AGS Berlin 2023 - Key insights and event recap

From March 19-20, the Remerge team attended the App Growth Summit 2023 on home soil, just a short distance from our Berlin headquarters. After a fun few days of networking, knowledge sharing and informative panel discussions, we caught up with Remerge attendees Kate Taganova and Asli Özcan to get the latest industry insights and find out which topics matter most right now to the world’s leading app businesses.

Asli:
It was a great event this year and good to see so many clients and partners on our doorstep. We saw a variety of apps businesses across many different verticals from e-commerce and travel, to gaming and food delivery. It was a good opportunity to make new connections and catch up with familiar faces as well. To name just a few, some of the brands we saw included Wooga, OneFootball, Trade Republic, AutoScout, Runtastic, Kolibri, Tonsser, WetterOnline, FreeNow, Rewe, Flixbus, Tidal, ImmoScout, Vinted, Gorillas, HolidayPirates Group, eBay Kleinanzeigen, GetYourGuide and many more.

Asli:
From what I heard, I think it’s fair to say that the economic pressures are still present across most of the industry. Many people mentioned ongoing budget cuts and in most cases, this has impacted their capacities and hiring plans. As a result, workloads have increased and many businesses are having to strategically reprioritize their goals and objectives.

Kate:
Absolutely. I think the uncertainty of today’s economy has also made many businesses focus more consciously on optimizing their efficiency with existing partners, rather than expanding their partnerships with other businesses or advertisers. With this in mind, new apps who haven’t yet established relationships with advertising partners should do so wisely and look for partners with good reputations and proven track records in order to ensure effective, long-term collaborations.

Asli:
Our CEO Pan Katsukis held a great talk with Delivery Hero’s Hazal Demiral Gölge about the future of user privacy and how advertising will work when the tracking of device IDs becomes a thing of the past. It was good to hear the views of different industry stakeholders. Pan gave insights from Remerge’s perspective as a programmatic advertising partner and Hazal discussed the implications of the changes for app businesses.

Kate:
I think some companies still aren’t sure about what to expect from an ID-less world, so naturally many of them are relying on their advertising partners to guide them. That’s why at Remerge we’re already working closely on future-proof solutions to ensure that retargeting on mobile continues to be a scalable and effective channel for those wanting to advertise their app in the years to come.

Asli:
The topic of attribution seemed to be a common theme as it often is, but particularly with regards to CTV (Connected TV). It’s an emerging advertising channel so I think there’s a lot of speculation about how to approach it. Influencer marketing was also a topic of debate and something which I think app businesses are utilizing more and more as part of their marketing mix.

As for user acquisition (UA) and retargeting on mobile, I think a lot of apps are investing more heavily into the UA side of things to ensure steady growth – which makes sense given today’s ever-tighter marketing budgets. That said however, it’s a lot easier to convert existing users who are already familiar with your apps than converting newly acquired users who have never made a purchase. I think a lot of brands are yet to take full advantage of retargeting – at least until they can run a few preliminary tests to see the positive impact that it has on revenue.