Mobile Dev Memo Podcast: Recent Episodes

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My guest on this week's episode of the Mobile Dev Memo is Fred Leach, a Vice President of Product Development at Meta. Fred published a blog post last month announcing three significant changes to Meta's advertising platform: new value-based optimization objectives, support for incrementality optimization, and integrations with third-party analytics tools.

I invited Fred onto the podcast to unpack these changes in more detail. In our conversation, we discuss, among other things:

• How the Meta ads platform has evolved over the past 2-3 years;
• How Meta thinks about incrementality, and why it is important to advertisers;
• How Meta measures incrementality;
• The objectives that will be available for incrementality optimization;
• How integrating with third-party analytics tools contributes to improved advertiser performance;
• The new value-based segment targeting feature;
• Whether these changes will reduce the number of campaigns advertisers need to run;
• How these changes will ultimately combine with Generative AI for ad creative production;
• The rollout plan and timeline for these new features.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• Kayzen. A mobile-first DSP that is built to democratize programmatic advertising.
• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

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My guest on this week's episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is Garrett Johnson, an Associate Professor of Marketing at Boston University's Questrom School of Business.

I was delighted to bring Garrett back to the podcast -- we recorded an episode about advertising auctions back in February 2022 -- because his seminal paper on the concept of Ghost Ads deeply informed my understanding of incrementality measurement in advertising, which is the topic of discussion in the episode. In our conversation, we cover:

• What advertising incrementality is;
• How a marketing team can measure incremental contribution from advertising;
• Whether incrementality is truly knowable;
• The concept of Ghost Ads;
• How ghost ads fit into an advertising workflow;
• Whether incrementality measurement necessitates prolonged advertising reaction cycles;
• The commercial risks of ignoring or neglecting incrementality measurement.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• Kayzen. A mobile-first DSP that is built to democratize programmatic advertising.
• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

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In this week's episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with notable ad tech authority and former podcast guest Ari Paparo about the specifics of the Department of Justice's lawsuit against Google in its ad tech lawsuit, which recently went to trial. Ari is the CEO of Marketecture, which recently launched a new sub-site dedicated to Google's antitrust lawsuits called The Monopoly Report.

I used this opportunity to speak to Ari to have him explain the various allegations made in the lawsuit (which I originally covered here). Among other things, Ari explains the specifics of:

• Google's restriction of its demand to AdX;
• Google's restriction of real-time bidding to AdX, while giving AdX "first look" (dynamic allocation);
• Project Bernanke / Global Bernanke / Project Bell;
• Header bidding and why Google wanted to suppress it;
• Project Poirot;
• Unified Pricing Rules / removing per-exchange price floors;
• Who was harmed by these tactics, and how.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• Kayzen. A mobile-first DSP that is built to democratize programmatic advertising.
• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

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In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with Bill Grosso, the CEO of Game Data Pros, a consultancy that specializes in experimentation for digital entertainment. Over the course of our conversation, among other things, we discuss:

• Experimentation as a concept in consumer products;
• Whether experimentation should exist as a standalone team or be integrated into the workflow of a product team;
• The tools needed for experimentation;
• How to ensure that experiments don’t conflict with or negate each other;
• Pricing experimentation;
• The most severe mistakes teams make with experimentation.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• Kayzen. A mobile-first DSP that is built to democratize programmatic advertising.
• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• Rockerbox. Get the clarity your marketing needs and navigate your way to success with Rockerbox. Visit rockerbox.com/maze today to see what it’s all about.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

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In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with Rob Leathern, a trust and safety and business integrity executive, on the potential use of AI by bad actors to perpetrate scams and other forms of abuse on social media. Among other things, we discuss:

• The role of a business integrity function at a large technology company;
• How proactive these teams can be to new and emergent threats;
• The ways in which privacy vulnerabilities are exploited for monetary gain by malicious actors;
• How AI changes the threat landscape for things like business integrity, trust and safety, and privacy;
• How AI empowers large consumer platforms to fight malicious actors;
• Non-obvious threat vectors for consumer privacy.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• Rockerbox. Get the clarity your marketing needs and navigate your way to success with Rockerbox. Visit rockerbox.com/maze today to see what it’s all about.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

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My guest in this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is Barak Witkowski, the Chief Product Officer of Appsflyer, a mobile advertising attribution and measurement platform.

In our conversation, among other things, Barak and I discuss:

• The prevailing themes in mobile attribution;
• How advertisers have adapted to the rapidly evolving privacy landscape, and what separates the most effective advertiser initiatives from those that haven't worked as well;
• How the media landscape utilized by mobile app advertisers changed over the past few years;
• How mobile app advertisers should view the web as a potential source of installs;
• SKAdNetwork's transformation into AdAttributionKit and how should advertisers view that;
• How AI will play a role in marketing performance measurement.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• Rockerbox. Get the clarity your marketing needs and navigate your way to success with Rockerbox. Visit rockerbox.com/maze today to see what it’s all about.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

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My guest on this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is Offer Yehudai, the CEO of Arya, a product that helps couples re-ignite intimacy in their relationships. Prior to Arya, Offer was the President of Fyber, which was acquired by Digital Turbine in 2021.

In this episode, Offer and I discuss the process and methodology of launching a consumer product. Among other things, we explore:

• Offer's philosophy for launching and growing consumer products;
• How to balance the desire to grow as quickly as possible and seize a market opportunity with the necessity of building a strong product foundation;
• The most appropriate focal metrics to optimize against as a product is called, and how those metrics might change over time;
• The right approach to thinking about audience targets at the earliest stages of product development, absent data;
• How to manage product optimization at the early stages of product growth;
• The right approach to monetization at the early stages of product growth.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• Rockerbox. Get the clarity your marketing needs and navigate your way to success with Rockerbox. Visit rockerbox.com/maze today to see what it’s all about.

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My guest in this week's episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is Joe Ferencz, the CEO and founder of Gamefam, a metaverse game developer that operates the largest portfolio of titles on Roblox. Among other things, Joe and I discuss:

• The degree to which the Roblox creator ecosystem has been professionalized;
• The enterprise tools that Roblox makes available to creators;
• Roblox's developer economics and revenue share terms, how they compare to those offered on other platforms, and whether they are likely to change in the near-term future;
• Roblox's new consumer-facing advertising platform and how it has changed the Roblox ecosystem;
• How large brands approach the development of Roblox experiences;
• How Roblox creators approach user acquisition for their experiences.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• Rockerbox. Get the clarity your marketing needs and navigate your way to success with Rockerbox. Visit rockerbox.com/maze today to see what it’s all about.
• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

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My guest on this week's episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is Joost van Dreuen, the CEO of Aldora, a data insights platform. Joost is also an adjunct professor at NYU's Stern School of Business, the author of the SuperJoost Playlist newsletter, and a well-known analyst of the mobile gaming ecosystem.

