Mobile Gaming Marketing & D2C Strategy Market: DoubleDown exec on D2C growth and AI cost realities

DoubleDown Interactive's director of growth marketing, Faith Price, discusses the rapid growth of direct-to-consumer (D2C) revenue, which reached $40.5 million in Q2 2026, representing 52.4% of social casino revenue. She highlights that attribution and mobile measurement partner (MMP) tools have not caught up with D2C growth, forcing publishers to push vendors for improvements. Price also addresses the challenges of acquiring players for a 16-year-old app, noting high acquisition costs and persistent measurement issues post-ATT. On AI, she argues that vendors are not delivering on promises at reasonable costs, and that automation has increased false positives and workload for her team. She advises improving existing processes before adopting AI. DoubleDown has not entered real-world rewards, focusing on its core social casino experience.