Mobile advertising company Liftoff is bringing together inspirational women from across the mobile industry to share their stories. In this series, we’ll explore their achievements, the challenges they’ve overcome, and their vision for the future — offering insights from the experts shaping the world of mobile apps and technology. This month’s article focuses on Kara Wexler, Director of Paid Media at PrizePicks.
Can you start by walking us through your career path — how did you get to where you are today?
I fell in love with advertising at the University of Georgia, where I led the department’s student agency, managed the AdClub alumni program, and studied abroad in France during the Cannes Lions Awards. A mentor, Elizabeth Hall, advised me to start my career agency-side to build “street cred” before moving in-house, so I began my career at 360i (now dentsu X) in NYC.
At 360i, I explored various departments but found my niche in media buying, where I could blend creative storytelling with performance-driven strategies. After a few years, I became eager to expand my expertise, which led me to transition to the beauty industry, first at L’Oréal (leading paid media for Kiehl’s) and then at Glossier, where I sharpened my D2C eCommerce performance marketing skills.
Eventually, I discovered the mobile app industry’s data-driven nature, and the rest was history. PrizePicks gave me a performance marketer’s dream: 100% ownership of consumer data, strong member re-engagement, and the agility to innovate quickly.
What is PrizePicks, and how would you describe your role there?
PrizePicks offers a simple, engaging way for sports fans to turn their knowledge into cash. With our mobile-first, pick-more-or-less format, fans can easily make predictions on their favorite players and add excitement to every game. Whether tracking a favorite player or just looking to enhance your sports-watching experience, PrizePicks makes every moment more meaningful.
As part of the user acquisition team, I lead PrizePicks’ digital paid media strategy across paid social, search, programmatic, and emerging channels. My focus is driving efficient new customer growth by optimizing creative testing, budget allocation, account structure, and seasonal spend pacing around the sports calendar.
What inspired you to pursue a career in the app/mobile industry?
Mobile is one of the fastest-moving industries, especially for brands without physical products. The ability to iterate, test, and optimize in real time — combined with the depth of first-party data — makes it a goldmine for performance marketers. In mobile, you can own the entire customer journey, from acquisition to re-engagement, which unlocks endless opportunities for innovation and personalization.
What difficulties have you faced in your career, and how have you navigated them?
Every company, team, and leader operates differently. Navigating those changes while staying resilient is key. For example, moving from eCommerce to mobile apps meant adapting to a different measurement landscape. App tracking is far more complex due to privacy restrictions, which pushed me to learn more about SKAdNetwork (SKAN), mobile measurement partners (MMPs), and alternative attribution models.
What are some of your biggest accomplishments throughout your career?
I’ve consistently driven fast, impactful growth in the direct-to-consumer (D2C) space. For example, in my first six months at Glossier, we improved return on ad spend (ROAS) by 93% and cost per acquisition (CAC) efficiency by 44% through new creative strategies and optimizing our channel mix. More recently, at PrizePicks, we grew First Time Depositors 76% YoY during my first NFL season through offer testing, channel optimizations, and 4x YoY creative testing.
I’m also quite proud of some of the innovative campaigns I’ve been involved with during my career. While working on the Jameson Irish Whiskey account at 360i, I helped create a Google Home voice skill for cocktail recipes, making Jameson the first alcohol brand on the platform. I also partnered with a rising designer star to create a neighborhood-inspired hand-painted mural for Jameson.
What’s one thing you wish someone had told you before you started working in mobile?
Mobile measurement is way more complex than eCommerce tracking. Privacy restrictions have made SKAN, MMPs, and incrementality testing essential tools, and navigating them effectively requires a deep understanding of attribution models.
How does your performance marketing strategy shift between sports seasons?
Our business is highly seasonal, with our biggest months spanning from the NFL kickoff to the NBA playoffs. We proactively plan spend spikes based on historical YoY trends while adapting to live sports calendar shifts. Creatively, even when we aren’t calling out specific sports in ads, we incorporate visual cues — like courts, fields, or balls — to demonstrate the seasonal relevance.
What role does organic growth play in your marketing mix, and how do you complement it with paid efforts?
Organic social media is a massive part of our success. PrizePicks won Best Social Media for the second consecutive year at the Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association Industry Awards in 2024. PrizePicks also has the world’s biggest and best sports Discord with nearly 600k members, which was recognized at the Hashtag Sports Awards.
We collaborate closely with our organic and partnerships teams to amplify our content partners. Our talent partnerships extend across paid media (including TV and OOH!), social media, and even our website/app store pages, creating an authentic, unified brand presence. These long-term relationships help our content remain genuine.
How do you tailor your campaigns for different users, e.g. casual fans vs. hardcore fans?
As algorithms become more sophisticated, creative is the new targeting. For casual fans, we simplify messaging and focus on how PrizePicks works while avoiding jargon. We also utilize explainer-style videos and creator-led content, which help ensure things remain approachable for all audiences. Our content creator mix is intentionally diverse, too — across age, race, and gender — to reflect our broad audience and appeal.
What are some of the biggest challenges facing mobile apps today, and how should the industry address them?
PrizePicks is an app with big traffic spikes around select games, which means one of the biggest challenges for us is working around app store data delays. Waiting 24-48 hours for App Store data limits real-time optimization based on ad-level performance. While Mobile Measurement Partners deepen advanced data-sharing connections with paid media platforms, we are also exploring alternative consumer journeys like having users sign up for a mobile web experience.
Looking at the broader market, most app marketers are facing the impact of growing privacy restrictions and attribution loss. We have had to evolve our measurement strategy to incorporate incrementality testing, check out survey responses, deferred deep linking promo code adoption, and several other points for triangulation.
Given your role at PrizePicks, what trends are you seeing in paid media?
As time goes on, more and more things are battling for our attention — and we’re now at a point where content needs to provide a significant amount of education or entertainment value to make an impact. Alongside TikTok’s continued rise and other platforms adopting similar formats, we must constantly challenge ourselves to find new, engaging ways to share our brand’s value proposition and avoid over-reliance on any one paid media channel.
What’s an exciting development in mobile apps or ad tech that you’re keeping an eye on?
The increasingly sophisticated incrementality testing approach is reshaping mobile growth. More platforms are moving beyond last-click attribution to focus on incremental lift models, helping advertisers optimize for true net-new customers rather than just catching users at the bottom of the funnel. As we evolve our triangulation approach for attribution, incrementality validation is always a central decision-making factor.
Could you tell me about any nuances in marketing a sports app compared to other mobile verticals?
From a creative standpoint, the principles are very similar. In the same way that Nike sells motivation, PrizePicks sells excitement. From a marketing perspective, we aim to showcase how PrizePicks can be a perfect complement to the sports viewing experience. Every shot, rebound, and assist means more when your lineup is on the line.
What’s been your experience working in a space that has traditionally been male-dominated, both in sports and tech?
I’m fortunate to work with many brilliant women at PrizePicks, but coming from the female-dominated beauty industry, the shift to sports and gaming was noticeable. That said, I continue to see more women entering leadership roles in sports and ad tech, which is exciting to be a part of.
Even so, women in ad tech and sports tech still lack representation in senior leadership roles and mentorship opportunities. While progress is happening, it’s critical to foster environments where women are not only included but actively empowered to lead.
What advice do you have for women looking to break into the ad tech or app growth industry?
If you’re transitioning from D2C eCommerce, the fundamentals of performance marketing translate well — just take the time to learn mobile-specific measurement. Use LinkedIn’s people search to find mentors in Mobile Gaming Apps, then narrow by shared college or university and mutual connections to build relationships.
