The Prosperous Society is a podcast series by Mobile Dev Memo that articulates an AI Bull Thesis for the digital economy. It argues that the pervasive application of AI to the digital economy will be broadly economically expansionary, leading to increased individual prosperity, expanded consumer choice, and greater human agency.

In Episode 1, I argue that AI production tools will catalyze dramatic growth in output, rendering content distribution as the primary binding constraint for commercial traction. This will accelerate growth in total digital advertising spend in support of product discovery and result in a proliferation of free software, more relevant ads, and higher levels of value offered to consumers through digital experiences.

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

In the latest installment of the MDM Mailbag series, I speak with Matej Lancaric, a well-known mobile gaming user acquisition consultant, a co-host of the two & a half gamers podcast, and the author of the Brutally Honest blog.

As a reminder: MDM Mailbag episodes center on a guest Q&A, with questions sourced directly from the MDM community.

Matej and I discuss a wide variety of topics over the course of our conversation, including:

• Creative strategy, including Matej's recent primer on integrating AI tools into the creative production process
• Web onboarding and web-based user acquisition for mobile games
• The analytics and reporting tools Matej sees used most commonly
• Approaches to competitor analysis
• The current mobile gaming conference landscape and which conferences Matej considers to be "can't miss."

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

In this episode of the podcast, I discuss the long-term effects of brand advertising with Carl Mela and Ross Link.

Carl Mela is the T. Austin Finch Foundation Professor of Business Administration at Duke University and one of the leading academics in the field of quantitative marketing and consumer choice. Ross Link is the CEO of Marketing Attribution, having previously served as the President of Global Marketing ROI Solutions at Nielsen. Carl and Ross provide a balanced perspective on brand marketing and measurement from both academic and industry lenses.

Among other things, our discussion covers:

• What firms get wrong about brand measurement, both from an analytical and a conceptual standpoint
• The most common internal political issues that Ross sees arise around marketing measurement within organizations
• The non-obvious stakeholders for marketing measurement within an organization
• How marketing teams can implement the two brand-performance measures that Carl introduced in his seminal Harvard Business Review piece, If Brands Are Built Over Years, Why Are They Managed Over Quarters?
• The differences in approaches to marketing measurement taken across verticals for successful companies
• The benefits and drawbacks of the various established methods of measuring long-term marketing effects 
• The tools available to a CMO to make the case for the long-term effects of brand advertising for a nascent brand

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 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