Business of Apps Podcast

#123: Leveraging mobile games ad tech for non-gaming apps with Andrey Kazakov, Vice President of Demand at AppLovin

You know, quite often in marketing a strategy that was proven to be really effective in one area, finds its second application with the other.
Usually, it happens when you take a holistic approach and all of sudden you can see that your calculation of why certain ad creatives or targeting work with one audience, should absolutely work with others.
From the inception of both Apple’s App Store and Google Play market, the app market is being divided between games and non-games. Analytics have been busy comparing revenues both sectors generate, number of downloads each gets, retention, and more.
In this episode, we want to show you how ad tech that has been powering mobile games’ growth in fact capable to do the same for non-games.
Today’s Topics Include:
For the last decade Andrey's career span across multiple companies, including Acquired.IO, which he launched in 2017, Adjust, where he served as COO, President and Chairman and now AppLovin, where he is VP of Demand
Mobile game categories that have been enjoying the growth the most
What ad tech that are proven to be really effective for mobile games can be applied to non-gaming apps advertisting
Non-gaming app market trends
What the future holds for non-games app promotion
Links and Resources:
Andrey Kazakov on LinkedIn
AppLovin
Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry
Quotes from Andrey Kazakov:
“Gaming definitely paved the way”
“The full stack matters how you think about the data, analytics, creative, and the flow to creative ideation that is efficient and to produce it at scale and data science that powers your LTV thinking.”
“Folks who approach their UA with a proper strategy and planning, and do it with the right partner, succeed.”
“While the environment is challenging, there are certain players that are actually approaching their user acquisition in a more aggressive fashion and growing.”
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Discounted ticket prices are currently available on all of our 2024 summits
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London - 25 Apr 2024
NYC - 27 Jun 2024
San Francisco - 26 Sep 2024
Berlin - 5 Dec 2024
 

#122: App Marketing for Black Friday & Cyber Monday with Jason Smith, VP of Sales (UK & Europe) at MoEngage

When you are a mobile app marketer, holidays mean a bit more than just the days to spend more time with friends and family and have a chance to escape thoughts about work.
In fact, I’m sorry to say, but for the thoughts, it’s the opposite - every app marketer, and marketer in general for that matter, knows that the holidays are the time when you can get more traction for your app, more traffic, and more sales.
In this episode, we have Jason give us hints and tricks for Black Friday and Cyber Monday we’re all moving in time and will get there on November 25th and 28th respectively.
Today’s Topics Include:
Jason's path in tech is from a data software engineer to VP of Sales in MoEngage - the leading insights-led engagement platform
What are seasonal promotions
What app marketers and brands need to know about app marketing on Black Friday
How Cyber Monday can fit into your app marketing strategy
Good examples of successful ad campaigns on Black Friday and Cyber Monday
Mistakes made by brands on these two holidays
Takeaways
Links and Resources:
Jason Smith on LinkedIn
MoEngage
Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry
Quotes from Jason Smith:
“You need to be sensitive to many cultures, many religions, and also different types of customers. It's not one size fits all.”
“Building a plan can never be too soon. So it's also building a channel strategy, as well as a communication strategy.”
“Don't push to somebody who just bought it a month before for price.”
“I think what many people like to do is rewarding most loyal customers.”
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Discounted ticket prices are currently available on all of our 2024 summits
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London - 25 Apr 2024
NYC - 27 Jun 2024
San Francisco - 26 Sep 2024
Berlin - 5 Dec 2024

#121: Untapping app growth with great ad creatives with Dan Greenberg, Chief Design Officer at ironSource