Joost and I discuss Netflix's gaming efforts to date, as well as the expansion of many legacy media companies into gaming. Among other topics, we cover:

• Netflix's strategy with its gaming endeavor;
• Netflix's hiring of Alain Tascan from Epic to run its gaming division;
• The commercial outcome that Netflix is pursuing with games;
• The convergence of monetization strategies across streaming video and gaming;
• Where the ceiling is in mobile games, and whether that ceiling has been reached by companies like Supercell;
• The New York Times as a gaming company.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• Rockerbox. Get the clarity your marketing needs and navigate your way to success with Rockerbox. Visit rockerbox.com/maze today to see what it’s all about.
• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

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this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with Adam Epstein, the CEO and founder of Gigi, a CTV advertising buying platform specializing in Prime Video. We discuss the current CTV advertising landscape, including:

• What is motivating the dramatic growth of CTV advertising spend?;
• The distinct pricing strategies implemented by Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon for their ad-supported tiers;
• The different targeting and measurement solutions offered by the major streaming services;
• Why CTV measurement is challenging when inventory is purchased through third-party DSPs;
• The availability of targeting data across various streaming services and programmatic channels.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• Rockerbox. Get the clarity your marketing needs and navigate your way to success with Rockerbox. Visit rockerbox.com/maze today to see what it’s all about.
• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

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In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with Chris Kane, the President of Jounce Media, a research agency that covers the programmatic advertising ecosystem. Chris and I discuss the state of the programmatic advertising market. Among other things, we cover:

• The current state of the open programmatic web;
• What caused the rapid decline of made-for-advertising (MFA) supply;
• How the largest premium web publishers will adapt to cookie deprecation in Chrome;
• Whether cookies will ultimately be deprecated in Chrome;
• Why cookie deprecation in Safari provides little clarifying guidance on the impact of cookie deprecation in Chrome;
• The dynamics behind OEMs claiming ad rights within CTV apps.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• Rockerbox. Get the clarity your marketing needs and navigate your way to success with Rockerbox. Visit rockerbox.com/maze today to see what it’s all about.
• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

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This episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is a spoken essay and not an interview. In the episode, I discuss the European Commission's preliminary finding that Meta's use of the "Pay or Okay" model violates the Digital Markets Act, and I relate that decision to the broader trend of digital deglobalization.

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My guest on this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is David Philippson, the founder and CEO of Dataseat, a privacy-first mobile DSP. As David notes in our conversation, this is the fourth episode of the MDM podcast on which David has appeared, which likely makes him the most recurring guest. David is a wealth of insight into the mobile advertising ecosystem, having founded one of the first MMPs, Ad-X, which was acquired by Criteo in 2013.

In this episode, David and I discuss AdAttributionKit, the advertising attribution framework that Apple introduced at WWDC this year and which is mostly -- currently, anyway -- a re-brand of SKAdNetwork. Among other things, we cover:

• The changes to mobile attribution introduced with AdAttributionKit;
• The extent to which AdAttributionKit is an attempt to unify attribution across platforms, and what would that conceivably might look like in a few years' time;
• Whether Meta or Google are any more likely to adopt AdAttributionKit than they were SKAdNetwork;
• Why Apple made the change that only allows one view-through impression to be open at a time;
• Apple's long-term vision for attribution;
• Whether Private Cloud Compute will have a measurement use case at some point;
• Updated thoughts on the likelihood of Apple deploying its "nuclear option" of IP obfuscation.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• Rockerbox. Get the clarity your marketing needs and navigate your way to success with Rockerbox. Visit rockerbox.com/maze today to see what it's all about.
• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

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MDM Canon is a new podcast series from Mobile Dev Memo in which co-hosts Eric Seufert and Stewart Johnson select an article from the Mobile Dev Memo archive and discuss it at length.

This episode focuses on an article titledWhat is performance marketing?⁠, first published in October 2018. The episode attempts to clarify what I see as a broad misunderstanding of the general marketing taxonomy with a functional definition of performance marketing.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠⁠⁠Clarisights⁠⁠⁠. Go to⁠⁠⁠ clarisights.com/demo⁠⁠⁠ to try it out for free. You’ll see why thousands of performance marketers trust Clarisights every day.⁠⁠
• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Google Podcasts

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My guest on this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is Archie Stonehill, the Head of Product at Stash, a D2C and web shop enablement tool for mobile game developers. Prior to Stash, Archie was an investor at Makers Fund, a venture capital fund investing in the gaming ecosystem.

In this episode, among other topics, Archie and I discuss:

• The history of alternative mobile app stores, starting most prominently with Epic's Project Liberty and progressing through those lawsuits, as well as Google's settlement with states' attorneys general;
• The current state of affairs with respect to alternative app stores and alternative in-app payments;
• The size of the "shadow IAP economy" on mobile, enabled by web shops;
• How much traction do you think alternative app marketplaces will see in the EU under the auspices of the DMA, including the four that are live now: AltStore Pal, the Aptoide games store, Mobivention, and SetApp Mobile;
• The key advantages of web shops over platform storefronts;
• How developers can overcome the conversion friction inherent in moving users to alternative storefronts.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠⁠⁠Clarisights⁠⁠⁠. Go to⁠⁠⁠ clarisights.com/demo⁠⁠⁠ to try it out for free. You’ll see why thousands of performance marketers trust Clarisights every day.⁠⁠
• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Google Podcasts

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In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with Mike Taylor, the co-author of a new book, Prompt Engineering for Generative AI: Future-Proof Inputs for Reliable AI Outputs, published by O'Reilly. Taylor was previously the founder of a 50-person growth marketing agency, Ladder.

In our conversation, among other things, Mike and I discuss:

• How Prompt Engineering is a skill that can be improved upon over time;
• The non-obvious ways in which prompt engineering can be approached in order to improve outcomes;
• How Prompt Engineering can be approached procedurally and programmatically, and how companies should think about building systems that improve their LLM interactions over time;
• Whether the growth hacking model has fallen out of favor;
• The principal challenges of running an agency;
• Whether marketing generally suffers from a lack of statistical literacy.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠⁠⁠Clarisights⁠⁠⁠. Go to⁠⁠⁠ clarisights.com/demo⁠⁠⁠ to try it out for free. You’ll see why thousands of performance marketers trust Clarisights every day.⁠⁠
• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

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My guest on this week's episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is Tom Smith, a partner at specialist competition law firm Geradin Partners. I invited Tom to the podcast to discuss the recently passed Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) Bill in the UK, which grants the UK's Competition and Markets Authority with broad new powers to regulate digital markets.

Among other things, Tom and I discuss:

• What the DMCC aims to achieve;
• The political context around the DMCC;
• How the DMCC differs from the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA);
• What new powers and obligations the DMCC grants and imposes upon the CMA;
• The long-term consequences of the DMCC.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠⁠⁠Clarisights⁠⁠⁠. Go to⁠⁠⁠ clarisights.com/demo⁠⁠⁠ to try it out for free. You’ll see why thousands of performance marketers trust Clarisights every day.⁠⁠
• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Google Podcasts

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My guest on this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is Danny Frenkel, the CEO of PunchUp, an eCommerce platform for stand-up comedians. Prior to founding PunchUp, Danny was an early employee at Facebook.

Danny and I discuss the process of building an audience in the era of social media subscriptions, and what the end of the internet's grand bargain means for live performers. Among other topics, our conversation covers:

• The economics of live entertainment;
• How developing a direct connection with customers became an imperative in the post-ATT marketing landscape;
• What building a relationship with a customer entails;
• How live entertainers think about lifetime value;
• How the creative landscape changes when creators are equipped to with direct-to-consumer tools.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠⁠⁠Clarisights⁠⁠⁠. Go to⁠⁠⁠ clarisights.com/demo⁠⁠⁠ to try it out for free. You’ll see why thousands of performance marketers trust Clarisights every day.⁠⁠
• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

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My guest on this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is Ari Paparo, a prominent entrepreneur and thought leader within the digital advertising ecosystem. The impetus of our conversation is a newsletter that he published several weeks ago for Marketecture in which he asked, Did it have to be this way?. From that piece:

"After reading this, you’re forgiven for thinking that the web is dead. Not dead yet, but certainly in decline. Media companies have pivoted to CTV. The NY Times makes more money from games than news. The advertisers are finding more of their customers on retail sites through Commerce Media. When you zoom out, these are all parts of the same story, but it could have maybe been different."

