The Mobile User Acquisition Show

Our guests today are Brian Krebs and Anthony Cross. Brian is the founder and CEO of MetricWorks, and Anthony formerly at Big Fish Games. In today’s conversation they offer very interesting perspectives on why SKAdNetwork isn’t enough - and what it needs to be supplemented by in order for mobile measurement to truly reflect the value of marketing efforts.In today’s conversation, we reflect on why measurement in a world where marketing is influenced by multiple variables has no clear and easy answers - certainly none seemingly as simple as the solutions that deterministic measurement offered. The solution then is to embrace the multiple variables involved - and use an approach that is a mix of SKAdNetwork, econometric modeling and intelligent experimentation.Key highlights: 🌓 Why last touch attribution does not give the whole picture🏋️‍♂️ Incrementality is THE criteria for marketing effectiveness🤏 The limitations of SKAdNetwork signals for measurement🧮 Top statistics-based approaches to measuring incrementality that work🍼 How statistical models rely on IDFAs to be useful🧨 No-IDFA is going to blow up the measurement landscape📚 Big Fish used multiple sources of data in a custom dashboard to solve for attribution💡 How Big Fish used data science to get marketing insights🦋 Using data science to comparing LTV curves through a gaming app launch cycle to amp up ROAS◀️ Reverse engineering LTV curves to inform ad spend decisions🗺️ Mapping in-app events to monetisation and retention opportunities💸 Spend needs to tie back to business, and LTV is the only way to do that📍 Where to apply econometric modelling in marketing🎨 How to use media mix models for marketing🏗️ How to build models that calculate impact and outcomes💯 Micro and macro level factors to consider for accurate predictions🍃 How seasonality and trends impact lift⚙️ Tweaking factors to generate insights about what-if scenarios👋 The journey from deterministic to probabilistic has already begun🧪 Testing successful campaigns with interrupted time series can give counterintuitive results💪 How the post-IDFA landscape is strengthening the case for incrementality testing🔻 The opportunity cost for interrupted time series experiments⚖️ The careful balance in ITS experiments🔎 Why models are necessary alongside experiments for real validation 🧱 How to construct an econometric model by choosing the right variables📅 Why daily data is better than weekly data for training models in spite of the increased noise📈 The value of seasonality and trends encoding in models🔮 The key to good prediction for granularity in each event 🔬 Understanding counterfactual experiments and setting baselines🥇 Why incrementality testing is the gold standard now but not post-IDFA👬🏻 The two-fold team buy-ins for testing🤝 Why transparent partners are very important to a UA team🌌 Why experiments are tied to a certain level of scale🚼 Why single apps don’t have to worry about incrementality till scale 👌 The tried and tested approach to learning how to modelCheck out the show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-use-econometric-models-to-supplement-skadnetwork-for-mobile-measurement-in-ios-14-with-brian-krebs-and-anthony-cross/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

Facebook recently made its Automated App Ads(AAA) available for all advertisers - as a part of its broader push toward having greater automation drive advertising performance.As of this writing, we see a number of challenges with AAA due to which we don't recommend doubling down on AAA. In this episode, we explain how AAA works - and what some of the challenges with it are.KEY HIGHLIGHTS🤖 What are Facebook’s Automated App Ads🦾 The optimisation that AAA automates⚗️ The introduction of liquidity📏 Why CPA is not necessarily the right metric to use🤷 AAA doesn’t leverage your existing knowledge of your users🧭 Navigating the learning phase is tricky🔌 Why knowing when to pull the plug is uncertain🧺 AAA is like putting all your eggs in one basket🌁 How performance data is obfuscated😵 There’s no way to know what’s going wrong, when something's going wrong🎯 Target exclusion is not quite there yet🌅 It’s early days yet; AAA will get better🌏 Test in non-critical geos⚖️ How to choose the right type of campaigns for testing☔ Using split tests is the prudent path forwardCheck out the show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/5-reasons-why-facebooks-automated-app-ads-aaa-arent-ready-for-prime-time-yet/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

