My guest on this week's episode of the podcast is Rishabh Jain, the CEO and co-founder of FERMÀT Commerce, an eCommerce advertising optimization platform. I invited Rishabh back to the podcast to discuss OpenAI's recent announcement that it will bring advertising to ChatGPT.

Among other things, we cover:

• The commercial potential for ads in ChatGPT.
• OpenAI's decision to launch ChatGPT ads essentially as a "brand unit," with CPM pricing and little targeting or measurement functionality.
• How quickly ChatGPT advertising is likely to evolve past its launch form.
• What success looks like for ChatGPT advertising in one year's time.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• Xsolla⁠. With the Xsolla Web Shop, you can create a direct storefront, cut fees down to as low as 5%, and keep players engaged with bundles, rewards, and analytics.
• ⁠Branch⁠. Branch is an AI-powered MMP, connecting every paid, owned, and organic touchpoint so growth teams can see exactly where to put their dollars to bring users in the door and keep them coming back

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact Mobile Dev Memo advertising.

The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

My guest on this episode of the podcast is Karl Stillner, the CEO and co-founder of BrightCanary, an app that allows parents to glean insights from their children's digital activities. Note that I am an investor in BrightCanary through Heracles Capital.

In this podcast, we discuss the challenge of protecting children from digital harm. Among other topics, we cover:

1. The concerns that parents face in the current digital landscape
2. The specific issues that arise with teens' use of social media
3. The tools that parents have to manage the risks faced by their children from digital products
4. Whether being too restrictive as a parent with digital products is a genuine risk
5. How active US regulators have been in creating digital protections for children
6. Whether any consensus exists around the "right age" for a child to be given a smartphone

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• Xsolla⁠. With the Xsolla Web Shop, you can create a direct storefront, cut fees down to as low as 5%, and keep players engaged with bundles, rewards, and analytics.
• ⁠Branch⁠. Branch is an AI-powered MMP, connecting every paid, owned, and organic touchpoint so growth teams can see exactly where to put their dollars to bring users in the door and keep them coming back

Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact Mobile Dev Memo advertising.

My guest on this week's episode of the podcast is Alfred Succer, the founder of Nova Nuggets, which provides private, end-to-end secure operating environments for AI applications.

The topic of our conversation is sovereign AI, or the importance of controlling the environment on which AI-based applications, but especially chatbots, operate. Among other things, we discuss:

• The definition of a sovereign AI system
• The privacy vulnerabilities inherent in web-scale LLMs
• The purpose of hosting an LLM on-premises or within a company's own data environment
• The use cases that most necessitate private model training or hosting
• The cost profile of private model hosting and training
• The liabilities that companies face in sending sensitive data to publicly-accessible LLMs in their workflows

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• Xsolla⁠. With the Xsolla Web Shop, you can create a direct storefront, cut fees down to as low as 5%, and keep players engaged with bundles, rewards, and analytics.
• ⁠Branch⁠. Branch is an AI-powered MMP, connecting every paid, owned, and organic touchpoint so growth teams can see exactly where to put their dollars to bring users in the door and keep them coming back

Interested in advertising in the Mobile Dev Memo newsletter or podcast? Get in touch.

My guest on this week's episode of the podcast is Francesco D'Orazio, the President and Chief Product Officer at Pulsar, an audience intelligence and insights platform. The topic of our conversation is the use of AI to develop an understanding of a product's existing audience for feature planning, marketing, and optimization. Among other things, we discuss:

• How AI is being applied to audience development and audience insights currently
• The difference between audience analysis for existing users and audience analysis for advertising targeting, and whether these two use cases converge
• How a team should balance efforts across optimizing a product for an existing audience versus optimizing the product to onboard new, previously unserved audiences
• Who in an organization typically owns audience insights, and whether that's optimal
• How audience insights combine with user-level personalization

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• Xsolla⁠. With the Xsolla Web Shop, you can create a direct storefront, cut fees down to as low as 5%, and keep players engaged with bundles, rewards, and analytics.
• ⁠Branch⁠. Branch is an AI-powered MMP, connecting every paid, owned, and organic touchpoint so growth teams can see exactly where to put their dollars to bring users in the door and keep them coming back

Interested in advertising in the Mobile Dev Memo newsletter or podcast? ⁠Get in touch⁠.

