S07, E30: MDM Mailbag #8 (with Thomas Petit)

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Welcome to the Mobile Dev Memo podcast. I'm your host Eric Seufert, and I'm joined today for the eighth installment of the Mobile Dev Memo Mailbag series by

Thomas Petit, who's actually the first returning MDM Mailbag guest. So, Thomas, welcome back.
Hi Eric, very very honored to return. And yeah, very curious about the questions from the audience.
Yes, so as a reminder to the audience, these questions are fielded from the Mobile Dev Memo community. Well, some of them, I supplemented the list. I'm in the middle of a move, so I didn't get around to actually publishing the form until Sunday. And sometimes I forget that not everyone's permanently online like myself. So, we got some We did get some questions. We got some good questions. But yeah, let's just let's just dive right in. Or actually, before we do that, why don't you introduce yourself, you know, to maybe the handful of people who who don't know you? A very very prominent voice in the in the mobile space, but for anyone who's who's unaware of who you are, you can introduce yourself, and then just tell me what you've been up to.
Yeah, sure. I'm an independent, so people call that consultant or freelancers. I don't, but it's what it is. It's been about over a decade, like 12 years, something. I specialize mostly in subscription apps, so I don't do that much gaming or or fintech like, but all kind of

subscriptions I like to work with indie developers, middle class, and very big subscription apps, so a bit of every stage, largely on acquisition, monetization, and the data underlying it, so a lot of attribution, product analytics, and so on.
Well, it's good to have you back. I have been remiss in scheduling these, and I think the audience really loves the mailbag series cuz it's much more tactical and practical. And so, I'm I'm excited to dive in. Let me start with some fan-submitted questions. I thought this is a good one cuz it's just so I mean, you can interpret it a number of different ways. So, here we'll we'll kick off with is incrementality the way?
Yes and no. I mean, obviously for a very long time people were not looking at it enough. Um regardless what tool you're looking at, like the CPI or CPA, or return that you see measured is highly dependent on the the attribution method, and it's only since it's got a bit for a few years that start people have started and also because networks are modeling a lot more conversion that

people got interesting into non-last click, and oh, well, is this really incremental? Would I have it happen if I didn't pay for that? Which I think is great, but [snorts] it's kind of you need it, but it's not enough in the sense that for most network, if not all, that's not going to be enough for the network to actually run the ads, even if Meta has some kind of incremental conversion features and so on, but you want for yourself in terms of budget allocation the incrementality of it, but you still need the deterministic, last click, user level, because incremental is not usual user level, and you still need those for the mechanics of ad auction to actually happen, for the next impression to show up. So, I don't think it's it's it's never been a replacement, it's something if you don't have it, for sure you're making a mistake, but you can't have everything on incremental alone just because Meta, Google, Apple, TikTok, whoever is not going to be able to properly work from it. So, still need

a bit of both and I think that's what makes the game interesting as well. Like looking at different methods of last click and incrementality and MMM and whatever. And I think that's the game of attrition. No, the not none is right, but you form a better opinion when you pile several of them up.
Yeah, I I think it's interesting how the sentiment has changed around this. I think you know, this obviously there's a push into media mix modeling a couple years ago in the sort of like immediate wake of ATT. And you know, media mix models are great, right? You could have one and it could be very helpful to your business or you could do some kind of like real-time incremental measurement like our wonderful sponsors offer Incremental, the company Incremental. You But But it's like it's not that alone is is probably not going to be sufficient. And so, I think there's a little bit of a recognition that maybe the probabilistic approaches were oversold 2021-ish. And I mean, I don't know how

these media mix model vendors survive. I mean, there's so many of them on LinkedIn. I don't know how how are there this many of them? And I feel like it's Do you remember like kind of in the earlier days the MMPs? There were a lot of them and like they'd have like one or two big flagship customers. It reminds me of Mad Men. You know, all those little agencies, they had like their flagship customer that kept the lights on. Remember, it was Lucky Strike for you know, earlier on in the Mad Men series. Like and Lucky Strike left the agency and it like did collapse, right? And I think that was that was the MMP space for a while and then it consolidated or it just it just eroded. And there were a couple and now there's just so many. I don't I don't know how there are this many MMM vendors. There can't be that many. They're all chasing the handful of I'm Are they going for brands now? just don't understand who they're serving, what customer base they're serving cuz there aren't that many scaled advertisers that would not that are in that sweet spot of I'm too small to build this myself, but I'm too big

to be ignorant of the fact that I need it. Like that that's a tiny market space to be going after and there's like a thousand of these vendors.
Even more surprising that both Google and Meta have released like a open-source model out of it and I was discussing with somebody in this field not long ago and they were telling me over 80% of the MMM companies that you think of are just like a a layer on top of those two, like of Merkle Gen and and Robin specifically. They just repackage it very nicely, which is So I don't I don't think that can last forever. I guess the reason there's so many of them is maybe because it's not really a None of the solution is perfect. Like clients are always going to be unhappy unhappy one way or another. So maybe they keep switch some keep switching, but I I I can't see this continuing forever like this and I don't know. I've stayed a bit away. I've worked with a couple of the bigger players. I've worked a bit on the on the open-source models, but yeah, there's many of them. I don't I I don't get it either, but I stopped I stopped trying understanding

the mean market of that one.
So I had Michael Kaminsky on the show a couple weeks ago and we were talking about open-source MMM. And he you know, he runs an an an MMM company. And you know, we we were talking about like the calibration and it's like all that integration stuff is the the product. I mean that is just integrating with the product and they're they're integrating with the the client and their data and calibrating and aligning the the output with the business goals. That's that's the product that you're offering, right? I also listened to a podcast with Olivia Cory on on the Mark Ritscher podcast a couple weeks ago. I was in Italy and she made this point. It's like, yeah, like, you know, house they do kind of geo tests for incrementality measurement. Which is like, we're best friends with the MMPs. We love the MMPs. We don't compete with the MMPs. Like, we complement the MMPs. You need an MMP. All of our app clients have to have an MMP. If we didn't have that, they'd have a lot less data to to go on and and to to be able to use us to do

the sort of reconciliation. And so, I think we have settled in this this configuration where customers or clients or consumer you know, the the app advertisers. Maybe we're talking about apps in this podcast, not like big consumer brands, but you know, app advertisers are are sort of like accepting and acknowledging that you need both. And and one of the other alone on its own is not going to be sufficient.
I'm also surprised about how many of them still run only on the MMP, but the yeah, which is kind of crazy, but
Yeah, well, that's that's also that's just that's that's a broken way to operate. You know, that whole that whole thing, you mean you heard about the the controversy with like Bill Gates' daughter running that cookie stuffing fraud scheme with her startup.
Oh, no, I didn't read about that one. Must have been Euro maxing too much.
Yeah, well, yeah, you've been Euro maxing. Unfortunately, I'm X maxing.
[laughter]
Permanently, but you know, she she had a startup that was like Honey or whatever, you know, where you did like rewards and stuff. And so,
Oh, yeah, I know Honey. It's very big, yeah.

There was another there was another one that got caught in a similar scam years ago. I don't know I don't think it was Honey, but it was they were cookie stuffing. So, they were basically like taking credit for like conversions they didn't deliver.
Yeah.
And this was a tiny startup. They had no revenues. There weren't that many customers. The only reason it was noteworthy was Bill Gates' daughter was like a co-founder. But, I mean, I wanted to post that that meme of the guy with the noose around his neck. You know what I'm talking about? And like these people freaking out about like having, you know, gotten defrauded by this firm. And and it's like if you're a media buyer on that, you know, you've got some grizzled veteran who's like, "First time?" Like, this is why you need incremental measurement. And like, people complain about fraud, and obviously fraud exists, and I wrote this piece in AdExchanger years ago that got like a lot of hostility to it. About like, yeah, fraud exists, fraud's regrettable, fraud is a a moral atrocity. Sure, I agree with all that. But, if you're doing your job,
No.
I mean, it's just it's it's unfortunate

that it exists, and it it does cost it's a drag on the digital economy, and it sort of extracts a lot of money from the digital economy, and it's unfortunate, but, you know, if you're doing your job well, you should probably be able to avoid the overwhelming majority of it.
Yeah. I also have this stand where it's basically your fault as a marketer if you get a lot of Yeah.
It's your fault.
Yeah.
I mean, are you Yeah, you could blame, I don't know, the Yeah, the system, I got you blame Why does evil exist in the world? Like, I don't know. Like, do we live in a just society? I mean, we could ask these philosophical questions, I guess, but we know that fraud exists. Fraud exists in in every aspect of life. And, you know, when there's a lot of money on on the line, it's going to attract more of it. And and so, it's you have to be vigilant. And and you know, if you're doing your job, like, you should be able to avoid the vast majority of it. But, what bothers me is these voices in the space

that tell you that you're not sophisticated or smart enough to detect fraud. And I I just reject that out of hand. I mean, and and they're always selling a service, right? It's like, they're they're only they are smart enough to build the tools to detect fraud, not you, media buyer. And I just I just ask, you know, like, I you know, my the example I usually give is like, I we built this tool at a company I was working at a while ago, and or, you know, we just had built this technique, and it was really interesting, and we got invited to like a very large company to present to their marketing org, and I went in there thinking it's going to be some conference room with like eight people and like a pizza and it was like an auditorium on their campus of like 300 people and I just asked like out of curiosity, how many of you have PhDs? And it was like more than half. And so like these you know, some startup influencer like ad fraud influencer will tell you like I'm the only person that's capable of telling you how much fraud you're encountering. And then you go into a a room like that and you say, "No, I think I'm good." Like I think I've got it. Don't worry

about us. Like don't worry about me and it and it's not even you know, that you need the PhD or whatever you need to a massive team, but I think it's just you know, there's obvious sort of like well-founded techniques to root it out and to say that you need to subscribe to some service or have some consultant come in and charge you 500k a year which is a quote I've seen to run these systems that they've developed you know, as a team of one. I mean, it's just absurd on its face.
Well, seeing it as a lost battle is that when you get there, you're fighting on on on technicalities, like on how it's actually happening, on detecting it and so. And and I guess the fraudsters are always going to be faster and more efficient in finding another way before it's detected. I'm not interested in how it's happening. I'm just interested in in in if stuff I'm buying is largely incremental and there's 20% of fraud mix in in in inside of it. Well, it's still incremental as a whole and I I consider that trying to fighting it is going to cost more and more effort than money

than actually I just want to be aware of the channels that are like largely fraud. And I don't need to know what they're doing, the technique, the exact thing and the those those detection system, they're pretty complex. I don't need that. I just need that to know that hey, there's a lot of it there and I can see it because the conversation are non-incremental which I don't see on last click, but I'm going to eventually see running in any other method incrementality, geo test, whatever. And it should be obvious enough that I don't need a tool. So, it's one of these It's one of the I'm not arguing that some case might be helpful and so on, but I'm trying to weed out a part that is so big that you don't need this to see it. And if you need it, then the amount of effort is so big that I'm like, "Nah, I'm not a I'm not interested."
Right, exactly. It's just a It's just a very basic cost-benefit analysis. Like, how much is this going to cost me to root it out? And what is your service cost? And like, what you know, at at what at what point am I actually losing money here by rooting out this fraud? I read a piece in The Current this

