Business of Apps Podcast

#86: Post iOS 14.5 app marketing budgets with Guido Crego, VP of Product at Jampp

 iOS 14.5. If you aren’t in the app marketing industry, this version number of the Apple’s mobile operating system won’t tell about the whole drama associated with it. It is just what the Settings app on your iPhone suggested you to update your smartphone with. That’s it.  But if your job is to promote mobile apps, I bet you’ve been following the fallout of its release by Apple this spring real close. 
In this episode Guido sheds light on what’s going on with App Retargeting, iOS versus Android ad campaigns shift, IDFA and more.
Today’s Topics Include:
✔️Guido started his career as a Search Engine Optimization specialist in a small but vibrant and dynamic Argentinian tech community
✔️ Jampp, part of the Affle company, is a programmatic advertising platform used by the most ambitious companies to accelerate their mobile businesses.
✔️ The update on what's going with app retargeting, after Apple's introduction of its ATT (App Tracking Transparency) framework early on this year.
✔️ Reality check on the current status of IDFA - are people really rejecting app tracking in messes as many people afraid they will a few months ago?
✔️ With all recent updates what's coming up next for the mobile app industry?
✔️On which side of the Android & iOS duopoly Guido is? iOS on his iPhone 12 Pro
✔️ What apps would Guido miss the most if he leaves the smartphone home. Google Maps
✔️ What hardware / software features Guido is waiting for? Augmented Reality tech
Links and Resources:
Guido Crego Linkedin profile.
Jampp website.
Jampp iOS 14 resources section.
Quotes from Guido Crego:
"Argentina is actually a pretty interesting place for tech, although the internal market is small, a lot of successful companies in Latin Americas are started from Argentina.
The reality is when it comes to the split per operating system, it changes a lot depending on the region mostly because, as you may know, different markets and different countries in the world will have different penetration of operating systems. In places like Latin America they are really big on Android and iOS is not that big.
The reality is we are all learning, advertisers are learning how to do it, DSPs are learning how to do it and MMPs are learning how to do it (work with SKADnetwork efficiently)"
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London - 25 Apr 2024
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#85: App Lifecycle marketing with Fouad Saeidi, CEO at App Growth Network

As you're reading these lines, around the world dozens and dozens of app marketing teams work on brainstorming new ideas to give their app a leg up on competition. They crunch data from app analytics tools, trying to figure out why people churn away from their app, decide on plugging in a new app user acquisition channel and so on. The list is endless. If you put together all those activities together you get the App Lifecycle marketing notion - a holistic view on an app marketing, when all activities are viewed as a part of the general picture. It's about long term strategy and being able to think a few steps ahead and plan ahead.
In this episode we have Fouad Saeidi, CEO of App Growth Network to walk you through the app marketing funnel that is at the base of the App Lifecycle marketing.
Today’s Topics Include:
✔️Fouad has been in digital marketing in over a decade. Started at a mobile games startup in 2013, in 2018 he founded App Growth Network - currently one of the leading app marketing agencies on the market.
✔️ App Growth Network is an app marketing agency with over 250 mobile apps under its marketing belt.
✔️ What is App Lifecycle marketing
✔️ Marketing funnel and its stages
✔️App user acquisition, activation, retention and monetization
✔️ On which side of the Android & iOS duopoly Fouad is? iOS on his beloved iPhone 12 Pro
✔️ What apps would Fouad miss the most if he leaves the smartphone home. Slack :-)
✔️ What hardware / software features Fouad is waiting for? Small thinks like unread feature for Messages app.
Links and Resources:
Fouad Saeidi Linkedin Profile 
Fouad Saeidi email - fouad@appgrowthnetwork.com
App Growth Network website.
Quotes from Fouad Saeidi:
"A Lifecycle marketing is about creating an effective strategy that meet customers' needs at the right stage.
The first step is obviously to focus on the value proposition - how is my product is different?
You are just launching a product, do you really want that million (of users) right now? Or do you want to have thousand to ten thousand downloads to validate every stage of the product? "
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London - 25 Apr 2024
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#84: Stories in your app with Aykut Bal, Head of Business at Storyly

