Business of Apps Podcast

#166: State of playable ad formats and creatives with Greg Castro, VP, Global Partnerships at Mobvista

We carry this small rectangular computer in our pocket or a purse. One moment we complain about how we would like to use it less and wonder how the world span before the smartphone, the next - we’re relieved that it is in hand, pun intended, to help us figure out so many things.
We have a bunch of apps on it and sure thing - we see a bunch of ads in those apps or mobile websites. And you know what? Some of those ads don’t quite look like ads, these peculiar species are playable ads and today Greg will help us to understand them better.
Today’s Topics Include:
Greg Castro's background
What is Mobvista today
The landscape of digital ad formats
What is playable ad format
The role of Generative AI in creating playable ads
Playable ads usage best practices, common mistakes
What Greg would like to change about the programmatic tech sector the most
Android or iOS?
Greg’s first mobile phone
Leaving his smartphone at home, what features would Greg miss most?
What features he would like to see added to his smartphone?
Links and Resources:
Greg Castro on LinkedIn
Mobvista company
Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry
Quotes from Greg Castro:
“In the ever-evolving world of mobile in-app advertising understanding the role and effectiveness of various ad formats is really key. With banner ads, while they are one of the oldest formats their obtrusive nature still makes them suitable for certain campaigns."
“Videos ads have become an ideal medium for storytelling and building engagement across various types of apps, both gaming and non-gaming."
"Playable ads are perhaps the epitome of interactive advertising. They are especially prominent in the gaming industry. This try-before-you-buy model really offers potential users a taste of the actual product. "
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#165: The psychology of app user acquisition with Joe Schaeppi, CEO & Co-Founder at Solsten

App User Acquisition. Gosh, this topic has been covered so heavily precisely because only via acquiring new users for the app does it becomes possible to build a sustainable app business.
Fine.
So we’re talking about acquiring new users, and new people to use the app, right? But what happens when app marketers dive deep into their app marketing strategy, their investors’ expectations, and a ton of possible issues that may show up on the way to success? Right - they begin to think about people who will be using their app as numbers.
To be honest, it’s hard to blame them for doing that, it’s how our brain works - when it comes to planning it should be a rational cold mind to analyze the data. It is not prone to think about users who will be using the app as people, they become numbers.
But this is not to say that we shouldn’t resist this swap of notions and Joe will tell us today what exactly you should do.
Today’s Topics Include:
Joe Schaeppi's background
What is Solsten
The role of psychology in app user acquisition
How to build an app user profile using psychology
The Impact of psychology on ad creative creation
How psychology can help with a mobile app user churn
Takeaways
What Joe would like to change about the programmatic tech sector the most
Android or iOS?
Joe’s first mobile phone
Leaving his smartphone at home, what features would Joe miss most?
What features he would like to see added to his smartphone?
Links and Resources:
Joe Schaeppi on LinkedIn
Solsten company
Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry
Quotes from Joe Schaeppi:
“One of the things we noticed that changed in the app industry after IDFA deprecation is we saw a big shift in our customer base. We saw pure UA folks getting replaced with agency people, people that came more from creative backgrounds."
“I looked at the audience, I looked at the highest LTV group there and then I looked at their highest-scoring trades. A lot of times when we design the psychology we want to think of the things that really stand out of our audience. So in this case, the specific group was off-the-charts in altruism."
"One day in the distant future marketing will be a gentle tap on the shoulder from a very good friend"
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#164: Fixing bad mobile ads with Jimmy Morrow, Director of Product Marketing at Moloco

