Yonatan Maimon has always been curious about what the next big thing would be, and it was exactly this curiosity that drove him to the gaming industry and eventually to the role of CMO at Diwip Ltd.
He first became interested in the industry when running online marketing campaigns for affiliates at a company known as CCnetworkings. While he ran many campaigns — from forex, dating, gaming and more — it was the game-related campaigns that he found to be the most fun and satisfying. At that point Yonatan knew what industry he wanted to be in, though he wasn’t sure where.
As CCnetworkings grew though, they began closing direct deals with social gaming companies and managing a portion of their budgets. Eventually, CCnetworkings grew into the company now called Bidalgo, a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer, where Yonatan took on the task of performance manager team leader.
He says the role taught him a lot and his time at Bidalgo gave him a lot of experience in user acquisition, real money gaming and social games. While there, Yonatan discovered that social games were his “cup of tea” and he especially wanted to be more on the product side of the gaming industry.
After searching high and low, he found a home at a company by the name of Diwip, that focuses primarily on developing online social casino games for web and mobile devices. Starting out as a PPC manager, Yonatan quickly rose to the ranks of CMO of Diwip with promotion by the co-founders.
Things to Learn
On the new job as CMO at Diwip, Yonatan says, “Diwip is an amazing place, I really feel that it’s my second family! Regarding the role, I think its amazing! It’s never boring. I always learn new things.”
One of the first things he was tasked with was learning what there is to know about the mobile marketing business. The sector was new to him and he had no experience whatsoever. His research began with the internet to read, watch and research whatever he could on the topic.
Some things like getting the tracking in place, was fairly easy to find out. On the other hand, things like getting the best traffic sources were more of a challenge. Yonatan says that, while it took a lot of A/B testing, knowing which KPIs to look at and what period of time greatly shortened the learning curve.
Yonatan says he couldn’t be prouder of the results. The highlight of his career so far is “building an excellent data-driven marketing team for mobile and web with focus on user acquisition and retention.” He adds, “And we still have a lot to do.”
He notes though that you truly have to love what you’re doing to keep going long-term. “I have seen, not once and not twice, people that start in this field of work but don’t relate to it. Sitting down analyzing data for hours, learning and A/B testing new tools or capabilities that can improve our activity significantly won’t be easy to someone who will look at it as work. It will probably wear him down.”
Big Picture
Looking at the long-term picture, he notes that there are a few key things he sees coming on the horizon. Yonatan believes that 3D will play a big role over the next three to five years in the gaming industry and that emerging markets will continue to appear, especially in Asia and Latin America.
On that note, he is less certain about how technology like the Apple Watch or Oculus Rift will fit into the social casino market, saying it would be an “exciting challenge” for the industry to tackle. For Diwip, whatever new technology emerges for social casino, it will be welcomed. “We love technology changes,” Yonatan reveals. “It means that we will have smarter tools to work with.”
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