12 holiday app marketing tips for mobile growth pros

It’s November and if you haven’t started your Christmas shopping yet, you’re totally screwed. Happy supply chain crisis, baby: that toy your friend’s kid wants is stuck in a shipping container on a boat off the coast of Los Angeles, and no-one’s unloading it until they get a raise to cover 2021’s massively accelerating cost of living.

Google Play gift card for the win?

Maybe …

But as you’re working through the mobile app holiday marketing strategy you built about 3 months ago, here’s a few tips on making this holiday season the best ever.

1. Take advantage of of the supply chain crisis
Out-of-stock notices are up 325% and prices of meatspace physical products are trending northward too. Let people know that your game is NEVER OUT OF STOCK of in-app purchases or power-ups or skins or whatever you offer.

Look, as someone who has at least one game that I play obsessively, getting a significant boost in that game’s virtual economy would be a pretty big deal that would make me pretty happy. Much bigger than a tie, socks, or box of chocolates.

I don’t think I’m alone here.

2. Coordinate messaging
You have worked hard over the past year to connect with your users and customers in multiple first-party ways, right? Coordinate your messaging over push notifications, in-app notifications, email, social, web, and maybe even some advertising if you can target well enough (Android-only, probably) to let people know what you’ve got available for holiday fun (if you publish a game) or holiday gifts (if you’re in retail) or holiday treats (if you do on-demand food) or …

(You get the idea.)

3. Give to get
We’ve just had Diwali, the festival of lights, and we’re in the season of giving.

Why not surprise your users with a special holiday gift? Why not make it variable by person, so you can reward long-term players or users or customers for loyalty: the longer-term, the better the surprise?

Sure, this could be gems or power-ups, or maybe a discount or BOGO in retail (keep reading for that tip) but why not do something that they could never actually buy? Something that is never available: a special skin, a unique character icon, a special weapon, or an exclusive level?

Be creative. Give them something high-value that costs you very little.

4. Introduce yourselves
There are billions of app users who have zero personal connection to the people who make their mobile experiences come alive. Do a holiday celebration, use video, and connect the people who make it all possible with the people who make it all worthwhile.

Not only would it be a cool event that will boost retention, you’re guaranteed to learn something new from people who use your app that will be useful in development of new features in 2022.

5. Be the gift your users give
Offer an in-app option for people to give friends, family, competitors, or colleagues the gift of your app, services, or an in-app experience. Reward them with something cool themselves.

Multiple benefits: new users, happier existing users, longer retention, and maybe even social engagement in-app via your services.

6. Offer help-a-random-friend in your gaming app
Just for a short period of time, allow people to help someone pass a level or fight a boss. Struggling gamers can ask for help. Top-notch players can parachute in and play for them. Extra connection, extra meaning, extra engagement, and extra retention … plus everyone feels good about themselves, and it’s all centered around your game.

7. Start now, but finish late
If you’re like me, you want to get your Christmas shopping done EARLY. So start promoting special deals and offers now.

But if you’re like me, you never actually get all your Christmas shopping done early. So you’re running around on December 24th, when you’re finally taking a break from indentured servitude errr, work, looking for a gift for your mother-in-law. (This is a completely hypothetical case, by the way.)

So have special deals right up the big holidays.

And, after, because sometimes we buy a gift for a special someone, and that special someone turns out to be us.

8. Solidify existing relationships
The holiday season is a big time for getting new devices and trying new apps. Everyone has more time, and half of us are looking for something to stick our noses into to get away from Uncle Frank’s very definite and loudly expressed political views.

So we’re all looking for new apps and new games.

That’s great for new user acquisition (yeah, have a plan here) but it’s also a problem for user retention. Make existing users feel great about themselves by kicking off a holiday special that provides extra in-app gems or gold or power-ups every day of the holiday period?

Even better: let them know if they collect every single day, there’s an even bigger reward waiting for them on January 1.

9. Make something old new again
Maybe no-one does this better than Subway Surfers.

3 billion downloads plus can’t be wrong, right? Launching a game in 2021 and having it still be going strong in 2021 is impressive, and one of the ways Kiloo Games keeps it fresh is by moving players all over the world. The core gameplay is pretty much the same, but the decoration and design is always fresh.

(Yeah, you should have started this one about three months ago. Maybe keep it for whatever holiday season is coming up next.)

10. Run some App Store and Google Play ads?
I know you have all the app users you want but …

If you might just want a few more and you also want to boost engagement and reduce churn of those you have, consider a few App Store and Google Play ads that are aligned with your best guess/scientific approximation of what people do when they lose the habit of opening your app.

Ads can help you play defense as well as offense. It’s worth a shot.

11. Influence this …
You may or may not use influencer marketing. Buuuuuuuttttt … now is a good time to pair a holiday launch event with an influencer who matches your values, interests, and demographic. One-off influencer campaigns are a bit ho-hum … but 5 to 10 well-targeted influencers who engage in a tournament, participate in an event, or become part of a promotion over time could just keep the excitement high for existing users as well as attracting a flow of new people.

12. Design an easter egg for viral kicks
Everyone loves easter eggs: unexpected surprises in games or apps or environments.

Design a holiday-themed set of easter eggs that provide significant benefits in your app or game, and then kick off social media promotion. Have tons of low-cost, high-value rewards to keep people hunting for the easter egg (move it or them around to make it more challenging), but have at least one massive knock-it-outta-the-park reward like a trip to Hawaii or a visit from Ogden Morrow (just joking, insert your own idea here) that will stimulate serious searching and buzz.

Oh and … get a good way to measure all your marketing wins

It’s great to kill it during special marketing events. It’s even better to know exactly how hard and how well you are killing it.

Singular offers the insight you need on ad performance, creative optimization, and channels that work.

Chat with one of our experts about what you’re doing and, maybe, how to get even better data and better results.

Learning from China, the world’s largest mobile economy

Not everything that happens in China translates to America, Europe, or other mobile markets. But failing to pay attention to what’s happening in the world’s largest mobile economy is probably not a good strategy for staying on the cutting edge of mobile.It’s not a shock that China is massive:

  • Smartphone shipments of 250 million just in the first 9 months of 2021
  •  932 million mobile internet users
  • Mobile commerce totalling $2.3 trillion in 2020, more than half the global total (and 90% of this happens via mobile devices)
  • Almost 800 million mobile consumers buying and selling online

So I spent some time with the trilingual Moonie Zhu, co-founder and managing director of eTOC, which specializes in helping Western companies do business in China and with Chinese companies. My goal: understand some of what life is like in China in terms of mobile penetration and use, and understand what that might mean for the West in a few years.

 

Some of the key takeaways from our conversation:

1. Cash is shocking, even confusing
We know most payments in China are digital, but viscerally grokking that is another matter. Cash is literally not even a payment option in many places in China. When it is, it’s so uncommon that staff at restaurants may not even know how to deal with it.

2. The Chinese fan economy puts the hard in hard core
Imagine the most passionate cheesehead at a Packers game, or a diehard English soccer fan with her face painted red and white and her voice broken from too much cheering. That’s sort of on the level of the supporters of many Chinese influencers, who are projected to spend 140 billion RMB (about $22 billion USD) in 2022 on social commerce via key opinion leaders.

“The fans in the fan circle will frequently purchase music albums of course, or products endorsed by their idols, as well as actively and repeatedly generate posts and comments on social media.”

This is not passive following. This is ferocious promoting of their “idols” popularity, reputation, and business success, Zhu says. So ferocious that the Chinese government has recently taken steps to reduce influencers’ influence and popularity.

3. Livestreaming commerce is popular entertainment
It may take being up until 3AM to make The Shopping Channel entertaining for westerners, but Chinese people watch their favorite mobile personalities sell just about anything (and buy frequently).

One livestreamer, Austin Li, has almost 70 million fans and outsold Jack Ma in a lipstick-selling contest. (Pretty sure a goat could outsell me in a lipstick-selling contest.) He streams daily — sometimes more than once a day — and once sold 15,000 lipsticks in just five minutes.

These sessions move fast and there’s pressure to get items before they sell out: apparently one consumer bought a sofa before really understanding what the sale item of the day was.

4. Platforms are even more antagonistic in China
Amazon and Google may not be best of friends, but if you search for a product on Google, you’ll see some search results for products on Amazon and other organic results as well as Google shopping ads.

Not so much in China.

Products for sale on JD or Alibaba won’t show up on Baidu (China’s Google), Zhu says, as the platforms want you to go directly. It’s gotten so bad the Chinese government has told big (red) tech to interoperate better as part of its antitrust crackdown.

5. Grandpa and Grandma are hip, digital, mobile
There’s definitely an age gap in mobile-firstedness (yes, I just invented that word) in the West, and at some level that simply has to hold true in the East as well. But not nearly as much, says Zhu.

“Everybody uses the internet, actually … even my grandma often buys things online … after the pandemic, the number of elderly consumers has increased significantly because they have to shop for food online.”

I’m guessing some of our parents, never mind grandparents, might starve if they had to order their food and groceries via mobile. In China, that’s a bit different.

6. Horizontally-integrated technological ecosystems dominate
In the West, we might search on Google, buy on Amazon, socialize on Facebook, and check the latest buzz on Twitter.

Not so much in China.

“Facebook, Google and Amazon … are individual technology platforms and kind of walled gardens. But in China it’s called … ecosystems. So if you go to the Alibaba ecosystem or the Tencent ecosystem, when you are visiting one of those ecosystems, you can search, you can social, you can commerce, logistics, payments, et cetera … they are all seamlessly blended together.”

That of course goes hand-in-hand with the super-app mobile experience that is fairly uniquely Chinese at this point.

It’ll be interesting to see how the big Western platforms evolve over time in relation to this. Some consider, for instance, Apple Music to be a social platform because you can share content, follow people, and more. Google built something social in Google+ which it shut down, but YouTube could also be considered social.

 

What does this mean locally … and in China?

Clearly, if you’re going to expand to China, you need to adapt to the local modes of doing business.

That’s increasingly hard for western companies, however, with LinkedIn and Yahoo recently pulling out, and China blocking many other American tech companies. In addition, China’s recent crackdown on its tech sector, which is focused on redirecting Chinese innovation to core industrial and strategic needs, controlling public conversation, and realigning power and wealth in the country, also makes it much harder for outsiders to penetrate.

The flip side is what we can learn.

Older generations in the West will increasingly be tech-savvy. Platforms do battle here as well, and it’s getting increasingly difficult to to mix and match mobile-connected smart home technologies, for example, between Amazon, Apple, and Google. While influencers are extremely hot now, we’re not seeing huge uptake of mobile-first livestreaming commerce yet. (TikTok might have something to say about that, of course.)

But one thing we can foresee is the increasing marginalization of cash and the concurrent increase in the use of Apple Pay, Google Pay, and other wallet technologies to pay with our phones. (And have all our ID on our phones as well.)

 

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6 ways playable ads become anti-marketing

I literally loathe some popular games that I have never played. I genuinely hate them, with passion. And it’s all because of their ads.

Specifically, their playable ads.

The idea behind a playable ad is pretty simple: give people a taste of the game or app in the hopes that they’ll covert on the ad, click it, install your game, and become an engaged, retained player. The theory is great. The execution, too often, is not. And when playable ads fail, you become even less likely to convert people who just want a power-up, gold, or a free life to a player in your game than if you had not shown them any ads at all.

In fact, when the playable ad and the in-app execution of it are seriously bad — as is far too often the case — you actually turn potential players into active haters.

Congratulations, you’ve just paid good marketing dollars to do some anti-marketing.

Here’s why.

1. Games should be fun (but your playable isn’t)

Hopefully this is not too controversial, but games should be fun.

If your playable ad is too hard with literally impossible puzzles and no good solutions, you run the risk of alienating potential players. (And if you’re thinking no one would ever do this, I have literally had marketers tell me the puzzles in their playable games are unsolvable.)

I have plenty of frustration in my daily life and work. I don’t need it in a game.

The opposite problem is a gaming activity that is too easy: a guaranteed win for everyone who plays the game. I’ve seen that in App Clips for example. This is clearly a fine line: you want people to be able to do something game-like in your playable ad with almost no context and no instructions, so you can’t drop them into the deep end of your hard-core game.

But if it’s not going to be a challenge at all … what’s the point?

2. Let the people play (but you killed the game after 10 seconds)

I get it. A playable ad is in the middle of another game, and the publisher of that game wants advertisers’ money but doesn’t want them taking too much player time away from their own game.

But if people are having fun, let them play.

Too often I have a playable ad that I’m just starting to get into, just starting to learn, and just starting to have fun with … and BOOM: it’s over. Done. Can’t get just a little bit further into sorting the whatzzits or clearing a level: you’ve been shot into an App Store product listing view with pretty much any additional touch of the screen.

Suggestion: don’t artificially cut off the mechanics. Let people get just a little bit deeper. Build the beginning of a habit.

(And: beware of publishers’ apps that host your playable ads that might be aggressively triggering App Store views as an attribution credit play. They are not doing you any favors by mistreating your users. Audit them.)

3. Don’t sell too hard (but you’re doing ABC: always be closing)

Don’t close before you’ve made the sale.

Far too often any extraneous touch puts a crashing halt to any actual fun and triggers, again, an app listing view. I understand that this is often on the publisher who is trying so hard to monetize that it’s impairing their own users’ experience. But it also reflects on you as an advertiser of your app.

It’s difficult at scale, but as much as possible, audit how your playable ads are being treated. Check your ad network and attribution data for anomalies for specific networks and sources. Protect your app, your brand, and your marketing.

And if you must always be closing … do it subtly.

4. Decide if it’s a playable or a video (but we have to watch your ‘playable’)

If it’s a playable, let it be playable.

If it’s a video, let it be a video.

Nothing’s worse than a playable that won’t let you play.

5. Don’t add multiple timers (but you’re making people wait on hold)

There are multiple appealing things about playables for advertisers. First, of course, you’re giving someone a taste of your app. But secondly, you’re getting guaranteed ad viewability over a period of time. Ensuring that someone’s at least seeing your ad is a big deal, and that’s reinforced by timers.

(Let’s also be honest. If there’s a playable that sucks or a targeted person is uninterested, or they just have better things to do, they’ll drop the phone on a table, chat, do a chore, or whatever until the playable ad’s timer times out.)

Often there’s a 15-30 second timer for the first part of the playable ad. Increasingly over the past months, I’m seeing dual timers: one while you’re playing the ad, and a second while an invitation to install the game is showing up. Often this second timer is 10-15 seconds long.

Look: I understand the one-timer. It guarantees the view (at minimum, of someone dismissing the ad, at maximum, with someone deeply engaging in it).

But two is one too many.

(And, by the way, if the app publisher you’re advertising in is driving this behavior … don’t let them.)

6. Provide an escape route (but your X isn’t clickable)

I have literally force-quit apps to get out of playable ads.

Some publishers have such a tiny X to exit out of the playable that they are virtually unstoppable. They’ve put such a miniscule X in the absolute top right corner with a truly tiny hit radius so it is almost impossible to tap. Oh, and when you miss it, they intentionally misinterpret that as a tap on the “install app” button (which is already ginormous and has a hit state of almost the entire screen surface) so that anything but a lucky direct hit pops open an App Store listing preview.

You know who you are.

This is a dirty trick. It’s dishonest, it disregards users’ express wishes, and it intentionally does the opposite of what they want.

Publishers that do this and advertisers that allow it to be done do damage to their brand, to their engagement, and to their retention.

Need more insight on ad performance, including creative?

Don’t we all.

Singular offers unparalleled insight on ad performance, creative optimization, and channels that win. Chat with one of our experts about what you’re doing and, maybe, how to get even better data and better results.

The new titans of adtech: evolving giants

What does an ad network look like in 2022?

I’ve been asking myself that question as we’ve seen the massive and accelerating evolution of adtech over the past two years. We’ve all noticed the consolidation of former competitors and partners and the growth of super-networks with both huge scale and a huge breadth of offerings. I mean … ad networks that own MMPs … ad networks that own gaming studios with hundreds of apps … ad networks that own business intelligence solutions …

What does it even mean to be a mobile ad network anymore?

In this multi-part series I’m going to explore the new evolving giants: the titans of adtech. Though this post and future ones we’re going to look at:

  • What are the components of a mobile ad network for 2022?
  • How do the current titans stack up? And … who are they?
  • What’s the impact of this massive shift for app publishers and marketers?
  • Is it great for the industry to see increased consolidation? Is it healthy?
  • And ultimately … is this good for mobile marketers?

The new adtech titans

Let’s start here: we’re not talking about Facebook or Google. As we all know, those are still the true titans of adtech and they’re undergoing their own evolutions in different ways. Nor are we talking about the mini-SANs, the other social networks like Snap, TikTok, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Add those all up (with Apple Search Ads) and you’ve got perhaps 75% of the mobile user acquisition pie.

That massive majority power position, however, is not as safe and unassailable as it once might have seemed.

For one thing, SKAdNetwork has made an impact. Facebook and Google both saw some declines in mobile user acquisition market share, and Apple Search Ads had some massive increases. But it wasn’t just ASA capturing more share at the expense of the duopoly. Even if profitability took a hit — like Snap’s recent quarterly financials — many of the formerly mid-tier UA partners have seen market share growth, at least in terms of Singular customers’ ad spend, in 2021:

  • Tiktok
  • ironSource (plus Tapjoy, Aura, and now Bidalgo)
  • Liftoff + Vungle (and JetFuel)
  • Twitter
  • Unity
  • Digital Turbine (plus AdColony, and Fyber)
  • Aarki
  • AppLovin (plus MoPub, Adjust, multiple game studios)
  • Chartboost (owned by Zynga)
  • Bing
  • Fluent

In a time of uncertainty, Google and Facebook both reacted slowly. Other ad networks reacted quickly, with some charging forward to adopt SKAdNetwork and some racing to push more dubious solutions like device fingerprinting. (And some doing both: one publicly and the other privately). Nimbleness pays off, and quickly jettisoning some of the cultural/emotional baggage about the world that was enabled quicker adaptation.

But it’s clearly not just about share of wallet growth.

There’s much more going on.

Components of a modern mobile adtech titan

What actually constitutes an ad network is changing.

In the past 10-15 years of massive mobile adtech and mobile publishing expansion, there’s been an explosion of innovation that has manifested in the development of multiple overlapping advertising and monetization related capabilities.

These capabilities include but are not limited to:

  • Ad network (your basic vanilla ad network)
    • Supply-side (SSP)
    • Demand-side (DSP)
    • Retargeting and remarketing
    • On-device preloaded
  • Ad exchange (stock market for ad buying/selling)
  • Mediation (in-app, header bidding)
  • Agency (managed creative and/or campaign development)
  • Measurement (independent MMPs, not just analytics)
  • Identity solutions and/or graphs
  • Marketing intelligence
  • Live ops, CRM, retention solutions (including this might be controversial, but they’re part of how growth teams and product teams can work together)
  • Analytics and optimization tools
  • Game/app development (yes, really: ad networks use these to understand the ecosystem and build up a first-party identity graph of users)
  • Ads automation: bids, campaigns, placement

Ad networks are taking bits and pieces of these and mixing and matching them. But not just those.

Ad networks are adding owned components that operate as first-party data accumulators: studios that make apps and games, vacuuming up not only extensive device and user data but also acting as real-world testbeds for consumer behavior vis-a-vis advertising performance. And studios or publishing houses are adding ad networks to create vertical integration opportunities plus own all the components needed for success from acquisition to onboarding to user engagement to monetization to retention.

Many of these components have significant overlap, but here’s an oversimplified view of how they stack up.

Adtech stack components and Function

In the golden age of adtech expansion, venture capital fueled the creation of all these interrelated capabilities and just as marketing analytics grew almost 10,000% in a decade, adtech exploded. By 2016, there were almost 1,000 logos in the mobile LUMAscape, mostly young companies less than a decade old.

“Between 2006 and 2017, hundreds of ad networks, dozens of DSPs, SSPs, exchanges, anti-fraud solutions, attribution solutions, and so on were able to accumulate billions of dollars in funding,” says Maor Sadra, former CEO of AppLift, now CEO of INCRMTAL.

Have an idea? Build it!

Start another adtech company? Go for it!

The cash was flowing and the solutions — and companies — exploded.

Now we’re seeing convergence as the thousands of ad networks and additional thousands of complementary puzzle pieces are getting sorted into fewer piles of consolidated and aggregated key players. It helps that many are now public or are owned by private equity companies, providing easier access to massive amounts of capital. (And, in turn, are forced to offer the public markets ever-bigger growth strategies and expansion plans to justify the infusions of cash.)

This was probably a natural adapt-or-die next step — markets don’t stay as atomized elements and components of companies forever — but it’s been accelerated by the privacy revolution and the long drawn-out death of third-party data.

Ads without targeting suck for the user and offer little value to the advertisers. Targeting requires data. Third-party data has been cheap and available thanks to IDFA and GAID and third-party cookies … but thanks to GDPR and App Tracking Transparency and the long-rumored death of the third-party cookie … third-party data is on life support.

First-party data is the new game, and this new game demands aggregated scale. And something more.

“It’s about scale (vertical concentration), but it’s also about horizontalization: adding adjacent capability,” says Thomas Petit.

In other words: one-stop shopping for the mobile-app-centric enterprise.

Current titans: Puzzle pieces they own

So what do the emerging titans of adtech look like today? Here’s five significant ones — generally speaking SDK networks — with a breakdown of what each one offers. I’m indebted in this section to insights from Brett Bauer, co-founder and CEO of Appfluencer, and Alon Nafta, VP of Product at Singular.

  • ironSource
    • Key acquisitions/ventures: Upopa, Supersonic Ads, Soomla, Luna Labs, Tapjoy, Bidalgo, Supersonic Games, Aura, ironSource Mediation
  • Liftoff+Vungle (yes, this is the interim name)
    • Key acquisitions/mergers: Vungle/Liftoff, AlgoLift, GameRefinery, JetFuel, TreSensa
  • AppLovin
    • Key acquisitions/ventures/investments: Lion Studios, MAX, SafeDK, Machine Zone, Adjust (which previously bought Acquired.io), MoPub
  • Digital Turbine
    • Key acquisitions: AdColony, Fyber, Appreciate
  • Unity
    • Key acquisitions: Applifier (GameAds), Playnomics, DeltaDNA

Here’s how they stack up:

adtech titans

A couple caveats:

  • It’s pretty challenging to get consensus in mobile adtech on precise definitions for each type of business activity, so if a box is checked that you think shouldn’t be, that might be why (for instance, almost every adtech website says something about an “exchange,” but few operate a true open ad exchange)
  • It’s also fairly challenging to parse the language on each player’s website to sift for capability that they’re promising and perhaps sort of/kind of/partially deliver versus capability that they own and completely rock
  • For “measurement,” I’m talking full-on MMP, so AppLovin with Adjust makes the cut, but ironSource with Bidalgo doesn’t totally fit (but I understand this is a matter of a continuum)
  • As I hear from companies on what they offer and don’t offer (and as they’re persuasive) I’ll adjust the matrix
  • As I hear from industry experts with similar insights, I’ll do the same

Additionally, many of these adtech giants have a historical core of competence that is now surrounded by additional capabilities. As Bauer says, ironSource is primarily an SDK network that recently opened their excess inventory to the exchange, Liftoff+Vungle is a closed DSP + video SDK network that can do some algorithmic attribution, AppLovin is trying to offer the entire stack of everything a mobile marketing could ever need, while Digital Turbine is adding components to a historical core of telco solutions.

Who’s winning the collector sweepstakes?

As a kid I collected hockey cards, and at school we’d stand in circles fanning our cards out and compare both doubles and gaps in our collections with each other. Someone looking to deal would show his or her doubles, and we’d say “got ‘em, got ‘em, got ‘em” or “need ‘em” for players we already had or cards we were missing.

Sometimes I think the adtech giants are looking at puzzle pieces in the ecosystem in much the same way, at least internally.

As it stands right now, here’s the count of what each emerging giant of adtech offers, out of the 14 different adtech components I’m checking for:

  • AppLovin: 10
  • ironSource: 9
  • Digital Turbine: 9
  • Liftoff+Vungle: 9
  • Unity: 6

It’s important to note that having a lower number isn’t necessarily an indicator of a lesser solution. It can be simply symptomatic of a different approach to the problems of mobile marketing, mobile growth, and mobile monetization.

For instance, Unity has a massive advantage since it’s the development platform for tens of thousands of games: 71% of the top 1,000 mobile games are made with Unity, and 2.5 billion people play games or enjoy experiences created with Unity every single month. And Unity is likely the most organic of all these emerging adtech giants, growing more by expansion than acquisition. The possibilities inherent in being so close to the development environment and in touch with so many game players are obvious.

In the same way, sheer scale in ad buying, placement, and management is a massive advantage as well.

Adtech giants can’t collect data the way they used to, and it’s likely that their abilities will be further constrained in the future. But as they increasingly consolidate consumer touches and first-party mobile user experiences, they position themselves better and better for improved targeting and improved performance.

It’s a simple equation: those who work better in acquiring users and customers will — assuming level playing fields — do better and grow faster.

As it stands right now, however, AppLovin is doing a pretty good job of collecting all the components that a mobile marketer might need. The bigger question, of course, is whether getting them all in one place is a good thing that mobile marketers actually want.

More to explore: is adtech aggregation good for mobile?

There’s much more to chat about here, but I have to leave it for another time.

The big question: is all this aggregation good for people who use mobile devices? Is it good for mobile publishers? Is it good for mobile marketers?

The answers to each of those questions could vary.

We’ll also look at the future of measurement in a smaller, more consolidated market. Where does it fit? Does it matter? How does it work? And I’ll dive into one of the key drivers of consolidation — the church of first-party data — and investigate whether this is actually all it’s cracked up to be as an industry-saver.

All that and more, coming soon.

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Help wanted?

Oh, and if you’re working through these changes in our space (who isn’t?) and you want some guidance, there are more than a few pretty smart people at Singular who would be happen to discuss the evolving industry and what you need in your growth stack moving forward.

Book some time with them, and they’d be happy to listen and advise, as well as do a bit of show and tell on where Singular fits.

Note:

I could not have written this piece without insight and guidance from Alon Nafta at Singular, Brett Bauer at Appfluencer, Thomas Petit at, well, Thomas Petit, and many others. Also got some insight from Offer Yehudai at Digital Turbine, Eric Seufert at pretty much everywhere, and Dennis Mink at Liftoff. All mistakes, however, are my own.

iOS 15 and mobile marketing: your questions answered

The life of a mobile marketer is hard. iOS 14.5 just dropped, with massive changes, and now iOS 15 is here with more. On the other hand, constant change is kind of what we’re used to in tech, and it ensures that most of us still have jobs that haven’t been automated out of existence.

Plus, it keeps things fresh.

We brought four experts together for our recent iOS 15: The endless evolution of app marketing webinar, and they were really good. But we had so many questions we just couldn’t answer during the webinar. So … here you go.

First: our experts:

  • Aykut Karaalioglu, CEO & Co-Founder, MobileAction
  • Warren Woodward, Co-Founder & Chief Growth Officer, Upptic
  • Yevgeny Peres, VP Growth, ironSource
  • Gadi Eliashiv, CEO & Co-Founder, Singular

1. Spend trend away from Facebook and Instagram?

Q. What are you seeing in terms of spend on Facebook/Instagram ads since June? If it’s decreasing, where is the ad spend going? Thanks!

A. Yes, to some extent. We saw spend move to top tier ad networks that aren’t the biggest self-attributing networks, particularly those who put in a significant amount of work on SKAdNetwork.

We also saw spend move to Apple Search Ads.

It’s incredibly important, however, that you update your growth stack for SKAdNetwork to get an accurate picture of what’s working. Some mobile marketers have seen chaotic results in their growth and attribution data because some ad networks are finding ways to steal app install attributions via fingerprinting.

2. Google’s version of ATT coming?

Q. While Apple has been burning bridges and changing the mobile/ad ecosystem, Google’s business model is completely ad based. If you were to use your crystal ball, what do you see from Google’s more white-glove approach to ATT Lite?”

A. The key difference between Google and Apple is their revenue model. Google is a giant ad network, while Apple is a product and (increasingly) services company.

Google is going to do things that work for marketers, even while it is forced to build more privacy-safe advertising technology.

The question is whether the technology will be like FLoC, which leaned towards benefiting Google by providing knowledge to it over the interests of advertisers, or whether it will be more neutral. One technology that is extremely useful and is likely to have a bigger role in Android app attribution is the Google Play referrer, which Singular integrates. Google also wants to move away from last-click attribution in general, though it’s uncertain how that will be accomplished in mobile app install advertising campaigns.

3. Apple Search Ads ascendant

Q. I’m seeing ASA conversions skyrocket and all other partners, even the biggest ones, tank. Not to put on a tinfoil hat but is Apple grading their own homework here? Do privacy thresholds only apply to non-Apple partners?

A. First, see #1. Second, ASA is up significantly this year. Apple does have more data that it uses for Apple Search Ads campaigns than others do, and ASA also uses its own attribution engine, not SKAdNetwork. ASA also has a very generous 30-day attribution window.

So … all data you’re seeing is a version of reality. It’s a side of a coin. There are other sides (yes, plural).

The most likely thing to assume when all your data shows that the world is turning upside down is that because the industry is collectively changing how to score the game, we’re introducing unintended consequences. Also, that your ads are probably doing pretty much what they were doing a few months ago, but that the data you’re getting back has changed.

Somewhere in between ASA’s growth and the need to update growth stacks for new modes of attribution is like the truth.

4. Attribution data for different product pages in the App Store?

Q: Will we able to receive any attribution data for installs from different custom product page variants in the App store?

A. This is a fabulous idea and the answer is a definite maybe.

Here’s what we know so far from Apple: “Create additional versions of your product page with different promotional text, screenshots, and app previews to better showcase particular features or content within your app. Direct relevant audiences to a particular page using its unique URL and view performance in App Analytics.”

So you will be able to see the relative performance, and a specific ad will be able to send users to a specific version of your app’s product page.

How that data will translate to attribution data is not entirely clear, although obviously you could brute-force it by simply having separate campaigns for different product page variations.

5. App Store severance movement burning bridges?

Q. Do you feel there’s the chance that iOS may be burning bridges, in order to later launch their own controlled advertising as a counter strategy, should the App Store severance movement gain traction?

A. Full-on speculation mode: no. I don’t think that’s Apple strategy. That said, I do think Apple Search Ads wants to be the best place to do paid user acquisition. I’m not certain it can be, but it certainly is one good place.

6. Who canceled the privacy apocalypse?

Q. During a long time the industry called the IDFA deprecation a “Privacy Apocalypse.” Nevertheless, after iOS 14.5, when looking at aggregated data of the market (downloads, revenue) we don’t see a clear disruption on the trends or patterns. It would be great if some of the panelists can talk about this point.

A. Great point.

Just because we changed the measurement methodology of attributing mobile ads for app installs doesn’t mean actual consumer behavior changed or that the effectiveness of your ad campaigns changed. For those seeing wild swings: don’t panic, but do update your growth stack to fit the new realities.

Everyone else: getting the best data possible under the current data/privacy/measurement regime will optimize your chances for cost-effective growth.