Okay, let’s start with the obvious - nothing is perfect. By the time you get to your 40s, hopefully, sooner, you realize that as much as you try to do your best there is always a margin for error. But that is not to say that you shouldn’t try.
Speaking of something you should try harder - mobile ads. To me, it feels like nobody is even trying to make them good. How so? What are we doing about it? This is exactly what we’re going to tackle with Jimmy on this episode.
Today’s Topics Include:
Jimmy Marrow's background
What is Moloco
Why do we see SO MANY bad ads?
Digital ads' recent history
The story of ad click attribution
What's up with Click Arms Race?
What does Moloco have to offer to solve it?
What app marketers can do about bad ads
Android or iOS?
Jimmy’s first mobile phone
Leaving his smartphone at home, what features would Jimmy miss most?
What features he would like to see added to his smartphone?
Links and Resources:
Jimmy Morrow on LinkedIn
Moloco company
Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry
Quotes from Jimmy Morrow:
“If you think about it, arguably it [digital advertising] is one of the most successful businesses for the past 30 years."
“Back in the day, it was pretty simple - advertisers had a good sense of their ROI in marketing and it made digital advertising an extremely lucrative business."
" From 2017, the pre-ATT era, to 2020 I would call it a kind of fat-thumb era, where is essentially like networks and other platforms started to introduce the idea - how can I get more credit in the ecosystem.
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#163: The challenges of a mobile game player support with Eric Vermillion, CEO of Helpshift

We all like it when things go smoothly and prefer it to stay that way but the Universe is messy so people’s experience with mobile apps and mobile games can be too.
As much as app developers do their best to deliver the best experience to the users, they are just human beings, even if the code is perfect - which is extremely rarely the case if ever, there are maybe issues with how people interact with the app.
The solution? A support system that will help you to resolve all those issues for your mobile game users. Today, Eric will tell us about the challenges of mobile game player support.
Today’s Topics Include:
Eric Vermillion's background
What is Helpshift
The challenges and requirements of mobile game support
What it takes to provide support for non-mobile game platforms
The role of Generative AI in a video game player support
Can Generative AI impact programmatic ad campaigns' costs
Generative AI impact on jobs in the programmatic ad sector
AR and VR games player support
What Eric would like to change about the programmatic tech sector the most
Android or iOS?
Eric’s first mobile phone
Leaving his smartphone at home, what features would Eric miss most?
What features he would like to see added to his smartphone?
Links and Resources:
Eric Vermillion on LinkedIn
Helpshift company
Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry
Quotes from Eric Vermillion:
“I find mobile games incredibly interesting because having a nice chunk of my career working in a broader cross-vertical support environment where I've done banks, insurance companies, some legacy brands and sort of have this preconceived notion of how the support is delivered - you put a bunch of people in the building and you call them, you send out physical mail and that sort of stuff. Gaming moves faster than that!"
“For consoles, you aren't in the game, you aren't in the environment and so you have to depart and go engage and support in a different way."
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#162: Generative AI in mobile ad campaigns with Levi Matkins, CEO of LifeStreet

ChatGPT from OpenAI, Bard from Google, Llama from Meta, and a decent number of smaller players are firing on all cylinders to power the Generative AI revolution that took off late last year.
Of course, for folks who had been watching the AI space, it was not a surprise but for the rest of us - it was. Generative AI based on Large Language Models is changing the business landscape. Today, we want to talk about its impact on mobile ad campaigns.
Today’s Topics Include:
Levi Matkins's background
Levi's take on ChatGPT
The impact of ChatGPT on mobile ad creatives production
Generative AI impact on programmatic bidding
The impact of Generative AI on mobile ad campaigns analytics
Can Generative AI impact programmatic ad campaigns' costs
Generative AI impact on jobs in the programmatic ad sector
What Levi would like to change about the programmatic tech sector the most
Links and Resources:
Levi Matkins on LinkedIn
LifeStreet company
Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry
Quotes from Levi Matkins:
“As things stand today, I think it's in most cases it (Generative AI) is a very helpful tool for a design team to use both for ideation and production."
“We've been using deep neural nets for quite a few years at this point."
"This is an area (AI programmatic ad analytics) where we have done some investigations and thus far the insights we're able to see are not reliable enough today."
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#161: Building apps for a billion users with Rajesh Janakiraman, Engineering Manager at Gmail Android at Google

