementality testing for ad creative.

Questions people ask

Do ad networks target better than in-house UA teams? By the account of a 20-year games marketing veteran, yes: Rovio's broader campaigns found the same quality of player at a higher cost, because the network algorithms were already finding them.

If the network does the targeting, what does the advertiser control? The creative, the budget and the destination. The creative is the one that tells the network who to look for.

What is "creative is the targeting"? The observation that on algorithmic platforms, who responds to an ad teaches the model whom to show it to, so the content of the ad determines its audience more than the audience settings do.

How does this change a creative brief? It is written to a motivation rather than a demographic, built as a system of variants so the network can learn, and judged on who converted rather than who clicked.

Source: two & a half gamers podcast, "20 years' experience: Luis de la Camara on why the networks know your users better than you", YouTube, October 2026. Quotes transcribed from the recording; interpretation is Flixr's.