It often feels like the continual trade off for any consumer product – the balance between maximizing customer experience vs. driving product revenue.

We’re often told they’re they same: Optimize your customer experience and the revenue will follow. But is that truly the case – Especially in the mobile digital app world, where the game or the app is the thing, but internal advertisements and upsells drive the business viability?

Getting that balance right becomes even trickier, of course, when you consider the continual maturing and benefits of Big Data. Given the granular information we can learn about users – and then target sell via ads or other placements: • How should developers think about the tension between maximizing transactions and continual upsell vs. the need for design and experiential elegance? • How do you know where those curves cross? • And in case of a tie, which side wins?

Dr. Niraj Dawar is a professor in marketing at the Ivey Business School in Ontario, Canada. He has held posts literally around the world – France, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Michigan. He is author of the book “TILT: Shifting your Strategy from Products to Customers, as well as the recent Harvard Business Review article: “Use Big Data to Create Value for Customers, Not Just Target Them.”