Spotlight
The top 10 AI mobile apps have already pulled in over $14 million this year
AI has suddenly been everywhere this month. Including (according to this article) the app store charts.
I'm still trying to integrate it into my everyday workflow (nothing in this newsletter is written by ChatGPT yet…), but I've seen some pretty compelling examples of how GPT might help with mobile app marketing. Here's a selection:
Interesting Reads
How Duolingo reignited user growth
The last newsletter issue also linked to an article about Duolingo's growth model, but this is a much more in-depth narrative about how it came to be.
On a related note, Duolingo is getting into music education! As a former semi-professional pianist, this makes me very happy (I remember being fascinated with the idea of building a 'Duolingo for music' app…clearly not the only one).
OTT advertising: Complete guide to over the top ads
Over the past year, OTT has been a rapidly-ascendent buzzword. There are a variety of reasons for this, but in my experience there is usually one thing that gets it onto the radar of mobile marketers: the promise that OTT might be a substitute for the paid acquisition channels that dried up after Apple raised the ATT drawbridge.
Of course, it's no drop-in replacement. There are similarities to mobile, but OTT advertising is a deep lake of its own complexity. This article is a good primer on some of those differences.
Industry Buzz
"SKAdNetwork 4.0 compatibility rates are still very low -- less than 10% in the US"
InMobi has some data showing that SKAN 4.0 readiness is (unfortunately) still very low. And even that number doesn't tell the whole story, because 'compatibility' and 'being used' are not the same thing.
I've said it before, but here's your reminder: because there is no required timeline from Apple, and the previous versions of SKAN will continue to function just fine for the foreseeable future, we're looking at an extended ecosystem transition period. The lingering specter of rampant fingerprinting abuses (on which Apple has still not yet cracked down) further erodes the incentive to update quickly. And that's unfortunate, because SKAN 4 is finally approaching 'usable', where previous versions were just painful.
UX
Modern iOS Navigation Patterns
This is one of those awesome resources that succinctly identifies something useful in a way that has never occurred to me…but immediately makes intuitive sense.
I promise you've used apps that exemplify of all of these, but probably never even considered the differences.
Data
How Apple Search Ads + SKAdNetwork Upended iOS Marketing
Every few months, a new datapoint seems to bubble up about how much Apple Search Ads has grown since the enforcement of ATT. The specific numbers fluctuate, but the narrative is always the same: ASA is killing it now.
Here's the latest installment, courtesy of Kochava.
Peer Group Benchmarks - App Store
Apple recently upgraded their built-in App Analytics tool to include peer benchmarks. And the data is pretty unprecedented.
The tool only gives access to benchmarks for one's own apps, but Thomas Petit has helpfully compiled a selection of metrics from across several verticals.
Podcast
Mastering the Arts of Product Leadership and Management
SVP and Head of Product for Amex Digital Labs: Lisa Yokoyama
Lisa is a seasoned professional with extensive experience in product development and management. As the Head of Product within American Express' innovation lab, she drives the product vision, strategy, and roadmap for enterprise-wide digital solutions and oversees a team of sixty product leaders and managers focused on automation and digital consumer commerce, a business line she built from the ground up over the past ten years.
Who’s Hiring?
- Dashlane | B2C Lifecycle Marketing Manager — NYC/Paris/Lisbon
Do you have a mobile growth role you’d like to share with the community?
Just fill out this form — it’s free!
This week, while discussing the finer points of post-ATT attribution policies with a pretty sophisticated performance marketing team, I botched a detail.
The missing info slapped me in the face about five minutes after we all left the room, but to me, the more interesting point is this: mobile measurement is becoming both commoditized, and impenetrable. I think about this stuff almost every waking moment — it's literally my job — and yet even I have trouble keeping everything straight without regular review.
Measurement isn't going away, and there is good work being done to keep the machine running. But my hope is that all this byzantine complexity will also lead app developers toward shifting focus back to what really matters: apps are just tools to an end. In other words, make sure you're spending time on something that actually helps your business grow, not on clinging to data collection habits that might have just been feeding vanity metrics in the first place.
PS, in the comment of the last issue, I linked to this incredible story from Spotify about their multi-year effort to repair deep linking and attribution. Or at least, I tried to — in the height of irony, I botched the URL…so here's a second try!
Alex Bauer