Ari and I discuss the history of and future prospects for the open web, including:

• The benefits of closed-loop advertising systems over the open web;
• Whether a fractured and stratified ecosystem of closed-loop walled gardens is a best-case scenario for digital advertising;
• The notion of the “open internet”;
• How the digital advertising ecosystem evolved differently than Ari would have expected at the time of Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick;
• Netflix’s announcement that it will develop its own advertising platform;
• What Ari predicts for the future of third-party cookies in Chrome.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠⁠⁠Clarisights⁠⁠⁠. Go to⁠⁠⁠ clarisights.com/demo⁠⁠⁠ to try it out for free. You’ll see why thousands of performance marketers trust Clarisights every day.⁠⁠
• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

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My guest on this week’s podcast is Trung Phan, a popular X (Twitter) personality and a host of the Not Investment Advice podcast. Trung popularized the “short-form deep dive” content format on X following its introduction of long-form posts and has developed a for posting infotainment style content that often goes viral.

In our conversation, Trung and I discuss:

• How Trung’s background as a comedy screenwriter contributed to perfecting his voice on social media;
• How the social media landscape has arguably been redefined since COVID;
• The substantive changes that have occurred on X since Elon Musk acquired it;
• The best strategy for aggregating an audience on social media in this new landscape;
• Whether creators focus on a single platform or try to diversify;
• How Trung’s content strategy on X has changed since Musk’s takeover;
• How creators should approach making time investments in new platforms like Threads;
• The value of live video for podcasts;
• The optimal cadence of publishing for various platforms.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠⁠⁠Clarisights⁠⁠⁠. Go to⁠⁠⁠ clarisights.com/demo⁠⁠⁠ to try it out for free. You’ll see why thousands of performance marketers trust Clarisights every day.⁠⁠
• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

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My guest on this episode of the podcast is Lazar Radic, a Senior Scholar for Competition Policy at the International Center for Law & Economics and Adjunct Professor of Law at IE University. Our conversation focuses on the EU's Digital Markets Act and the broader competition regulation landscape. Among other things, we discuss:

• A brief survey of the most meaningful recent new competition laws and investigations;
• The DMA workshop process;
• The EC's announced investigations into three gatekeepers following the conclusion of their workshops;
• The designation of iPadOS as a gatekeeper;
• How the DMA might shape the digital economy in the EU;
• Whether the EC has enough capacity to effectively enforce the DMA;
• New attitudes toward competition in the regulatory landscape.

Thanks to the sponsor of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠⁠⁠Clarisights⁠⁠⁠. Go to⁠⁠⁠ clarisights.com/demo⁠⁠⁠ to try it out for free. You’ll see why thousands of performance marketers trust Clarisights every day.
• ⁠⁠⁠⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

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In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with ⁠Alan Chapell⁠, an attorney who specializes in digital privacy through his law firm and consultancy, ⁠Chapell & Associates⁠, about the recently proposed American Data Privacy and Protection Act (APRA).

Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Washington, and Senator Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, unveiled the APRA last month -- the draft legislation presents consumers with broad digital privacy protections and features many similarities and several noteworthy distinctions from the ADPPA, a previous data privacy bill that was effectively killed by the last Congress.

In our conversation, Alan and I cover, among other things:

• The broad provisions and requirements of the APRA;
• How the APRA differs from the ADPPA;
• What to make of the fact that Maria Cantwell sponsored APRA while opposing the ADPPA;
• The interpretation of the APRA's targeted advertising opt-out provision as a de facto consent requirement;
• The FTC's obligations and powers as outlined in the APRA;
• The latest status of third-party cookie deprecation in Chrome;
• Whether Google intends to limit the functionality of first-party cookies in Chrome.

Thanks to the sponsor of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠⁠⁠Clarisights⁠⁠⁠. Go to⁠⁠⁠ clarisights.com/demo⁠⁠⁠ to try it out for free. You’ll see why thousands of performance marketers trust Clarisights every day.
• ⁠⁠⁠⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

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My guest on this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is Mikołaj Barczentewicz, a law professor at, and the research director of, the Law and Technology Hub at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom.

In this episode of the podcast, Mikolaj and I discuss the EDPB's recently published opinion on the use of the Pay or Okay model by "large online platforms." Mikolaj most recently joined the podcast in December of last year to speak with me about Meta's introduction of the Pay or Okay model. In this episode, we cover the EDPB's opinion invalidating that specific use. Topics explored in our conversation include:

• A high-level overview of the EDPB's opinion;
• How the EDPB presents Meta's use of Pay or Okay as not providing a valid consent mechanism;
• The EDPB's definition of "large online platforms";
• The other platforms to which the opinion might apply;
• The ways in which the opinion doesn't contradict the CJEU's commentary on Pay or Okay from last July;
• What happens next with respect to Pay or Okay.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠⁠Marketecture⁠⁠.

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MDM Canon is a new podcast series from Mobile Dev Memo in which co-hosts Eric Seufert and Stewart Johnson select an article from the Mobile Dev Memo archive and discuss it at length.

This episode focuses on an article titled The perilous mythology of Brand Marketing for digital products⁠, first published in November 2021. The episode proposes a taxonomy of performance marketing tactics, distinguishing between Direct Response, Delayed Response, and Brand marketing. It also outlines a framework for how all three can fit together into a unified strategy.

Thanks to the sponsor of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

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In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I discuss third-party cookie deprecation in Chrome, as well as Google's Privacy Sandbox suite of tools with Paul Bannister, the Chief Strategy Officer at Raptive.

Over the course of our conversation, we cover:

• The current state of third-party cookie deprecation in Chrome;
• Whether publishers are generally prepared for the full rollout of third-party cookie deprecation;
• Whether any components of the Privacy Sandbox are underrated, or will ultimately perform better than expected;
• Whether the Privacy Sandbox achieves an optimal balance across privacy preservation and advertising efficacy;
• If third-party cookie deprecation benefits the walled gardens;
• How publishers can test Privacy Sandbox;
• Whether Google will limit the functionality of first-party cookies, as Apple has done with ITP.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

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My guest on this week's episode of the podcast is Tom Fish, the Head of Public Policy and Research at Gener8, a data empowerment platform for consumers. Tom is also the Director of Policy at the Coalition for Online Data Empowerment, an advocacy group.

But prior to these roles, Tom was an Assistant Director at the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which has taken an active role in competition regulation related to technology firms, which is the subject of our conversation. In our discussion, Tom spoke in a personal capacity that doesn't necessarily reflect the views of the CMA.

In this episode, Tom and I discuss:

• The purpose and role of the CMA;
• How the CMA is able to influence mergers between foreign companies or proposed policy changes from foreign companies;
• Why the CMA has taken on such prominence with situations involving American firms recently;
• Whether any sense of momentum or harmonization goes into decisions from competition authorities;
• How the need for competition regulation in the digital ecosystem changed over time;
• How competition regulators view "success" with respect to competition regulation and whether they have a clear idea of what kind of society-level impact they want to effectuate;
• What competition authorities generally do well when it comes to digital markets and what they do poorly.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

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In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with Rishabh Jain, the CEO and co-founder of FERMÀT, an eCommerce platform designed to maximize advertising conversions for brands that recently raised a $17MM Series A led by Bain Capital.

In our conversation, Rishabh and I discuss, among other topics:

• The implications for retail and eCommerce from the impending deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome;
• Whether retailers and eCommerce brands are taking third-party cookie deprecation sufficiently seriously;
• Underappreciated knock-on / indirect consequences from the deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome;
• The prospects for alternative identifiers;
• Who stands to gain the most from third-party cookie deprecation;
• Shopify's innovations, including Shop Cash and Shopify Audiences;
• Amazon's partnerships with Meta and Snap.