One of the things that set mobile apps apart from desktop software is the scale. Since 2008, when the mobile app stores were launched, and on, scale has been a crucial ingredient for any iOS or Android app project success.
For both Apple’s and Google’s app ecosystems to grow mobile apps had to be affordable for lots of people. But for app developers and brands to make app enterprises profitable, they had to acquire a large number of users.
And there is more - in some cases when we talk about a free app from one of the most influential companies on the planet - Gmail app, we’re talking about roughly 1.8 billion users. This scale implies some unique challenges we’re going to be discussing with Rajesh today.
Today’s Topics Include:
Rajesh Janakiraman's background
Definition of app onboarding
Challenges of building an app for billions of users - development and management-wise
Rajesh's Thoughts on Generative AI in Gmail
Toughest projects in Rajesh's career
What Rajesh would like to change about tech the most
Android or iOS?
Rajesh's first mobile phone
Leaving his smartphone at home, what features would Rajesh miss most?
What features v would like to see added to his smartphone?
Links and Resources:
Rajesh Janakiraman on LinkedIn
Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry
Quotes from Rajesh Janakiraman:
“Having a product [Gmail] maintained that reputation for so long is a very difficult thing to do"
“It's such a massive set of users that you see this whole spectrum of how they use the product."
"Just from your device perspective, you see the latest $1,500 Samsung device running the latest version of Android with hundreds of Gb of storage, so it's not gonna matter how much space you take up of their phone, with multiple processors so it's gonna matter how efficient your app is, all the way to the $10 no-name smartphone."
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Discounted ticket prices are currently available on all of our 2024 summits
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#160: App onboarding: solving the endless choice problem with Chris Dalla Riva, Senior Product Manager at Audiomack

Frictions. “The resistance that one surface or object encounters when moving over another” - this is the dictionary definition of what friction means in science. When you ask a mobile app developer “What do frictions mean to you?”, the answer is “any obstacle that prevents my app users from doing with the app what I expect them to”.
This notion sounds great but as with everything in our life, moderation is the key and today, Chris will give you an example of that.
Today’s Topics Include:
Chris Riva's background
Audiomack brief bio
Definition of app onboarding
Onboarding for the Audiomack app
Bad friction versus good friction
Takeaways
What Chris would like to change about tech the most
Android or iOS?
Chris's first mobile phone
Leaving his smartphone at home, what features would Chris miss most?
What features Chris would like to see added to his smartphone?
Links and Resources:
Chris Dalla Riva on LinkedIn
Audiomack app's website
Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry
Quotes from Chris Dalla Riva:
“One thing we noticed is that this notion of what follower means on social media or on various music apps - it doesn't always mean you can reach your followers."
“Our process is evolved pretty dramatically over the last four years. When I started the Audiomack the onboarding process was a novel onboarding process, the idea was to let the person in the app, start listening to the music, they're gonna stick, they gonna eventually create an account, start saving music."
"We just look at each step of the onboarding to see where the people stumbling, are there ways that we can improve those pages."
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A message from App Promotion Summit
Discounted ticket prices are currently available on all of our 2024 summits
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London - 25 Apr 2024
NYC - 27 Jun 2024
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#159: Web-to-app user acquisition war stories with Andrew Tsui, former Director of Product at K Health

A long-long time ago, 16 years ago to be precise, there was the world before Mobile - the time when if you wanted to read the news, watch movies, pay your bills, plan your next trip and so on you had to sit down at your desktop computer or grab a laptop to open a browser window to go to a website.
Then Steve Jobs stood on the stage at Macworld Expo in San Francisco to introduce the iPhone. The rest is history. These days, as a mobile marketer, you expect the bulk of traction for your business to take place on mobile. But that’s not entirely true - today Andrew will tell you how important are customers' journeys between web and mobile for user acquisition.
Today’s Topics Include:
Andrew Tsui's background
Marketing channels Andrew used to run ad campaigns
Applying web-to-app marketing to the K Health app
Lessons learned
What Andrew would like to change about the industry the most
Android or iOS?
Andrew's first mobile phone
Leaving his smartphone at home, what features would Andrew miss most?
What features Andrew would like to see added to his smartphone?
Links and Resources:
Andrew Tsui on LinkedIn
Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry
Quotes from Andrew Tsui:
“I'd say that it (web-to-app marketing) has worked quite well in raising the awareness of K Health and driving strong new user growth."
“It's a powerful technique that requires a few basic things - natural user entry points, delivering value on the web as well as in the app, prioritizing account creation and attribution tech, and obsessing over the analytics."
"Hindsight is always 20/20, and I suppose the easy answer is I just wish we had done the aspects of what we've talked about way earlier."
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Discounted ticket prices are currently available on all of our 2024 summits
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#158: Strategic analytics for app growth with Jeff Wang, VP of Growth at Hiatus

I don’t think anybody in the app industry would argue with the fact that growth is what occupies app marketers’ and developers’ minds all the time. From Monday to Friday and, unfortunately quite often, from Friday to Monday as well, people do mental gymnastics for how to make their app’s growth more efficient.
But if you don’t measure it properly you can not improve it. What analytics reports are important to check regularly to measure your app’s growth? How do we do incrementality growth analysis? I invited Jeff to riddle these puzzling questions for you.
Today’s Topics Include:
Jeff Wang's background
Cohort and funnel definition
App analytics reports to focus on
The most important report to work with
App analytics reports to check less often
Incrementality growth analysis
The takeaways
Android or iOS?
Jeff's first mobile phone
Leaving his smartphone at home, what features would Jeff miss most?
What features Jeff would like to see added to his smartphone?
Links and Resources:
Jeff Wang on LinkedIn
Hiatus website
Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry
Quotes from Jeff Wang:
“I can spend all day looking at the reports, especially when you have a lean team. It's really important to get a sense of your business impact to guide workflows as well as the strategical direction."
“One good tip I would give is to have a regular cadence for certain reports."
"I think since we're a subscription product, looking at churn is really useful, seeing what a month-to-month looks like."
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#157: Marketing with ChatGPT: lessons learned so far with Bryan Karas, CEO of Playbook Media

In this episode, we’ll be discussing how ChatGPT can help you create more effective digital marketing campaigns.
We’ll be exploring the latest advancements in language models and machine learning and how they can be used to generate persuasive marketing content tailored to your target audience.
Our guest speakers will share their insights on how ChatGPT can help you improve your digital marketing efforts by creating more engaging content, improving your SEO, and increasing your ROI. So sit back, relax, and join us as we explore the exciting world of Digital Marketing with ChatGPT!
Ok, if you ever heard my previous intros you would feel there is something off about this one. And you would be right - this intro was written by ChatGPT itself. I have no idea why it decided that I’ll be having not one but multiple guests on this episode and of course the topics run the whole gamut of what can be said about using ChatPGT in digital marketing but we only have like half an hour, not a week to discuss them all :-)
Today’s Topics Include:
Bryan Karas's background
ChatGPT area of application in an app marketing
Tools that have embedded ChatGPT
Mistakes people do with ChatGPT in marketing
Expectations from ChatGPT 5,6 and on
What Bryan would like to change about digital marketing the most
Android or iOS?
Bryan's first mobile phone
Leaving his smartphone at home, what features would Bryan miss most?
What features Bryan would like to see added to his smartphone?
Links and Resources:
Bryan Karas on LinkedIn
Playbook Media
Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry
Quotes from Bryan Karas:
“ChatGPT, when I think about it, I think it can be used for idea generation, output copyrighting."
“If you are thinking about translation service, as you are moving from one country to another, you could use ChatGPT"
"One of the things that drive me the most crazy about marketers, is they look at everything from last-click attribution standpoint."
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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