User Acquisition is mostly a dead-end career path. UA is a great role from which to start a career because it touches both analytics and product, but the ceiling for career growth is fairly low (1/X)
2/ First, UA success is totally dependent on the monetization efficiency and TAM of the product. If the product cant scale and doesnt convert, the UA team cant be successful mobiledevmemo.com/building-a-vir…
3/ Second, even scaleable products hit a level of saturation after long enough that prevents a UA team from demonstably growing the product through paid media. mobiledevmemo.com/three-stages-m…
4/ This happens very frequently: a UA team capably scales a product, the product hits the second inflection in the S curve, and a “brand CMO”
is hired to take over to own a more comprehensive marketing org mobiledevmemo.com/how-to-navigat…
5/ Because so many marketing leaders with deep brand experience exist relative to those with deep UA experience, it’s easy to hire someone with an impressive work history to fill that role & complement the UA team’s work mobiledevmemo.com/defining-the-c…
6/ Brand is important and marketing teams should be well rounded, but I often see these Brand CMOs struggle to understand how digital (esp mobile) products scale in the absence of a pre-existing brand mobiledevmemo.com/the-uncomforta…
7/ Reality: It’s easier to level up the UA person into a CMO that incorporates brand-mindedness into their work, de-siloing UA + product + TAM into a unified vision. But that rarely happens, because it seems less risky to hire big-name VP Marketing mobiledevmemo.com/the-future-of-…
8/ So to where does the Director of UA progress? I actually think the UA -> CMO role track is not optimal. UA teams deeply understand the interplay between audience targeting & user base growth. That sounds like traditional “marketing” but for digital products its core strategy
9/ People with UA backgrounds make great product leaders because they grok the “path to growth”: not just the levers that drive acquisition or that drive retention, but the combined user journey from cradle to grave mobiledevmemo.com/monthly-churn-…
10/ UA people should theoretically also understand product resonance and TAM factors, and the appeal / monetization tension. Also the Click Through Rate Conundrum mobiledevmemo.com/click-rate-con…
11/ For these reasons, UA people are helpful in early product evaluation and assessing performant market segments. Theres a natural progression from “growing products” to “building products that can be grown” mobiledevmemo.com/building-a-vir…
12/ I have seen UA people successfully grow into senior Operations / Strategy / Product roles. A fundamental grasp of core commercial KPIs + interplay between UA -> product is very valuable from those vantage points. Potentially moreso than from CMO perch.
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The black box inside the black box: Google announced yesterday the availability of its Generative AI-based creative tools in Performance Max campaigns. What considerations should marketing teams make in expanding total campaign automation to creative production? (1/X)
2/ First, dispelling two myths. The first: marketing teams view Generative AI as a novelty or a toy that is not yet practically useful. This simply isn't true: I've seen marketing teams that have radically improved their workflow with Generative AI tools already.
3/ Second, wholly automated campaign optimization tools like Advantage+ and PMax are naturally hostile to advertiser goals. This isn't true, either. These tools can present competing incentives, but many advertisers benefit materially from their use. mobiledevmemo.com/google-pmax-me…
The control exerted by Apple & Google over the consumer internet is often expressed in terms of content discovery / distribution & payments. But a more subtle and esoteric form of control is emerging: advertising attribution. (1/X)
2/ Both Apple & Google have launched native advertising attribution frameworks for their mobile platforms & browsers. These dictate how and, crucially, how accurately digital advertising can be evaluated, based on rules set by these companies.
3/ These frameworks have been introduced alongside, or as components of, privacy policies that were authored by the platforms themselves. Moreover, it seems that the platforms' privacy restrictions don't consistently apply to their own advertising products.
Meta announced changes to its Aggregated Event Measurement (AEM) protocol this May. Meta introduced AEM a few months after Apple revealed (but before it rolled out) the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) privacy policy. (1/X)
2/ AEM was initially modeled on Private Click Measurement, Apple's own privacy-focused attribution framework for web-to-web and web-to-app advertising campaigns. Meta stated as much in an early version of its documentation for AEM.
3/ But I noted when Meta first announced the changes coming to AEM that the reference to PCM had been removed from its documentation. I interpreted this as meaning that AEM would no longer be tethered to the PCM design imperative.
Yesterday, The Verge reported that Meta will introduce a direct-to-install advertising product on Android in the EU once the DMA goes into effect next year. Some thoughts on the efficacy of such a product and its impact. (1/X)
2/ First, I believe the DMA will be systemically disruptive (in the EU). It has broad implications for all "gatekeepers" / large platform operators, not just on mobile. To my mind, the DMA represents a fundamental reset on competition in consumer tech. mobiledevmemo.com/a-deep-dive-on…
3/ Meta says that its ad product will allow consumers to install apps on Android directly from an ad click, sidestepping the intermediate step of visiting Google Play. This has the potential to meaningfully improve conversion rates (and thus decrease acquisition costs).
Yesterday, Apple announced its new Privacy Manifests feature, which takes direct aim at device fingerprinting on iOS. Privacy Manifests will hold SDK publishers and app developers accountable for how user data is collected and utilized. (1/X)
2/ Apple explicitly stated in its blog post announcing Privacy Manifests that their intended purpose is to disrupt device fingerprinting to force app developers to indicate a legitimate use case for data collection by potentially non-compliant SDKs. From the post (emphasis mine):
3/ Apple's approach here is, to my mind, ingenious: by effectively segmenting SDK permissions from general app permissions and forcing developers to certify that SDKs are behaving in accordance with App Tracking Transparency, Apple places the onus of compliance on developers.
Apple seems to be saying that app developers will be held liable for the validity of SDK data use attestations through the privacy manifest system. Will a BigCo legal team be willing to sign off on data usage claims by a third party that it knows to be practicing fingerprinting?
I’d characterize this list of SDKs as “commercially sensitive.”