My guest on this episode of the podcast is Brian Albrecht, the Chief Economist at the International Center for Law and Economics (ICLE). Brian holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Minnesota and is an expert on antitrust and consumer protection.

In this episode, Brian and I deliberate on the importance and application of antitrust law, as well as the current state of antitrust enforcement in the United States. Among other topics, we discuss:

• The purpose of antitrust enforcement;
• The tools that exist to combat monopoly abuses;
• The Neo-Brandesian worldview;
• How FTC Chair Ferguson may approach antitrust differently from his predecessor, Lina Khan;
• Why tariffs are disruptive to an economy;
• Why the impact of tariffs tends to be underestimated (see this post and this post from Brian for more on the economic dynamics of tariffs).

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

• ContextSDK. ContextSDK uses over 200 smartphone signals to detect a user’s real-world context, allowing apps to deliver perfectly timed push notifications and in-app offers.
• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

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

where he covers Apple. The topic of our conversation is Patrick's new book, Apple in China, which I reviewed last week.

In the episode, Patrick provides a history of Apple's manufacturing activities in China, why Apple became so dependent on China for the production of its products, and how Apple shaped the trajectory of China as meaningfully as China shaped Apple.

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

• ContextSDK. ContextSDK uses over 200 smartphone signals to detect a user’s real-world context, allowing apps to deliver perfectly timed push notifications and in-app offers.
• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

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

My guest on this week's episode of the podcast is Andrew Covato, a veteran of the largest digital advertising platforms -- including Meta, Google, and Snap -- and the founder and managing director of Growth by Science, an advertising measurement and technology consultancy.

Andrew and I discuss the topic of advertising measurement broadly, including:

• The misconceptions that advertisers have about how the largest walled garden advertising platforms function;
• The principal mistakes companies make related to marketing-driven growth;
• The scientific approach to measurement;
• How companies can future-proof their advertising measurement;
• The analytical constraints that prevent most advertisers from growing spend;
• Creative analytics;
• A systematic approach to channel diversification.

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

• ContextSDK. ContextSDK uses over 200 smartphone signals to detect a user’s real-world context, allowing apps to deliver perfectly timed push notifications and in-app offers.
• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

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

My guest on this episode of the podcast is Nilay Patel, the head of product at Kohort, a cohort analytics platform (full disclosure: I'm an advisor to the company). In our conversation, we discuss the profound power of cohort analysis in decision-making, not just related to marketing spend but across all disciplines within a digital-first company. Among other topics, we cover:

• The aspects of LTV estimation that companies most often get wrong;
• Why cohorts represent the most appropriate atomic unit to use in assessing a product's unit economics;
• How cohort monetization can be used as an input to a user acquisition cash flow model;
• How to handle outliers in cohort analysis;
• How companies can approach this type of prediction / forecasting if they don't spending significant amounts of money on user acquisition;
• How companies should think about monetization improvements over time when they project cohort performance;
• How the user acquisition channel mix contributes to cohort performance over time.

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

• ContextSDK. ContextSDK uses over 200 smartphone signals to detect a user’s real-world context, allowing apps to deliver perfectly timed push notifications and in-app offers.
• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

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

My guest on this episode of the podcast is Olivia Kory, the Chief Strategy Officer of Haus, an advertising measurement platform. Against the backdrop of tariffs and economic uncertainty, Olivia and I discussed how firms can think about assessing the efficiency of their marketing spend. Among other topics, we cover:

• Why the open web is so foreign to many performance advertisers;
• The right way to conceive of platform A/B testing tools that automatically optimize targeting;
• How advertisers are auditing their measurement solutions in light of the tariffs and economic volatility;
• What steps marketing teams can take to "get fit" ahead of a potential economic recession.

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

• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• ⁠⁠⁠Clarisights⁠⁠⁠. Marketing analytics that makes it easy to get answers, iterate fast, and show the impact of your work. Go to⁠⁠⁠ clarisights.com/demo⁠⁠⁠ to try it out for free.
• ContextSDK. ContextSDK uses over 200 smartphone signals to detect a user’s real-world context, allowing apps to deliver perfectly timed push notifications and in-app offers.

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

This week's episode of the podcast is in a new format: MDM Mailbag. I recruited Taylor Holiday, the CEO of eCommerce advertising agency Common Thread Collective and a prominent voice on DTC Twitter, to answer questions submitted by the MDM community. Among other topics, those questions related to:

• Any visible weakness in consumer spending related to tariffs;
• The viability of AppLovin and Pinterest for eCommerce advertising;
• The evolving business model of digital advertising agencies;
• The appropriate proportion of platform budget to route through Advantage+ and PMax.

