Mobile Dev Memo Podcast

On this week’s episode of the podcast, I am joined by Rishabh Jain, the founder of FERMÀT Commerce. Over the course of our conversation, Rishabh and I explore a potentially seismic shift in consumer behavior toward agentic discovery for e-Commerce and how specialized AI agents are beginning to mediate the relationship between brands and consumers. Among other things, we discuss:

• Why traditional search interfaces may become obsolete as consumers shift toward natural language interactions with specialized AI agents
• How the implementation of agentic workflows could resolve trust issues that have historically hindered high-value e-commerce transactions within chatbots
• Whether the future of digital commerce will rely on advertising auctions or subscription-based models for product recommendation and ranking
• If independent brands can leverage agentic discovery to compete effectively against the massive logistical and infrastructure dominance of Amazon
• What structural changes are necessary for merchant websites to communicate effectively with agents rather than just human site visitors
• When and why the role of human-in-the-loop oversight will become unnecessary for complex purchasing decisions across various retail product categories
• How the integration of AI agents within social platforms could fundamentally rewire the existing marketing and conversion funnel for retailers

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

• ⁠⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

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

The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:

• Spotify
• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts

On this week's episode of the podcast, I am joined by Adam Epstein, the co-founder and CEO of Gigi, an AI-enabled media manager for the Amazon DSP (disclosure: I'm an investor in Gigi). Adam is one of the foremost experts on the Amazon Gigi, and I invited him back onto the podcast to explore the evolving landscape of agentic commerce and Amazon's strategic positioning within it. We analyze the shift from take-rate models to advertising-driven monetization for AI agents and the significance of Amazon's recent partnership with OpenAI. Among other things, we discuss:

• Why the economic incentives of major retailers might prevent them from fully embracing open agentic commerce platforms
• How the integration of Amazon's advertising signals into ChatGPT could redefine the digital shopping experience for consumers
• Whether a revenue-sharing model based on cost-per-click is viable for third-party AI agents in the long term
• If the desire for a browsing experience will ultimately limit the mass adoption of autonomous shopping agents
• When the expansion of Amazon's DSP into AI chat interfaces will start to displace traditional search-based advertising
• What the implications are for brand relationships when AI agents mediate the entire path to purchase for consumers
• How Amazon's control over the full advertising and logistics stack creates an insurmountable moat against rival shopping agents

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

• ⁠⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

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

The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:

• Spotify
• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts

On this week's episode of the podcast, I am joined by Michael Morton, a Senior Research Analyst at MoffettNathanson who covers E-Commerce and Marketplaces.

In our conversation, Michael and I discuss the potential for agentic commerce and why consumer adoption might be more limited than Silicon Valley expects. We explore the data surrounding consumer payment habits and the structural moats that protect incumbent marketplaces from disruption. Among other things, we discuss:

• Whether I'm wrong about Agentic commerce being a mirage
• Why denizens of Silicon Valley may be overestimating the average consumer's actual frequency of shopping decisions
• How Amazon's massive investment in physical fulfillment infrastructure creates a nearly insurmountable barrier for new agentic competitors
• Whether autonomous agents can provide a reliable shopping experience without real-time API integrations into merchant inventory systems
• If the shift toward AI-powered product discovery will ultimately benefit independent brands over centralized e-commerce marketplaces
• What role consumer trust and reviews play in preventing the widespread adoption of hands-off autonomous purchasing agents
• How the transition to AI search might lead to higher-value advertising clicks despite a potential decrease in volume
• When high-stakes purchases like family vacations will be deemed too important to delegate to an automated agent

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

• ⁠⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

On this week's episode of the podcast, I am joined by Gareth Glaser to explore the potential for a resurgence of the open web. Gareth is the CEO of Gamera and a long-time operator in the programmatic media space, having spent time at Appnexus and Magnite and having served as the PMC Chair at Prebid.js.

We explore why the open web has lagged behind walled gardens like Meta and Google in performance marketing and how a shift in focus could unlock meaningful economic value. Gareth shares insights from his extensive career in independent ad tech, discussing the evolution of programmatic infrastructure and the current state of publisher monetization. Among other things, we discuss:

• Whether the open web can transition from a legacy branding medium to a high-scale performance marketing opportunity
• How the historical reliance on agency budgets and rebates stunted the technical development of open web advertising tools
• Why current estimates of open web traffic might significantly undervalue its potential if monetization strategies are modernized
• What structural changes are necessary to make open web inventory as attractive to small businesses as Meta ecosystem
• If the outcome of the Google antitrust trial will truly level the playing field for independent ad tech companies
• How the shift toward LTV measurement for publishers reflects the maturing operational standards of the mobile app world
• Why the lack of granular ad experience descriptions remains a primary barrier to entry for performance-oriented advertisers

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

• ⁠⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• ⁠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:

• Spotify
• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts

On this week's episode of the podcast, I am joined by Asad Awan, who leads monetization product and engineering at OpenAI. We explore the strategic foundations and product principles behind OpenAI's entry into the advertising space.

My conversation with Asad focuses on how conversational AI shifts the advertising paradigm from transactional keyword matching to a deeper understanding of user journeys and intent, all while navigating the tension between monetization / commercial utility and user trust.