We’re very excited to present a very special episode - highlights from The Definitive Guide To Marketing In a Post-IDFA World.As some of you may know, we released the book last week - featuring highlights from over 500 minutes of audio, featuring some of the smartest folks in mobile that we’ve had a chance to speak to on the Mobile User Acquisition Show.On today’s episode, we feature the most impactful quotes from the book. These are also highlights from some of the previous episodes of the Mobile User Acquisition Show that deal with the privacy changes coming with iOS 14.These feature some of the smartest folks in mobile who’ve been guests on the Mobile UA show, including: John Koetsier, Thomas Petit, David Philippson, Maor Sadra, Eric Seufert, Nimrod Zuta, Pau Quevedo, Andy Carvell, Kevin Bravo, Gadi Eliashiv, Nebojsa Radovic, Colette Nataf, Gabe Kwakyi, Warren Woodward, and Mark Loranger.KEY HIGHLIGHTS👁️ The very real dangers of easily-accessible IDFAs😇 Apple has an agenda with the iOS 14, and it isn't pure altruism📈 How making the IDFA useless pushes Apple’s revenue up🧠 The ideal demographic for advertisers to target is the same that knew to turn off IDFAs📍 Limit ad tracking actually meant more invasive tracking📐 Measurement was always tricky🌗 Why attribution only presents a partial picture📊 Why relying on LTV was not great to begin with💰 How IDFAs are going to fundamentally change app UA economics💵 Predicting ad revenue will be uncertain for the moment🤖 Preparing for changes in the programmatic landscape🔦 How post-IDFA strategies will have a renewed focus on retention and reengagement🗓️ Understanding the opportunities of the conversion value framework in SKAdNetwork💭 4 considerations to customise your conversation value framework🧩 How MMPs will evolve to still be a critical component of the measurement infrastructure🏁 Why causal inference can address some of the issues with SKAdNetwork🌫️ How IDFAs are going to change the game for publishers.🌊 How to use web flows for UA and what to expect🎨 Optimizing for creative hits is vital🦾 Using automation as a part of your UA playbook👍 Do whatever you need to do to maximise consent🧰 Tools to have in your marketing arsenal: pre-permissioning and win-backs📲 Why in-app bidding may carry the day💲 Why uncertain times are not the right time to look for capital💥 Post-IDFA is a time to focus inward and reassess the impact at a business levelCheck out the show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/highlights-from-the-definitive-guide-to-marketing-post-idfa-world/ **Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

Colette Nataf is the founder and CEO at Lightning AI. In today’s conversation, Colette describes 3 potential scenarios: best case, worst case and somewhere in the middle - and talks through how we might prepare for the worst. She illustrates the possibilities with the experience of a company that is using web-based flows for their UA today in a pre-iOS-14 world, and outlines exactly how the different aspects of user acquisition might change come January. KEY HIGHLIGHTS🔱  The best, the worst and the middle case scenarios for iOS 14🔒 How a privacy app manages growth without a single SDK🌱 It is possible to grow without sophisticated attribution🧮 Old school tracking with UTM parameters🍂 The longer the funnel, the greater the drop-offs💨 Targeting without conversion data doesn’t exist🌎 Macro trends impact CPMs🎬 Why it is a good idea to prep the user for a new flow🔚 It is end times for broad targeting👬🏻 No user level data means lookalikes will not work🧶 Interest-based targeting will become more prominent🗓️ How to set up a web-based flow🗄️ The critical importance of stitching together data from different sources🚫 Things that marketers should not attempt💍 Marriage of convenience: marketing courts engineering🤖 Bringing data science into the fold🌪️ Prepare for the worst, even though it may not happen🌟 Facebook will not remain a superstar🌈 Which are the new channels on the block?🖥️ The potential return of display advertising🦋 How marketing teams will change and evolve.Check out the show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-drive-web-based-user-flows-for-your-ios-14-user-acquisition-with-colette-nataf-ceo-and-founder-at-lightning-ai/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