morning, and The Current is owned by The Trade Desk. So, like, you have to interpret everything that you read in that publication in that through that lens, but they were saying that there's this trend now, or there's this impulse now for companies to actually reduce the amount of creative that they're launching. That that that this impulse to just always increase the volume of creative had actually become like destructive. And now people were launching too much creative. And and that people were seeing success in pulling back on the amount of creative. My sense is that may be true for specific companies, but I think in general people are are not launching enough creative in terms of truly differentiated concepts. They're a lot of times you see people saturating concepts with too many variants, but I still think in general people are sort of like under-resourcing creative. But what's what's your take there? How do you see the the benefits of of increasing creative? Like, if you go into a you know, sort of like take the take a client at random,

were they launching enough creative? Is is is that still a growth lever?
I'm I'm totally aligned with you that it's mostly not enough, and I it went out of a bit of hands because people are launching close variants. And like, "Oh, look, I've launched a thousand ads this month." And I look at them, and I'm like, "No, you've launched 18 ads this month. And 18 is just not enough." Like, because your ads are all the same, which is a bit pointless. So, the the sheer number because it comes from above like, "Oh, we need to have this minimum look. Oh, this company does 25,000 ads a month. We need to do like them." And it pushes people towards the the just the number, which is meaningless per se. But obviously, almost nobody launch enough like enough enough concept, enough attempts, enough messaging, enough like sub niche and specific audience, younger, older, whatever gender, type of players, what not. I guess the only counter in that is that we're both thinking about pure performance here. And it's true that you run like more more brand ads or that you

have the conjunction of brand and and performance. You may want to really choose which shots you give with the with the brand messaging. But on the performance side, I guess it's almost never enough. So, we've gone we've gone too far in close variants, but I don't think we're anywhere too far in in the sheer number. And the bigger companies I've seen, they have like absurdly high numbers of total creative, but within it, it's still a a huge amount of different concepts non-stop. Like it's an ever-ending process. And no, I don't think we've gone too far. I guess it's going to get even further like ads of creative is so way down. So, it's more about the I guess the technicality now is not so much into how you produce them. The two hard parts are one, how do I come to with actually new creative that are not a copy or clone of the previous one that is meaningless because it is exactly the same one. And the other one is how do you deploy so many creative because it's not when the volume goes up like

there's a bunch of like false negative. You haven't tried enough, but you obviously don't want to put spend across like behind every single one of them because it costs a lot of money. So, it's still it's still tricky to deploy, but I don't think the the sheer number of creative is supposed to go down now. So, I guess defines how you do it It depends how you define the but no, I would mostly disagree with that.
Yeah. I mean, again, like you have to kind of try to work backwards and like, okay, what is the trade desk trying to message here? And I think, you know, the trade desk is not in a position to do the same kind of like creative measurement creation that that meta is. And you know, the trade desk just serves a vastly different client base, so it's it's totally different advertiser categories. What So, let's say you onboard a new client, you're coming in, you're doing like an audit, kicking the tires. What's the first thing you look at?
Usually, the first thing I look at is how is the data flowing to the ad platform? Then, oh, look at my So, let let let's assume I'm coming on the UA side, like on the acquisition side. And people are expecting me to check the ads dashboard or their own dashboard. And

usually, the first thing I look at is is the data flowing to the platform good enough? Like, so typically for meta in the events manager or in Google in the they changed the name three times, but like conversion tools, conversion, whatever. Because there's often a mess there, like duplicates, bizarre names, whatever. Sometimes, people are not optimizing to what they think they're optimizing towards. Sometimes, it's just a very very dumb conversion. So, I just want to make sure that what the the of what the network is receiving. And then only I would get into into results internally, you know, ideally not in the ads manager, but in the BI. And so, there's a bunch of definition there, a couple of patterns there would be people who are oversimplifying the proxy results. And I I I think one of these pattern is And it's it's a bit like what what we mentioned about last click and incrementality before. What the platform needs to operate and what you're trying to achieve are two very different things. And if you try to conflate the

two into one, it will be suboptimal. Like So, and that's why I start looking at what data is sent to the to the platform because I want to know how they're going to interpret it. And then secondly, I look, okay, now that we've got this proxy is it what you're looking after because that's not going to be good enough. Like you're going to be using averages and you're not going to look at how the core thing is going and so on. So, those would be would be like so first checks. I do look at like money distribution, what kind I also try to I mean especially if I'm coming in, I'm like, okay, where where's going to be the low hanging fruit? It's either going to be that they've made a blunder and very often that's an integration and conversion signal as well. And the second one is like, okay, where is the most money going because that's what I'm going to focus on. Like this small channel that is spending 2% of the spend, I'm not going to look at it first months because I've got bigger fish to fry first. So, I'm going to look for the big wins. So, typically I'm going to like focus on the one two bigger channel. See see Yeah, I'm looking for blunders very often. Um they often are I

guess as an external it's also good that you find these blunders in the first months and it gives you a lot of credibility because there was an instant win and then only you can get into the higher forward wins that are going to take three months to build and stuff. But if you start straight up with the hard stuff, people tend to lose trust. They haven't seen like an impact within three months and then they're like, what is this guy doing? So, I always look for a blunder basically and honestly 99 of the time there is a blunder. It's actually
That's such a veteran consultant. You just you just gave out like millions of dollars in consulting fees to aspiring app growth consultants. That's such a veteran like insight. It just just how to optimize the engagement.
[laughter]
Yeah, maybe. I don't know.
No, but it's but it's true and
I was discussing earlier today with somebody who was like, I don't know, in the last six months it's looks like every 18 years old kid who's had an app for the for three months is actually

selling consulting gig. And I'm not concerned. I'm not like I I see it as a threat. Just the same way they were before like an enormous amount of different agencies and I was like the few agencies that are actually good, they're going to raise the bar for everybody. That's good. I'm going to see better accounts and stuff. But most of them they're so bad that they they're going to end up calling me anyway. So I'm not very worried about like the long tail of low quality competition ever. Like yeah, it's not really a big concern. I guess if you're trying to build like a big agency you look at it more but I'm a solo person. I don't really mind. It's okay. I'd rather sharing what I've learned on the way and that there's more better people and I see less of the shitty account but it's true that it's a benefit of when people have been handled very poorly there's more blunders and more blunders may you look like you're a star when you're just like no, I just corrected something that should never have happened.
Yeah. Yeah, but it's true and I mean it it it's not like it's extractive or manipulative. I mean you come up with a

quick early win and it's going to be a more productive engagement for everybody cuz you're not going to be fighting skepticism, right? It's just it's everyone wins.
Yeah, and there's a trust factor. You know, somebody external comes in you need to see that they're really in and the wins help everybody. Sometimes when you don't find it it gets tricky because then you get on to stuff that takes longer and you don't have the buy-in to actually make it happen and yeah, everything goes slower and is more frustrating. So I I I don't think that's like bad to do that and on the contrary I'm going to try to like what takes the lowest amount of effort first, let's get a win and then we move on to the further stuff. Sounds like a logical way to proceed to me.
Yeah, you're right. It's win-win. It's just managing expectations and like you said establishing credibility, giving yourself a clear pathway to to operate.
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We've seen this this surge in apps submitted to the App Store. It's, you know, vibe coding is has given anyone the tools to make an app and that I think that's I think that's fantastic. I think that's great. I think people have a very clear tractable pathway to bringing their visions to life now and it's it's fantastic. It's just going to result in more people having more creative output and more choice and, you know, more more sort of like personal fulfillment with their spare time. I think it's a fantastic dynamic that we're living in right now. But, you know, App Store's crowded. There's a lot of junk, you know, it's resulted

resulted in a lot of junk being being pushed in the App Store. You know, that's that now it's, you know, distribution's become like the the sort of like critical skill. So, let's say that you're talking to one of these people that's launched their first app. It's just some individual, some solo dev. They did all the coding in cloud. They're very proud of it. Let's say it's a really great product and they want to scale it. Maybe they want to turn it into a business. What's the playbook? How do you go from zero to 5K in ad spend?
Yeah, the the zero to 5K is kind of the the the the the worst. Like, I do it for a couple of friends because I like them, but as a business it's terrible business. Nobody wants to be in that segment. Basically, because it's the the biggest effort for the least impact. You're not going to be able to like get paid properly. And it's going to be harder. There's no data. You don't know where the creative win is. Like, it's it's really the hardest. Like, the the the the first thing I'd say is like, have you tried anything that wasn't paid that because maybe I'm going to see a signal that there is something. Like, could be a messaging, could be a very particular audience that you may find outside of the the normal path, and maybe cleaning the store page and whatever, but usually it's going to be

down to like men start posting videos on TikTok. And it's TikTok not because TikTok is better, just because there's still organic distribution in there. You can have a fresh account and publish 50 crap video and there's a good one and TikTok is going to show it. Which that used to happen on on Instagram as well, doesn't so much like on Facebook or Instagram, so it's much harder. And then when I find this angle, I usually put my money first on meta than on TikTok. So, use TikTok as a like what is the angle, what is the messaging that gets people interested, then put the money behind it on I would most likely do it on meta just because I don't know. It's not necessarily the easiest, but it's kind of like the one that had the algorithm that picks really fast into who's going to be interested into that product. They're just really really good at it. And even though competing network can be very good at it like and typically Google or AppLovin are very good at it, but they require more volume to do that. So, I'd rather do it later and down the road. But, yeah, my my my

first reply is I just don't anymore like because it's very tricky. And the second reply is find a message before you you throw the money out. It's funny how many conversation I see among these zero to one people in the about how bad the LLM advice is on how to integrate the meta SDK, how to set up your conversion, how to set up the first campaign. Like it's really really bad. And I guess that's the reason most platforms are making it so easy to create your first campaign like next next everything is set up by default, which is like both good and bad, but I guess it opens up the possibility for the very long tail of advertiser to get started, which is not a bad thing per se, but yeah, I'd be careful like LLMs are good at many many things. Doing the zero to one in in UA is not necessarily one where they're very good at.
Yeah, I mean I agree that's a horrible it's just a purgatory for a business.
Yeah, there's a problem I think the problem though is is getting that is scaling up the creative production piece. It's like all It's like It's like

the whole orchestration in the the pipeline. Like that it it just takes a lot of It's in in a big piece of it is just the unknown unknowns, right? It's like, "Okay, I had to make video creative. How do I do that?" And like I've got to set up some form of attribution. How do I do that? Now, I I think if you're going to the 5K, just start with Meta and do Like I agree with you with the TikTok trying to get organic distribution is to restart. When you're getting into a paid, I would go to Meta and stick with Meta up to 10K a month and then you're
even for Meta, we'll try a couple TikTok to see what's what's speaking so that you don't burn your 5 or 10K in the first creative testing to realize they were all Like at least you've done the effort a little bit to see, "Oh, this is catching attention." So, at least you you I've I've I've seen a lot of people burn their 5 or 10K because they haven't done that and they come to Facebook with their two videos and those two videos are complete crap. And the the first 5K are burned already. So, that's why even for paid, I would start on TikTok organic. This will say, "Oh, that one is a bit from more promising. I'm going to put my like my face of my

