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 and subscription apps pursue web acquisition differently; The measurement benefits of web acquisition; How and whether the FTC's recent "click-to-cancel" rule will change the dynamics of web acquisition for subscription apps; Whether Apple or Google will crack down on web-based acquisition for subscription apps. Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast: INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on. Moloco. Moloco is a trusted and transparent advertising platform powered by machine learning. Moloco can drive the best outcomes for mobile app advertising through Moloco Ads as experienced by marquee brands such as Bumble, Draftkings, and Playrix. For retailers and streaming enterprises, Moloco also provides a best-in-class advertising platform powered by machine learning to build and manage their own ad businesses. Learn more at www.moloco.com/podcast.

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 game development are the most natural places to apply AI;  How AI-assisted bots differ from those that were programmed with deterministic logic; How AI might play a role in live ops; How AI enables much larger and richer open worlds; How AI can be adopted by gamers; How AI can be used to radically personalize game experiences. Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast: Moloco. Moloco is a trusted and transparent advertising platform powered by machine learning. Moloco can drive the best outcomes for mobile app advertising through Moloco Ads as experienced by marquee brands such as Bumble, Draftkings, and Playrix. For retailers and streaming enterprises, Moloco also provides a best-in-class advertising platform powered by machine learning to build and manage their own ad businesses. Learn more at www.moloco.com/podcast. INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on. Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

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 consumer tech design practices can benefit consumers and still be considered anti-competitive; Amazon's treatment of its own products in search rankings (from Andrey's paper on the subject); Whether Amazon's branded search advertising product impacts the economics of retail on the Amazon platform; The tradeoffs that must be considered in the Amazon antitrust case (from Andrey's HBR article on the subject); How the impact on advertisers and consumers of advertising on the Amazon platform should be considered; How antitrust enforcement of Big Tech might evolve. Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast: Moloco. Moloco empowers businesses of all sizes to grow through advanced machine-learning solutions that deliver digital growth and performance for customers. INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on. Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.