BLKBOX.ai CEO Athar Zia talks marketing trends, ad failure rates and the future of AI

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Pocket Gamer Connects Summit San Francisco kicks off on Monday, March 9th, 2026.

The event brings together over 750 delegates for a day focused on the world of mobile gaming. Companies set to join the show include Tencent, Scopely, Jam City, Discord and many more.

One of the speakers set to join the conference is BLKBOX.ai CEO Athar Zia. The company helps marketers and game studios take the guesswork out of digital advertising.

BLKBOX.ai platform uses AI to automatically build and test video ads across Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, Unity, Moloco and Reddit.

Zia will be hosting a session entitled ‘Creative Marketplace For Gaming: Browse, Buy, & Launch Ready-Made Ads Instantly’ on The Growth Track.

We caught up with Zia ahead of the show to discuss optimising marketing campaigns and why AI will be integrated deeper into company workflows.

PocketGamer.biz: Please give us a summary of what you’re speaking about and why it’s important.

Athar Zia: I’m discussing the launch of the BLKBOX Creative Marketplace. What Amazon did to ecommerce with same-day delivery, BLKBOX Marketplace is doing the same for video ads in gaming.

Currently, ad creatives are the biggest lever for performance but suffer a 95% failure rate. Combined with heavy art backlogs and siloed operations, studios are forced into a “copycat” ecosystem just to survive.

Our platform breaks this cycle. Publishers simply create a profile, add their game and get daily, ready-made ads. You can preview, purchase, and launch tailored creatives across Meta, TikTok, and Unity on the exact same day.

This is a massive shift for the mobile games industry because it eliminates long production cycles and restrictive contracts, empowering UA teams to instantly test, scale and focus on ads that actually connect with players.

Where are the next big opportunities in the mobile games market?

The next big opportunity is streamlined marketing operations. With a 95% ad failure rate, mobile UA is a game of probability, not logic. To combat this, advertisers must produce hundreds of targeted ads per month segmented by channel, geo, user personas and player motivations.

However, simply producing more ads wastes spend if it isn’t matched with higher conversion quality. The true unfair advantage belongs to studios that can seamlessly unify the entire user journey: Testing -> Production -> Click -> Landing Page -> Install -> App Open.

By deeply linking omni-channel creative testing, video production and App Store optimisation, advertisers ensure that when a player clicks an ad, they see a perfectly matched store page and ultimately open the game to that exact experience.

What’s the most important key performance indicator (KPI) for you – and why?

Here are the four mandatory KPIs I focus on:

Production velocity per month: This is oxygen. Without consistent monthly production, you simply can’t compete and die. It is mandatory to profitably scale.

Creative win-rates: If your win-rates are below 15%, you must re-think your creative strategy. Increased volume without increased win-rates is just wasted spend.

Creative scale-rates: If you inject ads and they don’t scale, you have the wrong formula for determining winning ads. The ads auction changes fast (e.g., CPMs drop in January and rise later in the year), so your logic must be dynamic to highlight winners that actually scale.

Average carry per month: This defines your effective scaling ceiling. For example, if a winning ad carries $50K a month and you have five winners, your max scale is $250,000 per month. Any push above that will be wasted spend, unless you produce more ads to sustain the incremental budget.

While traditional metrics like D1, D3, D7 retention and ROAS are essential, building a well-oiled, sustained machine also requires operational KPIs.

What do you think the next big disruptor in mobile games will be?

The next big disruptor will be AI deployed at the company level to unify workflows, not just generate assets.

Currently, mobile game organisations are disjointed, heavily siloed and operating with conflicting KPIs. Art teams carry an unrealistic burden: they are expected to understand every single in-game feature (mechanics, powerups, characters, weapons and upgrades) while simultaneously adapting to shifting UA data from the changing ads auction – all while producing hundreds of ads per channel each month.

The major innovation won’t simply be using AI for generation. AI’s true value will be breaking down these silos to connect the UA, art, data science and product teams.

By streamlining these organisational workflows, studios will increase velocity without compromising quality. Ultimately, this unified approach is what will allow developers to provide amazing, highly personalised ad experiences for every specific player type – from casual and VIPs to hardcore and leaderboard chasers.

What is the single biggest challenge facing the mobile games industry today?

The mobile games industry faces two monumental, interconnected challenges:

1. The sheer volume of creatives needed: To survive today’s ad auctions, UA teams require massive monthly volumes of unique concepts segmented by channel and country. Because ads fatigue faster than ever, studios must rapidly test and rotate creatives while sustaining the high win-rates necessary to scale ad spend profitably.

2. Scaling QA and compliance workflows: Even if a studio solves production velocity, reviewing that massive output creates a new bottleneck. Manually checking ads to ensure they meet brand guidelines, remain IP compliant and avoid legal risks is impossible at scale. Managing 50 ads a month manually is fine, and 100 pushes the limits – but trying to review 400 ads a month completely breaks the system.

When not making/selling/playing games, what do you do to relax?

It might seem counterintuitive, but lifting weights is quite relaxing for me. When you lead an organisation, your decisions impact the lives of many, and that level of stress compounds. Working out relaxes my nervous system and gives me the fuel to keep going each and every day.

Aside from the gym, I rely on two other outlets to unwind:

Driving sports cars: I appreciate engineering of all kinds – specifically high-performance cars. Taking them out on a long, windy road on the weekends is a great release.

Coffee shops with Blue: Taking my Australian Shepherd, Blue, to work at coffee shops kills two birds with one stone. Blue gets the human and dog connection he needs and I get a nice change in environment to do my thinking.