One of the pillars of the app marketing are formats - how information about apps is packed and presented to people on various advertising platforms.
It's one thing when it's about connecting via ads a mobile app with people who need that app, it's another when retaining app users is at stake. Mobile app users churn is a continuous challenge app marketers face around the globe, from small indie developers start-ups to big app development powerhouses and brands.
There is a number of ad formats at app marketers disposal - Banners, Interstitial, Video, pop-up, pop-under and more and you may think that you know them all and there is no room for innovation.
Wrong. There is. And Aykut is here to tell us about the story format.
Today’s Topics Include:
✔️Storyly is a platform to bring social media content into the app, as well as to create and publish content from scratch
✔️The story format can be that edge, new angle, that distinctive feature that app marketers are looking for to set their apps apart from competition
✔️ It works for both indie developers and big brands, it's a matter of what content they publish via their social media channels
✔️Don't overwhelm your app users via content you're publishing from your social media channel packed in the story format.
✔️ On which side of the Android & iOS duopoly Aykut is? iOS on his beloved iPhone 12 Mini
✔️ What apps would Aykut miss the most if he leaves the smartphone home. Pokemon GO :-)
✔️ What new app technologies is Aykut most excited about? Machine Learning to process all personal information on the device to keep it secure, out of reach of hackers.
Links and Resources:
Aykut Bal Linkedin profile.
Storyly website.
Quotes from Aykut Bal:
"How to engage users was at the center of it all. When you fail to engage your app users, you're loosing them.
The cheapest way to grow is not acquiring the users in the cheapest way but keeping them inside the app."
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London - 25 Apr 2024
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#83: Catapulting app growth with Apple Search Ads with Yusuf Barutcu, Director of Business Development of SearchAds.com

Every app marketer is on a quest to acquire more users for her or his app. Today’s app marketing toolbox consists of such well time-proven tools as App Store Optimization, Paid User Acquisition via ad networks, paid ads platforms from Facebook, Google, Twitter, Pinterest and such, as well as content marketing, PR, ads in podcasts, on TV, radio and even good old outdoor ads.
But when it comes to iOS apps specifically, the Apple’s Search Ads stands out as one of the most powerful weapons in the app marketer’s arsenal. The platform has gone through a few years of evolution to become an effective tool to drive iOS app installs on multiple markets. In this episode we have Yusuf Barutcu of SearchAds.com to tell us about how to use this platform efficiently and scale up your app user acquisition campaign.
Today’s Topics Include:
✔️ Yusuf began his career in e-commerce and for the last 12 years he’s been an app search marketer, spending the last 2+ years in the SearchAds.com team
✔️ SearchAds.com helps app marketers to plug Apple’s Search Ads to their overall app user acquisition campaigns and have a holistic view on their UA efforts. It provides tools you need to find the best keywords, scale your marketing campaigns, and to be at the top of App Store search.
✔️ 60% of all iOS app downloads are driven by search - hence Search Ads is the must platform to use
✔️ The core of a successful Search Ads campaign is to define as much keywords relevant to your app as possible
✔️ Always consider a broader context than your app’s purpose to discover additional keywords to drive app installs
✔️ Make sure you bid on keywords that present your brand to avoid loosing traffic to your competitors
✔️ To market your app on 60 markets for dozens of keywords you need to use automation tools, unless you are a super human
✔️ iOS15 Custom Pages bring new capabilities for the visual creatives on the iOS App Store.
✔️ Search is a source of a high quality traffic, people open up the App Store app to search with an intent to find a specific app
✔️ On which side of the Android & iOS duopoly Yusuf is? iOS (and never looked back)
✔️ What apps would Nick miss the most if he leaves the smartphone home. Slack :-)
Links and Resources:
Yusuf Barutcu LinkedIn profile
Search Ads website - https://searchads.com
Quoеtes from Yusuf Barutcu:
"The main quality traffic generator is search. Because there have an intent to get what they after, so if what they after is what you have then you should be there.
Once you follow the right strategy, well - bingo, it’s not a rocket science and you can easily grow your business.
To speak loudly about that, at Mobile Action platform we have around 6 million keyword crawled every day."
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London - 25 Apr 2024
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#82: iOS 15 implications for ASO with David Bell, CEO of Gummicube