Thanks to the sponsor of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠⁠⁠Clarisights⁠⁠⁠. Go to⁠⁠⁠ clarisights.com/demo⁠⁠⁠ to try it out for free. You’ll see why thousands of performance marketers trust Clarisights every day.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Google Podcasts

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In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with Ryan Anthony, the CEO of DIRT, an emotion analytics platform. Over the course of our conversation, we discuss:

• The science of emotion and the field of emotion analytics;
• The challenges of using focus group feedback to optimize early consumer products;
• The methodologies used to measure a user's emotional state;
• How emotion analytics can be used in a product use case;
• How the value of emotion analytics has changed as the digital privacy environment has grown more restrictive;
• How PMs can use emotion to make product adaptations and decisions.

Thanks to the sponsor of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠⁠⁠Clarisights⁠⁠⁠. Go to⁠⁠⁠ clarisights.com/demo⁠⁠⁠ to try it out for free. You’ll see why thousands of performance marketers trust Clarisights every day.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

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I speak with Ty Tinker, the Head of Analytics at AdQuick, on the topic of Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising measurement. Among other things, we discuss:

• The definition of Out-of-Home advertising
• On what timeline advertisers tend to adopt Out-of-Home advertising
• How Out-of-Home fits into a marketing strategy
• Which product categories see the most success with Out-of-Home
• Who in an organization tends to control Out-of-Home budget
• The media buying process for Out-of-Home

Thanks to the sponsor of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠⁠Clarisights⁠⁠. Go to⁠⁠ clarisights.com/demo⁠⁠ to try it out for free. You’ll see why thousands of performance marketers trust Clarisights every day.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact Marketecture.

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In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with ⁠Dr. Grace Kite⁠, the Founder and CEO of two companies: ⁠magic numbers⁠, a consulting and advisory firm that helps companies apply econometric models to their marketing measurement, and ⁠magic works⁠, a company that specializes in training related to the application of econometrics to marketing measurement.

In our conversation, we cover:

• The use case of econometrics as a discipline in marketing;
• The ways that econometrics is utilized by marketing teams to make decisions;
• How marketers can navigate the “unknown unknown” problem of shifting from deterministic measurement to probabilistic and/or econometric measurement;
• The added benefit of the more immediate and granular availability of data provided to econometric measurement for digital-first advertisers;
• The specific econometric methods and frameworks that are utilized by marketing economists;
• How the measurement cadence changes when a marketing team transitions from deterministic to econometric measurement;
• What resources exist for a marketer looking to expand their domain knowledge as a marketing economist?

Thanks to the sponsor of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠⁠Clarisights⁠⁠. Go to⁠⁠ clarisights.com/demo⁠⁠ to try it out for free. You’ll see why thousands of performance marketers trust Clarisights every day.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact Marketecture.

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In this new podcast series from Mobile Dev Memo, called the MDM Canon, co-hosts Eric Seufert and Stewart Johnson select an article from the Mobile Dev Memo archive and discuss it at length.

This episode focuses on an article titled Why Analytics Teams Fail, first published in June 2016. Specifically, the episode highlights three common issues encountered by analytics teams that can cause them to be ineffective:

1) lack of agency and authority;

2) lack of investment into infrastructure;

3) improper placement in the organization.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠⁠Clarisights⁠⁠. Go to⁠⁠ clarisights.com/demo⁠⁠ to try it out for free. You’ll see why thousands of performance marketers trust Clarisights every day.
• ⁠⁠⁠⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact Marketecture.

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My guest in this week's episode of the podcast is Russell Ovans, who recently published a book, Game Analytics: Retention and Monetization in Free-to-Play Mobile Games. Russell has a PhD in Artificial Intelligence and began his career in academia before transitioning to industry and starting one of the first Western social free-to-play gaming studios.

The topic of my conversation with Russell is the structure and management of successful analytics teams at consumer technology companies. Among other things, we discuss:

• What purpose an analytics team should serve, and what value it should add;
• The optimal way to structure an analytics team;
• The difference between analytics and data science;
• How analytics teams fail;
• and Who should "own" the LTV metric in a consumer tech company.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠⁠Clarisights⁠⁠. Go to⁠⁠ clarisights.com/demo⁠⁠ to try it out for free. You’ll see why thousands of performance marketers trust Clarisights every day.
• ⁠⁠⁠⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact Marketecture.

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My guests on this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast are Dieter Rappold and Felix Krause, the founders of ContextSDK, a tool that allows app developers to optimize and personalize their products using on-device contextual signals.

Dieter is a serial entrepreneur and investor, and he leads business operations at ContextSDK, and Felix is a well-known security researcher who previously founded Fastlane, which was acquired by Twitter and rolled into the Fabric app development platform, which was then acquired from Twitter by Google.

The topic of my discussion with Dieter and Felix is on-device processing. In our conversation, we cover:

• What on-device processing is and why it is more privacy secure than other methods of personalization
• How personalization should fit into the product development workflow
• What sorts of contextual signals are available to be used in personalizing an in-app user experience
• Where developers can achieve success in personalization
• And how deeply personalization using on-device, contextual signals must be integrated into the product to materially impact its commercial performance.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠⁠⁠INCRMNTAL⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• ⁠Clarisights⁠. Go to⁠ clarisights.com/demo⁠ to try it out for free. You’ll see why thousands of performance marketers trust Clarisights every day.

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My guest on this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is David Barnard, who is the Growth Advocate at RevenueCat, the app subscription management platform. The subjects of our conversation are the new guidelines that Apple published, in quick succession, for alternative off-platform payments in the United States and alternative in-app and off-platform payments, as well as alternative app stores, in the EU. Fair warning, we get very granular on these guidelines.

I asked David to join the podcast because he is a high-profile independent app developer who has consistently championed the position of independent developers within the mobile ecosystem.

In this episode of the podcast, we discuss the specifics of the new guidelines in both the US and EU, the attractiveness of the new options made available in both regions, the less obvious impediments to implementing these options, and the general sentiment of these new opportunities to independent developers.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week's episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• Clarisights. Go to clarisights.com/demo to try it out for free. You’ll see why thousands of performance marketers trust Clarisights every day.
• ⁠⁠INCRMNTAL. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

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My guest on today's episode is Emmanuel de Maistre, the founder and CEO of Scenario, a generative AI platform for creating game art assets. Before founding Scenario, Emmanuel founded Redbird, a drone analytics company.

Emmanuel and I discuss the opportunity for generative AI to lead to radical personalization -- the ability of products to tailor content experiences to the tastes and behaviors of individual users. In our conversation, we cover:

1. The ultimate goal of personalization in consumer products;
2. What about gaming makes it a good candidate for radical personalization;
3. How gaming teams are using Generative AI for content production currently;
4. How the job of a game designer changes as personalization tools become more embedded in game production;
5. What happens with gaming when personal value functions are realized.

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My guest on this week's episode is Eran Friendinger, the CTO and Co-Founder of Voyantis, an advertising optimization platform that calculates user-level predicted LTV in real time for targeting and conversion improvements.

The topic of our discussion is conversion optimization and customer lifetime value. Among other topics, we talk about:

• The primary pitfalls that marketing teams encounter when building LTV models?;
• How to avoid (or accommodate) the curse of dimensionality when estimating LTV;
• How VO bidding has changed since ATT and the nuances of the different platforms that marketers should consider when using VO bidding;
• Synthetic signals and whether or how they should be incorporated into an advertiser's conversion optimization process;
• The specific campaign strategies that work differently across verticals.