You’ve seen these great videos from Apple they tend to start with the WWDC event every summer, right?
Both indie app developers and big app powerhouses get a chance to share a bit of their experience of building an app business.
Do you know what’s in common for such a broad spectrum of app developers? In one word - growth. The scale can be very different but the necessity to grow their user base is always there.
It’s 2022 - pandemic, recession, wars, iOS 14.5, a huge competition, how do you grow your mobile app in this environment? Ad creatives are one of the answers, it may sound trivial to you but that’s only when your ads do work when they do generate sales and revenue. When they don’t - I bet you don’t think it’s trivial that a good ad can bring you sales.
In this episode, we’ve got Dan to tell us about the role of quality ad creatives in mobile app growth.
Today’s Topics Include:
Born in Tel-Aviv, graduated as a graphic designer, and joined ironSource pretty much from day one to grow to its Chief Graphic Designer
What is in today's app marketer's toolbox
What makes an ad creative, pun intended, to click with people
What makes a mobile app's UI cool for Dan
Android or iOS? iOS on iPhone X
What features would Dan miss most? Easy - WhatsApp :-)
What’s missing from mobile app technology? More advances for AR and VR
Links and Resources:
Dan Greenberg on LinkedIn
ironSource
Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry
Quotes from Dan Greenberg:
“4 years ago when apps and games were doing user acquisition, most of the creatives would imply investing a lot of money to create a kickass like the trailer but that would be just one creative. ”
“In the end, creative, and you can say for some extent marketing, is something that we are always trying to quantify and turn into something that is machine-lead. ”
“There are a lot of ads that take it to 11, meaning everything is exaggerated. If it's a game, for example, it would be something that looks epic and could be way more than the actual game.”
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Discounted ticket prices are currently available on all of our 2024 summits
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London - 25 Apr 2024
NYC - 27 Jun 2024
San Francisco - 26 Sep 2024
Berlin - 5 Dec 2024
 

#120: 2022 Mobile App Experiences Gap Survey with Corey Gault, Senior Director of Corporate Communications at Airship

Think about it, from the time you wake up in the morning to the moment you fall asleep at night you use tools. Please, don’t picture necessarily a hammer or a screwdriver as a tool, I mean tools in a broader sense - means that help you to do tasks, small and big - create a reminder, set a timer, calculate something, get up in time, and so on. And, of course, a big part of the toolbox you take your tools from are mobile apps.
Now, your experience of using those apps is a function of how much energy and brainstorming was put into the apps by their developers. In this episode, Corey will be talking about Airship’s brand new survey that talks about how much effort goes - or should go - into a mobile app experience development.
Today’s Topics Include:
Corey's career spans 25 years in public relations with being Senior Director of Corporate Communications at Airship now
General findings of the 2022 Mobile App Experiences Gap Survey
Gap #1 - ASO
Gap #2 - Release Cadence
Gap #3 - Onboarding
Gap #4 - Preference Centers
Gap #5 - Customer Surveys
Gap #6 - Experience Optimization
Gap #7 - Team Communications
Android or iOS? iOS on iPhone X
What features would Corey miss most? A bunch of apps, hard to pinpoint any specific one
What’s missing from mobile app technology?
Links and Resources:
Corey Gault on LinkedIn
AirShip
2022 Mobile App Experiences Gap Survey
Business Of Apps
Quotes from Corey Gault:
“We've seen a lot of industry research, lots of companies earning reports, showing the exponential value that apps deliver for their business.”
“If you really think about ASO, it's the first step in any app's success. People need to be able to find the app.”
“In fact, the survey found that 97% of marketers that feature walkthroughs, permission prompts, these types of onboarding experiences have a significant impact on user behavior.”
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App industry marketplace
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A message from App Promotion Summit
Discounted ticket prices are currently available on all of our 2024 summits
https://apppromotionsummit.com/
 
London - 25 Apr 2024
NYC - 27 Jun 2024
San Francisco - 26 Sep 2024
Berlin - 5 Dec 2024

#119: LTV in Mobile with Levi Matkins, CEO of LifeStreet

At the heart of any sustainable business is knowing how much money you actually make with each client. When you launch a mobile app project, your hope is to sustain this business for years to come, not just months or weeks, right? This is a header level 1 Google said it’s going to extend billing choices for users of its Play Store to India, Australia, Indonesia, Japan and Europe.
Google said it’s going to extend billing choices for users of its Play Store to India, Australia, Indonesia, Japan and Europe. How do you achieve that? For starters, you absolutely need to know what revenue each of your app users generates for you. Here comes the notion we’re going to spend on the next half an hour or so - Live Time Value, aka LTV. Today’s guest is Levi Matkins, CEO of LifeStreet—a programmatic marketing platform for app developers. He talks about lifetime value (LTV) in mobile, which is a measurement of how much money a user will generate.
Today’s Topics Include:
Levi's career spans 20 years in digital advertising, half of which he's spent in mobile. From founding a company with his brother while he was still in college to the leading mobile marketing platform.
What is LTV and how it is different from ROAS
The significance of LTV
How to acquire app users with a higher LTV
How to increase LTV
App categories it's hard or impossible to measure LTV
Moving forward, does LTV become harder or easier to measure?
Android or iOS? Android only
What features would Levi miss most? Google Maps to get around everywhere
What’s missing from mobile app technology? Pretty much all good, perhaps except a holdable display would be nice
Links and Resources:
Levi Matkins on LinkedIn
LifeStreet
Business Of Apps
Quotes from Levi Matkins:
“Generally speaking, it's a measurement how much money the user will generate for an app at given amount of time.” “Having a good LTV in an app is the difference between success and a failure.” “You can't impove what you don't measure. It's critical to track and measure LTV.” “LifeStreet’s belief is that return on ad spend is the most important thing to optimize for in a successful campaign. By paying the right price for a user, allows a campaign to scale more effectively.”
Brought to you by Business Of Apps
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A message from App Promotion Summit
Discounted ticket prices are currently available on all of our 2024 summits
https://apppromotionsummit.com/
 
London - 25 Apr 2024
NYC - 27 Jun 2024
San Francisco - 26 Sep 2024
Berlin - 5 Dec 2024

#118: What an app and the Black Mirror movie have in common? with Emily Tate, Managing Director at Mind the Product

At this very moment, somewhere on the planet app development teams are working on new mobile apps. Some of them are thinking through features of those apps, others are ready to launch them on an app store, yet other teams are already marketing their apps to acquire users. It’s non-stop and you bet all those teams believe their apps are only capable of bringing good to this world. Let's try AppTweak. Now, did you watch the “Black Mirror” TV series on Netflix? Can you guess the connection between this movie and the app development process? Well, patience - on this episode - among many things - you’ll get the answer :-)
Today’s Topics Include:
Emily started her career managing software solutions for airlines before taking her experience to the traveler’s side of the journey as the product manager for a leading travel management app, TripCase. She spent 5 years working on TripCase, where her first major project was to redesign the mobile app from the ground up. Then as the app grew, she worked on wearables, including a launch app for the Apple Watch and two different Samsung Gear watches.
The app project Emily loved the most
Challenges of working on apps for wearables
Mobile apps versus web apps
Optimism, negligence, and short-sightedness in app development
What do you do when your app has externalities you didn't anticipate?
How do you break through on the app market?
Android or iOS? iOS
What features would Emily miss most? City Mapper app to navigate and Apple Pay to pay everywhere
Links and Resources:
Emily Tate on LinkedIn Mind The Product
Quotes from Emily Tate: 
“It's one of those fun things where you can have a problem that looks similar and the tactic you used to solve it the time before will not work this time.” “Where was one of the launch app for the Apple Watch when it came out.  And it was a really fun project, both from the perspective of obviously getting to play with new shining technology. But really starting from the ground level of figuring out what is the use case for a smartwatch in the context of travel. ” “Admitting that you've made a mistake is step one. And I think we're so hesitant to do that, you see it all the time.”
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Discounted ticket prices are currently available on all of our 2024 summits
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London - 25 Apr 2024
NYC - 27 Jun 2024
San Francisco - 26 Sep 2024
Berlin - 5 Dec 2024

