PGC Helsinki: Gaming Studios Need the Right Tools – And the Right Partners to Make the Most of Them

Last week at Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki, I found myself in conversations that kept circling back to the same tension: everyone’s racing to automate, but the winners are the ones who know what to automate and why.

Automation Isn’t Enough

The conference made one thing crystal clear: automation isn’t coming to performance marketing – it’s already here. From programmatic creative optimisation to AI-driven bid strategies, the technology has matured beyond experimentation. The casual gaming companies scaling successfully aren’t asking if they should automate – they’re asking where human judgement still matters most.

In short – AI accelerates production, but it amplifies whatever strategic direction you give it. At PGC, I watched this play out across three major trends.

Three Shifts Reshaping User Acquisition

1. Rewarded Engagement Is Now Table Stakes

Rewarded ads, surveys, and engagement experiences have moved from experimental tactics to core monetisation and acquisition strategies. But here’s what separates high-performing implementations from mediocre ones: understanding the psychology of value exchange at the audience level.

Anyone can plug in a rewarded ad unit. The strategic question is: what reward resonates with this player segment, in this game context, at this point in their journey? That’s not an automation challenge – that’s an insight (and strategy) challenge.

2. CTV Emerges as a Performance Channel

Connected TV advertising is finally breaking free from its brand-building reputation. Multiple sessions highlighted CTV’s growing effectiveness for user acquisition, particularly for story-driven and midcore games where you can actually show gameplay and narrative depth.

The opportunity isn’t just having access to CTV inventory-it’s knowing how to create for the format. The studios seeing success aren’t just resizing mobile ads for bigger screens. They’re rethinking their entire approach: how to show gameplay, tell a story, and communicate value when someone’s watching on their couch. That requires different creative thinking, not just another ad size.

3. Agencies Must Be Strategic Experts

Perhaps the most revealing theme was how agencies are being evaluated. Fast turnarounds, high-volume testing and concept ideation are expected, but the real question clients are asking: Do you bring strategic perspective we don’t have internally?

This matters because as creative production gets faster and cheaper through AI tools, the bottleneck shifts to strategic direction. Can you identify which creative angles to test? Can you read early signals in the data? Can you connect audience insights to creative systems that scale?

Where Human Strategy Still Wins

The pattern across all these trends is consistent: automation handles the how, but strategy determines the what and why.

In our work at Miri, we’re seeing this play out in how we structure creative testing. AI can generate 50 variations of an ad concept overnight. But deciding which concept to test-based on understanding your game’s core loop, your audience’s motivations, and your competitive positioning-that’s where strategic thinking makes the difference.

The same principle applies to channel strategy. Should you invest in CTV? It depends on whether your game’s value proposition works in that format, whether your LTV supports those CPIs, and whether you can create assets that perform in a living room environment. No amount of automation answers those questions.

The Path Forward

One of the biggest takeaways from PGC Helsinki: the competitive advantage is shifting from execution speed to strategic clarity. The tools are becoming accessible to everyone. The insights aren’t.

For agencies, this means evolving from production accelerators to subject matter experts and strategic partners who can:

• Identify which creative territories to explore before testing begins
• Read audience signals that inform creative direction
• Build creative systems that scale with strategic direction
• Translate channel opportunities into format-specific creative strategies

For gaming studios and app companies, it means choosing partners who bring a point of view, not just output.

As we head into 2026, the question isn’t whether to embrace automation-it’s how to ensure your automation is amplifying the right strategy. Because in a world where everyone can produce creative fast, the winners will be those who produce the right creative fast.

And that still requires human insight, strategic frameworks, and creative leadership.

Want to discuss how creative strategy and automation can work together for your game or app? Let’s talk about building creative systems that scale with intent.