Mobile Dev Memo Podcast

In this episode of the podcast, I'm joined by two academics -- Julian Runge from Northwestern University's Medill School and Koen Pauwels from Northeastern University -- for a conversation about the methodological (and stylistic) distinction between marketing experimentation and probabilistic measurement. Julian has previously appeared on the podcast and recently contributed a guest articl...

Meta’s trajectory over the past few years has been defined by its response to Apple’s App Tracking Transparency, or ATT, privacy policy, with its recovery serving as a blueprint for success in the modern digital advertising operating environment. And in adapting to ATT, Meta may have executed one of the most remarkable, wholesale business model transitions in modern corporate history. The company...

My guest on this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is Raveesh Bhalla , the Product Lead for Homepage Recommendations at Netflix. Our topic of conversation is product personalization and, specifically, how scaled consumer products curate experiences for individual users and for what purpose. Among other things, we discuss: How large technology companies implement product personalization; The p...

In this episode of the podcast, I speak with Jorge Ruiz, TikTok's Global Head of Marketing Science, about the measurement methodologies that TikTok employs with its advertising clients. Among other things, we discuss: How TikTok provides measurement solutions to clients in light of a more restrictive privacy environment; The approaches, methodologies, and tools are "future-proofed" for further dat...

Shopify today published the latest version of Edition , its regular overview of the new product features it has made available to its merchants. As part of this release, I had the exclusive opportunity to speak with Andrius Baranauskas , Shopify's Director of Advertising Products, about Shopify's advertising products and strategy. Among other things, we discuss: Why Shopify is building marketing t...

My guest on this episode of the podcast is Niels Hoven , the CEO of Mentava , a tutoring app that helps top-performing students achieve their potential. In this episode, Niels and I discuss: The special design considerations inherent in building an app for children; How the interface of an app needs to be adapted to users who have never used another app before; The kinds of feedback that can be us...

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 i...

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 ven...

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...

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...

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...

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 a...

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...

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; W...

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 challen...

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 t...

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...

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 Monopo...

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 pr...

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; T...

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 advert...

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&#39...

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...

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 o...

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; T...