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My guest on this week's episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is David Philippson. David is the CEO of Dataseat, a mobile DSP that uses contextual signals for targeting and which was acquired by the Verve Group in 2022. Before Dataseat, David was the founder of AdX, the first mobile attribution platform.

I originally invited David to the podcast to discuss the significance of the soon-to-be-released iOS privacy features that were announced by Apple at WWDC this year. But our conversation ultimately ended up being focused on the list of SDKs that Apple had recently released before we recorded our podcast. Throughout our conversation, David and I discuss, among other topics:

• The significance of the new privacy features that Apple announced at WWDC '23, including Privacy Manifests, the use of Required Reasons APIs, and tracking domains;
• The viability of fingerprinting when nothing but an IP address is available for use, and whether IP address-based fingerprinting will persist;
• What potential privacy changes Apple might introduce WWDC '24;
• How DSPs are adapting to ATT;
• Whether and how brands are adopting programmatic on mobile.

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My guest on this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is Matthew Kanterman, a respected gaming analyst who spent 8 years at Bloomberg covering companies in the interactive entertainment space, and who also spent time at Roundhill Investments covering the Metaverse.

I invited Matthew onto the podcast to consider the prospects for mobile gaming in 2024. In the episode, among other things, Matt and I discuss:

• Alternative in-app and off-platform mobile gaming payments;
• Further consolidation in mobile gaming;
• Microsoft's mobile gaming ambitions;
• and Netflix's strategy concerning mobile games.

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In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with Alan Chapell, an attorney who specializes in digital privacy through his law firm and consultancy, Chapell & Associates. In the episode, Alan and I discuss, among other things:

• The current state of a potential national privacy law in the United States;

• What role, if any, the FTC can have in regulating digital privacy;

• Google's Privacy Sandbox initiative and its impact on the digital advertising ecosystem.

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My guest on this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is Mikołaj Barczentewicz, a law professor at, and the research director of, the Law and Technology Hub at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom.

Mikolaj is an expert on European data privacy law and this is his fourth time appearing on the podcast: in previous episodes, we discussed the European digital privacy environment broadly, the future of EU-US data transfers, and the specifics of the EU's Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act.

In this episode of the podcast, Mikolaj unpacks the realities of "pay or okay," which is the business model that Meta has decided to apply for its users in the EU, the EEA, and Switzerland after various rulings and commentary by EU courts, regulatory bodies, privacy boards, and privacy authorities.

Under this model, a user is provided with a choice that dictates their ability to access a product: they can pay, or consent to having various forms of their data processed, often for digital advertising purposes (which is the "okay" component of the model's name). Several companies have applied this model in the EU in the face of the GDPR's restrictions related to data processing, as we discussed.

Specific topics of our conversation include:

• Background on Meta's pay or okay subscription offering;
• Norway's banning of Meta's targeted advertising;
• and the European Data Protection Board's recent guidance on the ePrivacy Directive.

The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Google Podcasts

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My guest on this episode of the podcast is Ben Savage, who works at the intersection of advertising and privacy at Meta. Ben is Meta's representative to the W3C in forums like the Private Advertising Technology Community Group and the Privacy Community Group.

At Meta, Ben has been heavily involved with a framework called Interoperable Private Attribution, or IPA, which is a distributed attribution and aggregation protocol that exists as a joint proposal between Meta and Mozilla. IPA has gained a great deal of attention as a potential solution for privacy-safe advertising attribution, and it is the subject of this episode. Ben and I go deep on several topics related to IPA and digital advertising privacy more broadly, including:

• A high-level conceptual overview of Interoperable Private Attribution;
• The origin of IPA as a joint proposal from Mozilla and Meta;
• The importance of the ease of adoption by advertisers and publishers for any privacy-enhancing technology;
• The degree of buy-in required from consumers to advance privacy-safe advertising solutions;
• And the process of establishing standards within W3C working groups

For more information about Interoperable Private Attribution and the broader subject of Multi-Party Computation, I suggest this YouTube series developed by Ben that is designed to explain these concepts to non-technical audiences.

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My guest on this episode is Olivia Kory, the Head of Go-To-Market at Haus, a marketing decision science platform. Before Haus, Olivia held senior marketing roles at Netflix, Quibi, and Sonos.

Olivia and I discuss a wide range of topics within the subject of advertising measurement in this episode, including:

• The role of causal inference in marketing measurement;
• The common skillset gaps that Olivia witnesses when observing companies making the transition to probabilistic measurement;
• The unforeseen challenges in transitioning to probabilistic measurement for marketing teams;
• The amount of coaching required for the non-marketing teams within the organization to socialize the concept of probabilistic measurement.

The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Google Podcasts

About Olivia:

Olivia leads customer support, marketing, and partnerships at Haus, which is productizing incrementality, experimentation, and econometrics to help brands quantify marketing ROI. Before Haus, Olivia was the Director of Growth Marketing at Sonos and has held marketing positions at Quibi and Netflix.

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My guest on Episode 4 of Season 2 of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is Joy Howard. Joy is the CEO of Early Majority and is a remarkably accomplished marketer, having held CMO and other executive-level marketing positions at some of the world's most recognized brands, including Sonos, Patagonia, and the Coca-Cola Company, among others. I invited Joy onto the podcast to discuss all things Brand Marketing, including:

• What constitutes a brand;
• How a company builds a brand;
• The difference between brand development and brand advertising;
• How a company measures the value of its brand;
• Also: some of my tweets.

About Joy:

Joy Howard has scaled disruptive technologies and led two unicorns through the transformation required to thrive in the public markets. She's been recognized by Forbes and Fast Company as one of the most influential and creative global business leaders and was profiled by Bloomberg for her unconventional journey to the C-suite. In 2021, Joy founded Early Majority, a community that makes gear for getting outside, where she serves as CEO.

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In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with Peter Hamilton, the Senior Director of Ad Innovation at Roku, about the digital advertising opportunity on CTV. Among other topics, Peter and I discuss:

1. The high-level promise of CTV for advertisers
2. Creative strategy for CTV
3. The availability and efficacy of targeting on CTV
4. The verticals that tend to experience the most success with CTV
5. And the most common ways in which CTV inventory is purchased.

The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Google Podcasts

About Peter:

Peter Hamilton is the Senior Director of Ad Innovation at Roku, where he leads consumer-facing ad experiences across Roku's OS, The Roku Channel, Mobile, Commerce, and Interactive. Prior to Roku, Peter was the CEO of TUNE, an early mobile advertising attribution company, which exited its mobile measurement business to Constellation Software in 2020.

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In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with Alex Collmer, the CEO of VidMob, about the power of creative in the modern advertising landscape.

In Episode 1, Season 2 of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, among other things, Alex and I discuss:

• How the role of creative optimization has changed over time as the privacy environment has grown more restrictive;
• How creative experimentation and creative concept construction align with audience development;
• How a productive relationship between the creative team and the media buying team can be structured;
• And the skillsets that Alex see most commonly in effective CMOs.

About Alex:

Alex Collmer is the Founder and CEO of VidMob, the world’s leading AI creative performance platform. Since founding the company in 2015, Collmer has raised more than $220M and led initiatives that earned VidMob official marketing partner badges from Meta, Google, TikTok, Amazon, Snapchat, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, and Hulu. Today, VidMob provides its software to a majority of agency-holding companies and counts many top global brands as clients.

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In Episode 2 of Season 2 of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with Michael Kaminsky, the co-founder and CEO of Recast, on the topic of media mix modeling and probabilistic marketing measurement more broadly. Among other things, our conversation touches upon:

• How a marketing team can get started with adopting probabilistic measurement;
• The unforeseen difficulties that teams face when adopting probabilistic measurement methodologies;
• How much longer pseudo-deterministic solutions can be relied upon;
• How the measurement methodology utilized by a marketing team changes its media buying behavior.