7. Web to app measurement woes

Q. We all know the standard solutions for Web to app users on IOS 14.5. Now that Apple is blocking IP addresses and fingerprinting from trackers, are there any new solutions to track Web to app users?”

A. First off, the sky is not falling (yet). iOS 15’s Private Relay is optional beta software at the moment, only for those who are iCloud+ paying subscribers, and only for web-based traffic. That said, I personally think it will become the standard at some point and at some level of paid iCloud subscription, maybe/probably/possibly for in-app network activity as well as web-based.

And almost every iPhone owner will be using it.

Fingerprinting is verboten, according to how Singular sees Apple’s App Tracking Transparency rules.

Any possibility of doing that will get VPN’d away, most likely, or Apple will implement some additional technical solution to make iPhones present randomized signatures.

We are seeing marketers could adopt a partially web-based onboarding or registration flow, which would then give you attribution insight as well as multi-channel connection to your customers. See the webinar for a few more thoughts on that.

8. Massive iOS 15 Private Relay angst

Q. We know that Apple will eventually bring Private Relay to the furthest reaches of iOS (based on their history of privacy) but what can we do as advertisers/publishers to ensure our networks can still be viable and not suffer another ATT-style blow with LAT traffic?

A. Sorry about this in advance:

I’m guessing a Hunger Games kind of Haymitch quote like “embrace the probability of your imminent death, and know, in your heart, that there’s nothing I can do to save you” isn’t of much comfort here.

Look: the game has changed. Embrace SKAdNetwork for measurement. If you go web-to-app (because there’s some cheap inventory on web that’s worth trying) look for early onboarding opportunities as I mentioned above.

And, if all else fails, some of the best marketers on the planet still at least partially rely on the oldest trick in the book: actually asking people. (Who knew that worked when you want to know something?) Simply asking people how they found your app is useful and insightful, and worth adding to the texture of your existing attribution solutions.

9. An MMP to rule them all

Q: Which MMP is the best and why? 🙂

A: I swear this was an actual question.

10. I want my iOS postbacks now

Q: About the option to get SKAdNetwork conversions directly from Apple: do you already receive them that way? I believe this feature has been anounced but Apple has not actually started sending this data to advertisers.

A: It is live now.

11. Fingerprinting vs MMM vs SKAdNetwork

Q: Do you think Apple will force everyone to use SKAN soon? Many apps still use probabilistic or fingerprinting.

A: Since 75% of the mobile user acquisition universe is SANs, I think the answer is a clear yes right now. For the 25% of the universe that fingerprinting is even available for, I’ll say this: fraudsters are always on the alert for ways they can make you think the good things you’re getting are directly from them.

And I can tell you with certainty at least one major player is being pretty tricksy, as Gollum would say, about fingerprinting-based attribution.

Look: it’s against the rules, and eventually Apple will make technical changes to make it impossible. SKAdNetwork is here, it is deterministic, it can be predictive, and is pretty fraud-free when implemented well.

12. SKAdNetwork and subscription apps

Q: How are other marketers dealing with trial based subscription apps? Whilst tracking/modeling trials and installs is ok, what are the best practices for attributing post trial (sometimes 14-28 days!) subscriptions?

A: I’ve talked to a lot of marketers about this, and the answer is the same every time. It’s also one word:

Predictive.

You simply have to find early indicators of high-value users. Find something that predicts likely subscribers, or re-architect your onboarding or even your app itself if nothing is available. (No one said your job was easy.)

13. SKAdNetwork privacy thresholds

Q: What can advertisers who are finding themselves consistently caught by the privacy threshold do to try and get the most out of SKAdNetwork? To add, do you think Apple will provide more numerical clarity on the threshold in the future?

A: There’s only one real answer: concentrate your spend in fewer campaigns. You need at least 30 conversions per campaign to get decent results; more can be better.

And on your second question: nope. (Sorry, again.)

14. First party data for mobile marketing

Q: You mentioned getting more first-party data. How should we be looking to use that first-party data to improve monetization? Are there use cases about how to leverage it with ad networks we are working with?

A: First-party data is particularly important for platforms, major ad networks, and big publishers who can collect insights from tens or hundreds of millions of people gleaned from hundreds of different apps. That’s why you’re seeing so much consolidation in the mobile app ecosystem. (And it’s ongoing: Scopely just bought GSN Games from Sony.)

For your first question, assuming you’re a publisher with one game or app, first-party data will be important in your environment to know what turns people on and what turns them off.

This is valuable and important information for timing and placement of your ads and your in-app purchases.

It’s not something you leverage to any great extent elsewhere, however, which is why it’s trickier in terms of your second question: leveraging it with ad networks. Because unless you have permission to use that data as fodder for targeting insights with partner ad networks — in other words, unless you have a positive response to App Tracking Transparency — you simply can’t share it.

It’s first-party, so it’s yours. It’s not accessible for use on a third-party level.

15. Is this thing on? What’s going on here, anyway?

Q: Where will the answered questions be? I have to hop off soon for another meeting.

A: So glad you asked!

16. Anti-IDFA advice now, please!

Q: Any advice that the panel can provide for apps which have completely opted out of IDFA for iOS strategy would be appreciated!

A: I have good news and I have bad news.

The bad news (and, coincidentally, the good news) is that all the advice we can give you is pretty much the same as we can give anyone else who is presenting ATT and attempting to get IDFAs.

Since most app’s ATT success rate is basically at or around 20%, and since you need double opt-in on the advertiser app and publisher app for it to really work, and since that happens infrequently … we’re all in the same boat here.

Welcome to the club!

Go check the webinar for much much much more

We had some really smart people on the webinar, and they said some smart things. (It’s almost like those two things are connected.)

Go check out the webinar on-demand here, and play it in the background while you’re doing some work. When it hits an interesting point for you, tune in more intently. It’s pretty much a guarantee you’ll take away something of value for your work in the next month or so.

Check it out here.

Facebook-TikTok data changes: what marketers need to know

Facebook deprecated Advanced Mobile Measurement. Tiktok deprecated advertiser accessibility to user-level impression data. While MMPs like Singular still have access to view-through attribution on TikTok and device-level install measurement data on Facebook, tightening privacy controls means only aggregated and privacy-safe summaries can be released to advertisers.

What does that mean for the future of mobile marketing?

The answers are here, in our recent webinar.

More questions about Facebook, TikTok, and marketing data

But there were some more questions about Facebook and TikTok, marketing data, and what this all means for the future of marketing measurement. As usual, we answered as many as we could during the webinar, and had a few left over.

Here they are, with answers:

Other channels?

Q: Do you think this shift with providing less info to marketers will force marketers to explore other platforms including broadcast, radio, etc. Social is going to become increasingly challenging …

How do you see the evolution of contextual with in app? Or is it just a buzzword?

A: Yes, I think marketers will broaden their reach and channel selection. We’ve seen it already with mid-tier ad networks. But let’s be real: Facebook and Google and the other self-attributing networks are 75% of mobile user acquisition spend, and that’s not going away anytime soon.

Also, on contextual advertising: it works incredibly well in some verticals. Gaming is one that stands out for me. I don’t think this is just a buzzword, and I do think it will get increasingly important. The downside: targeting whales will be harder.

Is the sky falling?

Q: Moving forward in an ecosystem without user level data, how do you see publishers assessing campaign performance?

A: First off, we still have device-level data on Android. We still have device-level data for about 20% of iOS. And we still have deterministic data in SKAdNetwork (yes, aggregated data, but still deterministic). Plus there are all kinds of probabilistic methodologies that mobile marketers are going to have to learn: incrementality, MMM, etc.

To get a good primer on where Singular sees this going, check out this article on post-IDFA user acquisition by Singular’s CGO Ron Konigsberg as well as my post on Google “killing” last-click attribution.

Social, I’m outta here

Q: Would you suggest that marketers shift from social altogether and shift to SEM and/or native? We have seen an 80-85% drop in revenue and number of transactions for some of our clients and some are doing the same or better from when before the iOS update was implemented.

A: We’ve seen some of those massive swings. Typically what we’ve seen is massive dips in campaign effectiveness that turn out to be artifacts of applying yesterday’s measurement methodology on today’s mobile advertising mechanics. In other words, if you’re using an IDFA growth stack under SKAdNetwork, it’ll look like the roof caved in.

You must, must, must adapt to the new realities.

That said, if the drop is real and not just perceived, that may be due to a severe impairment of the biggest channels’ ability to find whales specifically or payers in general. Give them some time: they are working through change just like you.

And, consider how you can use SKAdNetwork and day-one predictive insights to approach your former efficiencies.

Trust the process?

Q:In light of the Facebook changes, and their driving ad buyers into utilizing automated app ads, what’s the recommendation on running/scaling budget toward Automated App Ads versus a more granular, fully segmented approach?

A:Remember the first months of Google’s algorithm-driven mobile app install campaigns? Remember how much $$$ you needed to train Google’s ad-to-prospect matching AI?

First, give them some time. I do think they’ll figure it out. Second, if you’re going to use the giant platforms, I would assume they know more than you and let them stir, mix, and add the ingredients themselves. (Also, make your campaigns too granular and you’ll lose too much data to SKAdNetwork privacy cutoffs.)

That said, if you’re Rovio or another big team with massive data science and incredible BI, give it a shot.

Everything is crashing to the ground?

Q: So will MMPs not be able to disambiguate conversions between sources eventually? Will there be pools of overlapping conversions between sources? What will the role of MMPs be in this landscape?

A: MMPs are still able to disambiguate sources. And get access to a ton of granular data they cannot contractually share with advertisers. MMPs will not only start using multiple models to generate a better picture of reality; they’ll also need to be able to allow advertisers to run models in the MMP’s cloud to generate insights based on data that can’t be shared, and then export the resulting insights back to advertisers’ BI systems.

For more detail on what that might look like, check out Singular CEO Gadi Eliashiv’s blog post on exactly that topic.

Be specific, please

Q: When you say “We can’t share the device-level data, but we can share measurement insights derived — at least partially — from it …” what are the insights that will still be available?

A: Check out that blog post I linked to in the question above, specifically the section titled “How you can still do granular analysis.”

What’s the impact?

Q:What is the impact on small/medium-sized advertisers and publishers? Do you think it will be more difficult for them to acquire sales or generate revenue?

A: Larger advertisers can certainly use more campaigns via SKAdNetwork-based measurement, because they can feed enough volume into each to avoid privacy censorship levels from destroying their ability to optimize. But we also see plenty of smaller players being super-nimble in web-based acquisition flows that are much cheaper than in-app ad flows, and offer some other measurement advantages as well.

