Season 7, Episode 8: Games and AI (with Joost van Dreunen)

On this week's episode of the podcast, I am joined by Michael Komasinski, the CEO of Criteo, to explore the rapidly evolving landscape of agentic commerce and the critical role of recommendation systems in the AI era. We delve into how Criteo is positioning itself as a commerce intelligence layer for AI assistants and the technical distinctions between large language models and purpose-built recommendation engines. Among other things, we discuss:Criteo's recently announced advertising partnership with OpenAIWhether agentic commerce will transition from assisted shopping to fully autonomous purchase decisions without human oversightHow recommendation systems based on purchase data outperform large language models in providing accurate product discoveryIf retailers will eventually trust AI agents to manage complex fulfillment and brand trust in conversational environmentsWhy the integration of semantic language models and high-volume reward algorithms defines the future of digital commerceCriteo GO, Criteo's automated advertising platformHow the partnership between specialized advertising technology and generative AI platforms will reshape the global discovery layerThanks 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 backInterested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact Mobile Dev Memo advertising.

On this week's episode of the podcast, I am joined by Joost van Dreunen, the CEO of Aldora, an adjunct professor at NYU, and the author of the SuperJoost Playlist blog as well as the book One Up. We dive into the profound impact of generative artificial intelligence on the video game industry, exploring the immediate market reactions to new tools and the long-term implications for creative production. Among other things, we discuss:How generative AI models like Google's Genie will actually transform the fundamental mechanics of interactive game enginesWhy public markets reacted so aggressively to experimental AI tools by devaluing established gaming and advertising stocksWhether the reduction of production costs through AI will lead to a surplus of mediocre content for consumersIf game companies are making a mistake by prioritizing technical metrics over the cultural and creative aspects of developmentWhat happens to the cost of gaming hardware when AI companies compete for the same high-end chipsets and resourcesHow a move toward smaller, local language models could eventually disrupt the institutional power of large technology corporationsWhen the focus will shift from simple cost efficiency to utilizing AI for creating genuinely new consumer demandThanks 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 backInterested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact Mobile Dev Memo advertising.

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 backInterested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact Mobile Dev Memo advertising.The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:YouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify

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 processWeb onboarding and web-based user acquisition for mobile gamesThe analytics and reporting tools Matej sees used most commonlyApproaches to competitor analysisThe 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 backInterested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact Mobile Dev Memo advertising.The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:YouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify

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 standpointThe most common internal political issues that Ross sees arise around marketing measurement within organizationsThe non-obvious stakeholders for marketing measurement within an organizationHow 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 companiesThe 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 brandThanks 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 backInterested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact Mobile Dev Memo advertising.The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:YouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify

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 backInterested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact Mobile Dev Memo advertising.The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:YouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify

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:The concerns that parents face in the current digital landscapeThe specific issues that arise with teens' use of social mediaThe tools that parents have to manage the risks faced by their children from digital productsWhether being too restrictive as a parent with digital products is a genuine riskHow active US regulators have been in creating digital protections for childrenWhether any consensus exists around the "right age" for a child to be given a smartphoneThanks 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 backInterested 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 systemThe privacy vulnerabilities inherent in web-scale LLMsThe purpose of hosting an LLM on-premises or within a company's own data environmentThe use cases that most necessitate private model training or hostingThe cost profile of private model hosting and trainingThe liabilities that companies face in sending sensitive data to publicly-accessible LLMs in their workflowsThanks 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 backInterested 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 currentlyThe difference between audience analysis for existing users and audience analysis for advertising targeting, and whether these two use cases convergeHow a team should balance efforts across optimizing a product for an existing audience versus optimizing the product to onboard new, previously unserved audiencesWho in an organization typically owns audience insights, and whether that's optimalHow audience insights combine with user-level personalizationThanks 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 backInterested in advertising in the Mobile Dev Memo newsletter or podcast? ⁠Get in touch⁠.The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:YouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify

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 socialWhether a higher quality bar is applied to GenAI-produced creative for CTV than for other channelsHow well-integrated with the specific CTV platforms GenAI creative production tools must beWhether specific aspects of CTV -- such as the opportunity for dynamic, in-stream product placements -- lend themselves to GenAI creativeThe most substantive barriers to entry for CTV for advertisersThe most pervasive misconception that advertisers have about CTVThanks 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 backInterested in advertising in the Mobile Dev Memo newsletter or podcast? ⁠Get in touch⁠.The Mobile Dev Memo podcast is available on:YouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify