This week's episode of the podcast is in a new format: MDM Mailbag. I recruited Taylor Holiday, the CEO of eCommerce advertising agency Common Thread Collective and a prominent voice on DTC Twitter, to answer questions submitted by the MDM community. Among other topics, those questions related to: Any visible weakness in consumer spending related t…

My guest on this week’s episode of the podcast is Daniel McCarthy, who is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. The topic of our conversation is a draft paper for which Daniel is a co-author: Evaluating the Impact of Privacy Regulation on E-Commerce Firms: Evidence from Apple’s App T…

In this episode of the podcast, I speak with Lee Brown, Spotify’s Global Head of Ad Business & Platform, and Per Sandell, Spotify’s VP of Product, about Spotify's recent advertising product expansion, including its Spotify Ad Exchange (SAX) and its mobile app install product. Among other things, we discuss: The history of Spotify's advertising plat…

My guest on this week’s episode of the podcast is Alex Schultz, the CMO and VP of Analytics at Meta. Among other things, Alex manages marketing, analytics, and internationalization for the company and directed its rebrand from Facebook to Meta. Additionally, Alex recently wrote a book, Click Here, which is currently available for pre-order. Among o…

My guest on this week's episode is James Borow, the Vice President of Product and Engineering at Comcast's new Universal Ads effort, which was introduced this January. James was previously the Global Director of Product Strategy at Snap. The topic of our conversation is the evolving TV advertising ecosystem. Among other things, we discuss: The curr…

This week, I speak with George Hadjia, the founder and Chief Investment Officer of Bristlemoon Capital, a long-short hedge fund. George publishes regular insights on his firm's blog, including a recent post on Match Group, the company that operates Tinder and Hinge. The topic of our conversation is the dating app market and its prospects for growth…

My guest on this week's episode of the podcast is Antti Jäderholm, the founder and COO of Ray Browser, a web browser built and optimized for gaming. In our conversation, we discuss: The history of browser gaming and where it stands today; The limitations that have historically prevented the browser from becoming a mainstream platform for AAA-qualit…

My guest on this week's episode of the podcast is Jess Jacobs, the CMO of MDVIP, having previously served in senior marketing roles at Shopify and Wayfair. The topic of our conversation is Brandformance marketing -- or brand-oriented marketing pursued with specific sensibilities around directly-measurable business objectives. Among other things, we…

My guest on this episode of the podcast is Terence Kawaja, the CEO and founder of LUMA Partners, a boutique investment bank focusing on the digital media sector. Terry is a high-profile advisor for transactions in the marketing and advertising spaces, and LUMA Partners publishes the infamous LUMAscapes market maps for those ecosystems. The topics o…

My guest on this episode of the podcast is Rishabh Jain, the CEO and co-founder of FERMÀT Commerce, an eCommerce advertising optimization platform. This is Rishabh's third appearance on the podcast (see one and two). I invited Rishabh back to the podcast to provide a broad overview of the state of eCommerce advertising at the outset of 2025. Among …

My guest on this week's episode of the podcast isMikołaj Barczentewicz. Mikołaj has appeared on the podcast a number of times -- he's a professor of law at the University of Surrey and holds a PhD in Law from the University of Oxford. He also regularly publishes thoughtful commentary on the EU regulatory landscape on hisSubstack. In this episode of…

My guests on this week's episode of the podcast are John Lynch and JP Dube. John is the University of Colorado Distinguished Professor at the Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado-Boulder, and JP is the James M. Kilts Distinguished Service Professor of Marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Together, along with …

"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half." Knowing the context of his work, my view of the infamous quote attributed to John Wanamaker is that advertising measurement is fundamentally and necessarily uncertain, even in success. This surfaces another, in my view, invalid interpretation of the quote: t…

In this episode of the podcast, I speak with Pan Katsukis, the CEO of Remerge, a mobile DSP. Our conversation centers around the state of mobile programmatic advertising. Among other things, we discuss: How the mobile programmatic space has evolved in recent years; The misconceptions that advertisers have about mobile programmatic; The mistakes tha…

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 podca…

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 tra…

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 c…

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, methodologi…

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,…

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 …

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 featur…

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 o…

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…

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 percei…

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 t…

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 trac…

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 …

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 anti…

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 …

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 analytic…

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 Ghos…

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…

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…

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 …

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 landsca…

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 pr…

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 a…

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…

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, Dis…

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 declin…

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 adverti…

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 misun…

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 hist…

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…

My guest on this week's episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is Tom Smith, a partner at specialist competition law firm Geradin Partners. I invited Tom to the podcast to discuss the recently passed Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) Bill in the UK, which grants the UK's Competition and Markets Authority with broad new powers to reg…

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 bar…

My guest on this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is Ari Paparo, a prominent entrepreneur and thought leader within the digital advertising ecosystem. The impetus of our conversation is a newsletter that he published several weeks ago for Marketecture in which he asked, Did it have to be this way?. From that piece: "After reading this,…

My guest on this week’s podcast is Trung Phan, a popular X (Twitter) personality and a host of the Not Investment Advice podcast. Trung popularized the “short-form deep dive” content format on X following its introduction of long-form posts and has developed a for posting infotainment style content that often goes viral. In our conversation, Trung …

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 th…