Web-to-App-Store flows

Q: Instead of sending users directly to the App/Play Store, could directing users to a first-party website and using MMP tracking links solve this hole?

A: That’s certainly an option. You might (see above in #7) try models that originate on the web as well, but there’s plenty of in-app inventory that you’d want to access, of course. Going app to web to app is an extra hop, but could enable a sign-up phase or a more detailed introduction to your app which could result in higher-value users/customers making it all the way through the funnel.

So it’s all one big melting pot now, huh?

Q: How will you measure the performance of a TikTok campaign vs Facebook in the future? If the data is in “one pot?”

A: It’s not in one pot. Sources are still very distinct — there are lots of pots — and there’s additional data about conversions and performance within each source. The changes just mean there’s a little less granularity in each pot.

Aggregation and consolidation

Q:Do you see data aggregators starting to offer media buying? or vice versa? Through acquisition of teams or growing their own?

A: Hmmm … you wouldn’t mean like Applovin acquiring Adjust, or InMobi acquiring Appsumer, would you?

First-party data

Q: What are the opt-in rates currently being observed for getting access to FPD?

A: It really, really, really depends on what kind of first-party data you’re referring to. If you’re talking IDFA, it’s about 20%. For more on first-party data, check out this iOS 15 app marketing webinar.

Top funnel versus bottom funnel

Q: Engagement with creative doesn’t necessarily correlate with conversions or ROAS … with this in mind, why the emphasis on changing the way we develop creative? Will creative benefit from being made for more broad audiences?

A: Good creative gets attention. Bad creative does not. After that, there are two questions. First, did you get the right kind of attention, and second, what are you going to do with that attention? High CTR is good, but if it’s the wrong kind of attention, it won’t hit your bottom line. Bad CTR is irredeemably bad … unless the one in a thousand person who clicks on it also becomes a whale.

More questions? More answers …

There are always more questions.

If you have more that are not answered here or in the webinar (check it out here) then there’s a good time and place to get them: in a demo with some of our experts.

Book some time here.

30 mobile marketing influencers that actually matter

Most lists of influencers in mobile marketing completely suck.

That’s true of influencer lists and rankings in most topic areas, frankly.

They’re based on lists of people someone has taken from Buzzsumo or Klear or Upfluence, which too often find drones who might have some skill at SEO and hashtags but don’t really drive conversation, thinking, or actual action. Sometimes, the influencers you get back are not even remotely related to the topics you search for. I searched for “mobile advertising” on NinjaOutreach, and got Vlad and Niki, “the highest rated kids channel on YouTube,” Fail Army, CollegeHumor, and Supercell’s Brawl Stars.

So Ninja, right?

Even when the influencer search engines work, they fail. Buzzsumo, for instance, told me a website with no articles since 2018 was top-ten influential in mobile advertising. I and everyone else dealing with iOS 14.5 beg to differ.

Generally speaking: the tools come back with lists of people who don’t influence change. Who don’t inspire action. Who don’t answer questions. Who don’t drive the conversation.

In other words … who aren’t really influencers.

 

That’s not what this list of mobile influencers is

This list is my personal — and my friends and colleagues — list of people who are truly influential in mobile marketing, in mobile advertising, in mobile user acquisition.

They’re probably people that if you called them an influencer to their face would punch you in the nose. They might be people with almost no social footprint who share their insight in industry Slack channels. And they might be people you’ve never heard of.

But they are people I find interesting, insightful, influential.

In most cases, I’ve talked with them or interviewed them. In some cases, we’ve met multiple times in person. In other cases, we’ve communicated entirely digitally. In all, however, I’ve found them to be smart, impressive, creative, interesting people in mobile marketing and mobile advertising. To get their insight, you might need to be in Slack channels like Mobile Attribution Privacy, or in webinars, or in Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn DMs.

But once you get it, you value it.

Of course, my list is incomplete. Help me grow it: if you know someone else who should be here, don’t be silent. Tell me, and I’ll do my best to let everyone know.

I’ve listed them in four categories:

  • Creators
  • Connectors
  • Thinkers
  • Kingpins

 

Creators

These influencers are in the mobile advertising trenches now. They invent, create, build, MacGyver crazy-smart solutions for our constantly changing tech environments, and DO.

Jayne Peressini

“Most badass mobile marketer, period”

Jayne has been at DraftKings, EA, and Gala Games. She’s now at Dapper Labs growing games, NFTs, and blockchain. Smart, opinionated, unafraid to share, and far too giving of her time for the benefit of others. Great humor, smart hot takes, and a take-no-prisoners attitude.

Superpower: eating snacks while intrepidly dropping knowledge on webinars.

Jayne Peressini

Claire Rozain

“French Connection”

Claire is super nice, super sweet, super generous, and super smart. She’s been at Match, led user acquisition at Product Madness, spent time at Gameloft, and is now a UA team lead at Rovio. Translation: she’s been places, and she’s going places.

Superpower: you literally can’t stop listening to her soft French accent while she drops insights on webinars.

Claire Rozain

Rose Agozzino

“Marketing wizard”

Harry Potter has nothing on Rose (yep, she’s got “marketing wizard” in her LinkedIn bio; I didn’t just make it up). She has worked her way up through multiple roles to marketing manager at Ludia, managing user acquisition for games like Jurassic World, Dragons: Rise of Berk, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Superpower: unassuming but deeply knowledgable.

 

Rose Agozzino

Gabe Kwakyi

“Jack of all trades, master of most”

There is something super-valuable in people who have seen/built/grown/analyzed mobile user acquisition and mobile marketing at literally dozens if not hundreds of startups and enterprises, and that’s Gabe. Super smart, super analytical, he knows data, ASO, paid acquisition, organic growth … and how to grow his own company. Now with Phiture, growing mobile growth expertise in the U.S.

Superpower: has been there, done that, knows how to do it better in the future.

Gabe Kwakyi

Thomas Hopkins

“T.hop”

Nothing may be certain in life but you are almost guaranteed to enjoy a conversation with Thomas, generally from his home office: an Airstream parked out in the back yard. Thomas is a serial founder and marketing leader. He led UA at RockYou and Rocket Games, managed a Lyft division, ran performance and lifecycle marketing at MasterClass, founded a teach-and-share startup, and is now consulting.

Superpower: has been there, done that, knows how to do it better in the future.

Thomas Hopkins

Annica Lin

“Fitter than you”

Annica has humor and chutzpah in equal proportions, and she uses both in conversation, webinars, and work. From marketing intern to VP of growth marketing, Annica has done it all. She’s led marketing at Stash and Thimble, and is now at Sable. And she does it all while running marathons and lifting weights, hopefully not at the same time.

Superpower: she will beat you up, then outrun you … all while teaching you how to do your job better.

Annica Lin

Lomit Patel

“Eats challenges for lunch”

Best-selling book on AI? Check. 30K followers on LinkedIn? Check. Multiple SVP roles at companies like IMVU and Together Labs? Check. Contributing writer at ClickZ? Check. Clearly this dude has a clone, but both have a sense of humor to go with an insatiable appetite for accomplishment.

Superpower: what, I can only have one?

Lomit Patel

Drew Frost

“Billion-dollar business badass”

Do you need to be with a we-don’t-have-old-fashioned-things-like-offices startup or unicorn gaming company to really, really get it in mobile marketing?

Check out Drew, and the answer is obviously no.

While the rest of us are building million-dollar, maybe even billion-dollar businesses, Drew’s leading product and growth marketing for Sam’s Club, part of the yes-we-do-half-a-trillion-in-revenue-annually Walmart empire.

Superpower: ridiculous amount of brain power. Probably illegal, in fact.

 

Drew Frost

Patrick Stal

“The analytical CMO”

Some CMOs can’t wait to do a rebrand. Must have a new logo. Are dreaming of new colors and brand expressions. Patrick’s got the logo and colors (check!) but he’s much more focused on relentlessly attacking the metrics that make his company grow. Formerly at Uber and TomTom, now VP of global marketing at fintech leader N26.

Superpower: focus, focus, focus on the customer.

Patrick Stal

Jon Hook

“Smart money”

Some money is dumb. But Jon has not only been an investor through 5-6 roles, he’s the former chief revenue officer for Homa Games. He’s now at BoomBit and BoomHits, which I can never keep apart but which (I think) basically make mobile games go boom (in a good way, hopefully).

Superpower: knows what makes mobile games explode (this is a good thing).

Jon Hook

Thomas Petit

“Works on more apps than you”

Yet another French mobile growth expert, Thomas lives and works in Mallorca, which is already enough to make anyone insanely jealous. But he’s also super-connected and super-informed, and — like Gabe Kwakyi, has worked on SO. MANY. APPS that he has an amazing sense of what will work and what won’t.

Thomas has an abiding distaste for monopolies and monopolistic power and the way some of the major platforms through their weight around, and runs his own consultancy for seemingly half of the interesting companies in mobile.

Superpower: way more logos in his portfolio of clients than yours.

Thomas Petit

Matej Lancaric

“Spent 25 million Euros profitably”

Budgets in mobile marketing are big, but there are a lot more mobile growth experts who spend $250,000/year than millions. Matej has spent over 25 million Euros for 26 games in just eight years (!!!).

And apparently … that was profitable ad spend. That’s a bit of a wow.

One of the few on this list who I haven’t met or spoken to personally, he’s personally recommended by people I trust. Matej runs his own mobile growth consultancy.

Superpower: clearly, making it rain.

 

Matej Lancaric

Warren Woodward

“Rock and roll”

Warren’s been in the band. Now he is the band.

Look: I have moderated hundreds of webinars. And let’s be honest … your average expert drones on for about 175% of the time needed to convey his or her idea. Or answers questions better left to a different expert. Warren a) knows his stuff, b) condenses it marvelously, c) delivers it concisely … all while being pleasant and professional.

Warren is the co-founder and chief growth officer at Upptic, but I bet he still jams a bit here and there.

Superpower: clear, concise, information-dense communication.

Warren Woodward

Ido Naim

“The real deal”

Sometimes you chat with someone and you just know immediately … this person gets it. Knows his stuff. Or is an expert in her field.

That’s Ido, times 10.

The amazing thing about Ido, who is a great webinar guest by the way, is that he’s super smart and analytical and data-driven, but also has a massive appreciation for the creative, je-ne-sais-quoi parts of marketing that don’t show up on a spreadsheet or in your BI system but … still make a massive difference.

Superpower: Data and heart.

Ido Naim

 

Connectors

These mobile marketing influencers connect people. Talk to people. Make people blow up in the media, or feature them on podcasts.

