Vera Manhoso: Focusing on UA is “holding back your mobile game” – focus on retargeting too

Among the many tremendous talks underway at PGC London 2025, RTB House gaming account director Vera Manhoso has taken to the stage to highlight the importance of retargeting pre-existing users.

“Everyone wants your players, and we know that players are very limited,” she said.

“With user acquisition, you don’t know the value of those potential players yet, compared to those you already have.”

Special spenders

Backing up her argument, Manhoso focused on figures from Unity to highlight just how few users actually spend on in-app purchases – just 1.83% of mobile players on average.

For this reason, she argued that budgeting purely for user acquisition has less guarantee of obtaining spending players than putting funds into retargeting known spenders.

In fact, she claimed that the cost of acquiring new users is twice that of regaining existing players.

“You will have way more value focusing on the users you already know, but who might not be playing your game anymore. You have that data, and that data is precious. Why not use it?” she advised.

“You might want to try to focus on your VIP users and target them with rewards they won’t be able to say no to.”

Bringing back the big spenders

Tracking links and working with partners to collect first-party data were both strategies suggested by Manhoso to identify and leverage spending players, but she also noted the importance of “perfect timing” when retargeting those who haven’t played in some time.

“Define your inactivity window. Be open to test. Find the best time to target a user,” she said.

“You don’t necessarily need to commit a certain amount of budget or be a certain size to begin retargeting.”

Lastly, while Manhoso suggested retargeting doesn’t have to be used all the time – it can be used specifically to “tackle a specific season or a release you want everyone to know about”, for example – she did note the value of using it in tandem with standard user acquisition.

In fact, she stated that a combination of user acquisition and retargeting can cause a 150% increase in conversion rates. But for this to work, there must be communication between teams about what, exactly, is in the current development pipeline.

The first day of PGC London 2025 is almost over, but that means there’s plenty of coverage to catch up on from throughout Day One and a whole host of further talks still to come on Day Two, January 21. Check out the full schedule here.