Season 5, Episode 23: Meta's AI advertising playbook (with Matt Steiner)

In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with returning guest Mikołaj Barczentewicz on the current state of DMA enforcement, including the recently-released text of the European Commission's April decision on Meta's Pay or Okay business model. Mikołaj returns to the podcast for his fourth appearance — he’s a professor of law at the University of Surrey and holds a PhD in Law from the University of Oxford. He also regularly publishes insightful commentary on the EU regulatory landscape on his blog, EU Tech Reg.Among other things, we episode covers:An overview of the EC’s April decision related to Meta’s Pay or Okay model;What the EC says about the economic impact of DMA enforcement with its decision; The changes that Meta made to its business model in the EU after the EC and EDPB published their preliminary guidance on its Pay-or-Okay model; How this decision impacts other so-called gatekeepers; The knock-on economic implications of this decision;The latest developments in EU AI regulation.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.Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

This week’s episode of the podcast is in the MDM Mailbag format. I recruited Rishabh Jain, the CEO of eCommerce experience platform FERMÀT, to answer questions submitted by the MDM community. Among other topics, those questions related to:the "universal truths" of user acquisitiona viable "self-learning path" for acquiring data analytics / data science skillsthe role of technical media buyers going forwardthe purpose of the CMO rolewhat happens if Google is forced to divest part of its Network businessThanks 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.Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:Apple PodcastsSpotify

My guest on this podcast is Maor Sadra, the CEO and co-founder of INCMRNTAL, an advertising measurement company. Full disclosure: I was one of the first investors in INCRMNTAL. The impetus for this conversation was a blog post that Maor recently published: I Measured Incrementality. Now What?. In this episode, among other things, we discuss:Why discrete, one-off experiments are not the optimal way to measure incrementalityThe principal challenge in measuring incrementalityHow the "AI-ification" of marketing changes advertising measurementThe options that marketers have for attribution and optimization once every scaled channel offers AI-enabled total automationHow marketing teams should utilize the conversion / ROAS data that is reported by platformsThanks 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.Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

In this episode of the podcast, I speak with Matt Steiner, Meta's Vice President of Monetization Infrastructure, Ranking & AI Foundations, about the application of AI to the company's advertising platform.Among other things, we discuss:How ad ranking and selection are done at MetaThe evolution and functionality of Meta's various AI-enabled ranking and selection tools, from Lattice to Andromeda to GEMThe core architecture of Meta's advertising-focused AI modelsWhat's next on Meta's roadmap concerning the application of AI to advertisingHow and whether talent is a moat for any business applying AI to it advertising platformThanks 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.Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact ⁠Marketecture⁠.

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.