Seb Joseph

“Unusually clueful”

Look, most journalists don’t get marketing or advertising at any deep level. I once spent literally 70 minutes on the phone with an Ad Age reporter who used literally nothing from the interview … because they just couldn’t understand SKAdNetwork.

That is not Seb Joseph.

Seb has written some of the most insightful commentary on privacy and mobile user acquisition that you can find outside of the thinker category (coming below).

Super-smart, he’s been at Marketing Week, The Drum, and is now an editor at Digiday.

Superpower: a brands person who gets tech

Seb Joseph

Peggy Anne Salz

“My rolodex is bigger than yours”

Okay, I know I’m dating myself with the “rolodex” thing, but in my defense, I never had one either. In any case, if we actually had these things that measured the sizes of our networks, Peggy’s would be massive. No desk could contain it.

I’m biased because I work with Peggy on a bunch of video podcasts, but if there’s someone interesting in mobile or marketing … she probably knows them. Or knows someone who knows them.

Superpower: aggressively but somehow sweetly persistent. If Peggy wants something from you, she’s gonna get it. (Hint: save yourself some trouble, just give it to her right away.)

Peggy Anne Salz

Shamanth Rao

“Rocket Man”

Shamanth interviews people, obviously, on his Mobile User Acquisition show, but he’s also a good interview when you have him on yours. And Shamanth runs Rocketship HQ, leveraging his experience from Zynga and InMobi and FreshPlanet and multiple other companies to help mobile app companies grow faster.

Superpower: connector, cheerleader, learner, sharer. (Wait, that might be too many.)

Shamanth Rao

Dean Takahashi

“Dean the Machine”

Forever known to insiders as Dean the Machine for the frequency with which he churns out 10-story days at GamesBeat and VentureBeat, Dean’s first love is games. That love has led him to often write about the business of games, and how games grow.

Boom: Dean’s in the mobile user acquisition world.

He has appeared in cosplay on-stage at in-person pre-COVID conferences as game characters, and has a very, very big heart. He’s also a pretty bloody good writer and games journalist.

Superpower: words flow from Dean’s fingers like rain in Seattle.

Dean Takahashi

Allison Schiff

“Quiet genius”

The club of clueful mobile marketing journalists is very, very small. But Allison is a charter member. She takes the time to understand, get the real deal, and present it factually and insightfully.

Allison is also a ridiculously nice person (I’m tempted to make her an honorary Canadian) who doesn’t let that innate kindness block her from asking the tough questions and excavating the excrement, metaphorically speaking, when she meets PR-speak obfuscation.

Superpower: actually answers her email. (Allison … how?!?)

Allison Schiff

Susan Kuo

“Passionate perfectionist … and a people person”

Exec of a company acquired by Facebook? Yup. Former head of marketing for InMobi? Sure. VP of sales for multiple tech companies? Uh-huh. Founder and COO of a successful marketing measurement company (shhh … it’s Singular) … also check.

Susan is a major connector and benefactor for women in tech, but if you want her insight, you’ll be very lucky to get it on a webinar or at a conference. One on one or more intimate groups is where Susan shares her insight much more frequently.

Superpower: sweating the details and getting it right.

Susan Kuo

 

Thinkers

These influencers ran marketing for major companies in the past. Or they lead teams with deep expertise currently. Now they consult, think deeply, and share insight freely.

Andrew Chen

“The mastermind”

300,000+ followers on LinkedIn, one of the most influential newsletters on growth, a new book out on the biggest problem for network effect companies (starting)? Andrew’s got all of that, and more.

He led Uber’s most important growth team, is a partner at the hottest VC over the past decade, Andreessen Horowitz, and one of the most strategic thinkers on growth globally.

Superpower: Big brain, creative thinker, super connected

Andrew Chen

Eric Seufert

“Dr Evil”

Eric is not evil. (I mean, just look at that smile.)

But like Dr Evil, his tentacles extend everywhere. Founder of MobileDevMemo, the website and Slack channel for mobile growth professionals, Eric sees everything that happens in mobile and growth and analyzes, reports, and consults on it with the wisdom and perspective you’d expect from someone who led growth at Rovio.

Which is why private equity firms hire him to guide their acquisition efforts.

Superpower: Spidey senses triggered by the highest-value collective of mobile growth talent anywhere … all feeding data into a big brain. Plus the ability to aggregate and synthesize that data, and ultimately express the resulting knowledge with clarity.

Eric Seufert

Alex Bauer

“Janus … AKA TwoFace”

Much like the ancient Roman god Janus who had two faces and could look in all directions, Alex sees a lot. Thanks to his previous roles in consulting and growth, as well as his time as a developer advocate, he’s able to bring a ton of perspective and insight to his current gig as head of product marketing and strategy for Branch.

Then he shares that data generously with all who ask on Slack or in webinars or on LinkedIn.

Superpower: X-ray data.

Alex Bauer

Andreas Naumann

“Scourge of cheaters”

The monk look is relatively new, but this monk is wired. Andreas has a very deep understanding on inauthentic traffic, fake clicks, fraudulent installs, and everything associated with cheating honest marketers out of their all-too-small budgets.

Currently director of fraud prevention at Adjust, Andreas has been at Glispa, Trademob, and Zanox and — who knew — was a bartender back in the day. (There is a little Friar Tuck to him, no?)

Superpower: Sherlock Holmesian powers of analysis and deduction.

Andreas Naumann

Raja Rajamannar

“Quantum of Solace”

CMO of Mastercard, huh? It doesn’t get much higher level than that. But Raja is shockingly down-to-earth and easy to talk to … even though he’s not just a super-successful chief marketing officer but also the Wall Street Journal best-selling author of Quantum Marketing.

Not, it’s not about quantum computing. It’s about the next generation of marketing as we are all bombarded by almost two dozen new kinds of technologies that are coming at us.

Superpower: a big heart to go along with all that insight.

Raja Rajamannar

Andy Carvell

“Father of the mobile growth stack”

A lot of people have many claims to fame in mobile marketing. Few are the originators of an iconic image like the mobile growth stack.

And, few can speak as graciously and insightfully as Andy on the mechanics and drivers of mobile user acquisition. Currently co-founder and partner at Phiture — which just expanded to the U.S. — he led growth and retention at SoundCloud, has his MBA, and led product or marketing Infospace, LikedBy, and other companies.

And, like Eric Seufert, he’s got dev chops too, with prior roles in game development.

Superpower: Synthesizing data into insight.

Andy Carvel

 

Kingpins

Kingpins are those who are owners, execs, movers and shakers who see the entire space, understand the massive shifts, and —- occasionally — share their insight for others.

Offer Yehudai

“Prime mover”

Besides having the perfect name for a marketer, Offer has been embedded in mobile marketing for so long and with such great vantage points, he sees moves before they happen. Consolidation is accelerating in mobile adtech; he’s been doing that since 2017. From selling Inneractive (congrats on screwing up the world’s spellcheckers, Offer) to Fyber and then Fyber to Digital Turbine and becoming CMO of DT; Offer’s had a front-row seat on the evolution of adtech. And he hasn’t been sitting on the bench.

Superpower: just a little bit faster than you at picking up trends.

Offer Yehudai

Gadi Eliashiv

“Future programmer”

How many CEOs still code in Python? Or contribute code to their company’s innovation efforts? Or code for fun? Answer: not many. But there is something special about companies with engineers as CEOs (perhaps Elon Musk is the best example). Gadi sees the machinations of perhaps the most technical vertical in business from a global all the way down to atomic scale, resulting in insights others can’t see and pivots in strategy, when necessary, on the proverbial dime.

If the best way to predict the future is to invent it, Gadi’s got a leg up on the competition.

Superpower: understanding adtech like a mechanic understands cars. Except with the ability to also drive one like Max Verstappen.

Gadi Eliashiv

Abhay Singhal

“Pathfinder”

Robert Frost saw two roads, took the least traveled one, and that made all the difference. Abhay has done something similar, helping cofound InMobi in 2006 and growing it in all kinds of unique and interesting ways in the 15 years since. An ad network with products for telcos? An ad network with a marketing cloud? An ad network that has grown as fast and as large as InMobi?

All those things are unlikely, and require unusual thinking. And part of that is due to Abhay’s unique perspective on how to succeed in mobile advertising, monetization, and user acquisition.

Superpower: global vision to see opportunity everywhere, not just in North America.

Abhay Singhal

Sheri Bachstein

“Omniverser”

Sheri’s not just the general manager of IBM Watson Advertising, she’s also the CEO of The Weather Company, which IBM owns. That’s a significant mix of responsibilities, with some overlap, which requires multi-dimensional perspectives.

Good news: she’s got them. Even better news, she can communicate them — and the insights that proceed — extremely clearly. Also impressive: she’s quick, thanks partly to an early career stint as a live TV producer.

Superpower: makes diamonds under pressure.

Sheri Bachstein

Kieran O’Leary

“The Gamer”

Kieran is insane. Everyone says fail fast, but deep down, no-one actually wants to. Kieran legitimately enjoys failing and grinding and hitting his head on a metaphorical (I think) wall … as long as it ultimately leads to success.

There must be some method to his madness, however: Kieran deeply understands games, product, marketing, and mobile, and he’s been super-successful wherever he goes.

Confusing everyone with his Irish name and French accent, Kieran has a who’s who of global companies (especially in gaming) on his resume: Gameloft, Outfit7, Ubisoft, IBM, and of course Rovio, where he is currently the chief operating officer. Catch his insight on podcasts and webinars, and on LinkedIn, where he recently welcomed Ruby Games to the Rovio family. Err, flock.

Superpower: dumbfounds everyone with rapid progression.

Kieran O’Leary

Adam Foroughi

“Mastermind”

Imagine a conversation in the Foroughi household. “What’d you do today, honey?” Bought a company from Twitter for a billion dollars. “Oh, nice. By the way, the Joneses are coming over for dinner tonight.”

Applovin is a beast. Ad network, monetization, first-party content, user acquisition, growth strategies, marketing measurement (hey, that sounds familiar), and more. Plus 200+ games, studios to develop more games, and yep, that massive acquisition of MoPub. And if Applovin is the beast, the lion tamer is Adam, who has been sharing deep insights on mobile, growth, and the ecosystem itself for more than a decade.

Superpower: shocking the mobile world with massive acquisitions. Making everyone wonder … why they didn’t do that afterwards.

Adam Foroughi

That’s my list. I just know I’m forgetting about 50 people, so apologies in advance.

If we know each other and I missed you, please reach through that Zoom screen and slap me. If there’s someone you know that should be on this list, let me know.

Here’s an easy way: fill out this (very brief) form.

Google, the end of last-click measurement, and the future of attribution

Is last-click measurement dead?

That would appear to be the logical conclusion if you read Google VP Vidhya Srinivasan’s blog post last week. She’s the general manager of buying, analytics, and measurement for Google Ads, and her blog post was a massive shot across the bow of last-click measurement.

Of course, mobile attribution continues to be last-click. Apple’s SKAdNetwork is last click. Facebook is last click. App installs driven by Google are still … last click. With a few small exceptions, the entire mobile measurement industry is last click.

(None of which guarantees that last click is necessarily a great, amazing, foolproof model for all time and all purposes, of course.)

But despite the fact that last-click attribution is basically the default today in the wider marketing industry and to an even greater extent pretty much the only methodology that the average user acquisition specialist uses, the mobile user acquisition industry hasn’t really responded to Google’s post.

So let’s do that.

 

Google’s last-click argument: privacy, effectiveness, data

Privacy requires change, Srinivasan says:

In the face of a changing privacy landscape, marketers need new measurement approaches that meet their objectives and put users first …

Last click isn’t effective, according to her post:

As the industry continues to evolve, last-click attribution will increasingly fall short of advertisers’ needs …

The answer is data-driven attribution:

Advertisers around the world have seen better results by switching to data-driven attribution.

None of the above is particularly controversial. Despite the fact that Google has oddly contrasted last-click with data-driven attribution (is last click somehow not data-driven?) there’s probably not a lot of argument to the contentions that privacy requires changes to marketing measurement, that last-click attribution has challenges, and that there are potentially better models.

The new attribution model will become “the default attribution model for all new conversion actions in Google Ads,” Srinivasan says.

The question is: which model? What is it, really?

Google’s term “data-driven attribution” is odd: all attribution is data-driven. It’s not one of the recognized attribution models, nor is it clearly an incrementality-driven solution:

  • First click attribution
  • Last click attribution
  • Multi-touch attribution
  • Linear attribution
  • Time-decay attribution

While not 100% obvious, Google’s new “data-driven attribution” appears to be a sort of mix of multi-touch attribution and modeled attribution. More touches in more places, with some AI/machine learning thrown in to make sense of it all when you don’t have cookies or IDFAs or AAIDs.

“It’s really blurry … wasn’t deterministic ‘data driven’ as well?” asks growth consultant Thomas Petit. “Modelled attribution would be more descriptive. It’s basically extrapolated attribution [with] more inputs.”

And clearly, given what Google itself is doing in mobile user acquisition measurement, this is much more about brand ads driving web visits, retail purchases, or other types of activity. Right now it’s not really about mobile app install measurement.

“For mobile first businesses (or mobile and web), the claim of death of last click attribution is premature,” says Paul Bowen, general manager of AlgoLift. “SKAN and MMP attribution are both last touch and deterministic models. Any other attribution model (e.g. MMM or data-driven attribution) are probabilistic and should be built on top of these attribution methodologies given that they are deterministic.”

 

Privacy, data, and measurement

It’s also not hard to argue that multi-touch attribution can easily be much more privacy-invasive than last click.

Last click is literally looking at one point in time, and a deliberate action taken by a person to access a resource. Multi-touch attribution by virtue of being multi-touch needs to look at more activity, from direct action like clicks to indirect activity such as ad views. In fact if you were going to achieve full marketing measurement of every single action or view on every iota of marketing effort, you’d require full awareness of what people are doing.

Talk about an invasion of privacy …

Of course, this is not what Google is suggesting. And modeling and incrementality are ways of reducing that privacy overhead.

It’s interesting that Apple’s answer to mobile attribution is SKAdNetwork. That’s privacy-safe by hiding individual action in aggregations of activity. It is also last-click, though via “loser postbacks” introduced in iOS 14.6, Apple is still providing context around a more complex user or customer journey.

From my post back in May:

Most postbacks are “winner” postbacks: a notification that your ad network’s ad impression was successful. It generated a click and the click resulted in an app install. With iOS 14.6 and SKAdNetwork 3.0, however, we got a little gift from Apple: postbacks to up to five other ad networks whose ads were seen but not clicked on, or, at least were not responsible for the app install.

So modeling is not the only possible solution when you need to solve for both privacy and marketing measurement.

And, of course, it’s not exactly simple, either.

“When I entered the market five years ago, it was more or less clear how to attribute, how to measure events,” Nakusi Games user acquisition lead Vladimir Ilchenko told me recently. “Everything should become better and better and easier and easier for marketers … but nowadays I understand that it’s vice versa.”

That’s one challenge. Another is that a solution needs to be broader than just one company or ad partner, even one as large as Google.

A solution for brands needs to be comprehensive. Not of all customer or user activity — which breaks privacy protocols — but of all channels. In other words, not just what happens in the Google ecosystem, not just what happens on Apple devices, and not just what happens in the Facebook ecosystem.

 

The attribution solution we need

Look: Google is on to something. We need more than last-click attribution for a number of different reasons, including both privacy and the fact that the journey which leads to action is much more complex than a single click.

Even if it is the last one before a purchase or important event.

And we need that, eventually, in mobile user acquisition as well as other areas of marketing measurement. Modeling is part of the answer here. But it needs to be based on privacy-safe datasets from multiple places, channels, funnel levels, and partners.

From Singular’s chief growth officer, Ron Konigsberg, on the future of mobile attribution:

That future involves building out varying views of reality and integrating them intelligently into a single source of truth. At Singular, we’re looking at marketing performance from known and aggregated spend data, from deterministic last-click measurement, from probabilistic aggregated results data, from first-party data, and from other sources. All of those have their unique perspective on what is actually happening as marketers market, whether putting dollars to work or investing in organic promotion. Each of them has value.

But then they also need to coalesce into a single source of truth to provide a simpler modeled view of reality.

That’s the attribution solution we need. It’s data-driven (thanks, Google), it’s privacy-safe (thanks, Apple), it’s comprehensive (thanks, all ad partners everywhere), and it’s going to be the best way to meld aggregate and granular and deterministic and probabilistic data together to understand the impact of marketing spend and the best options for future allocation.

It’s coming.

Almost every iPhone owner will be using iOS 15’s Private Relay soon

iOS 15 is here, and so is Private Relay, Apple’s new privacy-centric technology for the web. How is it going to affect marketing measurement and advertising?

It’s going to hit like a bomb. A soft bomb.

Let me explain …

Private Relay is iOS 15’s App Tracking Transparency

iOS 14.5 was Apple’s opening salvo for app-based privacy with App Tracking Transparency and SKAdNetwork. iOS 15 with Private Relay and Hide My Email, both available in iCloud+, is Apple’s opening salvo for web-based privacy.

“Opening salvo” are the key words in the above paragraph.

Neither iOS 14.5’s ATT nor iOS 15’s Private Relay and Hide My Email are complete and fully-finished products, frameworks, and services. All will evolve over time.

(Yes, that’s part of the “soft” in “soft bomb. But just part; keep reading.)

As marketers and advertisers know, these technologies enhance privacy at the cost of marketing measurement. But thanks to the excessive tracking and data sharing of the recent past, consumers and privacy advocates don’t really care about that price. And even, honestly, most marketers want more privacy. Private Relay achieves that by separating your requests for the stuff you want on mobile web from the place that request goes, essentially by putting in two proxy servers. The inbound proxy gets your request. The outbound proxy relays it to the server, and they shake hands on the way back with your web page or resources.

You’re invisible to the server, and even Apple doesn’t have the full end-to-end picture.

Privacy solved (maybe).

Of course, it’s only mobile web, and it’s only Safari. At least, for now.

The first big question for marketers and advertisers is: how many people will be on Private Relay? The second is: will this eventually be extended to all in-app connections to the internet?

Let’s hit the first one first.

Everyone’s going to be on Private Relay

The plain answer is: almost everyone with an iPhone.

Look, mobile Safari is pretty much the default for iOS users. If you take a peek at Statcounter’s mobile browser market share for North America, you see that Safari has about 49% share right now to Chrome’s 44%, with a few anklebiters like Samsung, Firefox, Opera, and UC Browser fighting for crumbs under the table.

mobile browser share private relay iOS15

While that percentage doesn’t line up perfectly with iOS market share in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, it’s pretty close. Basically, if you use an iPhone, you use the browser that shipped with the device. (Microsoft clearly taught Apple everything it knows about default system choices.)

iPhone market share in the U.S., from Piplsay via Asymco:

iOS market share usa

So everyone’s on Safari.

But what about access to Privacy Relay and other privacy features like Hide My Email? They are premium add-ons to basic iCloud, so they’re only for paid accounts. So that will only be a few people, right? Actually, no. Not even close.

The question here is: how many people pay for iCloud+?

A lot of people. In fact, hundreds of millions of them.

“We now have more than 700 million paid subscriptions across the services on our platform, which is up more than 150 million from last year and nearly four times the number of paid subscriptions we had only four years ago,” Apple CFO Luca Maestri said in the company’s June 2021 quarterly earnings call.

Are all of those iCloud+? Probably not. There are, after all, just under 20 million people who pay for Apple TV+. And Apple has some other subscriptions, like the iPhone Upgrade Program: pay a monthly fee to always have the latest and greatest shiny new iPhone.

But most of them are.

Drop your guess wherever you wish, but to me, it looks pretty clear that literally hundreds of millions of people, and likely something near 600 million or higher pay for at least a little bit of extra iCloud space. The base price is literally 99 cents/month in the U.S., and with HD photos and 4K videos and Pro Res, basically everyone with a modern iPhone needs iCloud+.

That means almost everyone, and it almost means disproportionately the most valuable users with the most disposable income.

Sure, there are some caveats (and the bomb is soft)

Yes, it will take some time. iOS 15 will take some months to fully percolate through the iPhone userbase, and yes, right now Private Relay is in beta, is buried in settings, and needs to be turned on manually.

(Plus — you’re right — some Apple customers use Chrome or other browsers.)

Also, there are some countries Private Relay is not available in. Apple doesn’t offer Private Relay in China, Belarus, Colombia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkmenistan, Uganda, the Philippines, and Russia. (Those countries, of course, want to see what their citizens are doing digitally.)

But, just like ATT in iOS 14.5 — and don’t forget it was originally scheduled to arrive six months earlier with iOS 14 — Private Relay and other Apple privacy innovations will almost certainly be rolled out to the wider and eventually complete iOS ecosystem just about everywhere else.

And probably become opt-out rather than opt-in.

But you can basically expect most high-value iPhone owners to become less visible digitally.

That’s the soft bomb.

