Mobile Dev Memo Podcast

My guest on this episode of the podcast is Simon Whitcombe, the Vice President, Global Business Group at Meta. We discuss Meta's Business AI and the Meta AI business assistant, both of which were announced ahead of this year's AdWeek. I unpacked the potential of these tools to help advertisers cross the "ad-product divide" in Can Meta cross the ad-product divide?; in this episode, Simon and I deliberate on the non-advertising opportunity with platform AI tools like these.Among other things, we cover:How Meta is bringing AI to bear for its advertising clients in non-advertising use cases;Other potential ways that Meta's AI tools can be used for optimizing advertisers' products or understanding of advertising performance;Meta's recent whitepaper on GEM, and whether Meta's attitude toward transparency with these types of systems has changed over time (especially in light of recent speculation about its Q3 update to Andromeda);How advertisers are using creative generation tools to expand creative diversity (versus merely increasing output volume);The tenor of feedback that Meta is getting from advertisers about Meta's AI business tools, and whether that feedback differs by company size, company category, geographic region, etc.;How the digital advertising landscape has evolved since COVID.Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:⁠Xsolla⁠. With the Xsolla Web Shop, you can create a direct storefront, cut fees down to as low as 5%, and keep players engaged with bundles, rewards, and analytics.⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.⁠Universal Ads⁠ is Comcast’s self-serve TV ads platform that lets you launch campaigns in minutes across premium inventory from NBC, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, Roku, and more.Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠⁠Marketecture⁠⁠.

In this episode of the podcast, which is a companion to ⁠Affiliate links, personalized ads, and chatbot revenue optimization⁠, I discuss the need for OpenAI to discover a scalable, durable revenue model, given its status as the avatar for artificial intelligence as a transformative economic and social force. I then make the case for why personalized, conversion-optimized advertising is a superior business model for chatbots than affiliate distribution.Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:Xsolla. With the Xsolla Web Shop, you can create a direct storefront, cut fees down to as low as 5%, and keep players engaged with bundles, rewards, and analytics.INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.Universal Ads is Comcast’s self-serve TV ads platform that lets you launch campaigns in minutes across premium inventory from NBC, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, Roku, and more.Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

My guest on this episode of the podcast is Luca Fiaschi, a machine learning expert who previously held executive data science roles at MistPlay, StitchFix, and HelloFresh. Luca is now a Partner for the Generative AI vertical at PyMC Labs, a consultancy that specializes in the application of Bayesian methods to business problems and which maintains the open source PyMC library for Bayesian statistical modeling as well as the open source PyMC Marketing media mix modeling library. The subject of my discussion with Luca is PyMC Labs' recent paper, LLMs Reproduce Human Purchase Intent via Semantic Similarity Elicitation of Likert Ratings. I found the paper fascinating and wrote an overview on LinkedIn; the paper's authors (from PyMC Labs as well as Colgate) use an LLM to score product concepts, finding that the distribution of LLM-produced scores can be comparable to that produced by human panels.Among other things, the podcast episode covers:Background on the paper, and how the partnership with Colgate-Palmolive came about.An overview of the LLM querying methodologies used in the paper and how they produced score distributions.The approaches used in the paper for calculating similarities between the LLM-produced and human-produced scores.The conclusions / findings of the paper.What the implications of the paper are on marketing creative ideation and the use of LLMs for evaluating product and advertising concepts.Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:Xsolla. With the Xsolla Web Shop, you can create a direct storefront, cut fees down to as low as 5%, and keep players engaged with bundles, rewards, and analytics.INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.Universal Ads is Comcast’s self-serve TV ads platform that lets you launch campaigns in minutes across premium inventory from NBC, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, Roku, and more.Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

The sixth installment of the Mobile Dev Memo mailbag features app monetization expert Sylvain Gauchet. Sylvain formerly served as Babbel's US Director of Revenue Strategy and now works with a number of subscription apps on revenue growth as an advisor and fractional executive. Additionally, Sylvain runs the GrowthGems newsletter, for which he scours the internet for valuable content related to growth and surfaces the most relevant and actionable insights from it.Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:Xsolla. With the Xsolla Web Shop, you can create a direct storefront, cut fees down to as low as 5%, and keep players engaged with bundles, rewards, and analytics.INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.Universal Ads is Comcast’s self-serve TV ads platform that lets you launch campaigns in minutes across premium inventory from NBC, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, Roku, and more.Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