#117: App Subscriptions Best Practices with Tobias Boerner, Co-Founder at Admiral Studio

It’s been a while since we talked on this podcast about App Subscriptions - the latest business model for mobile apps that powers revenue generation for so many apps today.
It all started with video and audio streaming services such as Netflix and Spotify but then….it turned out that the model actually works for so many other apps.
But popularity doesn’t necessarily mean that app brands actually know how to make the most of it. In this episode, we have Tobias Boerner, Co-Founder at Admiral Studio talking about the best practices for App Subscriptions.
Today’s Topics Include:
What is Admiral Media/Studio all about? Connecting Web3 world with NFT space
NFT: Non-fungible token concept is out of this world and over the heads of most
App Businesses: Rely on three models—app ads, purchases, and subscriptions
Switch to subscriptions? Tobias recommends adding not switching revenue streams
App Subscription Mistakes: Not enough or no A/B testing in place for conversion rates
App Subscription Successes: Duolingo uses a world-class gamification approach
Pay Subscription Plans: When 1 revenue stream doesn’t meet financial needs to grow
Future of App Subscription Model: More flexibility and creativity for app businesses
Android or iOS? iOS
What features would Tobias miss most? To be connected
What’s missing from mobile app technology? AR and VR: Connect with the real world
Links and Resources:
Tobias Boerner on LinkedIn
Admiral Media
Quotes from Tobias Boerner:
“To be very good in things, it’s very important to have a very deep understanding of how this world is working.”
“We believe here, in the studio, that very soon in the near future, a lot of companies need help with marketing approaches and make that happen. We will very soon release a lot of new activities in Web3 space.”
“Apps, they monetize through ads, only start along the journey of thinking, ‘Oh, how can we implement subscription or how is it possible to switch to subscription?”
“I’m a very big fan of subscriptions, but I would not recommend to switch the model. I think it’s an additional revenue stream.”
Brought to you by Business Of Apps
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A message from App Promotion Summit
Discounted ticket prices are currently available on all of our 2024 summits
https://apppromotionsummit.com/
 
London - 25 Apr 2024
NYC - 27 Jun 2024
San Francisco - 26 Sep 2024
Berlin - 5 Dec 2024

#116: An App Launch: Expectations vs. Reality with Amrick Chauhan, Lead Product Manager at Which?

Expectations versus reality. This theme is as old as this world. In so many walks of life, we set our expectations high, we’re driven by optimism, which on itself is a great quality but sometimes it may lead you to a very frustrating experience.
Mobile app development and marketing can be one of the brightest examples, especially when venture capital is involved and the expectations that app projects will deliver quick returns are high.
Today we have Amrick to tell us the story of expectations versus the reality of developing and launching the app called Which?.
Today’s Topics Include:
Amrick's career spans Financial Times, Sainsbury, KFC, Guardian, and now Which? - the UK's consumer champion, the non-profit organization that protects consumers.
Which? app development key lessons learned
How app development teams can avoid making common mistakes
What app categories are the hardest to develop apps for
Android or iOS? iOS longtime user
Amrick's first mobile phone. Nokia 3010
What features would Amrick miss most? Apple Pay
What’s missing from mobile app technology? More AR and VR capabilities
Links and Resources:
Amrick Chauhan's LinkedIn profile.
Which?'s website.
Quotes from Amrick Chauhan:
”It was quite interesting to me because I had a chance to reflect on the journey of building and then launching an app."
"So that first assumption about product features was really us having an expectation we knew what we needed to build. We thought we did."
"I think a lot of it comes down to the culture that you have within the company. There are some obvious mistakes that you should avoid doing, things like choosing the right text style..etc. But I don't think anyone should really be afraid of making mistakes."
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Discounted ticket prices are currently available on all of our 2024 summits
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London - 25 Apr 2024
NYC - 27 Jun 2024
San Francisco - 26 Sep 2024
Berlin - 5 Dec 2024