The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

My guest on this episode of the podcast is Jonathan Moffie, the Head of Agentic Product at Magnite, the largest independent SSP. Moffie joined Magnite when it acquired Streamr.io, which he founded, last year.

The topic of our conversation is the application of generative AI to creative production for CTV. Among other things, we discuss:

• How GenAI is currently being used for ad production for CTV channels, and how it compares to social
• Whether a higher quality bar is applied to GenAI-produced creative for CTV than for other channels
• How well-integrated with the specific CTV platforms GenAI creative production tools must be
• Whether specific aspects of CTV -- such as the opportunity for dynamic, in-stream product placements -- lend themselves to GenAI creative
• The most substantive barriers to entry for CTV for advertisers
• The most pervasive misconception that advertisers have about CTV

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• Xsolla⁠. With the Xsolla Web Shop, you can create a direct storefront, cut fees down to as low as 5%, and keep players engaged with bundles, rewards, and analytics.
• ⁠Branch⁠. Branch is an AI-powered MMP, connecting every paid, owned, and organic touchpoint so growth teams can see exactly where to put their dollars to bring users in the door and keep them coming back

Interested in advertising in the Mobile Dev Memo newsletter or podcast? ⁠Get in touch⁠.

The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

My guest on this week's episode of the podcast is Amanda Engelman, Shopify's Director of Product for Advertising. The topic of the episode is the recently announced Shopify Product Network, which allows merchants to insert recommendations for products they don't sell into their own storefronts, sourced from other Shopify Merchants.

But don't call it an ad network! In our discussion, among other things, we cover:

• An overview of the Shopify Product Network (SPN)
• How Shopify merchants have reacted to SPN since its launch
• How payment works for merchants that host product recommendations
• How product exclusion and targeting are managed
• The ultimate distribution potential for SPN and whether it serves as a complement to third-party ads or could replace them altogether for some merchants
• Whether SPN could be expanded to third-party surfaces.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠Xsolla⁠. With the Xsolla Web Shop, you can create a direct storefront, cut fees down to as low as 5%, and keep players engaged with bundles, rewards, and analytics.
• ⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• ⁠Universal Ads⁠ is Comcast’s self-serve TV ads platform that lets you launch campaigns in minutes across premium inventory from NBC, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, Roku, and more.

Interested in advertising in the Mobile Dev Memo newsletter or podcast? ⁠Get in touch⁠.

In this week's episode of the podcast, I speak with Peter Stuart, the founder of Velora Digital, which publishes Velora Cycling, a new media outlet focused on the sport of cycling. Velora Digital has adopted an AI-first philosophy and integrates AI tools thoughtfully and fundamentally into its publishing process. I've known Peter since we both studied at University College London many years ago — he has spent his career in publishing, most recently serving as the editor of Cyclingnews, the world’s largest road cycling and pro cycling website.

In this episode, we discuss:

• ⁠⁠What it means to be an AI-first media company
• What core editorial principles Velora is organized around
• Velora's editorial process
• At what point in the editorial process it is necessary to have a human in the loop
• The role that disclosure of AI-generated content / assets plays
• The skepticism that Velora has faced since launching.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠Xsolla⁠. With the Xsolla Web Shop, you can create a direct storefront, cut fees down to as low as 5%, and keep players engaged with bundles, rewards, and analytics.
• ⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• ⁠Universal Ads⁠ is Comcast’s self-serve TV ads platform that lets you launch campaigns in minutes across premium inventory from NBC, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, Roku, and more.

Interested in advertising in the Mobile Dev Memo newsletter or podcast? ⁠Get in touch⁠.

The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

In this episode of the podcast, I speak with Anindya Ghose from NYU and Vilma Todri from Emory University about their recent paper, The Impact of Visual Generative AI on Advertising Effectiveness, which is available in pre-print. In the paper, Anindya, Vilma, and the other authors assess the performance efficacy of three types of ad creative:

1. Creative entirely crafted by humans;
2. Creative crafted by humans but modified by generative AI;
3. Creative entirely created by generative AI.

The authors also quantify the impact of disclosing that creative was produced by generative AI tools. In the paper, the authors run a field experiment (buying display impressions on Google Display Network) as well as a lab study where they collect qualitative data. We discuss the results of these in the podcast.

In addition, we cover:

• The genesis of this paper and the motivation to explore this topic;
• The four research questions the authors pursue in the paper;
• The methodology used to interrogate those questions;
• The principal conclusions from the studies the authors ran;
• The authors' finding that lower creative constraints on the genAI tool led to better results;
• Possible explanations for why a Generative AI tool benefits from total control with the visual modality whereas textual generation performs better with a structured, chain-of-thought process.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠Xsolla⁠. With the Xsolla Web Shop, you can create a direct storefront, cut fees down to as low as 5%, and keep players engaged with bundles, rewards, and analytics.
• ⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• ⁠Universal Ads⁠ is Comcast’s self-serve TV ads platform that lets you launch campaigns in minutes across premium inventory from NBC, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, Roku, and more.

Interested in advertising in the Mobile Dev Memo newsletter or podcast? ⁠Get in touch⁠.

My guest on this episode of the podcast is Rishabh Jain, the CEO and co-founder of FERMÀT Commerce, an eCommerce advertising optimization platform. Rishabh most recently joined the podcast in June for an episode of the MDM Mailbag.

In this episode, Rishabh and I discuss the impact of chatbot discovery on eCommerce sales, including over Black Friday. Among other things, we speak about:

• The current state of AI search with respect to eCommerce, and how are chatbots are influencing eCommerce purchases now
• The likely trajectory of "agentic commerce" over the next 12-18 months
• How eCommerce retailers are adapting to chatbots and other forms of AI search
• ChatGPT's Instant Checkout and whether that reflects a durable business opportunity for OpenAI or other companies

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠Xsolla⁠. With the Xsolla Web Shop, you can create a direct storefront, cut fees down to as low as 5%, and keep players engaged with bundles, rewards, and analytics.
• ⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• ⁠Universal Ads⁠ is Comcast’s self-serve TV ads platform that lets you launch campaigns in minutes across premium inventory from NBC, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, Roku, and more.

Interested in advertising in the Mobile Dev Memo newsletter or podcast? ⁠Get in touch⁠.

The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

My guest on this episode of the podcast is Mikołaj Barczentewicz, a professor of law at the University of Surrey and the author of EU Tech Reg, a blog dedicated to following developments in the EU regulatory machinery.

In this episode, Mikołaj and I discuss the digital omnibus package that was recently proposed by the European Commission and which aims to reform and simplify, among many other things, the GDPR. A draft version of the digital omnibus had been leaked a few weeks before we spoke, but we waited until the formal version was unveiled by the EC to record this podcast.

Among other things, we cover:

• The genesis of the Digital Omnibus package: why was it proposed in the first place, and what it aims to achieve;
• The specific changes to the GDPR proposed in the package;
• The scope of the opposition to GDPR reform;
• The implications of digital omnibus reforms on the EU's domestic AI industry;
• Whether any genuine progress been made against the recommendations made by last year's Draghi report;
• The current status of Pay or Okay in the EU and in the UK;
• Whether the DMA might be softened in response to pressure from the Trump administration.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• ⁠Xsolla⁠. With the Xsolla Web Shop, you can create a direct storefront, cut fees down to as low as 5%, and keep players engaged with bundles, rewards, and analytics.
• ⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• ⁠Universal Ads⁠ is Comcast’s self-serve TV ads platform that lets you launch campaigns in minutes across premium inventory from NBC, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, Roku, and more.

Interested in advertising in the Mobile Dev Memo newsletter or podcast? ⁠Get in touch⁠.

The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify