Growth Masterminds: mobile growth podcast

Monetization and retention can seem like the opposite ends of a continuum ... a zero-sum game where focusing on monetization kills retention.

Not necessarily, says AppLike CEO Jonas Thiemann. AdJoe, one of their brands, has a unique ad placement that earns players money for installing and playing games they're interested in ... including the game they saw the ad in.

He says it's the perfect balancing of incentives between users, publishers, and advertisers, and that's why 80 out of the top 100 grossing apps on Android are using AdJoe, users are making $20-20 a month, and some publishers are taking home six-figure paydays daily.

First-party data? Content fortresses? Incrementality?

2020 was crazy for everyone. 2021 is crazier for mobile marketers, who are facing complete disruption in how they keep score, measure success, and report on growth.

Attribution's not gone, but it is changing. You still get some last-click data in iOS with SKAdNetwork, and of course on Android, but it's less clear, less direct, and -- for Android -- probably not long-lived. What other data do you have to measure the impact of your marketing?

That exactly what we chat about with Tinuiti's Liz Emery ... possibly the smartest agency-based marketer. We chat about iOS 14.5, Android 12, Facebook AMM (advanced mobile measurement) deprecation, opportunities, media mix modeling, incrementality, first-party data, mergers & acquisitions, and much, much more.

We end with this: what will remain true in marketing ... regardless of technology, data, and regulation changes?

0:00 Everything is broken

1:49 Attribution + more data

5:04 In-app analytics for marketers

6:28 Historical data for marketers

8:28 Flight to Android?

10:39 Facebook Advanced Mobile Measurement (AMM)

14:02 Android app set ID and more

16:19 First party data

18:12 Mergers & acquisitions & content fortresses

22:06 Owned media, lifecycle marketing, social

23:52 Agencies and mobile marketing

27:37 Liz rocks

We’ve had more billion-dollar adtech acquisitions in the first quarter of 2021than in the previous several years combined, according to LUMA.

What’s going on?

Could it be … all the talk of third-party cookie deprecation? The reality of the IDFA apocalypse? New levels of competition? Changing marketing channels and opportunities? Or … a new emphasis on platform services and first-party data?

We’re going to find out.

Vungle is part of this acquisition frenzy. Vungle has acquired no fewer than 4 companies in the past 9 months, including, most recently, JefFuel, an influencer marketing platform. Today we’re chatting with Vungle’s SVP of Revenue, Scott Silverman, about why.

Many mobile marketers are less than happy with Apple's new iOS 14.5 and SKAdNetwork, Apple's privacy-safe mobile advertising attribution framework. 

But developers and publishers of kids' apps are not among them.

In fact, SKAdNetwork might just be the best thing that's happened to kids' apps. Now, as Kidoz co-CEO Eldad Ben Tora says, marketers can actually do user acquisition at scale for kids' apps. And publishers can monetize safely via ads.

In this podcast ...

0:00 Intro

0:44 Kids' apps market size

5:17 What is Kidoz?

11:38 User acquisition for kids apps

15:01 Marketing to kids vs parents

17:38 Monetization of kids' apps

23:06 Integration with Singular

25:00 Why focus on kids?

Now.gg is launching a new cloud gaming service. And while there are dozens of startups and giant tech companies doing the same, Now.gg is from Bluestacks, which has over 500 million users play Android games on the web.

Now gaming is moving to the cloud.

And that means huge changes for marketers and user acquisition specialists. While it's early days, being able to market a game by sharing a link that someone can start playing a game with instantly is an entirely different ball game than marketing an Android or iOS app.

In this episode of Growth Masterminds (check out the audio podcast!) I chat with Ben Armstrong, a Bluestacks and Now.gg VP, about the new service, about what it means for mobile, and about how marketers can take advantage of it.

Check the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXJmxzOOaFk

Check the story here: https://www.singular.net/blog/cloud-gaming-user-acquisition/

The list of Western apps that have made it big in China is not long. There are some great games on that list, including ones from major studios Supercell and Riot Games. Games like Cut the Rope and Fruit Ninja made the cut, and Subway Surfers and PUBG are big globally as well as in China.

But as Josh Burns explains, it’s probably easier to list the apps that failed.

He has a lot of experience with apps in general and China in particular. 

As a former exec at 6waves and EA and founder of DigitalDevConnect, Burns has helped launch games for Kabam, Nexon, and Atari. He’s managed games with IP from Disney, Starz, Eminem, and the BBC. Now, among a few other things, Burns helps top grossing mobile games enter the China market.

I chatted with him recently, and along with a lot of advice about what NOT to do, he shared 12 keys to success in bringing mobile apps to China. 

Here’s his best insight about taking apps and games from the west and bringing them east. If you'd prefer to read this than watch this, the 12 keys are available on the Singular blog:

https://www.singular.net/blog/mobile-app-success-in-china/

What is happening in the mobile adtech ecosystem?

Is it the rise of platforms? The need for size to fight the heavyweight contenders of mobile advertising? Consolidation to accumulate and stockpile more first-party data in an era of increasingly scarce second and third party information? Or just a need to acquire revenue on the path to going public?

Whatever it is, we are seeing a massive acceleration in mergers and acquisitions in the mobile marketing and adtech ecosystems. Applovin bought Adjust, Vungle bought GameRefinery, Verve bought Nexstar. District M and Sharethrough. Magnite (formerly Rubicon) bought SpotX just a few months ago … and, of course, the ink has barely dried on the $400 million Digital Turbine acquisition of AdColony.

In this episode of Growth Masterminds, we chat with Offer Yehudai, president at Fyber, and Matt Tubergen, EVP corporate development and strategy at Digital Turbine about their deal ... and the wider implications in the ecosystem.

SKAdNetwork-compatible mobile ad inventory is hard to come by these days. Fortunately, Snap is ready, and Singular and Snap are announcing a joint solution for SKAdNetwork campaign measurement. 

For all the details, we check in with Singular product marketing manager Saadi Muslu in this episode of Growth Masterminds.

Perhaps even more interesting?

Like Facebook but unlike Google, Snap has decided to show the App Tracking Transparency prompt. And the results, according to our recent IDFA survey data, could be extremely important for the ecosystem as a whole.

All the details in the episode, or here in the blog post:

https://www.singular.net/blog/snapchat-skadnetwork/

Facebook automated app ads are smart and useful ads that take elements of creative you supply, mix and match them according to Facebook’s secret alchemy of advertising success, and automate the process of targeting, delivery, customization, and even — if you wish — setting budgets.

There’s one small problem.

You can’t analyze everything you might want to. 

In this brief episode of Growth Masterminds, we chat with Singular product manager Evyatar Ram about how you actually can analyze Facebook AAA ads by country and creative assets simultaneously.

We are down to the short strokes now: Apple’s iOS 14.5 will roar in next week or soon after, changing mobile marketing on iPhone and iPad forever. But is the mobile advertising ecosystem ready? Is there SKAdNetwork-ready ad supply from mobile publishers? And how will MMPs, mobile web customer journeys, and deep links work?

In short: there are still a lot of questions.

I spent some time with Jonathan Chen, who leads Singular’s attribution product and manages integration with top partners, to answer these questions.