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This is probably one of the juiciest newsletter issues to date (I even held it for a day to include a bombshell article that only came out late last night), but before we get to all that…

Nominations for the 2021 Mobile Growth Awards are now open! Think of it a bit like a cooler version of the Webbys, with a much less confusing website.

There are eight award categories:

  • Best Mobile Viral Campaign
  • Best Overall Growth Campaign
  • Best Phygital Experience
  • Best COVID Adaptation
  • Best COVID Retention
  • Best Digital Transformation
  • Best Mobile Innovation
  • Best Onboarding/Activation

We have some really impressive judges lined up for this, including industry thought leaders from Reddit, Calm, Google, and Credit One Bank to name a few (seriously, go look at the landing page). There will be an awards gala, and the winners get featured in a whitepaper on the most innovative thought leaders in mobile growth (see last year's version here).

All we need now are nominations from you. And yes, you can even nominate yourself!

Alex Bauer

Spotlight

Thoughts on 'data-driven attribution'

Over the last few weeks, I've seen a flurry of discussion around attribution theory, and how this plays into changes happening in the digital ecosystem. I find this whole topic fascinating, so that's where we're going to start today!

Most of these changes are 100% about finding a way to still get some data as tighter privacy polices descend — the companies doing the pitching might frame it as better for user privacy (and in many cases, it genuinely is), but few of them would be investing in this if the status quo weren't getting steadily eroded. Under the hood, these are tectonic shifts designed to reset marketers' expectations that 'campaign data' connects directly to anything observable from outside the black box.

The truth is that last-touch attribution (still the de facto standard on mobile) has always been the-least-bad-option-that-sort-of-works. Multi-touch was a promised land that never really arrived for most, and with universal identifiers like the IDFA now an endangered species, true MTA (especially across channels) is impossible: it's an unrealized dream left over from the old world of 'more tracking is the answer'.

It's clear that modeling and incrementality-based measurement will be key parts of the future of digital marketing (along with more robust on-device techniques), but there is still an inherent conflict between privacy and transparency.






Interesting Reads

Industry Buzz



Walled Gardens


UX

Data

Almost a month after launch, iOS 15+ adoption is still only 28%.

For whatever reason, Apple hasn't pushed the auto-update button yet.

The Encore

EventsEvents


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