5K into that one rather than burning it down entirely."
Yes, I agree with that. I absolutely agree with that. What tools you see people use to generate creative now cuz I I people talk about Higgs Field as a creative production tool. It's not. I don't think anyone's using that for creative production. It's too expensive. People using that for fake influencer videos. That's not I don't believe that's being used for ad creative. And that's I think the problem that companies going to run into. At scale, that's the scalable product. It's ad creative that I don't think people are going to go to tools like that for. I think they're using it for influencer video generation, which you're going to get a lot of people running small amounts of spend there and then not having any success and then stopping. I I think a lot I think the way that they're projecting out revenues, my sense is they're making a lot of assumptions about the durability of scaling those tiny influencers into like large influencers and they're just

by definition there aren't a lot of large influencers. But what tools are you seeing people use to generate creative?
I almost don't want to give too many names because my experience has been it's so like fragmented and diversified. Like obviously a bunch of people use the the main models directly because anyway everything is based on the on the main models anyway, but I see a lot of I see a lot of fragmentation in there because a lot of tools are are good at just one thing. One is good to make variants. One is good to make the voice-overs. So I see people using 11 Labs a lot for voice only, but then not for the video. And then they would use this to make variants and that. Like there's one that a lot of people have used around me that is called Arcads that has grown quite a bit. I haven't had the best result myself, but I know a lot of my clients have used it at some point. And I see them and I guess it's because we're still in the like to me it's only about a year that we've got AI video creative. Like everything that was before summer 2025 was pretty Like because the video models were not good enough. And that year has been a lot of experimentation

of jumping from one tool to another and I'm not seeing yet forming like and everybody has their own process and and so on. I see people work in this field. They're trying to glue different steps into one process that they can package and sell to the clients because they know that they're not going to replicate a model and because they know it's painful to say, "Okay, so I'm going to have to generate the model the like the let's say it's a AI UGC. I'm going to have to generate the persona. And then there's a script and then I'm going to need to edit it and then I'm going to need to make the voice-over and then the text over. And actually it's the the whole process of sticking this one tool for each that is quite painful. So I've got a couple of friends that are working on that, but they're very small tools. If I look at my portfolio, I see like a very clear pattern that is established like uh that one is great to do a a UGC. And then I see also a bunch of of agencies that had to tool for themselves and are slowly moving from okay, nobody nobody wants to pay for my service anymore, but they want to pay for like

but I had to build something to stitch these different tools together. But they're usually small like I haven't seen any one of them in particular like really become standard in my portfolio like and that's why I don't I don't want to give like a couple of names because I think that it's like myriad of names. And they change every 3 months because oh look, the new shiny toy. And then I see everybody jumping on it and then 3 months after nobody talks about it anymore, which is very hard when you build a SaaS in this environment right now because it's kind of like even if you manage to get the momentum and a lot of influx of leads or whatever, the whole castle can crumble within a few weeks because there's a new shiny toy. So it's it's pretty tough. There's also the fact not only because there's a new shiny toy, but because there's a price war now and a lot of people would switch just because the cost of credits cheaper on the other one. They don't really give care which which output is exactly better. It's just like oh look, free credits over there. Let's swap. And that's why I I keep seeing people swapping quite a lot. I think it's not going to last like this forever but

because it was the first year for the video, it's in pretty fuzzy how it's going to concentrate. I don't have it very clear yet.
I I agree 100%. That's a very tough space to be launching into right now. It's a race to the bottom on cost. You've got really performing open weight models. If I was at a big company, big meaning like let's say spending upwards of 10 mil a month, mo- mobile, I would distill Kimmy, K3, and into a model that is fine-tuned on my own creative.
But then you say that because we're in August and it's possible that in November you've got another name to throw.
Yeah, but that would buy you 6 months, I think. Yeah, you have to do you have to do it every but if you're big enough company spending 10 million a month, that's worth you're going to spend less doing that than you are running 2,000 creative creatives a month through some outsourcer who's just or through company basically that's just wrapped around

probably one of the one of the frontier models that's the enterprise plan. So like you you you'll spend less doing that. And maybe you get a year, I don't know. At some point like you get it just gets you good enough. Like I talk about this a lot, but like once you've done these integrations like often times you know, you've validated this against a need and it meets the need and why would you ever upgrade? Like I do all of my transcription of my podcast with Gemini 3.1 flash preview. Why would I ever change? It's so cheap. And sure, I could go to flash 3.5, it's more expensive. Why? The transcripts are great. I have no problem with the transcripts. I'm never going to change that until Google deprecates it on Vertex AI. And so and then I'll just update to like whatever the the next most advanced model is, not the cutting edge. I have zero problem with my transcripts. I think they're perfect. I don't think you can improve upon them. So why would I ever change that unless I'm forced to because it's costing

Google money to process these queries or these prompts. And like the same even goes for the video production, the clipping, all that stuff. I think it's great. I have no And you could tell me, well, it might be 8% better if you Okay, so what? I don't It's not worth anything to me. It's worth nothing to me to get 50% better. Cuz it works fine. It meets the need. There's certain use cases where yeah, I would generate more revenue or whatever and then we could have that discussion, but for these things that are just satisfying the checking the box or satisfying the need, they're serving the purpose. And it's binary in that way, I'm never going to upgrade. I'm never going to upgrade. And you might get there with creative. You might get there with creative production.
Yeah, we're not there we're not there yet and especially because the video generation cost a lot of money but the analogy is true for certain niche like I see people who have the process for voice and especially around translation. Oh, I've got this creative that works. I need it to have it in 12 language now. I don't really care if it's 5% better left and right because they found something that kind of works. The

process is there and the time gain into just applying this and at some point it might switch but I yeah we're not there yet for video generation but yeah for I guess scripting is also an easy one where it's like doesn't really matter that it's 10x better.
All right. Web to app. I mean I feel like this is I don't know. This feels like old hat. This is not like a new field anymore. This is what everyone's doing. I've got a question and let me tie that into a a user submitted question. And I'll I'll adapt the user submitted question because it's a little a little too uh pointed but talk to me about uh optimizing the web app onboarding. Like how do you how do you think about that in terms of like length and friction and you know how do you think about that from like a measurement and unit economics standpoint? Like how do you think about the impact on the unit economics? Like like what's the Have you have I I don't like so the question was hinting at like a universal optimum. And I don't think there is. It's going to be very context dependent, very client dependent but like talk to me about the process you go through to optimize that and then how do you think about that in terms of like conversion but also like the unit economics of

those people. Do they tend to be better? Can you overcome some of the frictions going straight app to app with just a more optimized onboarding? So talk to me about your process for optimizing the web to app onboarding.
Yeah. I'll answer through different ways. The The first one is that if I was in an ideal world, I would want my acquisition to be half half, half on the web, half direct to the store. Less dependencies like when one thing breaks which always happen, I've got the other one. The reality is that is never like this. It's always almost 100% zero or zero or 100%. I've seen many clients for whom the web to app unit they tried really hard, just didn't work. I've been myself over a million dollar on one that I was sure was going to work and it didn't and that's on me. But yeah, it always end up that one of the two is just a better fit for that particular use case. It's especially true like the basically the more the time to experience the aha moment in the app is short, the harder it is to move to the

web. So, that's true for gaming, that's true for a lot of photo video editors that can show the wow moment instantly in the app. That's true for a couple of utility apps where you don't need like those presentation quiz and so on. And then the opposite way in health and fitness, obviously, a lot of education and a lot of like the look maxing stuff as well and where dating, fintech, like anytime there's more complexity into the app, like it kind of makes sense to do that. And I think the wrong conversation all along has been oh yeah, you're going to pay 5% fee or 3% fee to Stripe instead of 30% of whatever and this is such a bad reason to do web to app because conversion rates are different and it hides like the the whole problem around it. But it's more I think one of the the issue is actually the the app store itself is such a bottleneck. Like even if you can change your screenshot and stuff, like the experience is terrible. There's not a lot you can say. And if it's from the ad, if you need something to warm up the

user or an explainer or to show something, the app store is a terrible place to do that. And so, especially if you've got like low install rate, like kind of makes sense. If you've got longer boarding, kind of makes sense. And sometime I'm trying to like what we're doing, are we doing it for the hype of web flows or does it actually make sense for the type of user we're trying to reach? So, older user are a bit is to reach on the web, for instance. Does it make sense to have a long flow? Yeah. Or once we're there, I'm going to I'm going to mainly check at some like I've got a couple of like numbers in my mind that should be acceptable. I'll I'll give you one like the drop on the very first page. So, like basically people who bounce, they click the ads and they would bounce on the whatever you're showing them first. A reasonable number there is 50%. So, like 50% bounce is okay, like misclick, they were not interested, whatever. It's actually hard to move it higher and whenever you move it higher, you lose people later. So, those are battles that But, if it's very low, there's probably something to do. And I I've been working

with a company recently whose bounce rate on that page is around 80 85%. I was like, there's definitely something we have to do on that page to improve it. And then actually, like the next I look is not even the I do look at how many people reach the paywall. So, like after these whole questions and stuff, but that one is not really one that I try to maximize anymore. Like because what you're doing through those flow is trying to raise intent. In which state of mind is the user going to be when they're going to hit that paywall, which defines the conversion rate to pay? And actually, there are some people you can actually easily trick them into getting to the paywall, but they're never going to pay. Like and it's a little bit useless to try to maximize from this 50% to how many see the paywall, but rather I say, "Okay, do this How is this change impacting the payment conversion rate without touching the payment?" Because that means I'm going to the right direction in selling my product better, in people believe the

solution I'm giving is actually going to solve their need. So, that would be my the second metric. And some of this change are on the paywall itself, like whether you use a weekly is and what's the price point and localization price point and the UX of the paywall and blah blah. But very often they're on this page and it's never like, "Oh, that question is dropping 10% user." No, that question is dropping nobody, but people are arriving instead of mind that they drain when they arrive at this paywall and they don't convert. So, very often I look at this. There are some tricks about I love this the psych framework that was from Charlie. It was posted on on Andreessen blog like 12 years ago or whatever that every action gives energy or removes energy and I I think it's a very good way of of framing it of you know, I might I might psych you up people into believing what I believe what I'm selling is actually going to solve their need. And so, changing some question into reinforcement stuff and curves that go up and social proof and whatnot. And so,

the next metric for me is really like doesn't bounce to pay conversion. And I'm not looking so much at the intermediary steps because they're quite misleading. So, unless there's a huge bounce on one page unless the the the the paywall is really horrible like I'd look at the whole thing and that's up to the paywall and that's that's the second thing I would like maximize on. Lately I've had this battle with a lot of people which is when you make the paywall harder, you've got a few more people who are going to get in because they really want to see what's there. But obviously you've got more refund which become more and more of a problem when you've got a lot of charge backs. So, one of the tactics you can try to fight the charge backs or you can try to have just less charge backs and be a little bit more freemium. The the playbook here was like make the paywall completely hard and whoever is not paying forget I don't care and that's how you increase conversion. Which is true in the short term, but eventually having a button maybe later, having a second offer, letting eventually people who've gone who

through that whole flow download the app and all. I believe in the in the long term maybe beneficial not for everybody, but for some apps that one you get late conversions, two you don't need all these serum to like do cart abandonment and so on. And three, you're going to get less chargebacks and chargebacks are a problem. The same way Apple is going to go at you if you've got 20% refunds on AP, Stripe is going to go at you, other merchant of records are going to go at you. So, you need to balance this a little bit as well. So, yeah, that would be the third one. Like so, bounce, full conversion rate from non-bounce to payment, and then how do I manage the 95, 97, 99% of people who actually don't pay.
Right. It's important though because I think you know, there's no free lunch here. I mean, you you make the tactics more deceptive or you make it a little bit too frictionless to subscribe and your chargebacks go through the roof. I mean, it could be disastrous, right? I don't think people realize that you have to pay a chargeback fee. So, chargeback you refund the money and you pay a fee. And it's really problematic. And and you could try to fight it, but it's almost

impossible. So, I luckily I've I've had very few chargebacks. I've been I've been running the subscription on Mobile Dev Memo for I'm going to say three some years now, and I've had like five chargebacks.
Yeah, but I mean, it's a very different use case. Everybody wants to pay on your stuff and it's not you're running aggressive UA into it.
But, I've tried fighting it and I've I've successfully fought one. So, I I've succeeded in one. And and these are egregious. I mean, like I I've never encountered more unethical behavior in my professional life than with the chargeback dynamic with these subscriptions cuz people are clearly lying. I mean, they're just they're just clearly and obviously lying. Like they obviously forgot to unsubscribe. And you know, I'll email to people when I get the chargeback notice. I am happy to refund your money. If you're not happy with the product, I will give you your money back. I don't need you to read the newsletter. Just please cancel the chargeback. And I think oftentimes people are just too

embarrassed to do it and then respond. And so, you know, you try to fight it and it's like I had this this person once they did a chargeback on the annual sub. And I emailed them. I'm like, "Why did you Why did you do that? I mean, I would have just refunded it. Like, you didn't need to do a chargeback. Can you cancel the chargeback, please?" And this person writes, "Well, the sub renewed on Saturday. And so I saw the charges pending on my credit card. And so I thought if I canceled it, because the credit card payment wouldn't resolve until Monday, that I effectively was canceling before the the sub- the the renewal date. And therefore, you charged me after I canceled. And I wrote back, like, you And I looked this person up and they had an MBA. I was going to write back to them like, "If I publish this, your alma mater would go bankrupt because no one would ever get an MBA from there again."
[laughter]
But I didn't do that, of course. I just let it go. And I didn't respond. But But

I just like like I know that you know that that's not how credit card charges work. But it's just it's so unethical. But But going back to this description you gave, yeah, you make it too easy to subscribe. You're just going to get a surge in chargebacks, and it's going to cost you money. It's not just that you refund the cash. It's also that you have to pay a fee on the chargeback.
There's layers and layers of consideration on those chargebacks, like because what one is the the cost of those chargebacks. But there actually a threshold until you get kicked, you know. You you get kicked and you need to change the the provider and so on. And I I think in the recent case, like, so there was this very prominent case from the FTC against against Genesis that has a lot of subscription recently. And one of the complaint was that it's hard to cancel. One of the complaint was that yeah, the paywall is not very explicit and the full price is not mentioned. And there are a lot of like small points here and there, which I believe actually don't matter, even if they're true and it's okay. The real problem the FTC had is that they They a whole network of sub

payment companies behind
Yeah.
with the goal to actually dilute the chargebacks around accounts because if they were operating through one, the chargeback rate was so high that the the payment provider would have kicked them out. And I think they were the main problem for the FTC of you've designed a system to actually hide the fact that your chargeback rate was very high and to escape the consequences of it. And and I don't know if it's true, huh, but it's my my interpretation of it. And let's say that you're not as smart as Genesis that has has built as executed in a in a way that I believe was actually really well done and they're very smart people, but you're not them. And it's going to bite back. It's going to bite back. And And if you're as smart as them, it still bites back because then you reach that level where the FTC comes back. But yeah, they're a much bigger problem than people realize. They're also a problem on IAPs. It's just Apple deals with that problem and usually the consequences are are pretty harsh and you're also I've been kicked I've been kicked out of

the store for no reason. I'm like, yeah, show me a little bit. Yeah, I don't think that was no reason. But you never read the story about oh, Stripe kicked me out for no reason. Uh but there's a lot of people who get kicked out of Stripe or even other provider payment provider as well. Just be And then you go to more shady and more shady pro- payment provider that would accept, let's say, higher refund rates.
[laughter]
Yeah. Yeah. I just like visceral like cringe reaction when people say that they prefer web to app because it's harder to unsubscribe. They you can sidestep Apple's like very sort of easy-to-use unsubscription tool. And like that's just no way to run a business. First of all, a business is just just unethical. I I think you shouldn't be making a product that people don't want to use, that you know that they don't want to use, and that makes money just as a function of like being a complex to unsubscribe from. I I that is just deeply unethical. But there's just no free lunch. Like even that, even if you took that approach,

you're going to you're going to pay the piper eventually. You're going to get chargebacks. Like that's no way to run a business. Ethically or you know, just ruthlessly. It's just no way to run a business.
I've come to that sadly people who forget are a reason that many app developers, and I'm talking on IAP alone here, are actually surviving. Like without the people who unsubscribe, a lot of business app business wouldn't operate. So it's a bit of a sad reality, but then it doesn't mean you need to maximize maximize this cohort. That's just That's just bad. And but it's not the only reason people move to the web. I mean, I've always been in an advocate on on audience and channel expansion that the the auction of meta is not the same when you run web traffic and app traffic. Google auction is completely different when you run app campaign and non-app campaign. So for me this was one of the reason. And even on on payment themselves, like even if it's not like it's not necessarily just to make it hard to unsubscribe, but like the flexibility that you have on payment is just so much better on the web. And in particular to do upsells. So many apps

that I know that run those web-to-app funnels, once you get somebody to subscribe, you've got like a real they were they just said yes, really easy moment, are you sure you don't want this PDF on top and this method and this body scan and these supplements and these and it's a very good way to actually increase LTV that is really hard to do as an IAP. At least the the friction is is is higher. But that's a very good one. But also the management of those payments, you can do it in a neticual way that is better for you and the users. And I have something for example that I remember once where we were making it easy for people to cancel. But when they ask, we're just like, would you be interested if I refund you half the amount and you keep the whole subscription? And we had a giant number of users say, oh yeah, that's awesome. I want that. And Apple is slowly moving to that direction with this new retention messaging API that they're offering.
Yeah, that's right.
But it's just so much more flexible doing it on the web. Like there's so much more and I wish

I wish developers see the expansion to the web not as a free stuff, but as a feature expansion and audience expansion. And I hope Apple and Google sees it and say, "Okay, we need to do better." And I think Apple has started to get better on this, but they still have a lot to do. Like on on on refunds, on upsells, on on the on the So in this case not even win backs, it's like you win back before you lose them. And hopefully So there's the free stuff and I hope the IAP are going to standardize at 15% one day or another and I've always advocated for this, but I also hope it we get closer to feature parity with the liberty of how you can handle your customers on the web that honestly is just better at this point. It's better for the user to be on IAP because it's centralized, it's everywhere. Sometimes for a very small developer because all the tax, all the refunds, like everything is one place. Apple does a lot for you. If you're large developer, I hope we're going to get a lot more features around payment on IAP that incentivize developers to also stay on

IAPs.
Yeah. No, I I've I've always said that. I've always said that, you know, you should not move from app to web to save the commission because you're going to be encountering a lot more friction that you're probably not accounting for. You should not move from app to web because it's just inherently harder to unsubscribe. That just makes you a revolting person. You should move there because it gives you so much more freedom and latitude to do merchandising, to actually provide a personalized product that's impossible to do in the App Store and therefore to provide more value to the user. So you can counter the friction with just providing more value and making the value proposition stronger and more compelling and then you'll you'll overcome the friction. All right, quickly, I know we've got 2 minutes left. Link out. We don't know where we're going to land there yet, but you can do it for free now on iOS in the US because of the injunction, but Apple made the new proposal, 15% on link out. Tim Sweeney's objecting to it. I have a feeling, and this is just an intuition,

that Judge YGR is going to accept it. What do you think? If 15% is the link out commission, is that viable?
I'll say some of it's viable. Those will return, but the enforcement of this is going to be a mess like on
Yeah.
on actually proving that this Oh, this came before the store. This came after the store. It's going to be so messy. Like just the the the finance through it of of justifying what should be getting 50% and what not. It's such a mess. So, I think it's been a huge win for the developers while it was at 0%. Some developer will still gain with 10 or 15% on it, but a lot of developer just for the hassle of justifying I'll say it. Like I'll just do IAP and pre-app store, but it's just too much hassle to do it. So, only the bigger developer with most retained users and so on, and that are able to develop like this extra value because personalization and so on it's not it's not effortless. So, I think it's only going to be a good for the bigger developer. And the whole battle of Epic from the very beginning was allegedly on helping the small

developers, which I think for the small developer is going to be like that's it. It's too complicated.
Oh, don't get me started. I mean I think Tim Sweeney has just dropped the mask completely on this. I mean, it it clearly just the
I understand his battle, but his battle is not the small developer battle.
Well, but that's you know, that was that was the the the banner that they were flying originally, but this is clearly just for Epic to make money on an Epic Games on an Epic Games store that charges slightly less than what Apple charges on commission.
Uh we all defend our our little piece of meat, you know, we all do it.
Yeah, well, we're not so sanctimonious about it, though. He's just lost all credibility here in terms of the the actual reasoning for this crusade, and I actually wonder how it's viewed internally because my sense is it's seen as a disaster. This is seen as tilting at windmills internally. I mean, they've spent allegedly a you know, this is reported a billion dollars on legal fees. They just laid off a large proportion of their workforce. I mean, I don't think this has been seen

as a successful effort internally.
That's the money and the time and focus, man. I respect that they tried, but it was like, yeah, a lost crusade in my opinion.
Thomas, this is great. Thank you. How can people find you? How can they interact with you? How can they hire you?
They can't hire me. They can interact with me in the MDM Slack. I'm on Twitter/X and LinkedIn. My My LinkedIn inbox is pretty packed, so better you talk to me on MDM.
All right, there you go. Well,
[laughter]
what a what a seal of approval there. Thank you, Thomas. I appreciate your time as always.
Thanks.
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