Death of manual UA, BUILDING MARKETING SQUADS, AND WHY UA BECOMES GROWTH HACKING
In this episode, we speak with visionary Marilyne Chasseur, Director of Performance Marketing at Scopely. Gaming since childhood, she’s developed her own unique philosophy for marketing, and sees gaming as a natural bridge between creativity and technology.
“It’s always been a hobby of mine; I used to play with my dad, so I have a lot of fun memories from gaming.”
Paris, Suzhou, Amsterdam; her career has led her around the world, and she’s put her international lens to identify and latch onto emerging trends. That might explain why Marilyne holds a holistic view of marketing, where each department should be interconnected.
Comparing the role of marketing directing to that of an orchestra conductor, Marilyne presents hard-to-ignore arguments about the value in uniting the data-minded UA folks with the artisans in marketing.
An Early Introduction to Mobile Ecosystems
During a gap year at university, Marilyne got her first gig at Ubisoft in the Paris, France headquarters, working on PC and console games like The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot. The work was exciting; press engagements, influencers, and events were a fun introduction to the dynamic world of gaming marketing.
After, she went on to finish her master’s degree in Suzhou, China, and experienced the first pivotal moment of her career. The year was 2012, and she was working with a start-up way ahead of its time. It had an app, and it was her introduction to the future of mobile ecosystems.
“China was well, well, well far in advance compared to Europe and Western regions.”
Because of the speed and accessibility allowed by smart phones, she recognized that “you don’t necessarily have to wait for six years to market your game before the launch of the game.”
Let’s not forget scale, “everybody has a phone or two.”
This moment in China really opened her eyes to the potential of mobile gaming. So, when Marilyne’s time in Suzhou was up, she sought out another start-up in Amsterdam that was working for mobile publishers.
The perfect flow of information
Marilyne advocates for building a “community team,” one that is intertwined at all subdivisions, and sees that the data-oriented UA need to be especially present for the artists. Admitting that everyone might have a different opinion on the matter, for Marilyne, it’s vital to integrate UA teams into the creative processes.
“They should be inside the meetings.”
Why? Because they can translate the data.
“They should be contributing on the ideation, and they should be the best partner to the creative team and to the branding team.”
This speaks to her holistic marketing approach at large. Because as much as UA and marketing need to be intertwined, all the subdivisions need to be equally coordinated on the vision and strategy, as an orchestra is. When there is a “perfect flow of information,” a game launch or campaign is successful.
Being the Voice of the Players
A central theme in the podcast is Marilyne’s belief that brand marketing and user acquisition are deeply interconnected. She uses her experience in marketing and UA as a double-pronged method for understanding the audience.
Asking the right questions, (Why would a player download our game? Is it clear enough?) opens up the UA team to understand the game and what people love about it. At the same time, “As a branding person, you need to understand how UA works. How do you help UA scale further?”
One specific insight she suggests UA gaming teams to look into is what the players want more of. The players are voicing what they love and dislike about the game, and to those paying attention, it’s possible to pinpoint exactly what needs to be improved. By “being the voice of the players,” UA learns how to customize attractive methods of monetization.
Testing to Learn, Not Just to Scale
Creative testing, as Marilyne explains, is a safeguard from producing creatives that are both costly and increasingly high-volume.
“Creatives can be expensive. You want to lower the risk.”
Testing acts as a filter. As the volume of assets continues to grow, fueled in large part by AI, it becomes less about generating ideas and more about identifying what actually works. Protection is as important a goal as performance. Team want to make sure that new creatives don’t disrupt campaigns that are already delivering.
At the same time, the question of volume has no fixed answer. Instead, it’s shaped by spending, platform requirements, and how quickly creative fatigue sets in.
“If you spend a lot, the creative fatigue is going to hit you pretty quickly.”
This makes creative strategy inherently dynamic. Teams start with a baseline, adjust based on performance, and scale production when needed. Especially around key moments like live events or product updates.
Still, more isn’t always better. While some publishers, particularly in Asia, produce creatives at an aggressive scale, Marilyne doubts whether incremental variations truly drive meaningful results.
You see “very little differences. Is it really going to be impactful? I’m not sure.”
What’s clear is that the role of the creative has fundamentally shifted. As targeting capabilities fade and automation takes over campaign management, ad creatives have become one of the last controllable levers in user acquisition.
Testing isn’t about volume for the sake of volume. It’s about learning fast enough to stay ahead.
The Future for UA is Growth Hacking the System
As automation takes over the operational side of user acquisition, the role itself is shifting toward strategy. UA managers are moving away from running campaigns to thinking bigger about new, smart ways to drive growth.
That’s why orchestration between systems management is high on her predictions list. Marilyne emphasizes how UA departments need to try and hack growth in the system. Over the next five years, she predicts that UA managers will need to understand data process better to get how small tweaks in the feed, or early monetization, can help scale a channel.
“Even though [the algorithm] is a black box, how do you put it at your advantage? What do you change inside your game, inside your strategy, to really come out on top?”
Meanwhile, as AI is accelerating all of this, it remains a tool. It’s valuable for allowing efficiency and freeing up time for more meaningful work.
“What took ten hours, now takes five minutes.”
The takeaway: As the tools get smarter, execution becomes less important, giving marketers room for more thinking.
Wrap Up
From creative testing to community teams to AI, Marilyne emphasizes the same principle: Gaming marketing performs best when departments are interconnected.
Her metric for best performance is how deep the creative and technical sides have merged. In this podcast, she makes a compelling case for uniting the data-oriented UA with the creative marketing teams.
She sees her responsibility as director to coordinate all the teams on vision and strategy. “At the end of the day, a product marketer for me would be leading the orchestra.”
Marilyne emphasizes the need for a perfect flow of information and being the voice of the player. Two processes that fundamentally require curiosity.
When the flow of information is easy and fast, success is imminent. Particularly in the case of creative testing. Being quick to see the variables of a successful campaign versus an unsuccessful one will help teams hack growth. She concedes that there’s always a little mystery behind the algorithm but quickly learning from insight is a critical part of leveraging creatives.
Last, she encourages gaming marketing teams to use AI as a tool to help the creation side. Its real benefit is how it gives people more time to think and understand their environment.
If there’s one lesson you take away from today’s podcast, silo marketing and UA at your own risk. Set meetings for UA to explain the data and for marketing to share audience insight. Because when you a build a “community team,” all the failures and mistakes are going to have a higher level of learning, understanding, and eventually, output.
