In this episode of the podcast, I argue that the total automation of digital advertising through AI enablement presents a radically economically expansive opportunity that, while certainly disruptive for certain segments of the digital advertising ecosystem, will ultimately confer significant benefits on consumers, advertisers, and advertising platforms alike. I term the complete, end-to-end automation of digital advertising Commerce at the limit : it represents not just the utmost optimization ...
Jul 01, 2025•33 min•Season 5Ep. 27
In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with returning guest Mikołaj Barczentewicz on the current state of DMA enforcement, including the recently-released text of the European Commission's April decision on Meta's Pay or Okay business model. Mikołaj returns to the podcast for his fourth appearance — he’s a professor of law at the University of Surrey and holds a PhD in Law from the University of Oxford. He also regularly publishes insightful commentary on the EU regulatory lands...
Jun 25, 2025•1 hr
This week’s episode of the podcast is in the MDM Mailbag format. I recruited Rishabh Jain , the CEO of eCommerce experience platform FERMÀT , to answer questions submitted by the MDM community. Among other topics, those questions related to: the "universal truths" of user acquisition a viable "self-learning path" for acquiring data analytics / data science skills the role of technical media buyers going forward the purpose of the CMO role what happens if Google is forced to divest part of its Ne...
Jun 17, 2025•48 min
My guest on this podcast is Maor Sadra, the CEO and co-founder of INCMRNTAL , an advertising measurement company. Full disclosure: I was one of the first investors in INCRMNTAL. The impetus for this conversation was a blog post that Maor recently published: I Measured Incrementality. Now What? . In this episode, among other things, we discuss: Why discrete, one-off experiments are not the optimal way to measure incrementality The principal challenge in measuring incrementality How the "AI-ificat...
Jun 10, 2025•50 min•Season 5Ep. 24
In this episode of the podcast, I speak with Matt Steiner , Meta's Vice President of Monetization Infrastructure, Ranking & AI Foundations, about the application of AI to the company's advertising platform. Among other things, we discuss: How ad ranking and selection are done at Meta The evolution and functionality of Meta's various AI-enabled ranking and selection tools, from Lattice to Andromeda to GEM The core architecture of Meta's advertising-focused AI models What's next on Meta's road...
Jun 03, 2025•45 min
My guest on this episode of the podcast is Brian Albrecht , the Chief Economist at the International Center for Law and Economics (ICLE). Brian holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Minnesota and is an expert on antitrust and consumer protection. In this episode, Brian and I deliberate on the importance and application of antitrust law, as well as the current state of antitrust enforcement in the United States. Among other topics, we discuss: The purpose of antitrust enforcement; The t...
May 27, 2025•40 min•Season 5Ep. 22
where he covers Apple. The topic of our conversation is Patrick's new book, Apple in China , which I reviewed last week . In the episode, Patrick provides a history of Apple's manufacturing activities in China, why Apple became so dependent on China for the production of its products, and how Apple shaped the trajectory of China as meaningfully as China shaped Apple. Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast: ContextSDK . ContextSDK uses over 200 smartphone sig...
May 19, 2025•42 min•Season 5Ep. 21
My guest on this week's episode of the podcast is Andrew Covato , a veteran of the largest digital advertising platforms -- including Meta, Google, and Snap -- and the founder and managing director of Growth by Science , an advertising measurement and technology consultancy. Andrew and I discuss the topic of advertising measurement broadly, including: The misconceptions that advertisers have about how the largest walled garden advertising platforms function; The principal mistakes companies make...
May 14, 2025•50 min•Season 5Ep. 20
My guest on this episode of the podcast is Nilay Patel , the head of product at Kohort , a cohort analytics platform (full disclosure: I'm an advisor to the company). In our conversation, we discuss the profound power of cohort analysis in decision-making, not just related to marketing spend but across all disciplines within a digital-first company. Among other topics, we cover: The aspects of LTV estimation that companies most often get wrong; Why cohorts represent the most appropriate atomic u...
May 06, 2025•46 min•Season 5Ep. 19
My guest on this episode of the podcast is Olivia Kory , the Chief Strategy Officer of Haus , an advertising measurement platform. Against the backdrop of tariffs and economic uncertainty, Olivia and I discussed how firms can think about assessing the efficiency of their marketing spend. Among other topics, we cover: Why the open web is so foreign to many performance advertisers; The right way to conceive of platform A/B testing tools that automatically optimize targeting; How advertisers are au...