In this week's episode of the podcast, I speak with Daphne Tideman, a product growth expert who runs the Growth Waves newsletter. The topic of our conversation is "zero-to-one growth": the tactics developers can utilize to validate and optimize their product to ultimately enable scaled user acquisition.Among other things, we cover:The purpose of early audience validationHow monetization can be validated without actually being implemented in a productHow developers can assess product-market fit at various points in the development cycleHow a developer can recognize that their optimal audience isn't being servedHow user feedback can contribute to a developer’s understanding of product-market fitWhether and how a developer can quantify the scale of their product's opportunityHow to recognize product-market fit in the soft launch / beta stageThanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:Xsolla. With the Xsolla Web Shop, you can create a direct storefront, cut fees down to as low as 5%, and keep players engaged with bundles, rewards, and analytics.INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.Universal Ads is Comcast’s self-serve TV ads platform that lets you launch campaigns in minutes across premium inventory from NBC, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, Roku, and more.Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:Apple PodcastsSpotify

In this week's episode of the podcast, I speak with Kate Minogue, a fractional CPO and advisor for consumer and ad tech companies. Kate also runs the AI Leadership Lab, an AI leadership course. Previously, Kate worked in marketing measurement at Meta. This episode is the fifth installment of the MDM Mailbag series, in which I bring experts onto the podcast to answer questions fielded from the Mobile Dev Memo community.The questions posed to Kate related to:The nature of being a fractional executive (including incentive alignment, compensation, and time commitment)Ad monetization for chatbotsHow companies can establish defensible moats when development costs are eroded through AI toolsThe capabilities needed to optimize AI-native productsHow AI-native apps should design for engagementThanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:Xsolla. With the Xsolla Web Shop, you can create a direct storefront, cut fees down to as low as 5%, and keep players engaged with bundles, rewards, and analytics.INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.Universal Ads is Comcast’s self-serve TV ads platform that lets you launch campaigns in minutes across premium inventory from NBC, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, Roku, and more.Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

My guest on this week's episode of the podcast is Dan Pantelo, the CEO and founder of Marpipe, a platform that enables eCommerce companies to build dynamic product ads. In our conversation, we discuss:The necessity of exhaustive creative experimentation in eCommerce advertisingWhether and how advertisers can create an effective feedback loop between advertising creative and product design / product conceptingCurrent best practices with ad creative testingHow AI can be applied to creative production currentlyThe general health of the D2C ecosystemThanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:Xsolla. With the Xsolla Web Shop, you can create a direct storefront, cut fees down to as low as 5%, and keep players engaged with bundles, rewards, and analytics.INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.Universal Ads is Comcast’s self-serve TV ads platform that lets you launch campaigns in minutes across premium inventory from NBC, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, Roku, and more.Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:Apple PodcastsSpotify

In this episode of the podcast, I speak with The Wall Street Journal's Tim Higgins about his new book, iWar: Fortnite, Elon Musk, Spotify, WeChat, and Laying Siege to Apple's Empire. iWar traces a series of campaigns launched against Apple's control of the iOS App Store, including those from Spotify, Epic, Meta, and Elon Musk. Higgins chronicles the rise of the App Store from its launch in 2008, contextualizing Apple's vigorous defense of its iOS business practices with its broader pattern of testing the boundaries of legal and ethical standards.Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:Xsolla. With the Xsolla Web Shop, you can create a direct storefront, cut fees down to as low as 5%, and keep players engaged with bundles, rewards, and analytics.INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.Universal Ads is Comcast’s self-serve TV ads platform that lets you launch campaigns in minutes across premium inventory from NBC, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, Roku, and more.Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

In this episode of the podcast, I speak with Daniel McCarthy on the topic of Customer Lifetime Value (LTV / CLV). This is Daniel's second appearance on the podcast; he first joined me in April to discuss his paper, Evaluating the Impact of Privacy Regulation on E-Commerce Firms: Evidence from Apple’s App Tracking Transparency.In this episode, Daniel provides an overview of the CLV / LTV metric. Among other topics, we cover:The concept of LTVThe commonalities observed across companies that utilize LTV successfullyThe analytical challenges in deriving LTVWhich functional team within an organization should own the LTV metricThe right dimensionality / granularity of user segmentation to use in calculating LTVThe ways in which companies overcomplicate the LTV calculationHow the LTV metric can be kept currentWhether improvements to LTV through product or marketing optimization over time should be assumed when calculating LTVThanks to the sponsor of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.Universal Ads is Comcast's self-serve TV ads platform that lets you launch campaigns in minutes across premium inventory from NBC, Paramount, Warner Brothers Discovery, Roku, and more.Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:Apple PodcastsSpotify

In this episode of the podcast, I speak with Adam Singer about the general trend of brands pivoting their marketing strategies into anodyne and agreeable positioning (and why brands succeed when they don't). Adam is the VP of Marketing at AdQuick and runs the Hot Takes blog.Among other things, Adam and I discuss:The "blandification" of marketingWhy AI output won't displace creativityWhat David Ogilvy would think of the current state of marketingThe role of a CMO and how it should be evaluated The backlash from marketers against the recent American Eagle ad campaignWhat went wrong with Crack Barrel's rebrandThanks 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 podcast, I speak with Andrew Lipsman, an independent analyst in the retail media space and the author of Media, Ads + Commerce. Andrew and I discuss the prospects for -- and the futility of -- agentic commerce. Among other things, our conversation covers:The definition of 'agentic commerce'The 'fundamental flaws' in agentic commerce from a conceptual and commercial standpointWhether independent agents can capably fulfill commercial transactions if platforms like Amazon and Shopify block themWhether open web advertising is a useful analog for agentic commerceWhether agentic commerce is fundamentally at odds with consumers' interestsAmazon's own implementations of commercial agentsThanks 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 podcast, I examine Google's Gambit: its effort to transition Search from a distribution intermediary to an engagement sink. Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode products seek to retain users in the Search experience, rather than forwarding them to external destinations. Many publishers claim that their inbound traffic from Google Search has plummeted, with expectations that this traffic will eventually decline to zero.I've described Google's ambitions with AI Overviews and AI Mode as Google's Gambit: an attempt to utterly reform the core Search experience through AI functionality while not alienating users. In this episode, I unpack Google's motivations behind this gambit and attempt to outline its broader impact on the open web. I also consider this product strategy within the broader context of consumer engagement shifting from web-based content to LLM-empowered chatbots.

In this episode of the podcast, I speak with Itai Kafri on the topic of signal engineering. Itai is the Head of Product Growth at Voyantis and previously held senior roles at TikTok and ironSource. I've defined signal engineering as "the process of designing and capturing high-quality outcome proxies (eg., pLTV) so they can be reported back to ad platforms in real time such that those platforms optimize campaign targeting for them." Given the rise of platform-integrated automation, signal engineering is an emerging and increasingly critical tactic in digital marketing.In my conversation with Itai, we consider:The purpose and goal of signal engineering.How platform automation (eg., ASC, PMax) has intensified the value of signal engineering.Whether signal engineering is best accomplished using existing events or by experimenting with new, purpose-built events.Who within the organization is best positioned to manage the signal engineering experimentation process.What a team should aim to proxy with signal engineering.The different approaches that various types of advertisers take with signal engineering, eg., mobile games vs. ecomm vs. subscription apps.The commonalities that exist amongst the companies that have seen the most commercial success with signal engineering.Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.ContextSDK. ContextSDK uses over 200 smartphone signals to detect a user’s real-world context, allowing apps to deliver perfectly timed push notifications and in-app offers.Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:Apple PodcastsSpotify

In this episode of the podcast, I speak with Chris Hewish, the President of Xsolla, a payments and merchandising platform for video games. Chris previously held senior roles at Skydance, DreamWorks, and Activision.In our discussion, Chris and I discuss the recent changes to mobile platform payment policy implemented by both Apple and Google as a result of Epic's lawsuits. Among other topics, our conversation covers:The history of off-platform payments on mobile.How interest in off-platform payments has changed as a result of Apple's recent App Store policy updates.The types of products for which off-platform transactions convert best.The "trust premium" that a developer must possess to implement off-platform payments successfully.The most common mistakes developers make with off-platform payments.How conversion rates tend to change with off-platform payments relative to native payments.The best practices for off-platform storefront management.Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.ContextSDK. ContextSDK uses over 200 smartphone signals to detect a user’s real-world context, allowing apps to deliver perfectly timed push notifications and in-app offers.Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

In this week's episode of the MDM podcast, I speak with Adam Epstein, the CEO of Gigi, an AI-enabled automation tool for the Amazon DSP. Following Amazon's announcement in June of identity partnerships with both Roku and Disney (which I cover in Amazon is CTV’s data engine), Adam and I focus our conversation on Amazon's strategic positioning with its advertising business across Amazon Prime Video, sponsored on-site advertising, and the Amazon DSP. Among other topics, we discuss:An overview of the partnerships that Amazon announced with Roku and Disney at CannesWhy Amazon's dataset is a natural fit for CTV, and whether its audience data alone can be a principal driver of growth in that marketHow Amazon's AI-enabled automation products, Brand+ and Performance+, differ from those offered by Meta and GoogleWhether Amazon is fundamentally supply-constrainedThe ecosystem of advertising-focused AI toolsThe non-obvious ways that Amazon is approaching growth in non-endemic advertisingMisconceptions related to Amazon's advertising business?Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.ContextSDK. ContextSDK uses over 200 smartphone signals to detect a user’s real-world context, allowing apps to deliver perfectly timed push notifications and in-app offers.Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

In this week's episode of the podcast, I am joined by Ari Paparo, whose new book, Yield, is currently on pre-sale (see my review here). Yield follows Google's growth in the "open web display market", starting with its acquisition of DoubleClick and ending with the company being found guilty of abusing its monopoly power in the "ad tech" antitrust suit brought against it by the Department of Justice.But Yield also documents the history of modern digital advertising, from the advent of the advertising exchange to cookie targeting to yield management. The book provides a fascinating and engaging chronology of the events that shaped the internet economy, anchored to the characters that participated in them.In this episode, among other things, Ari and I discuss:The atmosphere in early 2000s-era New York as programmatic advertising took shapeHow and why Facebook's business model diverged from Google'sThe flaws in the open web advertising business model and whether the current state of the open web was pre-ordainedAdditionally, we discuss Ari's current venture, Marketecture, which is hosting its next event, Marketecture Live, in New York in October. I'll be presenting a keynote at the event, and tickets are currently available for purchase.Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.ContextSDK. ContextSDK uses over 200 smartphone signals to detect a user’s real-world context, allowing apps to deliver perfectly timed push notifications and in-app offers.Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:Apple PodcastsSpotify

In this week's episode, I speak with David Barnard, a well-known independent app developer, the host of the Sub Club podcast, and the Growth Advocate at RevenueCat. This is the fourth installment of the MDM Mailbag series, where questions for guests are sourced from the Mobile Dev Memo community.Among other things, we discuss:The viability of link-out following Apple's policy change and how developers are integrating it;How independent app developers can build sustainable businesses;Retention strategies for subscription apps;When developers should utilize subscription monetization versus other forms.Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.ContextSDK. ContextSDK uses over 200 smartphone signals to detect a user’s real-world context, allowing apps to deliver perfectly timed push notifications and in-app offers.Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

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 of advertisers' campaigns, but also the introduction of every business that could potentially derive value from it to the digital advertising economy. Commerce at the limit captures the maximum theoretical scale of advertising's impact of the economy: the AI-empowered apogee of digital commerce.Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.ContextSDK. ContextSDK uses over 200 smartphone signals to detect a user’s real-world context, allowing apps to deliver perfectly timed push notifications and in-app offers.Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.Resources cited in this podcast:What comes next after Facebook’s VO campaign strategy? (Mobile Dev Memo)Understanding Google’s Universal App Campaign (UAC) changes (Mobile Dev Memo)Understanding conversion optimization in digital advertising (Mobile Dev Memo)“Black box” ad optimization and satisficer’s remorse (Mobile Dev Memo)The inflationary impact of AI-generated ad creative (Mobile Dev Memo)Ad Spend Forecast To Grow By 4.9% In 2025, Despite A Reduced Economic Outlook (Dentsu)Measuring the digital economy (IAB)The Rise of Digital Advertising and Its Economic Implications (St. Louis Fed) 2024 digital ad spend and video strategy report (IAB)What will it take for CTV ad spend to overtake linear? (The Drum)Digital Video Is Set to Capture Nearly 60% of All TV/Video Ad Spend in 2025, CTV Rebounds to Double-Digit Growth in 2024, According to IAB (IAB)‘You Will’: A Macroeconomic Analysis of Digital AdvertisingThe Expansion of Varieties in the New Age of AdvertisingTargeted Advertising, Market Structure, and Consumer WelfareEstimating the Value of Offsite Data to Advertisers on MetaEvaluating the Impact of Privacy Regulation on E-Commerce Firms: Evidence from Apple's App Tracking TransparencyThe App Tracking Transparency recession (Mobile Dev Memo)Mobile Gaming in 2023: Still Cooling Down After a Red-Hot Run, the $107B Category Wasn’t Without Success Stories (Sensor Tower)

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 incrementalityThe principal challenge in measuring incrementalityHow the "AI-ification" of marketing changes advertising measurementThe options that marketers have for attribution and optimization once every scaled channel offers AI-enabled total automationHow marketing teams should utilize the conversion / ROAS data that is reported by platformsThanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.⁠⁠⁠Clarisights⁠⁠⁠. Marketing analytics that makes it easy to get answers, iterate fast, and show the impact of your work. Go to⁠⁠⁠ clarisights.com/demo⁠⁠⁠ to try it out for free.Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

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 tools that exist to combat monopoly abuses;The Neo-Brandesian worldview;How FTC Chair Ferguson may approach antitrust differently from his predecessor, Lina Khan;Why tariffs are disruptive to an economy;Why the impact of tariffs tends to be underestimated (see this post and this post from Brian for more on the economic dynamics of tariffs).Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:ContextSDK. ContextSDK uses over 200 smartphone signals to detect a user’s real-world context, allowing apps to deliver perfectly timed push notifications and in-app offers.INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.