In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak to returning guest Maor Sadra , the CEO of INCRMNTAL , about changing attitudes toward marketing measurement. The catalyst for this conversation was a set of diagrams that Maor recently published on the INCRMNTAL blog, ranking various marketing measurement methodologies across a number of features. In this episode, we discuss: The tradeoffs inherent in the above spiderweb diagram; Whether and how app advertisers implement experiments in the...
Nov 26, 2024•49 min•Season 4Ep. 13
My guest on this week's episode of the podcast is Annina Salvén, the COO of BIT ODD, a Helsinki-based gaming studio that was recently profiled by the WSJ . Bit Odd raised $18MM in a seed extension this month, following on from the €5MM seed round it raised in 2022. My fund, Heracles Capital, is an investor in both rounds. I asked Annina to join me on the podcast to discuss the current state of venture fundraising for mobile gaming. Specifically, we cover: Why Anniina returned to mobile gaming, g...
Nov 20, 2024•49 min•Season 4Ep. 12
In this episode, I present a long-form analysis of AppLovin's business and its significant recent growth. But understanding AppLovin the company is fundamentally predicated on understanding the market in which it operates, mobile games advertising, and the direct response digital advertising landscape more broadly. And so this podcast is structured in three parts: Understanding direct response advertising Understanding mobile gaming advertising Understanding AppLovin’s growth All of these topics...
Nov 11, 2024•39 min
My guest on this week's episode of the podcast is Paul Bannister , the Chief Strategy Officer at Raptive . Paul is returning to the podcast for the third time; see the first two episodes here and here . Our topic of discussion is Google's AI Overviews product, which I profiled in Google's Gambit . Among other things, we cover: How web publishers perceive AI Overviews; Whether AI Overviews have yet appreciably impacted publisher traffic; How AI Overviews might fit into Google's broader strategy w...
Nov 06, 2024•44 min
My guest on this week's episode of the podcast is Kate Minogue, who previously served as Meta's Head of Marketing Science for EMEA and now serves as a fractional C-level executive for various companies. Kate published one of the first guest posts on Mobile Dev Memo in 2019: The LTV metric isn’t dead. Here’s why . The post was a rebuttal / response to my own contentiously titled post, It’s time to retire the LTV metric . Among other topics, Kate and I discuss: The core of a capable marketing anal...
Oct 29, 2024•54 min
In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with Thomas Petit, a well known voice in the mobile ecosystem and a veteran of the podcast. In the episode, we discuss all things related to subscriptions for mobile apps, including: The current state of web acquisition for subscription apps; The timeline over which web acquisition gained traction for subscription apps; The downsides of web acquisition for subscription apps; How web acquisition differs from app acquisition; How gaming apps ...
Oct 22, 2024•52 min
My guest on this week's episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is Christoffer Holmgård , the CEO and co-founder of modl.ai , which allows game developers to deploy AI-empowered bots into their games to discover bugs and personalize game experiences. Our conversation is focused on the use of AI in game development. Among other things, we discuss: How AI is being used to assist with game development now, and how that might change or expand in the near term; Which of the less glamorous aspects of g...
Oct 15, 2024•39 min
My guest on this week's episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is Andrey Fradkin , an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Boston University's Questrom School of Business. The topic of our conversation is the role of antitrust in tech and the various design decisions impact consumer welfare. Among other things, our discussion covers: The role of antitrust law with respect to digital marketplaces; Whether digital marketplaces naturally trend toward anticompetitive behavior; How and whether certain...
Oct 09, 2024•45 min
ho covers the retail media space through his blog, Media, Ads + Commerce . We discuss the current state of retail media, including: When the explosion in retail media began (when did Everything become an Ad Network? ); Whether retail media budgets generally represent "new money" or are being redirected from elsewhere; The sustainability of growth in the retail media market; The measurement challenges that arise from advertisers' use of multiple retail media networks; Any forthcoming consolidatio...
Oct 02, 2024•47 min•Season 4Ep. 5
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...
Sep 24, 2024•40 min
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 conversa...
Sep 17, 2024•41 min
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 laws...
Sep 10, 2024•49 min
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...
Sep 04, 2024•1 hr 7 min
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...
Aug 28, 2024•52 min
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 ...
Aug 20, 2024•49 min
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 ...
Aug 13, 2024•49 min
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 a...
Aug 06, 2024•48 min
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 ende...
Jul 30, 2024•1 hr 5 min
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 me...
Jul 23, 2024•50 min
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 ulti...
Jul 16, 2024•55 min
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 .
Jul 09, 2024•18 min
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 AdAttribution...
Jul 02, 2024•49 min
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 What 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 o...
Jun 25, 2024•32 min
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 Googl...
Jun 18, 2024•46 min
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...
Jun 11, 2024•44 min
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 dif...
Jun 04, 2024•37 min•Season 3Ep. 16
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...
May 28, 2024•51 min
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 ...
May 22, 2024•52 min•Season 3Ep. 14
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 ha...
May 14, 2024•54 min•Season 3Ep. 13
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 gatekeep...
May 07, 2024•52 min