Apr 29, 2025•50 min•Season 5Ep. 18
This week's episode of the podcast is in a new format: MDM Mailbag. I recruited Taylor Holiday, the CEO of eCommerce advertising agency Common Thread Collective and a prominent voice on DTC Twitter , to answer questions submitted by the MDM community. Among other topics, those questions related to: Any visible weakness in consumer spending related to tariffs; The viability of AppLovin and Pinterest for eCommerce advertising; The evolving business model of digital advertising agencies; The approp...
Apr 23, 2025•50 min•Season 5Ep. 17
My guest on this week’s episode of the podcast is Daniel McCarthy , who is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. The topic of our conversation is a draft paper for which Daniel is a co-author: Evaluating the Impact of Privacy Regulation on E-Commerce Firms: Evidence from Apple’s App Tracking Transparency . I cited this paper in Could ATT be rolled back? , and we unpack the paper’s findings in detail in the episode. Among other thi...
Apr 15, 2025•48 min•Season 5Ep. 16
In this episode of the podcast, I speak with Lee Brown , Spotify’s Global Head of Ad Business & Platform, and Per Sandell , Spotify’s VP of Product, about Spotify's recent advertising product expansion, including its Spotify Ad Exchange (SAX) and its mobile app install product. Among other things, we discuss: The history of Spotify's advertising platform, which predates the Everything is an Ad Network phenomenon; The current state of Spotify advertising, including the product announcements m...
Apr 08, 2025•44 min•Season 5Ep. 15
My guest on this week’s episode of the podcast is Alex Schultz , the CMO and VP of Analytics at Meta. Among other things, Alex manages marketing, analytics, and internationalization for the company and directed its rebrand from Facebook to Meta. Additionally, Alex recently wrote a book, Click Here , which is currently available for pre-order. Among other things, we discuss: Alex’s background and long tenure at Meta; Alex’s distaste for the term “performance marketing” and his philosophy around f...
Apr 01, 2025•47 min•Season 5Ep. 14
My guest on this week's episode is James Borow , the Vice President of Product and Engineering at Comcast's new Universal Ads effort, which was introduced this January . James was previously the Global Director of Product Strategy at Snap. The topic of our conversation is the evolving TV advertising ecosystem. Among other things, we discuss: The current state of performance advertising on TV; The historical process of buying linear TV advertising inventory; The boundaries between CTV and linear ...
Mar 25, 2025•41 min•Season 5Ep. 13
This week, I speak with George Hadjia , the founder and Chief Investment Officer of Bristlemoon Capital , a long-short hedge fund. George publishes regular insights on his firm's blog , including a recent post on Match Group , the company that operates Tinder and Hinge. The topic of our conversation is the dating app market and its prospects for growth after the tumultuous COVID era. Among other things, we discuss: The impact of COVID on the dating app market; Whether consumer attitudes have sou...
Mar 18, 2025•48 min
My guest on this week's episode of the podcast is Antti Jäderholm , the founder and COO of Ray Browser , a web browser built and optimized for gaming. In our conversation, we discuss: The history of browser gaming and where it stands today; The limitations that have historically prevented the browser from becoming a mainstream platform for AAA-quality gaming; The forces of change that are expanding the browser gaming category; The current size of the browser gaming market, and it is expected to ...
Mar 11, 2025•43 min•Season 5Ep. 11
My guest on this week's episode of the podcast is Jess Jacobs , the CMO of MDVIP , having previously served in senior marketing roles at Shopify and Wayfair. The topic of our conversation is Brandformance marketing -- or brand-oriented marketing pursued with specific sensibilities around directly-measurable business objectives. Among other things, we discuss: The definition “brandformance," and differentiation between brandformance and traditional brand marketing; The approach to measurement tha...
Mar 05, 2025•47 min
My guest on this episode of the podcast is Terence Kawaja , the CEO and founder of LUMA Partners , a boutique investment bank focusing on the digital media sector. Terry is a high-profile advisor for transactions in the marketing and advertising spaces, and LUMA Partners publishes the infamous LUMAscapes market maps for those ecosystems. The topics of our discussion include: Terry's general perspective on the digital advertising fundraising and M&A environment at the start of 2025; Why 2024 ...
Feb 26, 2025•48 min•Season 5Ep. 9
My guest on this episode of the podcast is Rishabh Jain , the CEO and co-founder of FERMÀT Commerce , an eCommerce advertising optimization platform. This is Rishabh's third appearance on the podcast (see one and two ). I invited Rishabh back to the podcast to provide a broad overview of the state of eCommerce advertising at the outset of 2025. Among other things, we discuss: Rishabh's outlook on eCommerce this year; Meta's opportunities with Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns (ASC); Whether Meta is ...
