Mobile Dev Memo Podcast

Felix The, SVP of Product and Engineering at Unity who leads ads, ML and runtime data efforts, explains Vector as Unity's ML-powered growth platform. He discusses integrating engine runtime signals for better predictions. They cover unified large models, generative creative exploration, personalized micro-cohort creatives, and using playables to de-risk soft launches.

Christina Augustine, COO at Bloomreach and former software engineer, leads AI-enabled personalization and agentic commerce. She traces the move from predictive models to generative agents. Short takes cover real-time one-to-one personalization vs cohorts, channel trade-offs like SMS versus email, data quality as the main bottleneck, conversational shopping benefits, and the rise of agent-to-agent personalization.

Michael Komasinski, CEO of Criteo, leads the company through commerce and adtech innovations. He explores agentic commerce and Criteo’s role as a commerce intelligence layer for AI assistants. They compare recommendation systems to large language models, discuss the OpenAI advertising partnership, Criteo GO self-serve ads, and how recommendation tech reshapes product discovery and retail integrations.

Joost van Dreunen, CEO of Aldora and NYU adjunct professor who studies games and their economics, joins to discuss AI's ripple effects on gaming. They explore how generative models could change game engines. Short-term market shocks, production efficiency versus creative demand, rising hardware competition, and the risk of AI-driven mediocrity are examined in lively debate.

A big-picture take on how AI will swell digital production until discoverability becomes the real bottleneck. It explores shifting economic constraints from production to distribution and the battle for human attention. The conversation covers modern ad mechanics, personalized feeds, auction dynamics, and why platforms capture value as supply outpaces findability.

Matej Lancaric, a mobile gaming UA consultant and creative lead who runs a motion design team and writes the Brutally Honest newsletter. He talks about creative strategy and using AI in creative production. Web onboarding and web-based UA for games come up, plus web shops and payment sync. They cover analytics stacks, playables and how fast creatives get cloned at scale.

Ross Link, CEO of Marketing Attribution and marketing measurement veteran, and Carl Mela, Duke quantitative marketing professor, discuss measuring long-term brand advertising. They cover what firms get wrong about brand measurement. They debate short-term metrics versus brand strategy and internal politics around measurement. They explain Carl’s two brand-performance metrics and practical tools for nascent brands.

Rishabh Jain, CEO and co-founder of FERMÀT Commerce and commenter on commerce and ad strategies in AI, joins to dissect ads in ChatGPT. He explores why ads can fund product improvements and boost discovery. They weigh CPM launch choices, targeting and privacy tradeoffs, who wins early, and what success could look like in a year. The tone is optimistic but focused on disciplined execution.

Karl Stillner, CEO and co-founder of Bright Canary, builds tools to help parents understand their children’s digital activity. Conversation covers which parents worry most, how COVID changed device use, the unique harms of social media, tools parents can use today, regulatory developments like Sammy’s Law, and recommended ages for phones and social networks.

Alfred Succer, founder of Nova Nuggets, dives into the realm of sovereign AI, emphasizing the significance of controlling AI environments for privacy and security. He highlights vulnerabilities in public LLMs, such as data residue and model contamination. Alfred discusses the growing need for on-premises model hosting, especially in regulated industries, and the economic advantages it holds. Unexpected applications in agriculture and conservation also emerge as intriguing new frontiers. Tune in to discover how sovereign AI can transform enterprise practices!