By day, Cassie Chernin is the director of UA at Scopely and passionate about running Facebook and Google ads for her apps. But this year, she has decided to put her prodigious tech talent towards a different cause. Cassie volunteers for the not-for-profit, Tech for Campaigns, which brings together top tech talent to work towards driving electoral change at the grassroots level. In our conversation today, Cassie describes what she does, how her background in marketing is helping support her political work, how her work helps drive grassroots support for the candidates she’s working with, and how her efforts are driving systemic change. KEY HIGHLIGHTS📥 Why Cassie joined Tech for Campaigns💻 Tech expertise to effect electoral change🧑🏿‍🤝‍🧑🏽 How teams are set up at Tech for Campaigns📧 How email campaigns work for political campaigns#️⃣ Even political email campaigns have KPIs🎯 Super targeted campaigns drive impact👍 Why endorsements are a valuable tool in the email marketing arsenal⛏️ How to mine the campaign for insights and messages🌱 Grassroots level campaigns have ripple effects🙃 What are leading indicators that a state might flip?  Check out the show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-a-band-of-volunteer-marketers-help-drive-political-change-with-cassie-chernin-volunteer-at-tech-for-campaigns/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

David Barnard started developing apps soon after the first iPhone was released. In the last 12 years, he has seen each minor and major change play out in the appstores - from the first paid apps and their price drops - to the explosion of freemium - to the advent of subscriptions. In today’s episode, he tells the stories of living through the roller coaster that the appstore has been.If you’re wondering as to what relevance details from a decade ago will have to our world today, this episode will help you think about the unseen forces that influence what we see on our phones, and about how Apple’s policies have influenced the kinds of apps that flourish. Just as important, all of this helps contextualize the looming privacy changes that will effectively deprecate the IDFA in iOS 14.This episode provides a fascinating and in-depth look at how the last decade helps us learn about what’s ahead - and we’re excited to present it.KEY HIGHLIGHTS💼 David’s background2️⃣ 2 primary reasons why the App Store was a game-changer in 2008-09🛡️ Introducing the App Store: a platform consumers trusted🧶 App Store enabled indie developers💸 Price played a huge role in galvanising the App Store🗿 The Stone Age of monetisation💰 Why the only way to earn from an app was to have a paid app🤑 What “free apps are free” meant for monetisation🍎 How the smallest of Apple’s decisions shaped the app marketplace📊 The tale of 2 top charts📸 Exposure: How curation influenced market economics📲 Limited monetisation led to mass market apps✨ With subscription, you get sophistication⛔ The limited scope of early ad-monetisation🎮 Games were big winners⌛ The timeline of how the platform and the marketplace evolved together🆓 The advent of in-app purchases - and the freemium/free-to-play model🥕 Subscriptions and in-app purchases changed the incentives for developers♾️ Value is the biggest driver of the subscription economy🧯 Apple’s new IDFA policy is to offset some of the ills of the monetisation models⚠️ Freemium isn’t evil; but it brought about unintended consequences🔜 The future of the app economy is value-driven subscriptions💞 How Tinder is an example of a subscription that also has consumable purchasesCheck out the show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/a-brief-history-of-app-store-monetization-with-david-barnard-developer-advocate-at-revenuecat/ **Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

Danika Wilkinson is a product marketer at Social Point, where she is responsible for the overall, high level marketing strategy of one of their games. She strategises all aspects of game marketing, and guides UA specialists in performance analysis and optimisations.In our conversation today, Danika goes deep into the specifics of their creative process - and outlines how their very different processes for Facebook and other channels have been dramatically effective. She walks us through not just how her team’s tests are structured, but also about how their testing process has changed their workflow dramatically for the better.KEY HIGHLIGHTS🔀 Why Danika and her team use a custom DSP for creative testing. . 🧮 The specific testing process on the DSP that results in reliable results. . 🏆 Purchasing set impressions for new creatives through sub-publishers yields clear IPM results for which creatives work—and which don’t. 🔬Mitigating risk by rolling out creatives starting from low to high risk partners. 💸 The key difference between low risk partners and high risk ones. 🕸️ Creatives that have good IPMs in testing are likely to work in like campaigns. 🎉 Creatives that perform well in MAI campaigns can do well in AEO and VO campaigns as well. 💡Ideas come from everywhere.🤓Using hypotheses to shortlist and prioritise creative development. 🌿For Facebook, weed out the creatives with terrible IPM - and treat MAI tests as a screening for VO and AEO.🌟 Remember, Facebook rewards quality. ⏳ You can extend the life of a winning campaign with variations. Up to a point. 🚀 How to give internal creative teams the space and energy to ideate about new concepts. 🔍 The ideal lens to look at creatives with is through your player persona. 🦋 Beauty in ads lies in the eyes of the user. 🃏 Why tacky ads workCheck out the show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-set-up-a-high-impact-creative-process-on-and-off-facebook-with-danika-wilkinson-product-marketer-at-social-point/ **Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