Among other things, we discuss:

• How the conversational interface creates a unique environment for surfacing latent consumer intent and preferences
• Whether user trust can be maintained when AI responses are supplemented by paid commercial placements
• Why the direct value exchange of ads for compute might reshape consumer perceptions of digital advertising
• What role ChatGPT's Sponsored Agents will play in streamlining the path from discovery to transaction within chatbots
• How OpenAI's approach to automation and simplified bidding differs from traditional social media ad stacks
• When generative AI will be capable of fully automating the creation of contextually relevant ad creative
• If the integration of first-party conversion data is essential for grounding LLM-driven ad targeting systems

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

• ⁠⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• ⁠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:

• Spotify
• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts

Among the many disastrous consequences predicted of artificial intelligence is a jobs famine: widespread worker displacement that devastates the economy and brings about a second Great Depression.

But that hasn't happened. In fact, the US economy is doing well and, with a 4.1% unemployment rate, operating roughly at full employment, despite other headwinds like persistent inflation. And while whether humanity is "early" in the adoption phase of artificial intelligence is debatable -- I argue that, certainly, from an exposure standpoint, AI is a familiar technology at this point -- the notion that AI has displaced large swaths of the workforce is not supported in the current data.

Given the buoyancy of the economy, should we reduce the odds of that happening? We can't definitively say that it won't, of course, but we can use the data at our disposal now -- in September 2026, nearly four years after ChatGPT's launch -- to update our likelihoods. And one likelihood that I believe is underestimated, sitting somewhere between The Prosperous Society and total economic Armageddon, is that everything turns out alright.

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

• ⁠⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• ⁠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:

• Spotify
• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts

On this week's episode of the podcast, I am joined by my friend Nebojsa Radovic, the Senior Director of Mobile User Acquisition at Zynga and a battle-hardened mobile marketing veteran. In the course of our conversation, we discuss the evolution of mobile user acquisition from the era of manual campaign configuration to the contemporary operating environment of automated, AI-driven workflows. We reflect on how the industry has shifted from highly technical, high-headcount operations toward lean, specialist teams focused principally on creative optimization and signal engineering. Among other things, we cover:

• How AI-driven automation will permanently redefine the technical requirements for marketing roles
• Whether the consolidation of major ad networks will eventually stifle innovation within independent mobile gaming studios
• Why high-volume creative production has become the primary lever for performance in an algorithmic buying environment
• If traditional media buying expertise is becoming obsolete in the face of sophisticated signal engineering strategies
• What future organizational structures will look like as marketing teams become smaller and more specialized
• When the industry will reach a saturation point regarding the effectiveness of cross-channel attribution models

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

• ⁠⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• ⁠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:

• Spotify
• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts

The Conversions API, or CAPI, represents a revolutionary development in the digital economy: it allows any platform with sufficient scale to extend its advertising scope beyond local context into the broader and more commercially valuable function of behavioral advertising, entirely outside of the purview of a browser or operating system. In this episode, I provide a history of the CAPI and its role in the Everything is an ad network phenomenon. I also explore the fundamental shift in the digital advertising landscape driven by the transition from browser-side pixels to the server-to-server CAPI, moving beyond the immediate impacts of Apple's App Tracking Transparency to a more permanent structural change in how commercial data is shared and utilized.

Articles cited in this episode:

• Everything is an ad network
• The App Tracking Transparency recession
• Is CAPI future-proof?
• The privacy shuffle (part one, two, three, four)
• Privacy manifests, fingerprinting, and Apple’s intentions
• Podcast: Meta’s Renaissance
• Does Apple police fingerprinting?
• Google embraces IP-based fingerprinting
• Apple’s privacy “nuclear option”

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

• ⁠⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• ⁠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:

• Spotify
• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts

This week's podcast episode is a long-form companion piece to an article I published last week: The privileged position of chatbot advertising. In this episode, I make the case for why the chatbot advertising model is differentiated from those of both search and social media, feed-based display, and why it benefits from greater targeting scope through the optionality and flexibility it can utilize in determining which signals should inform that targeting, based on the context of a conversation.

Articles cited in this piece:

• OpenAI’s advertising opportunity
• Google's Gambit and Google’s Gambit, Part 4: The end of Static Search
• Obviously, OpenAI will monetize with ads
• Digital Advertising, Demand Routing, and the Millionaires’ Mall
• Search is the wrong mental model for chatbot advertising
• The prosperous society

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

• ⁠⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• ⁠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:

• Spotify
• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts

For the eighth installment of the MDM Mailbag series, I am joined by independent app growth consultant and advisor Thomas Petit. As a reminder: guests for MDM Mailbag episodes of the podcast are practitioners, and questions are sourced directly from the MDM community.

Thomas and I discuss the current state of measurement, the necessity of incrementality testing, and the challenges of scaling creative production in an automated environment. We also dive into the technical and ethical considerations of web-to-app funnels, as well as the ongoing legal battles surrounding app store commissions.

Among other topics, the questions Thomas fields pertain to:

• Whether incrementality testing will ever completely replace deterministic last-click attribution models for large-scale mobile advertisers and networks
• How the proliferation of media mix modeling vendors affects the quality of measurement insights available to smaller app developers
• Why the mobile industry continues to struggle with ad fraud detection despite the availability of sophisticated third-party verification services
• If the current trend toward massive creative volume is actually delivering diminishing returns for performance marketing campaigns on Meta
• What the long-term impact of AI-generated video creative will be on the traditional role of performance marketing creative agencies
• When the friction of web-to-app onboarding funnels becomes a secondary concern compared to the benefits of merchant flexibility
• Whether Apple's proposed fifteen percent commission on external links will effectively stifle the growth of independent web-to-app payment ecosystems

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

• ⁠⁠INCRMNTAL⁠⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• ⁠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:

• Spotify
• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts