Business of Apps Podcast

Today's topic is where app marketing budgets should go - and why creative now does the work that audience settings used to do.

Ad platforms are increasingly machine learning-led, and the industry is increasingly privacy-led. Put the two together, and the creative you run decides who sees your ad. A couple of hero videos won't cut it anymore.

To cover all this, we've got Jonathan Yantz, Managing Partner at M+C Saatchi Performance, talking to tech journalist David Murphy at Business of Apps New York about budget allocation, creative strategy, and retention.

Jonathan explains why budget planning starts with a robust testing plan, how to be ready for new channels like ChatGPT ads before they arrive, and what a creative strategy built on a large number of variations looks like. He also covers why retention matters more when every dollar is under scrutiny.

If you work in app marketing, performance media, or creative strategy, this is a clear look at how to plan, test, and spend when the algorithm does the targeting.

"We always said creative is king. And now we're saying creative is the new targeting, which is absolutely true."

"Any extra dollar is going to be the most important one to measure."

"Every dollar has to drive something."

Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry since 2012

Performance CTV is the phrase of the year - and today we're looking at what's actually behind it.

For years, connected TV did one job: awareness. It was bought on reach and frequency, often upfront at fixed rates, with no way to tie an impression to an outcome. Now measurement has caught up and supply has flooded in, so the same channel can be linked to installs and conversions.

To cover all this, we've got Matilda Lindström, Associate Sales Director at Dataseat, talking to tech journalist David Murphy at Business of Apps New York about connecting CTV with mobile user acquisition.

Matilda explains what changed to make performance possible on CTV, why so many CTV tests look like failures when they aren't, and how MMP attribution settings can decide a campaign before it starts. She also covers second-screening and where to begin if you've never run CTV for performance.

If you work in user acquisition, app marketing, or brand media, this is a clear look at how to run CTV and mobile as one strategy.

"I don't think that we should shy away from the fact that it's a great brand channel. That part hasn't changed. What changed is the ability to measure and optimize in real time."

"You might look like the performance is not working at all, but it's actually not a performance issue. It's a settings issue."

"I think that the most disappointing CTV tests are the ones that were decided by settings that no one looked at."

Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry since 2012

This time, we're talking about the practical impact of AI on app store optimization - and why LLMs aren't about to pull app discovery out of the stores.

LLMs are changing how people search the web. But app discovery has stayed inside the App Store and Google Play for 16 years, and the stores are now adding AI layers of their own.

To cover all this, we've got Dave Bell, Co-Founder and CEO of Gummicube, about how AI is reshaping ASO on the App Store and Google Play.

Dave explains why winning in-store search is what earns an app a place in Apple's and Google's AI recommendation layers, and why reviews, Custom Product Pages, and Android vitals now count as AI signals. He also covers the risk of "AI cannibalization" when competing apps use generic prompts to write their metadata, the store policies and copyright issues around AI-generated content, and why your website, social, and store listing need to tell the same story.

If you work in app store optimization, app marketing, or app growth, this is a clear look at what AI actually changes in the stores - and what it doesn't.

“LLMs are absolutely going to eat search.”

"AI is great for research, but it's not great for creation."

“You don't want to have a web page that communicates one thing, and a store listing that communicates another.”

Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry since 2012

Today we're talking about influencer marketing - and about the point where creator content stops being a brand play and starts being a performance channel.

Creator-led ads run four times better on click-through rate than the same brand's own ads. So the question is no longer whether to use influencers. It's how to scale them without losing the ROI.

In this episode, we bring you a live panel hosted by Lucia Aguilar, CEO and Founder at TATAM Digital, featuring:

The panel works through four trends. YouTube as the new TV - 13% of all US viewership and more ad revenue than Paramount, Disney, Universal, and Warner combined - and why long-form still converts for products that need explaining. Creator and partnership ads, where content boosted from the creator's own handle beats anything posted from a brand account. Regulation, with only 57% of UK paid posts tagged correctly, and how teams in health, Pharma, and banking build compliance into the brief instead of bolting it on at sign-off. And AI, from sourcing and brief writing through to forecasting campaign results, plus the case for human creators in a feed filling up with avatars.

If you work in influencer marketing, user acquisition, or performance marketing, this is a practical look at where creator budgets are going in 2026 and what it takes to scale them profitably.

In this episode, we're talking about app store visibility - and about the fact that organic and paid aren't two separate budgets.

Every channel you run, no matter where it starts, ends up on the same product page. And the platforms are watching what happens there.

To cover all this, we've got Stephanie Ino, Client Services Manager at Gummicube, about how ASO and paid search feed each other on the App Store and Google Play.

Stephanie explains why ASO is the home base every channel returns to, how Apple Ads and Google Ads send relevance signals back into the organic algorithm, and why the right split between the two depends on budget, app maturity, and how much relevance you've already built. She also covers Custom Product Pages and Custom Store Listings as a way to align paid traffic with the right creative, and why a younger app should build its ASO foundation before pushing paid spend through.

If you work in app store optimization, user acquisition, or app growth, this is a clear look at how the paid and organic sides of the store actually connect.

“ASO is where everything comes back to, kind of home base. Most of any channel will come back into that product page or that store listing.”

"When we're running Apple Ads, particularly for those SERP results, it gives that boost in relevance so that Apple understands that we have better potential to then rank organically for those terms."

“If we're working with a younger app in the storefront, we don't have that relevance built out yet within the algorithm. So we really want to focus on our organic and our ASO performance first.”

Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry since 2012

Today we're talking about mobile A/B testing - and about the moment the app store hands you a winner.

Because that result is directional, not the truth. And if most of your traffic is paid, you may have measured the wrong users entirely.

In this episode, we speak with Scott Masters, Director of Strategy and Partnerships at Gummicube, about why mobile A/B testing is never set-and-forget.

Scott explains why most developers and marketers under-invest in testing, what a sensible cadence looks like - once or twice a month, with each test running at least two weeks to reach statistical significance - and why changing one element at a time is the only way to know what actually moved the needle.

If you work in app store optimization, user acquisition, or app growth, this is a practical guide to testing your product page properly.

“If you're not A/B testing at least once or twice a month, you're leaving users out there for other competitors to take from you.”

"It's not a one-and-done. You can't set it and forget it. It's just like with any other brand - you create a package for your product and you put it on the shelf. If it doesn't change over time, if you're not attracting those users with new materials or new approaches, it's going to get stale."

“The platforms will give you an estimated conversion impact and confidence interval for each test you run. But that data is directional. True validation of performance really comes from launching a test winner into the store and then measuring the pre-deployment conversion rate versus the post-deployment conversion rate.”

Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry since 2012

In a world built to fragment your attention, one news app made the opposite bet: fewer ads, trusted sources, and users who actually stay.

In this episode, we speak with Ramesh Ramalingam, VP of Product at SmartNews, about how a Japanese news app was rebuilt — not ported — for American users.

Ramesh explains why SmartNews users spend 20 minutes per session, why 79% of them don't switch to another screen while reading, and how that focus turns into brand recall for advertisers. He also covers contextual targeting without cross-web tracking, why the product looks different in Tokyo than in Los Angeles, and how a revenue-share model keeps publishers in the loop.

If you work in product, app growth, or media monetization, this is a conversation about building for engagement quality rather than scale.

“What is interesting about SmartNews is it's not about the scale. We're talking about 50 million, but it's more about the user engagement. Our users spend on average 20 minutes in our product, which is very high.”

“From an advertiser perspective, yes, they do care about the reach, but trust is the most important aspect. We don't rely on invasive tracking across the web like other platforms do. What we built is a privacy-first, brand-safe environment.”

“We didn't take the Japanese app and plug it into the US. We made sure that it is customized to the user preferences in the US, and it's built for American users.”

Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry since 2012

Everyone in app growth has an opinion on AI, web-to-app, and channel strategy — but few of those opinions ever get stress-tested in public.

In this episode, we bring you a live panel debate featuring:

The format is simple: six provocative statements — from AI replacing growth roles to data versus creative — and the panel, along with a live audience voting in real time, has to agree or disagree. Along the way, you'll hear which growth tasks AI can already handle, why fintech can't rely on performance marketing alone, and how changing a single optimization event cut cost per acquisition by 96%.

What if the channel you've written off as "brand-only" could measurably lift your Meta and Google performance?

In this episode, tech journalist David Murphy is joined by Mike Fogarty, Head of Client Development at Tatari, and Lauren Frame, Director of Growth & Brand Media at Greenlight, to explore how a performance-first app brand turned TV from a scary experiment into an always-on channel that now accounts for over a third of its media mix.

Whether you're a growth marketer watching CACs climb on paid social, wondering how to measure a channel without click-through attribution, or curious whether AI-produced creative can fight TV's fatigue problem, this conversation offers a practical framework for treating TV as a performance channel.

Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry since 2012

Let's be honest — nobody wakes up in the morning excited to open your app. Well, some people may but definitely not all of them! And in 2026, the CRM teams that win aren't the ones sending more messages. They're the ones who know exactly who to reach, on which channel, at which moment — and when to say nothing at all.

In this special episode, we're bringing you the Business of Apps London 2026 panel 2026 CRM Trends: The Ultimate Guide to Customer Retention. It's a candid look at what retention really takes right now — from LLMs quietly rewriting app discovery to why downloads have become a vanity metric — told by three people running lifecycle for some of the UK's most recognizable brands: