Apptivate: The best insights from our app marketing podcast

Remerge’s Apptivate podcast remains one of the go-to sources of inspiration and information for all things app marketing. Since 2018, we’ve had the pleasure of speaking to experts and influencers from the advertising industry about the hottest app trends and developments.

As part of our privacy-first approach to programmatic advertising, we recently sat down with Google and AppsFlyer to discuss the rollout of the Privacy Sandbox on Android and its impact on user acquisition and retargeting campaigns. We've also welcomed guests from brands such as Paramount, Rovio, Delivery Hero and McDonald's, who have shared their stories about working in the mobile space.

We look back at more of our favorite episodes and snippets from the show.

Ep 160: Shifting the mobile marketer's mindset on measurement

“What excites me about the mobile space is that it’s like it’s on steroids. It’s always changing. You think you’ve got a handle on it, and there’s some new wrinkle.”

Ep 140: Is now the right time to rebrand your app?

“I think a lot of people feel that they make their choices very rationally, and I think they’re wrong. It’s not usually the case. There’s a lot of subconscious force that’s driving you into making these decisions. And this is where well-crafted messaging and correct branding can change your bottom-line metrics.”

Ep 157: Top 5 mistakes startups make when marketing new apps

“Carve out a budget to make your creatives and set yourself up to make iterations of these in the future. If you don’t make this investment, maybe you’ll get lucky, but more often than not, you won’t.”

Ep 142 Reducing signal loss with well-structured first-party data

“Most people and most media plans start first with how you’re going to buy rather than how you’re going to measure–and that’s the problem.”

Ep. 114 Optimize your website to drive app downloads

“Your customers are the blood within your company’s body.”

Ep.115 Marketing automation in the privacy-first era

“Reporting is actually the first block in your automation puzzle.”

Ep 158: Why 'Next Billion User' markets matter for your app

“A lot of advertisers think they’re restricted by not having a different language outside of English, but we use something called an English Proficiency Index. If you Google that, there are a lot of external tools, free, that you can use to rank or rate markets based on how comfortable users are converting in English, and those are often markets that surprise your advertisers.”

Ep 159: The future of privacy-safe advertising on Android

“Users are becoming more aware of how valuable their own data is, how it’s being collected, and how it’s being used. As a result, we’re seeing people demand more transparency and control over their data, especially when it comes to online advertising.”

Ep. 108 Customer Experience: The key ingredient to app growth

“In the world we live in, it’s really about connecting both the digital to the in-person experience.”

Ep 146: The dos and don’ts of soft launching a mobile game

“Companies try to skip the technical phase and jump right into running a UA in Tier 1 countries where it’s really expensive. You need to be sure you have your tech stack – not 100% – but 200% correct; because there’s nothing worse than making decisions based on false data.”

Ep. 122 Why the climate change fight needs an app

“If you make mistakes, they’re your mistakes. You’ll learn more quickly than if you’re making mistakes because someone else told you what to do and you did what they told you.”

Ep.129 Mobile Measurement: Adapt or Die

“With everything going on in the world, everyone wants to have their ad be seen but also not seen against certain content. [Brand safety is] a very touchy subject but one that’s top of mind and always evolving.”

Ep 144: Prioritizing countries for an international app launch

“Be brave – make mistakes and learn from your mistakes.”

Ep 154: Building the pipeline for more women leaders in tech

“Now that we’re talking about business value, what I’m seeing more from brands are things like, ‘I want to create an in-app experience that’s exclusive for the app and the only way our customers can interact with this is by coming in and being a part of the app community.’ Whereas before it was, ‘Oh, we’ll do a promotion on email or we’ll do a promotion on the web and we’ll also do it in the app,’ I’m seeing a lot more app-exclusive content, which is pretty cool.”

Ep. 127 How marketers influence consumer habits

“Why build an app? I think because we have to be able to create long-lasting relationships with our users. We need to be able to not only offer services that we create but to actually listen to the user in every step.”

Ep. 130 What to expect when marketing mobile games

“In today’s world with TikTok where things can instantly become viral without you even trying, I think it makes things exciting but it also makes things hard because there is no recipe to follow.”

Ep. 137 Monetization strategies for casual mobile games

“The key thing about any game, especially in the casual market, is that you need a user base to want to play and be engaged with the game, and come back and play it often. So we don’t really look at game time, or time played, but more on the retention metrics because that gauges how often you have opportunities to make money out of your customer base.”

Ep 150: The 3 markers of good marketing automation

“A good way to think about what consumers are doing on your app or website is the working backwards methodology. In my case, for example, I look at when a user makes a purchase. With data that I get or with analysts I can see what they do right before that.”

Ep 152: How to thrive in remote work environments

“I think any opportunity to spark joy and help users be genuinely happy about what they’re doing with your app is a win-win.”

Ep 155: How to market and grow EdTech app products

“As I’ve spent more and more time learning about growth, you really come to realize the value of data and how important that is to make different decisions.”

Ep.136 Mobile Gaming: Are your creatives inclusive and accessible?

“Design was made to involve everyone in society and to make everyone capable at the end of the day. It’s not only something beautiful.

Ep 149: Why mobile marketers should pay attention to CTV

“Due to the pandemic, people fled into entertainment, basically, and started turning their living rooms in unprecedented levels into home cinemas. So, they were investing a lot in Connected TV.”

Ep 156 (Pt 1): UA strategies from the most downloaded apps

“Now you need an app for most businesses, just to have that environment that you control with your customers and that consistent customer experience.”

Ep 143: Cracking Africa’s mobile gaming market

“I think crypto and Web3 will be more impactful in Africa than anywhere else in the world. The reason is because there are legitimate day-to-day use cases for the majority of folks whereas, in the West, it tends to be, up until now, primarily a tool for speculation.”

Ep 139: Debunking myths about offerwalls

"At the end of the day, users are incentivized for completing a particular action [with offer walls]. So the goal here is to make sure that users are spending some quality time with the offer, and it’s not just about a quick action and a quick reward. ”