Year in, year out Apple has been improving its mobile operating system that every iPhone runs on - the iOS. This year its 15th version has just hit the market. In some years, Apple’s focus is on introducing new features, others on polishing some features, sometimes they don’t get a particular feature right from the first shot and they need to revisit it again next year - Apple’s engineers are human beings, like you and me.
In particular, amongst all these updates there are some that are of interest to mobile app marketers. Today we’ll cover such updates introduced with iOS 15 and we have Dave Bell, CEO of Gummicube, a leader in providing Big Data Analytics for the App Stores, which is used for App Store Optimization, Mobile Marketing and Market Analysis, here to tell all about it.
Today’s Topics Include:
✔️Dave's been in the mobile marketing space since 1999, actually was among developers who created and published apps for featured phones, before the rise of Apple's iOS App Store for the iPhone.
✔️Gummicube is the oldest North America-based App Store Optimization company, more than 11 years on the market, built the tech to help app marketers to understand how the app stores work from an app marketing perspective.
✔️Apple's focus with iOS, as well as in general, is app users' data privacy and creating a more robust experience for app marketers.
✔️iOS 15 beta feature Private Relay, which is essentially Apple's VPN - another Apple's step in the direction of replacing iOS apps developed by a third party, when the stakes are high, like in the case of iOS app users privacy and data safety.
✔️Updates for the iOS's Spotlight
✔️A/B testing solution for iOS
✔️Custom Product Pages
✔️Searchable In-App Events
✔️SKAdNetwork enhancements
✔️App Clips updates
✔️Dave's iOS 15 favorite features
Links and Resources:
Dave Bell's Linkedin profile
Gummicube website.
Quotes from Dave Bell:
"Apple is moving in the direction when they are going to make it more convinient for their user to stay with Apple ecosystem.
Frankly, if you're looking at the amount of time people spend in mobile apps versus websites, I think the statistics is 88% of the time is being spent in the mobile app versus web.
But I think that actually the reality of In-App Events is going to be much more broad because of this in even in apps, you know, categories you wouldn't think of, like Productivity, Utilities simply because in-app events are re-engagement ASO."
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London - 25 Apr 2024
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#81: Building apps for businesses to survive COVID-19 with Nick Swenson, Managing Partner at Swenson He

We are more than a year and a half into this pandemic and, aside from the multiple challenges it’s brought into our lives, there is this one - are you ready to volunteer to help others, providing your business’s services for free? Are you entirely focused on your own survival or you are willing to help people to relieve some of the challenges they’re going through?
In this episode, Nick, Managing Partner at Swenson He - award-winning digital development company, will tell us the story of how his company's commitment to help people in need hit by COVID-19 and more.
Today’s Topics Include:
✔️Nick's story starts at MIT, where he was studying to become a bio-engineer and met his future co-founder and COO of Swenson HE Chao He, with whom he shared the same passion about new digital experiences. Nick has been fascinated with building the bridge between digital and the real world and understanding how to make this bridge useful for people based on their perception of it.
✔️Swenson HE is a software development company that works on both mobile and desktop software projects. Their portfolio ranges from Fortune 500 companies to small clients with unique needs.
✔️Luckily Nick's company team was already in the business of changing their operations to understand how they can work remotely prior to COVID-19 and hence the pandemic didn't hit hard his team.
✔️Watching how other businesses were impacted by the pandemic, Nick's team decided to figure out how they can help the most and make the biggest impact. That effort lead to launching several projects, one example was working with the Reach Project to build a platform for their latest initiative: feeding the “Invisible Aggies,” essential employees on the Texas A&M campus, who have been laid off due to Covid19.
✔️The most challenging part of any app development project - engagement, making sure people interact with the app and it brings them real value.
✔️Today innovation in app design is about figuring out how to develop apps that meet today's standards of Gen Ze.
✔️It's hard to pinpoint what today's cutting-edge tech will eventually stay or will be left in the dust over time.
✔️ On which side of the Android & iOS duopoly Sacha is? iOS
✔️ What apps would Nick miss the most if he leaves the smartphone home. Email.
Links and Resources:
Nick Swenson Linkedin profile
Swenson He website.
Quotes from Nick Swenson:
"Digital experiences are about this transitioning between the digial world and a real world and understanding how users interact with an interface and how they think, desicions they make. It's very much is in some cases is a psychology problem. 
If you aren't innnovating you already behind."
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London - 25 Apr 2024
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#80: 2021 Influencer Compensation report with Joe Sinkwitz, Co-founder and CEO at Intellifluence