About Michael:

Michael Kaminsky is a co-founder and co-CEO of Recast, a startup that is re-inventing Marketing Mix Modeling for modern marketers. Michael was trained as a statistician and econometrician focused on helping people make better decisions. He's passionate about taking cutting edge statistical techniques and using those to build tools that help marketers drive better performance for their businesses.

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This episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast focuses on The Future of Digital Advertising Measurement. I am joined by two very esteemed guests, Maor Sadra and Dr. Julian Runge:

• Maor Sadra is the CEO of INCRMNTAL, an incrementality testing platform. Prior to INCRMNTAL, Maor was the CEO of Applift and held executive positions at a number of digital advertising and interactive media firms before that. As a disclaimer: I am an investor in INCRMNTAL;
• Dr. Julian Runge is an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University and before that was a Visiting Scholar at Duke University. Julian's research focuses on behavioral economics and marketing analytics. Julian and I recently co-authored a paper with Dr. Garrett Johnson of Boston University titled Privacy-Centric Digital Advertising: Implications for Research for the Customer Needs and Solutions Journal.

In this episode of the podcast, Julian, Maor, and I explore the future of digital advertising attribution in an increasingly privacy-sensitive operating environment by exploring the topic from two angles:

• What approaches to advertising measurement are future-proofed?
• How can companies implement probabilistic methods for advertising measurement -- and, more importantly, how can they attain buy-in for those methods across the entirety of a firm?

We also discuss the nature of brand advertising and how it fits into a performance marketing framework and the skillsets needed for digital marketers as the demands for quantitative rigor increase.

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In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with returning guest Mikołaj Barczentewicz, an expert on European data privacy law, about the recent $1.3BN fine that the Irish DPC issued to Meta over its transmission of EU residents' data to the United States. We discuss the history of data transfer frameworks between the EU and the US and why they've all been invalidated, the core motivations of EU protectionism related to data transfer, and the implications for all technology companies of the Irish DPC's decision.

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In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with Shamanth Rao, the CEO of Rocketship HQ, a mobile performance marketing agency. We discuss Shamanth's practical approach to integrating probabilistic marketing measurement, and especially media mix modeling, into his clients' reporting workflows:

• How to sell probabilistic measurement to key stakeholders;
• How to use probabilistic measurement to guide marketing investment decisions;
• How to adapt the media buying approach to be best captured with probabilistic measurement methods.

Our discussion touches on many of the topics I have covered recently in essays like The Emerging Marketing Economist and Reprogramming the Broken Marketing Brain.

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In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with Rishabh Jain, the CEO and co-founder of FERMÀT, an eCommerce platform designed to maximize advertising conversions for brands. Prior to FERMÀT, Rishabh spent nearly six years at Liveramp, most recently as its Vice President of Innovation.

In our conversation, Rishabh and I discuss, among other topics:

• Rishabh's journey from a PhD in solid state physics to ad tech;
• The necessity of financial literacy for eCommerce media buying;
• How the media buyer role has changed following ATT, and the optimal marketing channel mix;
• Why more consolidation and roll-up efforts haven't occurred within DTC;
• The viability of a product like Shopify Audiences.

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My guest on this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is Mikołaj Barczentewicz, an expert on European data privacy law. Mikołaj is a law professor at, and the research director of, the Law and Technology Hub at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom, and he joined me just a few weeks ago in A deep dive on European data privacy law to discuss recent developments in Europe related to data privacy and GDPR enforcement.

In this episode, Mikołaj outlines the legal impact of both of these pieces of legislation in detail, with specific attention paid to the digital advertising market. We also discuss the latest news related to Meta's recent fine by the Irish DPC for using first-party data without consent to empower personalized advertising, as well as the temporary ban that the Italian DPA enforced on OpenAI's ChatGPT.

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My guest in this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is Brad Richards, the Managing Director & Chief Product Officer at LOVOO, the most popular dating app in the German-speaking world.

Brad and I discuss the Product Management role for mobile-first companies:

• What a product manager does;
• The path to becoming a product manager;
• The role of A/B testing in product management, and how it can do more harm than good.

We also discuss the Dating App Dilemma: how the success of the product's core use case actually creates churn for the product.

If you enjoy the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, please remember to rate it with 5 stars!

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My guest in this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is Mikołaj Barczentewicz, an expert on EU digital privacy law. Mikołaj is a law professor at, and the research director of, the Law and Technology Hub at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom, and he has research affiliations with the Stanford Law School and the University of Oxford, from which he received his Ph.D.

I learned of Mikołaj after reading a piece he co-wrote titled GDPR Decision Against Meta Highlights that Privacy Regulators Don’t Understand ‘Necessity’. I invited Mikołaj onto the podcast to discuss the recent spate of decisions in the EU related to digital privacy, including:

• The Irish DPC's ruling against Meta over the company's use of the contractual basis for processing user data related to personalized advertising;
• The French CNIL's recent sanctions of Apple and Voodoo Games;

In the episode, Mikołaj and I discuss a wide range of topics:

• Consent as a mechanism for collecting and processing first-party data in the EU;
• The difference between the necessity and legitimate interest bases under GDPR;
• The dynamics between the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) and the data protection agencies within the various EU states;
• The future of trans-Atlantic data flows.

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In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I discuss the promise of Generative AI for marketing and product development with Thomas Petit and Ketty Slonimsky. Thomas is a well-known consultant and the author of the MADV newsletter, and Ketty Slonimsky is the Chief Growth Officer of Palta, the publisher of the popular Lensa app. The subject of the episode was intended to be predictions across the mobile space for 2023, but we ended up hovering over the topic of Generative AI for most of the conversation. In the episode, we unpack the potential for Generative AI across a number of different functions related to marketing, publishing, and optimizing apps, as well as the ways in which Generative AI technology can be practically implemented into these various workflows.

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In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with Jessica Lee on the topic of digital privacy legislation. Jessica is a Partner and serves as the Chair of the Privacy, Security, and Data Innovations practice at Loeb & Loeb, a New York-based law firm. Jessica’s practice focuses on emerging media, technology, advertising and promotions, privacy, and intellectual property, and she has represented clients in a variety of fields, including Internet, film, music, sports, telecommunications, and consumer products.

Over the course of the podcast, Jessica and I discuss the history of digital privacy, the prospect of a federal privacy law in the US and how the recent midterm election results impact that, why Europe leads the United States in codifying privacy protections into law, and the efficacy of self-regulation, among other topics.

For a full transcript of the interview, see this post on Mobile Dev Memo.

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In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with Taylor Holiday, the CEO and founder of the Common Thread Collective, an eCommerce growth agency. Taylor and I discuss the general state of eCommerce advertising, what happened within the eCommerce category in Q3 and what he sees happening now in Q4.

We also speak about the coming reckoning in the eCommerce advertising debt market (with background on what this is!), misconceptions about how Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) privacy policy impacts eCommerce advertising, and the nature of setting direct response advertising budgets.

Common Thread company publishes a regular newsletter containing recent eCommerce advertising performance data.

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My guest for this episode is Alex Bauer, the Head of Product and Market Strategy at Branch. On Monday, October 24th, alongside the release of iOS version 16.1, Apple released its long-awaited major update to SKAdNetwork, its privacy-safe app advertising attribution framework for iOS, with SKAdNetwork 4.0. The industry was first made aware of SKAdNetwork 4.0 at WWDC this summer and we only saw public documentation for this fundamental and substantial upgrade to the framework with the release of iOS 16.1. 