Brett Nowak is the founder of Liquid & Grit, a product research company for games, that creates actionable reports about new game features and industry trends for game developers. In our interview today, Brett describes his unique approach to hiring. He has developed an interview and onboarding process guaranteed to remove biases, get the best person for each role, and thus develop a quality team that involves almost no talking or in-person interaction with the candidates. Today, we dive into this fascinating and counterintuitive approach to hiring.KEY HIGHLIGHTS👥 What inspired Brett’s zero-touch hiring process.0️⃣ What the zero-touch hiring process looks like - and what it optimizes for.📡 How a remote hiring process eliminates biases; even unknown ones. ⛰️ Using lean methodology to build a topnotch team. 🏃🏿‍♂️ Why it is important to emphasize diligence over domain expertise.🌠  Does experience correlate with performance?💬 Examples of responses to a test in Liquid & Grit’s hiring process.🌎 Top talent exists everywhere. Even on Craigslist. 🤐 Liquid & Grit’s zero-touch onboarding process. Is it weird not to talk to a human during onboarding?🍪 Almost everything can be templatized. 👎 The surprising way that emotional attachment is a liability. Check out the show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/the-zero-touch-interview-process-for-hiring-superstars-with-brett-nowak-founder-at-liquid-grit/  **Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

Claire Rozain is the user acquisition manager at the UK-based firm, Product Madness. Her experience spans a wide range of mobile apps; right from dating to gamesOn the show today, Claire underlines the critical importance of using live ops to increasing the user life time value even if users already have a strong LTVNote: The opinions and views shared in this episode are the interviewee’s - and they aren’t in any way connected to the views of the company Product Madness.KEY HIGHLIGHTS⏫ User LTV can always be extended.  🔑 Key strategies to extend LTV. 🔔 The impact a push notification can have.⛩️ Why UA and CRM should not be siloed.📛 It is so important to use personalisation to connect with users🔱 Three things to get right: timing, frequency and message. 🎇 The key types of live ops events. 🙋 The best way to understand what users want? Ask them!🧩 Why user segments are crucial for crafting great experiences. 🎭 Incentives can be a double-edged sword. Striking a balance can be tricky. 🤭 Common mistakes marketers make when organising live ops. Check out the show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-use-live-ops-events-to-extend-user-ltv-with-claire-rozain-user-acquisition-manager-at-product-madness/ **Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

John Koetsier sees the effects of the imminent IDFA changes in iOS 14 happening in real-time. As a Forbes columnist, he has seen from close up the changes in the mobile ad tech ecosystem over many years that have led us to this point.In our keynote chat, organised by Mobile Growth Summit, John shares his speculations about the reasons why Apple is executing such a huge shift in its IDFA policy. What are the pressures and/or motivations at play here? In examining these reasons, we can perhaps predict trends of big tech. Apple’s actions will not stand alone; Google and Facebook are sure to not only react, but to come up with their own policies. We talk about the future of privacy, and how it collides with targeted marketing. And more importantly, where does ad tech go from here? KEY HIGHLIGHTS🔒  Privacy has always been critical for Apple.👎 Why Apple views ad tech negatively.😈 What might bad actors do with readily accessible IDFAs?⚡ How IDFAs were an improvement for privacy in user tracking, but still dangerous. 🗣️ Politics plays a bigger role than you think. 📊 Cambridge Analytica 2.0?⚔️ Big Tech frenemies: Apple, Google, and Facebook.🦸 Champion of the little guy? Apple and its optics.⁉️ Why too many privacy choices is as good as no choice at all.⏰ What may have precipitated the extension of Apple’s deadline.🏋️ Why Facebook’s decision to opt out is a power move. ⏭️ Be prepared: Android is probably next. ☯️ The huge distinction between HAVING an ad network and BEING an ad network. 🔐 How differential privacy may be the answer. 🌍 Privacy is a global trend and ad tech has to adapt to survive.Check out the full transcript and show notes here: http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/mgs-deep-dives-idfa-the-unseen-forces-behind-apples-idfa-policy-changes-with-john-koetsier-columnist-at-forbes**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co