One of the biggest differences in a life of a marketer, from let’s say, 10 years ago is that today a big chunk, of not entire, marketing campaign that she or he runs for a brand's product or service takes place on social media. But the reason why marketing on social media really works is people. Influencers Or Creators.
Now question is - how much do they charge? Well, the answer is classic - it depends. It depends on a particular social media platform and other factors. Today we’ve got Joe Sinkwitz, CEO at Intellinfluence marketing platform that helps brands partner with key influencers to achieve better results, to riddle this question for you.
Today’s Topics Include:
✔️Joe is a veteran of digital marketing, spending a quarter of a century in this area and Intellinfluence his latest creation.
✔️Intellifluence is the largest warm contact Influencer marketing network
✔️How the idea to issue the 2021 Influencer Compensation Report came about and what did it take
✔️How much does it take to launch a marketing campaign via Influencers on Instagram
✔️How much do Influencers charge for a marketing campaign on Twitter and who are the biggest Influencers on Twitter
✔️What would be a marketing budget to fun an Influencer marketing campaign via Influencers on YouTube
✔️What is a ballpark for a marketing campaign via Influencers on TikTok.
✔️What are the biggest takeaways from the report for brands
✔️Influencer versus Creator - what's the difference and what brands should know about each.
✔️ On which side of the Android & iOS duopoly Sacha is? iOS
✔️ What apps would Joe miss the most if he leaves the smartphone home. You would be surprised - good old making calls :-)
✔️ What is missing from mobile app technology? The mix of AR with auto-translation makes traveling easier.
Links and Resources:
Joe Sinkwitz Linkedin profile
Intellinfluence website
2021 Influencer Compensation Report
Quotes from Joe Sinkwitz:
"The hard part was getting people to fill up the survey
So the data absolutely will be skewed towards micro-influencers internet network but it's really interesting just to see how they felt about everyone.
The coolest thing that came out 41% felt that brand is not pitching them the right amounts."
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#79: Yubo: building a social network differently with Sacha Lazimi, CEO at Yubo

Even if you aren’t a tech pundit, who has been following all stories about social media companies, inevitably you stumble upon a breaking story about Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok that talks about their negative impact on our society, on teenagers’ mental health and even on the democracy itself.
You may get an impression that there is no way how you can design a social network differently, so you won’t get such a flip side. But that’s not the case and Sacha, CEO of Yubo, will tell us how it’s actually possible to achieve.
Today’s Topics Include:
✔️Sacha is on a mission to improve how people interact online, hence his involvement into developing multiple social media apps prior to Yubo
✔️Yubo is a social media platform for Gen Z to interact with each other in small groups
✔️ It doesn't compete with big social media platforms like Twitch, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat. 
✔️ Yubo is the social media app that doesn't push its users to be hooked on such concepts as Likes, Comments and Followers.
✔️ The app applies 8 age-verification procedures to make sure it has on board legit age users only
✔️ The platform is ads free, it's freemium based with paid options & subscriptions to get more engagement
✔️ Yubo is used by Gen Z on their leisure time - after school, on weekends or holidays
✔️ Once COVID-19 hit both usage and engagement shot up
✔️ Yubo is available on both iOS and Android but the bulk of users on iOS
✔️ On which side of the Android & iOS duopoly Sacha is? iOS
✔️ What apps would Nico miss the most if he leaves the smartphone home. Good old placing calls function :-)
✔️ What is missing from mobile app technology? 
Links and Resources:
Sacha Linkedin profile
Yubo website
Quotes from Sacha Lazimi:
"...with the same mission "To improve how people meet each other and connect online"
Yubo is just an iteration of what I've done with my co-founder and we always have the same mission.
Yubo is a social platform to socialize online all over the world and designed for Generation Z. It's a public space where you have a small group that interacting publicly through video, audio and chat."
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London - 25 Apr 2024
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#78 :The opportunity for consumer subscription apps with Nico Wittenborn, Investor at Adjacent

On the enormous landscape of mobile apps, there are two special categories that have been grabbing a lot of businesses attention - SAAS (stands for Software As a Service) and App Subscriptions.
Both generate tens of millions of dollars for such companies as Slack, HULU, Netflix, Spotify and others. While there are obvious differences between these two, like it's a lot easier to get loads of users for a SAAS app (because all these people are employees of a particular company) as opposed to doing your best to reach out people who will benefit from an App Subscription app, but there are similarities too.
In this episode we've got Nico Wittenborn from Adjacent to tell us about these similarities and lessons that can be applied from the world of SAAS apps to the App Subscriptions.
Today’s Topics Include:
✔️Nico's career's trajectory: from re-selling refurbished iPhones to investing into big SAAS apps
✔️What is an App Subscription
✔️App Subscription model advantages and limitations
✔️Enterprise SAAS vs. Consumer App Subscription model
✔️SAAS and App Subscription apps growth indicators
✔️What's coming up in the mobile space
✔️ Android or iOS? both iOS and Android
✔️ What apps would Nico miss the most if he leaves the smartphone home. Not much, he does leave it on purpose to limit the time he interacts with the phone
✔️ What is missing from mobile app technology? Having better tools for the smartphone screen time moderation
Links and Resources:
Nico's Linkedin profile
Quotes from Nico Wittenborn:
"Yeah, it did. It sounds like a bit of exaggeration but in retrospect the iPhone definitely changed my trajectory.
It's not really new that we pay for something on a recurrent basis that we use for a long time, it's just for software it seems to be the evolution - first we paid for a license once for a product on a CD and now we pay on a monthly basis
The interesting thing is that after one or two years, if the company is still stick around, they're flatting out in terms of their reach and retention and so there might be a big drop in the first year for a company with an app subscription but the second year they almost don't drop anymore"
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#77 : How to make more of your Search Ads targeting campaigns with Simon Thillay, Head of ASO at AppTweak

At this point, It wouldn’t surprise any app marketer that to acquire users for their apps they need to do both - App Store Optimization to get native traffic and run paid search, among many performance marketing, ad campaigns.
It’s given.
But the question they may have - what about bidding on their brand keywords? Should they do that? They’ve heard other folks do it and now they’re trying to answer this question for themselves. In this episode, we have Simon Thillay, Head of ASO at Apptweak, the leading ASO tool driven by data science, to riddle this question for you.
Today’s Topics Include:
✔️Simon’s trajectory in business: from a small mobile game studio, to Deezer and finally one of the leading App Store Optimization agencies.
✔️Apptweak - ASO and marketing intelligence tool, covering both major app stores and expanding beyond to cover the Facebook Ads platform and more.
✔️Apple’s iOS 14.5 ATT framework and how it changes app marketers UA campaigns.
✔️Keywords cannibalism - what is it, how and why app brands need to pay attention to it closely.
✔️The role of ad creatives in the App Store Optimization, how app screenshots may help to communicate the app’s message to specific audiences.
✔️Apple’s A/B testing tool and custom landing pages - what should we expect
✔️ Android or iOS? iOS
✔️ What app features would Simon miss the most? Texting via WhatsApp and music streaming via Deezer
✔️ What is missing from mobile app technology? Offline mode for mobile games
Links and Resources:
Simon Thillay’s LinkedIn
Apptweak website.
Quotes from Simon Thillay:
If you look at the direct impact of the ATT on Apple Search Ads it’s almost zero because Apple Seach Ads was the one marketing channel that was going to be exempted from it.
If I’m seeing a small pirating app that is based on pirated shows on YouTube, I don’t think it’s possible anymore, but just for the sake of the argument, I won’t feel the same level of threat. This is where you need to think “ok, not every threat is equal”
Don’t expect too much out of it, we still see a lot of people only now finding out what is ASO and thinking that they can get 300+ downloads just out of the thin air”
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