In this episode, Alex and I cover four major topics related to SKAdNetwork 4.0:

First, the new timer system that accompanies the two additional attribution windows that have been made available;

Second, the ability for advertisers to lock conversion values within those attribution windows;

Third, the concept of crowd anonymity that has been introduced to SKAdNetwork and how the four tiers of crowd anonymity regulate the information that is transmitted within postbacks;

and Fourth, how ad networks will adapt to SKAdNetwork 4.0, and on what potential timeline.

We additionally briefly touch upon fingerprinting and whether or not Apple begins to police that behavior anytime soon.

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My guest on this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is Liat Barer, the VP of Product at Odeeo, an audio SSP. Liat has deep expertise in mobile ad tech, having worked at Yahoo and StartApp prior to Odeeo. I invited Liat on the podcast to discuss a topic that has taken on increased importance within mobile ad tech since the introduction of Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy, which is yield management, and how SSPs assist app publishers with maximizing the revenue they derive from in-app advertising.

Liat provides an expert overview of the way in which SSPs -- the acronym SSP stands for Supply Side Platform -- interface with demand sources and in-app inventory to generate revenue for publishers.

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I had the great pleasure last week of speaking with Matthew Ball, a prolific writer, investor, and respected thinker in the interactive media space. The backdrop of our discussion is Matthew's upcoming book, The Metaverse: And How it Will Revolutionize Everything, which is currently available for pre-order and will be available for sale on July 19th.

In this podcast, I speak with Matthew about the economics of the Metaverse: what are the parameters of commerce when resources are infinite and the only constraints to production and economic output are human ingenuity? In our conversation, we also discuss Apple and the path to open economic systems, the role that games play in making new technologies ubiquitous, and how absolute replicability impacts our understanding of legal protections, among other topics. The interview is transcribed below, and it has been edited slightly for clarity.

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This episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast was recorded live from the Mobile Apps Unlocked conference in Las Vegas on June 8th, 2022. 

In this episode of the podcast, I discuss the future of alternative payments on mobile with Allison Schiff, the Managing Editor of AdExchanger; David Barnard, Developer Advocate at RevenueCat; and Josh Burns, the Senior Director of Business Development at FunPlus. We consider how the platform operators will adapt to regulatory and legal intervention into their payments policies, whether alternative payments systems can ever gain traction over the native systems, and how developers can best focus their efforts on driving users into alternative purchasing environments. 

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In this episode of the MDM podcast, I speak with Maor Sadra, the CEO of INCRMNTAL and a returning guest to the show, about how advertisers should respond to the slowdown in growth across mobile that is being experienced as a result of the combined effects of:

• Apple's ATT privacy policy, which has deteriorated the efficiency of mobile advertising;
• a COVID overhang, which is producing altered consumer behaviors relative to what advertisers had grown accustomed over the past two years;
• a potential economic slowdown.

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My guest for this episode of the MDM Podcast is Alex Bauer, the Head of Product and Market Strategy at Branch, the mobile measurement and linking company. We speak about the revelations from Apple's WWDC conference last week that are most important for mobile advertisers: 1) the expansion of Apple's SKAdNetwork measurement framework, 2) Apple's prohibition of aggregated measurement solutions, and 3) Apple's very clear and strident proclamation that Fingerprinting is Never Allowed.

This interview assumes quite a bit of knowledge on the part of the listener. For background, see these articles:

Dear Apple: These changes will improve SKAdNetwork for advertisers (background on SKAdNetwork)

How to scale and optimize marketing spend with SKAdNetwork (background on SKAdNetwork)

Apple to Ad Tech: “Fingerprinting is Never Allowed” (overview of Apple's stance on Fingerprinting as stated at WWDC 2022)

Is SKAdNetwork 4.0 a turning point for mobile advertising: Privacy with Purpose? (overview of Apple's expansion of SKAdNetwork as revealed at WWDC 2022)

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In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with Rameez Tase about the applicability of panel data in the new advertising environment in which device-level and user-level identifiers are not available for use in creating behavioral profiles. Rameez and I speak about the use case for panel data in developing marketing audiences for both product testing and development (for whom is this product being built?) and advertising targeting (to whom should we show this product's ads?). Without the direct feedback loop of behavioral targeting and conversions measurement, both product managers and marketers must rely on much more broadly conceived audiences for input into the tough balancing problems they face in scaling a product. We discuss what panel data is, how it has been used historically, and why it is becoming more critical as a product development and marketing tool in the new digital privacy landscape. Rameez Tase is the co-founder & President of Antenna, a subscription services insights platform.

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In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, Adam Lieb and I discuss the prospects for advertising in console games, following news that both Microsoft and Sony will pursue advertising programs for their game consoles. In our conversation, we consider what ads might look like in console games, what types of developers and games are capable of integrating ads in a way that is gratifying for players, and how advertising might transform the commercial landscape of console gaming. Adam Lieb is the CEO of Gamesight, a Seattle-based marketing platform for PC, console, and web3 games.

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In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with Yevgeny Peres, the VP of Growth at ironSource, about Google's announcement that it will deprecate the GAID as well as its introduction of the Privacy Sandbox for Android. I unpacked Google's announcement of its Privacy Sandbox and the deprecation of the GAID in a post that was published shortly after the announcement. 

But my thinking was mostly out of alignment with the commentary delivered by other outlets. Popular sentiment following the announcement characterized the deprecation of the GAID as the Android equivalent of Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework, and the coverage generally surmised that the changes would catalyze another disaster for mobile advertising performance. But I believe the Privacy Sandbox, which is a collaborative environment for proposing and evaluating Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PET) concepts, is a positive and optimism-inducing development for the mobile advertising ecosystem. In the episode, Yevgeny and I discuss the three tools proposed in the Privacy Sandbox for Android, as well as the new SDK Runtime that Google revealed.

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In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I discuss the economics of advertising auctions with Garrett Johnson, who is a professor at the Questrom School of Business at Boston University. I find that the auction dynamic is one of the most poorly understood aspects of digital marketing for practitioners: most advertisers are so intently focused on their own business objectives that they ignore the machinations of ad platforms that are invisible to them. But the auction mechanic is the beating heart of digital advertising, and it determines the pricing that advertisers pay for ad inventory. I'm happy to record this foundational, evergreen episode because I think it might help to inform a broader discussion about pricing in digital advertising generally -- and to explain how it is that ad platforms don't set prices.

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In this week's episode, I speak with Canaan Linder and Atif Khan, the CEO and Head of Operations, respectively, at Stardust, a platform that allows game developers to incorporate crypto assets into their games. In this episode, we talk about the challenge of some of the various foundational notions underpinning web3 gaming -- such as the interoperability of in-game items expressed as NFTs -- as well as the potential promise in terms of expanded gameplay and player enjoyment that they present. We also talk about the skillsets needed to build web3 games, the correct way to bring a web3 game to market, and what kind of infrastructure these games require to thrive.

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In this new episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with Maor Sadra, the CEO of INCRMNTAL, about probabilistic attribution for mobile advertising and why bad incentives prevent advertisers from rejecting it. We also talk about Media Mix Models and Facebook's efforts to drive adoption for Robyn, its open-sourced measurement product, and budget diversification post-ATT.

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In this third and final episode of ATT, One Month In, I speak with Alex Bauer of Branch about the iOS 14.6 adoption rate curve, why it's unfortunate that misleading opt-in rate measurements proliferated throughout the mainstream media so quickly after the release of iOS 14.5, device fingerprinting and whether or for how long Apple will tolerate it, and Apple's PR campaign around ATT.

