Alphabet Q4 earnings: Search down 2%, YouTube down 8%

Alphabet announced Q4 2022 earnings yesterday: overall advertising revenue of $59BN was down 3.6% on a year-over-year basis, with Search advertising revenue declining by 1.6%, YouTube advertising revenue declining by 7.8%, and Network revenue declining by 8.9%. Overall Q4 revenue of $76BN was up by less than 1% on a year-over-year basis; overall 2022...

2d

Meta Q4 earnings: not a worst-case scenario

Meta announced Q4 2022 earnings yesterday: it beat analyst estimates on revenue, generating $32.2BN in revenue versus consensus of $31.5 billion. The company also registered 4% growth in global DAU for its family of apps, reaching 2BN DAU for the first time, and 2% growth in global MAU. Ad impressions increased across the family of apps by 23% on a...

3d

The DoJ sues Google: exploring the accusations

Last week, the US Department of Justice, along with a group of eight US states, sued Google, alleging that it exercised monopoly power to suppress competition in the markets of publisher ad servers, advertiser ad networks, and ad exchanges operating within the commercial realm of open web display advertising. In this piece, I’ll attempt to clarify...

4d

Snap Q4 earnings: confirmation and clarity

Snap announced its Q4 2022 earnings yesterday: the company reported revenue of $1.3BN, below consensus analyst estimates of $1.31BN and representing just 0.15% growth over Q4 2021. Snap’s global DAU grew by 17% to 375MM, although DAU growth in North America registered 3% growth on a year-over-year basis, versus 4% last quarter and 5% in Q4 2021. Snap’s...

4d

Apple’s ad targeting mechanics revealed in recent French privacy case

Earlier this month, Apple was fined €8MM by CNIL, the French privacy watchdog, for reading iOS device identifiers without consent for the purposes of ads personalization. While the CNIL’s press release on the matter is meager, the text of the decision (machine translated from French) contains a great deal of fascinating detail about how Apple...

6d

Netflix Q4 earnings: ARPU down, with no signs of an advertising recession

Netflix reported Q4 earnings last week: the company outperformed expectations on subscriber growth, adding 7.66MM new subscribers compared to analyst expectations of 4.57MM. For reference, Netflix lost 203,000 subscribers in Q1, nearly 1MM subscribers in Q2, and added 2.4MM subscribers in Q3. Notably, Netflix launched its ads-supported product tier...

2w

The promise of Generative AI in 2023

In this episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I discuss the promise of Generative AI for marketing and product development with Thomas Petit and Ketty Slonimsky. Thomas is a well-known consultant and the author of the MADV newsletter, and Ketty Slonimsky is the Chief Growth Officer of Palta, the publisher of the popular Lensa app. The subject of the...

2w

French privacy watchdog to Voodoo Games: use of the IDFV requires consent

Last week, France’s privacy regulator, the CNIL, announced that it has fined Voodoo, the French developer of hypercasual games, €3MM for violating the French Data Protection Act. The basis for the CNIL’s sanction is Voodoo’s use of the IDFV, or ID for Vendors, on iOS without user consent. From the CNIL’s press release about the decision: During...

2w

Declining App Store revenue growth and the bull case for mobile gaming

Last week, as is customary, Apple revealed the cumulative amount of money it has paid to app developers since the inception of its App Store in 2008: $320BN. While Apple doesn’t provide any granular context to this headline number, its development on a year-over-year basis can be used as a rough proxy to track overall App Store revenue: Through...

3w

Introducing the Marketing Micro Audit

I’m excited to offer a new Micro Audit product for performance marketing teams. The Micro Audit is conducted via a lengthy and exhaustive questionnaire that is filled out by the client. Armed with information from the questionnaire, I complete an Executive Summary and Report Card (sample here) for the client that assesses its marketing team, tools,...

3w