Feb 18, 2025•44 min•Season 5Ep. 8
My guest on this week's episode of the podcast is Mikołaj Barczentewicz . Mikołaj has appeared on the podcast a number of times -- he's a professor of law at the University of Surrey and holds a PhD in Law from the University of Oxford. He also regularly publishes thoughtful commentary on the EU regulatory landscape on his Substack . In this episode of the podcast, among other topics, we discuss: The EU's AI Act, which was passed in July 2024; The broad status of AI regulation in the EU; The Ham...
Feb 11, 2025•55 min•Season 5Ep. 7
My guests on this week's episode of the podcast are John Lynch and JP Dube . John is the University of Colorado Distinguished Professor at the Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado-Boulder, and JP is the James M. Kilts Distinguished Service Professor of Marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Together, along with a number of co-authors, they have written a draft paper titled The Intended and Unintended Consequences of Privacy Regulation for Consumer Marketing ...
Feb 04, 2025•39 min•Season 5Ep. 6
"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half." Knowing the context of his work, my view of the infamous quote attributed to John Wanamaker is that advertising measurement is fundamentally and necessarily uncertain, even in success. This surfaces another, in my view, invalid interpretation of the quote: that advertising is only effective when it can be measured perfectly, absolutely, and with total precision. To my mind, this has been the prevailing vi...
Jan 29, 2025•33 min•Season 5Ep. 5
In this episode of the podcast, I speak with Pan Katsukis , the CEO of Remerge , a mobile DSP. Our conversation centers around the state of mobile programmatic advertising. Among other things, we discuss: How the mobile programmatic space has evolved in recent years; The misconceptions that advertisers have about mobile programmatic; The mistakes that advertisers make when they first explore programmatic; The targeting techniques that you see advertisers have the most success with in programmati...
Jan 22, 2025•46 min•Season 5Ep. 4
In this episode of the podcast, I'm joined by two academics -- Julian Runge from Northwestern University's Medill School and Koen Pauwels from Northeastern University -- for a conversation about the methodological (and stylistic) distinction between marketing experimentation and probabilistic measurement. Julian has previously appeared on the podcast and recently contributed a guest article for Mobile Dev Memo, and he and I have co-authored a number of articles (including this Harvard Business R...
Jan 14, 2025•52 min•Season 5Ep. 3
Meta’s trajectory over the past few years has been defined by its response to Apple’s App Tracking Transparency, or ATT, privacy policy, with its recovery serving as a blueprint for success in the modern digital advertising operating environment. And in adapting to ATT, Meta may have executed one of the most remarkable, wholesale business model transitions in modern corporate history. The company transformed the core engagement model of its two flagship products, Facebook and Instagram, while re...
Jan 08, 2025•54 min•Season 5Ep. 2
My guest on this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is Raveesh Bhalla , the Product Lead for Homepage Recommendations at Netflix. Our topic of conversation is product personalization and, specifically, how scaled consumer products curate experiences for individual users and for what purpose. Among other things, we discuss: How large technology companies implement product personalization; The promise of LLMs and other AI tools for product personalization; What the objective or goal function i...
Dec 24, 2024•49 min•Season 5Ep. 1
In this episode of the podcast, I speak with Jorge Ruiz, TikTok's Global Head of Marketing Science, about the measurement methodologies that TikTok employs with its advertising clients. Among other things, we discuss: How TikTok provides measurement solutions to clients in light of a more restrictive privacy environment; The approaches, methodologies, and tools are "future-proofed" for further data restrictions; The most common mistakes that advertisers make with measurement; The measurement sol...
Dec 18, 2024•46 min
Shopify today published the latest version of Edition , its regular overview of the new product features it has made available to its merchants. As part of this release, I had the exclusive opportunity to speak with Andrius Baranauskas , Shopify's Director of Advertising Products, about Shopify's advertising products and strategy. Among other things, we discuss: Why Shopify is building marketing tools for merchants; What makes Shopify's data relevant for ads targeting; How Shopify's ad products ...
Dec 11, 2024•39 min•Season 4Ep. 15
My guest on this episode of the podcast is Niels Hoven , the CEO of Mentava , a tutoring app that helps top-performing students achieve their potential. In this episode, Niels and I discuss: The special design considerations inherent in building an app for children; How the interface of an app needs to be adapted to users who have never used another app before; The kinds of feedback that can be used to improve a children's product, given a lack of analytics; The design challenges that arise when...
Dec 04, 2024•42 min•Season 4Ep. 14
