Clash of Clans vs. Game of Thrones: Ascent — Two ways app publishers use celebrity brands to drive user acquisition

The point of using celebrity brands to reach mobile app users is straightforward: Your app needs a large, engaged audience to succeed, and celebrity brands have them.

You pay the celeb, or license rights to the brand, to get access to their audience and then leverage the credibility of their name and image to turn their fans into your (hopefully) paying users. As long as the lifetime value of the user is a multiple of your cost of acquisition, you’re winning.