For years, user acquisition strategies have been built around channels. Marketers optimized mobile campaigns in isolation, treated CTV as branding, and measured success within neatly defined silos. But user behavior has moved on — and the industry is now being forced to catch up.
In an App Talks video interview recorded during Business of Apps Berlin 2025, Maria Dimitropoulou, Head of Partnerships at SpinX, explains why performance marketing is no longer about optimizing individual channels, but about understanding and orchestrating the entire user journey across screens. 
Drawing on her experience building SpinX and working with app marketers globally, Maria outlines how fragmented measurement, channel-first thinking, and weak internal strategy continue to hold teams back — and why cross-platform “journey architecture” is quickly becoming a competitive advantage.
From programmatic black boxes to unified visibility
The idea for SpinX was born out of frustration. While working closely with user acquisition teams across regions, Maria noticed a recurring problem: programmatic marketing delivered results, but marketers rarely understood why.
Campaigns felt opaque. Teams didn’t know which creatives, formats, or placements actually drove performance — only that money was being spent. This lack of transparency made it difficult to scale with confidence.
SpinX was built to address that gap by creating a unified ecosystem: owned apps, owned inventory, an ad exchange, and full visibility into how users move from impression to install to subscription. The goal was simple — replace guesswork with clarity.
Users don’t live on one screen anymore
A defining insight behind SpinX’s approach is that users no longer follow linear, single-device journeys.
Maria describes a familiar scenario: a user sees an ad on a streaming platform, searches for the brand on their phone, compares options on the web later that evening, and installs the app the next day. Each interaction happens on a different screen, in a different mindset, at a different moment.
Treating these touchpoints as separate channels misses the bigger picture. Performance marketing, Maria argues, should follow behavior, not platforms. Success comes from understanding how screens connect — not optimizing them in isolation.
Measurement has finally caught up
For a long time, cross-screen strategies were constrained by measurement limitations. Attribution across CTV, web, and mobile was unreliable, which pushed marketers back toward mobile-only campaigns.
That has now changed.
Thanks to improvements in mobile measurement partner integrations, marketers can track performance from upper-funnel impressions all the way to in-app purchases and subscriptions. This makes it possible to evaluate CTV and cross-platform campaigns on performance metrics — not just awareness. 
As Maria puts it, CTV is no longer “just branding.” With the right strategy and measurement in place, it has become a legitimate performance driver — one piece of a broader cross-platform ecosystem.
Strategy before scale
One of the most common issues Maria encounters is not tooling — it’s preparation.
Many teams know their high-level targets but lack a clearly defined internal strategy. They don’t fully understand their conversion flow, their drop-off points, or the percentage of users they expect to move from install to registration to purchase.
Without this foundation, scaling acquisition simply amplifies inefficiency.
SpinX doesn’t replace UA teams or act as an agency. Instead, it supports teams that already have a strategy by providing the tools and inventory to execute cross-platform campaigns effectively. But that only works when KPIs, attribution, and expectations are clearly defined upfront.
Cross-platform performance beats mobile-only scale
A key pattern emerging from SpinX’s data is that unified, cross-screen campaigns outperform mobile-only strategies on long-term metrics.
By reaching users in different moments — relaxed on a TV, researching on web, active on mobile — marketers create a more natural and less aggressive acquisition experience. According to Maria, these campaigns tend to deliver better retention, stronger LTV, and healthier ROAS than static, single-channel approaches.
The goal isn’t to be everywhere for the sake of it. It’s to match creative, format, and message to the user’s mindset on each screen.
Creative and context still matter
Not all screens — or creatives — perform the same way.
Maria stresses that effective cross-platform marketing requires experimentation. Playables may work well for gaming apps, while finance or wellness apps require very different creative approaches. Each screen captures a different mood, and creative formats must reflect that.
SpinX runs creative testing across screens to identify what works where — but the real value comes from combining those insights into a coherent journey, rather than treating them as isolated A/B tests.
The industry’s blind spot: chasing volume without quality
Perhaps the most striking observation Maria shares is how often teams prioritize volume over clarity.
Many UA teams focus on installs without a clear understanding of quality, incrementality, or long-term value. They continue to pour spend into increasingly expensive search and social campaigns without asking whether new channels are actually adding incremental growth.
Adding channels only makes sense if they improve outcomes — whether that’s lower CPAs, stronger retention, or better LTV. Otherwise, more spend simply means more inefficiency.
Laying foundations that scale
Maria closes the conversation with a lesson drawn from both business and personal life: foundations matter.
In a volatile environment — whether in marketing, startups, or life — sustainable growth depends on having a strategy that remains stable as conditions change. From there, everything else can scale.
For app marketers heading into 2026, that foundation is clear: understand the full user journey, define success before spending, and stop thinking in channels.
Watch the full interview below.