The previous episodes in the series are:

Episode 1: ATT, one month in: privacy thresholds with Rich Jones of Dataseat (ep. 1 of 3)

Episode 2: ATT, one month in: SKAdNetwork standards with Paul Bowen of AlgoLift (ep. 2 of 3)

In conjunction with the podcast series, I am offering a 20% discount on my iOS 14: How to prevail in Q2 2021 course which can be accessed with the code MDM_4325_OMI_20PCT or through this link. The discount will only be available through June 4th, 2021.

As always, the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Google Podcasts

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This is the second episode of ATT, One Month In, which is a podcast series that aims to provide advertisers with an overview of ATT's impact on mobile ecosystem as it takes root.

The first episode in the series can be found here: ATT, one month in: privacy thresholds with Rich Jones of Dataseat (ep. 1 of 3)

In this episode, I speak with Paul Bowen, the GM of AlgoLift, a mobile marketing analytics and campaign automation company that was acquired by Vungle last year. We discuss SKAdNetwork conversion value standards, the conversion value window, and why and for how long fingerprinting will be tolerated.

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Today I am publishing the first episode in a three-part podcast series called "ATT, one month in" that will report observations on iOS 14.5 and its impact on mobile advertising from various corners of the ad tech ecosystem. The purpose of this podcast series is to serve as an analytical waypoint in the roll-out of iOS 14.5: what is currently happening in the ecosystem as the mobile landscape changes, and what can be expected in the near-term future.

These episodes are not expected to age well: they are snapshots of what is happening right now -- in this very transformative moment -- in the mobile ecosystem. In conjunction with the podcast series, I am offering a 20% discount on my iOS 14: How to prevail in Q2 2021 course which can be accessed with the code MDM_4325_OMI_20PCTor through this link. The discount will only be available through June 4th, 2021.

In today's episode, I speak with Rich Jones, the Head of Product at Dataseat, a mobile DSP. Rich and I discuss the nature of Apple's privacy threshold and what we've learned about it since ATT was first announced. Rich yesterday posted a very provocative graph (above) of the prevalence of conversion values in the postbacks that Dataseat is seeing across its network, which precipitated the conversation.

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On Monday, April 5th, I hosted a Clubhouse room in which I provided brief commentary on Tim Cook's recent interview with Kara Swisher. The interview focused on Apple's upcoming ATT privacy policy -- and, in the interview, Tim Cook indicated that ATT will be rolled out in the next few weeks -- and I explained why I felt the interview fell short of holding Apple accountable for the structural changes that ATT will wreak on the mobile ecosystem. I recorded a rough representation of the commentary I gave in the Clubhouse room and am releasing it as a podcast.

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On Monday, March 1st, I delivered a presentation on Clubhouse titled, "iOS14, Privacy, and the Future of Digital Advertising." I was asked by a number of people to release a recording of the presentation, so I have recorded the content as a podcast and am releasing it here.

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In this episode of the MDM podcast, I discuss the future of advertising attribution on mobile with my guests Maor Sadra, the CEO of INCRMNTAL, and Peter Hamilton, the former CEO of TUNE. 

• Why did Applovin buy Adjust?
• Will fingerprinting be possible once ATT is made mandatory?
• What is the nature of ad fraud on mobile?

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In this episode of the MDM Podcast, I unpack a very specific, very important question with my guest, Thomas Petit: Why doesn't Google have to show the ATT prompt?

This discussion was catalyzed by the enormous amount of confusion that was created when Google announced last month that it would not expose the ATT prompt in its owned-and-operated apps. This revelation seemed to fly in the face of Facebook's announcement in December that it must show the ATT prompt in its owned-and-operated apps, and that ATT would govern not just app campaigns run on its platform but also mobile web campaigns. How can Google avoid showing the ATT prompt if Facebook seems to have been told very explicitly that it must show the ATT prompt?

In this podcast, Thomas Petit and I discuss this very confounding situation and attempt to provide clarity on when exposure of the ATT prompt is required, and why.

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In this episode of the MDM Podcast, I discuss the future of privacy as it relates to digital advertising with Paul Bannister, the Chief Strategy Officer at CafeMedia. Paul and I consider why the platforms -- but especially Apple -- are developing new privacy frameworks, how Google's privacy sandbox initiative may perform relative to user-based targeting, and what is meant when we use the word "privacy" to describe how a user behaves or interacts with properties online.

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In this episode of the MDM podcast, I speak with Grant Harbin, the founder and CEO of Headlight, a marketing agency. We discuss the topic of user acquisition outsourcing and when and why that might be relevant for an app developer.

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In this episode of the MDM podcast, I speak with Stephen Ellis, the founder and CEO of Pipeline.gg, about the economics of game streaming and the future of the games streaming landscape.

As a former professional gamer and then an employee at Facebook working on the company's games streaming product, Stephen witnessed first-hand just how difficult it is to aggregate and monetize and audience as a streamer. In this podcast, Stephen and I discuss his journey from gaming enthusiast to professional gamer to entrepreneur, as well as the games streaming ecosystem, the relationship between games streamers and game developers, the obstacles that streamers face in building an audience, and the economic realities of game streaming.

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In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with David Philippson and Nebo Radovic about the near-term future of mobile advertising.

How will the deprecation of the IDFA -- and of mobile advertising identifiers more generally -- change:

• the way teams are constructed;
• demand for various media sources;
• the degree to which programmatic media buying is viable;

...and other topics that will be relevant for mobile marketers over the next 18 months.

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In this episode of the MDM podcast, I chat with Thomas Petit -- better known to those operating in mobile as @Thomasbcn -- about all things subscriptions. We discuss product strategy for subscription products, how to price test, the future of the subscription model (including hybrid IAP / subscription monetization), and a number of other aspects of building a successful subscription business on mobile. 

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In this episode of the MDM podcast, I try to unpack the underlying mechanics of the accusations being made against Google from a commercial perspective (in 13 minutes)

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In Episode 8 of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with Conrad McGee-Stocks, the Director of Growth at Uken Games, which is the Toronto-based studio behind mobile hits like Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and Jeopardy World Tour.

In the podcast, we talk about what it means to be a quantitative marketer, and how that role is evolving, especially on mobile, as product and user acquisition converge.

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In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with Maor Sadra about why the deprecation of the IDFA (announced at this year's WWDC event) should not have been surprising to people who follow the mobile ecosystem, why deterministic app install attribution wasn't as reliable as people thought in the first place, and what the future of mobile looks like without the IDFA.

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In this podcast, I speak with David Philippson, the CEO of Dataseat and former co-founder of Ad-X, which was acquired by Criteo, about the underlying mechanics of mobile advertising. David walks through the process of How a Bid Becomes a DAU (inspired by the Schoolhouse Rock animation, How a Bid becomes a Law). We also talk about the future of advertising identifiers and programmatic in-housing.

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In this episode of the MDM Podcast, I speak with David Barnard, a vocal developer advocate on Twitter, about whether the App Store's closed nature and its treatment of developers is fair.

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In the 4th episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with Matt Restivo, the Chief Product Officer at the Action Network, about the impact that the Supreme Court's recent decision to allow States to offer legal sports betting will have on sports fanaticism, social media, and mobile.

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A conversation with Dr. Sandra Matz of Columbia Business School about ad targeting, the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and how to protect our Democratic institutions from algorithmic content serving

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In the second episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with mobile growth expert Andy Carvell about the difficulty of hiring people into mobile growth roles and what might be the cause of that.

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In this interview, Mobile Dev Memo's Eric Seufert speaks with Adam Hadi, a mobile influencer marketing expert, about growing a mobile user base with influencer marketing.