Mobile + Performance Advertising

Today we speak with Lomit Patel, VP of Growth for IMVU, a 3D Avatar Social Networking App. We dive into how he manages the growth, user acquisition, retention, and monetization of the desktop and mobile app.

Also, we go into how he turned the company from a primarily-desktop game into a mobile-first app, by focusing on social channels, short-form videos, and testing new undiscovered channels.

Over the last 15 years IMVU has had 200M+ user registrations, and created 40M+ virtual items users can purchase. Lomit shares more on how he uses prospecting and retention to attract "Whales, Dolphins, and Tuna"; also he goes into why US/CA/UK/AU/FR/DE are his Top Geos by Revenue, and BR is their Top Geo by Active Users, and how APAC is opening up for IMVU.

Lastly, we discuss his new book LEAN AI that is a framework on how every marketer should use automation and AI to 100x their experiments to spend their budget better/faster/smarter.

Today we interview Ryan Buckley, CEO of MightySignal. We go into the founding of MightySignal, how Ryan was installed as CEO by a Private Equity Firm, and his previous start-ups where he raised over $18M.

We dive deep into SDK intelligence, Pricing and feature differences for ASO / Ad Intelligence / SDK Intelligence companies, and how data is identified and ingested to build these data tools.

Lastly, we discuss trending SDKs, the most installed SDKs for iOS/Android, as well as up-and-coming advertising SDKs that every mobile marketer should know about. Tune in today!

In today's episode, we interview Tim Koschella, CEO of Kayzen. Tim was previously the CEO/Founder of Applift, a large Mobile Performance Ad Network that he founded in 2012. 

We discuss his new programmatic in-house bidder solution for advertisers, that is taking self-service advertising one step further. Also, Tim goes into differences in biddable inventory for in-app vs mobile web, and optimizations advertisers can make such as Bid Shading. 

Lastly, we delve deep into Self-Attributing Networks such as Google and Facebook and how all MMPs have to pass them all user data, so they can send back which users they want credit for. 

For today's podcast, we interview Bryan Golkhajeh, Founder & CEO of AdAlpha Technologies.

Bryan was previously Senior Director of the AdColony Ad Exchange, and worked with all external partners from DSPs, to Ad Networks, and Publishers. We go into his start in the industry at ChaCha (a Q&A Search Engine), to Motricity, and AdMarvel, before he finally landed at AdColony.

He also shares more on AdAlpha and how he's building a Marketplace for Mobile Video PMP deals (through an AirBnB-type user experience) where buyers can see all Mobile App Video deals in the market, globally.

Finally, we dig deep into trade secrets that top yield optimization managers use to maximize yield and fill rates, from an industry expert. Tune in to hear more!

This week we interview Vishal Korlipara, Growth Marketing Manager at Credit Karma. We dive into Vishal's background in finance and the digital agency world, before eventually joining Credit Karma.

We go into Credit Karma hitting 100M registered users, the Atlanta Tech startup scene, Credit Karma being a massive financial affiliate network, and the countries they are focusing on for International Expansion.

Also, we discuss how the responsibilities of their 120+ Marketing team (30-40% of whom work on performance) collaborate on Acquisition, Engagement, and Personalization.

We're sitting here with Josh Zhang, Founder/CEO of Gainfluence - an influence marketing company primarily focused on Youtube and Instagram, and also a Product Manager @ Dropbox Business focused on growing revenue with Dropbox Paper through in-product experimentation and feature launches. 

We talk all about influencers this time around, and dive into how to work with them: sourcing, pricing, content creation and more. 

To start, understand your customers and their existing users, figure out which channels those types of users are watching, and figure out influencers and get a price and deal in place. Focus on niche influencers that do well and re-use them. 

Check out their other social platforms to determine their clout, views and engagement. Learn more about influencer attribution and launch strategies - listen in!

Welcome to this mobile performance podcast; this time we're talking with Sophia Cao - a user acquisition manager and mobile performance specialist who helped companies such as PennyPop, Machine Zone and SuperLuckyCasino scale their user base. 

At PennyPop, she managed the Facebook/Instagram channel, managing all the target spend and KPIs (predicted vs actual) on a daily basis. Always asking herself: How does this yield look? How about from the day before? 

She discusses digging deeper into the data to increase yields, looking at campaign level data, game levels, age levels, etc.  She also talks about how different channels provide greater returns, for different types of audiences. 

Tune in to learn how to use self-attributing networks to your advantage, and how different ways to monetize (in-app purchases vs ad revenue) changes the way you should approach UA. 

For low cost channels, such as incent, learn how Sophia used deep funnel events to really hook users, and get them to convert at sometimes $0.50 or lower CPIs. Measure everything and watch your drop off rates!

Founder and COO of Branch Metrics, Mike Molinet, talks with us today about what's next at Branch, their Tune acquisition and challenges. Started in 2014 as they were building an app and saw all the challenges in mobile and across devices that not only they but others were also suffering from in data, linking, and metrics and wanted to fix it. 

Now about 280 employees, 15 global offices and see data from over 1B devices monthly, 10B sessions a day and billions of clicks per day. When using Deep Linking, conversion, retention and engagement is up 2x because it provides a much better user experience in the first 10 seconds so a user isn't treated "like a stranger." 

Mike also discusses the Tune acquisition that helps them better solidify themselves in the attribution space and compliments the original Branch stack. Hear about fraud detection via network effects; using personas and device graphs to better attribution model for better matching and more accurate measurements. 

Lastly, Mike talks about where he's bullish on (India, OTT, and all new types of non-mobile devices to start tracking) - lots of opportunity to grow.

Today's podcast brings us Robert Garfinkle who helps manage UA @ Nexon M - one of the worlds biggest gaming publishers in both Asia and Western markets. Robert's experience is heavily built on helping bring and translate Asia-based games into in western markets. 

Some of these translations involve UX localization (how buttons look, colors; characters appearance and interactions) and UA differences (creative differences, style, pitch). 

In the beginning, social channels are best due to their vast amounts of data and granular targeting but in the long-run it starts to fizzle out of ROI, 2nd best channels are gaming focused and SDK-direct networks, followed on by DSPs and feeding their in-app event data on top for bid filtering. 

Learn more interesting insights such as how they they use retargeting to help improve incrementally of users, playables (not a magic bullet), top tools used and their day to day management.

In today's podcast, we get some insightful knowledge from Eric Cole, Head of US Partnerships for TAB, on helping run four mobile ad networks and seeing the various stages through out. 

From AdPerio, to AdAction, BlueTrackMedia onto TAB which was recently acquired by PIA in Germany (1200 staff, $400m rev). 

We hear her discussions surrounding mobile fraud, and how they combat with a marriage of 3rd party and in-house built tools, some of rules for customizable thresholds and variables looked at: CTIT / IP address / carrier / user agent, along with post-install metrics. 

Which ad formats do the best (video + end cards, playables and interstitials) and thoughts on rewarded video (good brand safe format). And her thoughts on mobile industry challenges today (lots of distrust), favorite attribution partner (adjust), and how they used micro-influencers in Germany to gain a 15% lift for a campaign.