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

• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• ⁠⁠⁠Clarisights⁠⁠⁠. Marketing analytics that makes it easy to get answers, iterate fast, and show the impact of your work. Go to⁠⁠⁠ clarisights.com/demo⁠⁠⁠ to try it out for free.
• ContextSDK. ContextSDK uses over 200 smartphone signals to detect a user’s real-world context, allowing apps to deliver perfectly timed push notifications and in-app offers.

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

My guest on this week’s episode of the podcast is Daniel McCarthy, who is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. The topic of our conversation is a draft paper for which Daniel is a co-author: Evaluating the Impact of Privacy Regulation on E-Commerce Firms: Evidence from Apple’s App Tracking Transparency. I cited this paper in Could ATT be rolled back?, and we unpack the paper’s findings in detail in the episode.

Among other things, we discuss:

• Background on the paper, including its general methodology and principal findings;
• Why so little academic research has been dedicated to the effects of ATT;
• The qualities of small business marketing that made it disproportionately susceptible to the restrictions of ATT;
• How SMBs have adapted to ATT;
• The consequences of ATT on lower-funnel metrics and how the impact of ATT on upper-funnel metrics might be misleading;
• The misapprehensions or points of confusion about ATT that are most common;

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

• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• ⁠⁠⁠Clarisights⁠⁠⁠. Marketing analytics that makes it easy to get answers, iterate fast, and show the impact of your work. Go to⁠⁠⁠ clarisights.com/demo⁠⁠⁠ to try it out for free.
• ContextSDK. ContextSDK uses over 200 smartphone signals to detect a user’s real-world context, allowing apps to deliver perfectly timed push notifications and in-app offers.

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

In this episode of the podcast, I speak with Lee Brown, Spotify’s Global Head of Ad Business & Platform, and Per Sandell, Spotify’s VP of Product, about Spotify's recent advertising product expansion, including its Spotify Ad Exchange (SAX) and its mobile app install product. Among other things, we discuss:

• The history of Spotify's advertising platform, which predates the Everything is an Ad Network phenomenon;
• The current state of Spotify advertising, including the product announcements made at Spotify's advertising event in New York City last week;
• How Spotify is bringing generative AI to audio;
• How performance advertisers use Spotify's advertising platform;
• The options for targeting on Spotify's platform;
• What role Spotify sees its ad exchange playing in the programmatic ecosystem;
• How Spotify plans to eventually automate ad placements and insertions.

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

• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• ⁠⁠⁠Clarisights⁠⁠⁠. Marketing analytics that makes it easy to get answers, iterate fast, and show the impact of your work. Go to⁠⁠⁠ clarisights.com/demo⁠⁠⁠ to try it out for free.
• ContextSDK. ContextSDK uses over 200 smartphone signals to detect a user’s real-world context, allowing apps to deliver perfectly timed push notifications and in-app offers.

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

The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Google Podcasts

My guest on this week’s episode of the podcast is Alex Schultz, the CMO and VP of Analytics at Meta. Among other things, Alex manages marketing, analytics, and internationalization for the company and directed its rebrand from Facebook to Meta. Additionally, Alex recently wrote a book, Click Here, which is currently available for pre-order.

Among other things, we discuss:

• Alex’s background and long tenure at Meta;
• Alex’s distaste for the term “performance marketing” and his philosophy around full-funnel management;
• Whether Alex’s background in analytics has made him a more effective CMO;
• How AI will impact the marketing profession in the near and medium terms;
• Whether the marketing function necessarily becomes more product-focused when AI-enabled automation can handle campaign optimization, audience segmentation, and creative production;
• How marketers can better embrace AI;
• How the quantitative frameworks for growth change when a company reaches 1BN+ user scale;
• The aspects of growth marketing least understood by the general public. 

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

• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.

• ⁠⁠⁠Clarisights⁠⁠⁠. Marketing analytics that makes it easy to get answers, iterate fast, and show the impact of your work. Go to⁠⁠⁠ clarisights.com/demo⁠⁠⁠ to try it out for free.
• ContextSDK. ContextSDK uses over 200 smartphone signals to detect a user’s real-world context, allowing apps to deliver perfectly timed push notifications and in-app offers.

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

My guest on this week's episode is James Borow, the Vice President of Product and Engineering at Comcast's new Universal Ads effort, which was introduced this January. James was previously the Global Director of Product Strategy at Snap.

The topic of our conversation is the evolving TV advertising ecosystem. Among other things, we discuss:

1. The current state of performance advertising on TV;
2. The historical process of buying linear TV advertising inventory;
3. The boundaries between CTV and linear TV advertising;
4. How advertisers approach measurement with CTV;
5. Where YouTube fits into the CTV space;
6. What linear TV can do to provide performance capabilities to marketers;
7. The demographics of TV that make it attractive to marketers.

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

• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• ContextSDK. ContextSDK uses over 200 smartphone signals to detect a user’s real-world context, allowing apps to deliver perfectly timed push notifications and in-app offers.

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

The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Google Podcasts