The Mistplay Audience Network: Smartest UA Expansion of 2026! 3X reach, same quality

Rewarded UA used to be a test bed. In 2026, it's a third of your UA spend. Mistplay just made it easier to scale. We sit down with the full Mistplay leadership team — Tricia (CEO), Aaron (CCO), and Mark "Bear" Bearman (GM, B2B) — to unpack the launch of the Mistplay Audience Network. The conversation covers the state of rewarded UA in 2026, validating rewarded as a core channel, why the category is consolidating, what the MyAppFree acquisition actually unlocks for advertisers, and how the audience network expands Mistplay reach to MyAppFree and Connected Rewards inventory with a single check-box.If you've been treating rewarded UA as a tactical add-on rather than a core part of your stack, this episode is the wake-up call.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Cold open — what the audience network means for UA01:33 Welcome + guest intros (Tricia, Aaron, Bear)02:55 The state of rewarded UA in 202606:23 Survey data: rewarded UA at 20-30% of budgets07:29 The scale-vs-performance tension and the "patient path"13:17 What the audience network actually is, in plain English17:51 Brand budgets and the value-exchange opportunity23:00 The "tick a box" advertiser experience explained30:31 Where rewarded UA goes next — discovery + retention📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS— AppsFlyer's 2025 Performance Index validates what UA managers already see in their dashboards: roughly one third of the top UA sources are now rewarded. Three to four years ago, rewarded was 1-3% of spend; today it's 6-10% average and climbing.— Matej's own UA survey: rewarded UA is now 20-30% of budget for most respondents, and 80% are planning to increase it further next year. That makes it core, not tactical.— The Mistplay Audience Network = one campaign, three inventory sources. The same Mistplay buying engine now extends to MyAppFree and Connected Rewards (Mobvista) inventory with a literal check-box. Tricia's framing: "same key, more doors."— Why MyAppFree matters specifically: brand advertisers finally want value-exchange placements (not just gamers), which means a third inventory stream that wasn't monetizable through gaming alone. This is genuinely new.— The performance-quality bar isn't being lowered to add scale. Mark Bearman: a high-quality DAU/MAU ratio and engagement filter still applies; the audience network expands reach without compromising the cohort signal.— Rewarded UA consolidation is real and rapid. Three to five years ago, every studio was launching a rewarded platform; now the market is consolidating around the platforms with sustainable foundations. Tricia's intentional framing: "platforms our partners can count on for trusted ROAS delivery."— Future direction: Mistplay is shifting from a closed loyalty platform to a UA layer that handles discovery, acquisition, AND retention as a continuous loop. The audience network is the first piece of that vision.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🎙️ HOSTSMatej Lančarič — User Acquisition consultantFelix Braberg — Ad Monetization consultant🎤 GUESTSTricia — CEO, Mistplayhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/tricia-han-920649/Aaron — Chief Commercial Officer, Mistplayhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronthandi/Mark "Bear" Bearman — GM, B2B Solutions, Mistplayhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/mwbearman13/━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━#mobilegaming #useracquisition #rewarded #mistplay #liveops #f2p---------------------------------------This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