Mobile Dev Memo Podcast

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.

In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with Jessica Lee on the topic of digital privacy legislation. Jessica is a Partner and serves as the Chair of the Privacy, Security, and Data Innovations practice at Loeb & Loeb, a New York-based law firm. Jessica’s practice focuses on emerging media, technology, advertising and promotions, privacy, and intellectual property, and she has represented clients in a variety of fields, including Internet, film, music, sports, telecommunications, and consumer products. Over the course of the podcast, Jessica and I discuss the history of digital privacy, the prospect of a federal privacy law in the US and how the recent midterm election results impact that, why Europe leads the United States in codifying privacy protections into law, and the efficacy of self-regulation, among other topics. For a full transcript of the interview, see this post on Mobile Dev Memo.

In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with Taylor Holiday, the CEO and founder of the Common Thread Collective, an eCommerce growth agency. Taylor and I discuss the general state of eCommerce advertising, what happened within the eCommerce category in Q3 and what he sees happening now in Q4. We also speak about the coming reckoning in the eCommerce advertising debt market (with background on what this is!), misconceptions about how Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) privacy policy impacts eCommerce advertising, and the nature of setting direct response advertising budgets. Common Thread company publishes a regular newsletter containing recent eCommerce advertising performance data.

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.

My guest on this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast is Liat Barer, the VP of Product at Odeeo, an audio SSP. Liat has deep expertise in mobile ad tech, having worked at Yahoo and StartApp prior to Odeeo. I invited Liat on the podcast to discuss a topic that has taken on increased importance within mobile ad tech since the introduction of Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy, which is yield management, and how SSPs assist app publishers with maximizing the revenue they derive from in-app advertising. Liat provides an expert overview of the way in which SSPs -- the acronym SSP stands for Supply Side Platform -- interface with demand sources and in-app inventory to generate revenue for publishers.

I had the great pleasure last week of speaking with Matthew Ball, a prolific writer, investor, and respected thinker in the interactive media space. The backdrop of our discussion is Matthew's upcoming book, The Metaverse: And How it Will Revolutionize Everything, which is currently available for pre-order and will be available for sale on July 19th. In this podcast, I speak with Matthew about the economics of the Metaverse: what are the parameters of commerce when resources are infinite and the only constraints to production and economic output are human ingenuity? In our conversation, we also discuss Apple and the path to open economic systems, the role that games play in making new technologies ubiquitous, and how absolute replicability impacts our understanding of legal protections, among other topics. The interview is transcribed below, and it has been edited slightly for clarity.

This episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast was recorded live from the Mobile Apps Unlocked conference in Las Vegas on June 8th, 2022.  In this episode of the podcast, I discuss the future of alternative payments on mobile with Allison Schiff, the Managing Editor of AdExchanger; David Barnard, Developer Advocate at RevenueCat; and Josh Burns, the Senior Director of Business Development at FunPlus. We consider how the platform operators will adapt to regulatory and legal intervention into their payments policies, whether alternative payments systems can ever gain traction over the native systems, and how developers can best focus their efforts on driving users into alternative purchasing environments. 

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.

My guest for this episode of the MDM Podcast is Alex Bauer, the Head of Product and Market Strategy at Branch, the mobile measurement and linking company. We speak about the revelations from Apple's WWDC conference last week that are most important for mobile advertisers: 1) the expansion of Apple's SKAdNetwork measurement framework, 2) Apple's prohibition of aggregated measurement solutions, and 3) Apple's very clear and strident proclamation that Fingerprinting is Never Allowed. This interview assumes quite a bit of knowledge on the part of the listener. For background, see these articles: Dear Apple: These changes will improve SKAdNetwork for advertisers (background on SKAdNetwork) How to scale and optimize marketing spend with SKAdNetwork (background on SKAdNetwork) Apple to Ad Tech: “Fingerprinting is Never Allowed” (overview of Apple's stance on Fingerprinting as stated at WWDC 2022) Is SKAdNetwork 4.0 a turning point for mobile advertising: Privacy with Purpose? (overview of Apple's expansion of SKAdNetwork as revealed at WWDC 2022)