#115: Chasing app users’ rapidly changing interests with Fabien-Pierre Nicolas, Advisor at SmartNews

If you app marketer, one of the things at your job that rises your pulse and eyebrows is the mobile churn. This is the KPI that measures the percentage of users who have abandoned your app, the logic goes – the smaller the number the better but unfortunately in real life, this number is always bigger than you would want it to be.
So people leave apps, in some cases to some glitches but in some cases because their interests change. From a technical perspective, the app may be fine but it just doesn’t deliver the experience they need. 
In this episode, Fabien will tell us the story of chasing app users’ rapidly changing interests.
Today’s Topics Include:
Fabien’s career spans the famous PC console gaming company Ubisoft, the industry-leading mobile data analytics company Data.ai (formerly known as App Annie), and now Smartnews – the award-winning news app.
Product-driven vs. Consumer-driven culture
What changes SmartNews team introduced to strengthen their business
Segmentation
Chosen segments to scale
Product-Marketing alignment
Adaptation
The right technology stack
Proactive vs. reactive
Trying unusual ideas
Android or iOS? Android
Fabien’s first mobile phone.
What features would Arthur miss most? Apps to read news 🙂
What’s missing from mobile app technology? Live translation capabilities
Links and Resources:
Fabien-Pierre Nicolas’s LinkedIn profile
SmartNews’s website.
Quotes from Fabien-Pierre Nicolas: 
”Typically, a lot of people are comsuming news in the morning time, just as you wake up to catch up with what happened or what might happened when you’re asleep. And there is as well a phenomen of consumption right before going to bed.“
“I will probably compare it to the dart board is essentially your marketing budget. And you should say “hey, where should I throw my darts and whom should I aim this budget?”
“When we looked at all Japanese market, we asked ourselves – “which segments are we underindexing, especially when it comes to preferences and what do they want?”

#114: Does Connected TV become the next big thing in UA? with Arthur Querou, CEO at Vibe

Let me ask you something, do you watch TV? Sem Nexus, Apptweak Depending on your age, when you hear a question like this, you may get a mental picture of a TV set or your Roku box, your Apple TV, or even your iPhone, if watching movies and TV series on a smartphone is your thing. Now, remember all those never-ending commercial breaks on your TV set? 
Well, you may also remember how people began watching video content more and more on their computers and then, especially on their beloved mobile devices. So, naturally, businesses followed people and so desktop and mobile advertising began to squeeze ad dollars from the traditional TV ads. Well, by now you would think TV ads are about to go extinct completely? Not so fast. Enter Connected TV and the advertising on it.
Today’s Topics Include:
Graduated a decade ago University of California, Berkley, Arthur was Co-founder & CEO of the mobile playable ad units company, Chief Mobile Officer at Adikteev before launching Vibe in January 2021
Unpacking what is OTT
How advertising on CTV works
CTV ads' competitive advantage
App categories that fit the best CTV advertising
The future of advertising on the Connected TV
Android or iOS? iOS
Arthur's first mobile phone. Nokia 3310
What features would Arthur miss most? WhatsApp and email
What’s missing from mobile app technology? Brining more AAA quality game titles on mobile
Links and Resources:
Arthur Querou's LinkedIn profile Vibe's website.
Quotes from Arthur Querou: 
”At tech we hvae this strange addiction to acronyms." "OTT stands for Over The Top and it means any content that goes over a standard channel." "I think the most important thing is to think about, when you are marketer and you want to leverage CTV - can I capture my audience on TV in an effective way?"
Brought to you by Business Of Apps
App industry marketplace
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A message from App Promotion Summit
Discounted ticket prices are currently available on all of our 2024 summits
https://apppromotionsummit.com/
 
London - 25 Apr 2024
NYC - 27 Jun 2024
San Francisco - 26 Sep 2024
Berlin - 5 Dec 2024