The bomb part is that almost everyone will be Private Relayed out of visibility. The soft part is that it will take some time. iOS 14.5 took half a year to arrive: much later than promised. The changes that iOS 15 brings for privacy — and the ones that are still coming — will be perhaps just as significant, and impact plenty of different services and parts of the online ecosystem.

So the full impact won’t be immediate. But like iOS 14.5 … those who survive it best are those who prepare for it first.

But what about in-app?

Of course, I still haven’t addressed in-app traffic. Will Apple extend Private Relay to in-app traffic?

First of all, this isn’t easy. In-app is a much bigger technical challenge at a much greater scope, simply because we spend 80% or more of our device time in apps. That’s a lot of traffic to manage, and there’s a lot of things that could break if Apple does it wrong, or if Apple’s implementation isn’t completely seamless to app developers’ code. Or the user experience could be poor, if the service isn’t globally accessible and state-of-the-art fast.

And there’s some significant cost to proxying 1.5 billion devices’ internet traffic.

So it’s not an easy yes.

But I can imagine Apple tackling it, possibly at high-value levels of iCloud+ thanks to the extra costs. And that would be a pretty significant privacy game-changer and marketing measurement milestone. Even if Apple doesn’t, however, my assumption is that Apple will change what metadata can accompany requests and potentially even scramble any metadata that it does allow to break non-privacy-compliant forms of attribution.

Time, ultimately, will tell.

What this means for marketers

This will have a number of impacts on mobile marketers and advertisers.

  • Shift to SKAdNetwork
    Fingerprinting attempts are a violation of Apple’s privacy guidelines for mobile app tracking, and are getting less and less viable. More marketers are buying in to privacy-safe attribution via Apple’s SKAdNetwork framework.
  • App-to-web-to-app attribution changes
    Marketers adopting web-to-app attribution to use owned properties to track users via first-party non-Apple-guidelines-covered data will have to consider if it still works. Some will move to web-based onboarding. Others will ask for a phone number or email address to send a download link to (hint: pick phone number). Others may just use it to forward anonymous traffic but use it as one more efficacy check on ad partners.
  • SKAdNetwork for web
    We’ve been wondering where the SKAdNetwork functionality for web is, given how important the web can be for mobile user acquisition. While Apple’s enabled private click measurement for app-to-web measurement, it doesn’t complete the journey back to app. If Apple for privacy reasons wouldn’t want to complete the journey, it should at least provide the mobile Safari version of SKAdNetwork for web to app marketing measurement.
  • More first-party data
    Expect a continuing and ongoing move to first-party data: getting it, keeping it, using it, and consolidating sources of it.

iOS 15: the webinar

Why yes, we are doing a webinar about iOS 15 and what it means for marketers and advertisers. And yes, you totally should come.

Sign up here …

Media mix modeling for mobile apps: a privacy-safe answer to marketing measurement?

Is media mix modeling the answer for mobile apps user acquisitions leaders who want to measure and optimize marketing and advertising?

Here’s the UA leader’s dream:

  • Immediate, accurate marketing intelligence
  • Actionable insights on channel, creatives, bids, and budgets
  • Privacy-safe, Apple compliant, GDPR-happy, CCPA-OK methodologies and mechanics
  • … all of which result in smart insights that generate massive growth

It’s a tall order for any methodology of marketing measurement. Can media mix modeling deliver that for mobile marketers?

Let’s dive in.

Media mix modeling is a senior citizen in marketing (not that that’s a bad thing)

There’s no really kind way to put it: media mix modeling is old.

Often referred to as marketing mix modeling, it’s been around since literally the 1950s and 1960s. Neil Borden, a professor at Harvard Business School, first coined the term marketing mix in 1949, and big brands used the concept in the emerging age of mass media to build statistical models of marketing effectiveness.

In that form, media mix modeling was effective at answering questions like these:

“If I spend $10 million on a TV campaign on the three big networks, what impact will it have on my sales of Cheerios?”

To build those answers, media mix modeling needed data: prior sales, ideally for years. Impacts on those sales. Seasonal trends. Competitive actions. Economic indicators like the consumer price index. Pricing comparisons. Availability data. Wider cultural movements, and so on. Marketing mix modeling typically used (and uses: it’s still in operation) intensive analysis of lots of data from lots of different sources over a long period of time. When it works, marketing executives get answers to the big “what if” questions like what will tossing $10 million at ABC, NBC, and CBS do to our bottom line?

This reliance on scale and history and long periods of time would seem to disqualify MMM as a methodology for the much faster-paced and lower-scale mobile user acquisition campaigns. And, indeed, when I recently talked to Adobe about their brand-new still-in-beta marketing AI-driven media mix modeling product, that suspicion seems to be accurate.

It works well: the system allowed one customer to cut ad spend by 50% while still growing 10%.

But there’s a big caveat: you need to be spending $50 million a year.

Well, some of the biggest mobile publishers are at that level, and beyond it. But certainly not the average mobile publisher. Most mobile marketers have much smaller budgets and need to know what’s going on with their $100,000/month spend or their $50,000/month budget.

Mobile marketing has been drunk on data

Let’s just be honest. Mobile advertising has been drunk on data: immediate data, accurate data, actionable data. Mobile growth professionals haven’t had to bother with pre-digital modes of marketing measurement … partly because they seemed ancient and inexact and cumbersome and expensive and slow.

But mostly because digital offered a dream: a pure and clean and bold dream of exact knowledge and perfect awareness and scientific marketing resulting in no wasted dollars.

(Fraudsters, of course, loved that dream.)

But despite challenges — and there are some beyond fraud — that dream required a level of tracking that 1960s marketers would be amazed at, if not shocked. It started with cookies on the web in 1994, continued with hard-coded device IDs on smartphones in the early 2010s, shifted to more user-controllable advertising IDs shortly thereafter, and is currently trending to largely disappear in the early to mid-2020s.

No data to gobs of data to much less data, all in about a quarter of a century.

But for the complete to-date lifespan of the mobile-first computing era until now, we’ve been in an era of data glut.

“We’ve had a data addiction in mobile,” says Brian Krebs, who runs MetricWorks and builds media mix models. “Because it has always been available.”

Hello again, media mix modeling (the times they are a-changin’)

Because those times are changing, driven by Apple, iOS 14.5, government regulation, and changing social attitudes, media mix modeling is coming back into the conversation. If you can’t get as much granular data via IDFA on iOS, and you’re wondering what might happen with AAID/GAID on Android, maybe there’s another way.

Maybe it doesn’t take a $50 million budget, and maybe it also doesn’t take as much crazy math and exogenous data about the surrounding world and competitor’s actions and economic shifts as we once thought.

If you pour in first-party data like day-of-week trends, vertical-specific trends like time of year seasonality, broad industry trends for app install frequency, plus specific-to-you events like getting featured by Google or Apple or having your game reviewed by GamesBeat or PocketGamer, that’s actually enough, says Krebs. Add to it the marketing activity for your app — spend and impressions — and you’ve got a good basis for MMM for mobile user acquisition.

You do need to vary spend from time to time — a steady-state drone makes efficacy hard to pinpoint — but that happens naturally with changing competition for impressions and availability of supply.

The reality might be that media mix modeling is better for mobile user acquisition than it is for its originally intended purpose: big, slow, spendy campaigns by massive national and global brands. And it may show incrementality better than traditional methods as well.

“It was surprising to us to be perfectly honest: MMM just works better in mobile,” Krebs says. “It’s simpler … you need fewer data points.”

But is it good enough?

What media mix modeling won’t give you

Look. A technique doesn’t have to be perfect to be useful. Anyone who thinks last-click attribution is a perfect measure of marketing performance is, frankly, delusional. And yet we’ve been largely using it for the last decade with, arguably, good effect.

Because it’s been good enough.

So the question is: is MMM good enough to drive decision-making?

Before we answer that, here’s what media mix modeling won’t provide.

Perhaps the three words that capture it best are immediacy, granularity, and clarity. Immediacy was of course the incomparable glory of the IDFA (which still exists, clearly, for 10-20% of iOS traffic) and still is the shining north star of GAID-based attribution. (It’s lacking — to an extent driven somewhat by your own decisions — in Apple’s SKAdNetwork framework, of course. You could reset the SKAN postback to as long as 7 days.)

Knowing what works as soon as possible is critical to quick optimization. Knowing what doesn’t work as soon as possible is critical to not wasting budget.

Media mix modeling for mobile doesn’t take the weeks and months it requires in the big brand consumer space. But it’s not quite as fast as a postback, either.

Granularity is similar: IDFA/GAID and even SKAdNetwork give you pinpoint precision data on a number of factors: source and campaign, a few configurable factors for SKAdNetwork, plus of course much more granular user-level data and cohorting for IDFA/GAID. There’s less data from SKAdNetwork, but smart customization and hybrid postbacks with encoded values for multiple events and/or timers can help.

MMM will provide less in each of these areas, including a little less clarity into helper networks, assists, and last touches, especially for mobile growth marketers who are accustomed to running with many different ad partners simultaneously. (Yes, you can argue that all those networks are casting hooks into the same river, and that’s true. But it’s hard to argue that all the hooks — and the bait on them — are of identical value, and are all cast into the very best parts of the river where fish congregate.)

Incrementality will also struggle with creative optimization, which of course you can address by manually limiting creative variations by campaign to see impact over time. And bids and budgets on individual platforms will be a little more opaque to MMM.

So … a hybrid model: next-gen attribution

Media mix modeling isn’t a silver bullet, someone who sells media mix modeling for mobile user acquisition teams told me. But it is useful. And, alongside an MMP, it adds context and insight.

The reality is that the age of tracking is ending.

IDFA is largely gone, fingerprinting is against Apple’s guidelines, and Google will be making some privacy changes over time as well.

So you do need next-gen attribution.

That means impressions, clicks, and costs, sure. Installs, when you can get them. Creative insights, as much as possible. Channel and partner-specific results, as available. Upper funnel data and lower funnel data. First-party data from within your own app: new users, engagement patterns, sign-ups, purchases. Bids and budgets, and normalization and standardization across all your data sources.

The reality is that it’s getting tougher out there. Last click on an advertising identifier was simple. Now, mobile growth professionals need a complete marketing data infrastructure, not just a mobile tracker. And you need that, by the way, across more than just mobile ads. There’s out of doors, TV, web, and other channels that are starting to matter.

Combining all that signal while simultaneously silencing the noise to generate insights for growth: that’s the next challenge. And MMM has a seat at that table as part of next-gen attribution.

Talk to us

Interested in learning more about how you can futureproof your marketing growth with next-gen analytics and attribution?

Let us know. We’ll be in touch.