Adjust makes three senior appointments
Melissa Dickman, Doug Grounds, and Guy Sheffer have all joined app marketing platform Adjust.

Dickman, as Regional Vice President of Sales for US East and LATAM, will focus on accelerating Adjust’s growth in the Americas. She has more than 20 years of experience within brand and performance marketing across traditional, digital, mobile, social and connected TV platforms. Most recently, she served as Senior Vice President of Sales at Taptica, overseeing the East Coast expansion and US growth. Before that, she held sales leadership roles at companies including Viacom, AOL, and RhythmOne.

Grounds arrives as Vice President of Global Solutions Consulting. He will lead the global Solutions Consulting team focused on ensuring Adjust’s customers are receiving maximum value from its products and services. Grounds has more than 25 years of experience in media, web and business intelligence at companies such as Coremetrics (now IBM Web Analytics), Omniture, Adobe, Aggregate Knowledge, and Domo.

Sheffer, who has almost 25 years’ experience in R&D, joins as Vice President of R&D for Adjust’s Unbotify product. He is responsible for managing Unbotify’s product development, with the objective of making Adjust the market leader for in-app bot fraud detection. Prior to Adjust, Sheffer held VP-level roles at several mobile and SaaS companies, including Somatix, StartApp, SundaySky, and Jacada (acquired by Software AG).

“Adjust recently celebrated its 500th employee milestone, and we’re very pleased to count these three hires among the ranks,” said Christian Henschel, Co-founder and CEO of Adjust. “With such diverse and experienced leadership, coupled with a financially sustainable business model, we’re in a strong position to build on the exponential growth we’ve seen in mobile first markets like the US and LATAM. We’ll continue to expand our teams and strengthen R&D so that we offer the best possible solutions to empower the business success of our clients around the world.”

Brown takes charge of agency partnerships at Selligent
Cloud technology company Selligent has appointed Dean Brown as its Vice President of Agency Partnerships. He will spearhead the company’s growing channel partner strategy and lead efforts for building, enabling and developing profitable partnerships with digital agencies and marketing service providers in North America. 

Brown joins Selligent with over 35 years’ experience in direct and indirect sales and sales management. Most recently, he was Senior Director of Partner Sales at Epsilon, where he led vertical market partnering initiatives with Adobe, SAP, Sitecore, and Crownpeak. Prior to Epsilon, Brown served as Vice President of Strategic Alliances at Neolane, later acquired by Adobe, where he ran strategic alliance partnerships in North America for Adobe Campaign.

“Businesses today are facing a novel and challenging time, with brands leaning on digital marketing solutions in a way we’ve never seen before,” said Brown. “Selligent’s platform and partner go-to-market model is a perfect fit for marketing service providers and agencies that need to innovate and provide measurable impact for their clients while realizing value from their technology investment. I am excited to be part of a company that has a true partner culture and is committed to building impactful relationships that nurture joint success and unlock new revenue channels.”

Samba TV turns to Sanders as MD
Yasmin Sanders has been named as Managing Director for Australia at Samba TV, a cross-screen television analytics company. In this new Sydney-based role, she will oversee Samba TV’s strategy and execution in the Australian market.

Sanders brings nearly 20 years of experience in the advertising technology and media industry. She joins Samba TV from her consultancy business developed to help media and advertising technology clients to diversify and grow their revenue by building innovative market-first solutions. Previously, she held senior roles at companies like Verizon Media and ViacomCBS-owned Network 10.

“Samba TV’s unique ability to connect linear TV to over-the-top audiences provides an exciting opportunity for Australia’s platforms, advertisers, broadcasters, publishers, and measurement firms,” said Sanders. “The company’s cross-screen insights enable these marketers to boost their capabilities in planning, targeting, and measurement for their businesses and clients.”

Ryosuke takes Japan lead at YouAppi
YouAppi, an in-app advertising firm, has selected Izumi Ryosuke as its Country Manager for Japan. The appointment will enable YouAppi to specifically focus on growth in the Japanese market.

Ryosuke has over 15 years of experience in the advertising technology space. Previously, he was a Vice President for AdColony.  Prior to AdColony, he was the Head of Sales at Vungle in Japan for almost two years.  

“I am thrilled to join YouAppi and lead growth in the Japan region,” said Ryosuke. “With mobile marketing being an $80B yearly industry, Japan contributes to a significant part of this. YouAppi already has experienced strong growth in Japan and Asia in user acquisition, and now mobile app retargeting will be our focus.”

Cavai hires Smith to head up advertiser experiences
Karol Smith has arrived at conversational advertising company Cavai as its Global head of Advertiser Experiences. Starting 1 September, she will focus on service delivery and the overall experience of Cavai’s client base, all the way through from onboarding its proprietary ad cloud technology to campaign delivery and oversight.

Smith was Global Digital Marketing Lead at HSBC for 13 years.

“I can’t wait to get Cavai’s ground-breaking service out to more industry partners, brands and agencies,” Smith commented. “Conversational advertising is one of the new frontiers of advertising; as yet largely untapped and at times misunderstood. There is so much potential for brands to boost engagement and connections with their audiences and Cavai’s technology enables advertisers to do just that.”

Czerny to front customer success at Uberall
Location marketing firm Uberall has added André Czerny to its team as Senior Vice President of Customer Success. In the role, he will help further Uberalls company growth through developing relationships with its customers and partners.

Czerny joins Uberall after many years in customer success and change management positions at leading technology SaaS companies, including Salesforce and Microsoft. At Salesforce, helped design and build the company’s European customer success programme for its Commerce Cloud platform, and was later responsible for the complete Renewal Revenue Stream for the company’s DACH and Nordic regions. At Microsofts Customer Success Unit, Czerny led the Business Applications Team, supporting enterprise customers through strategic change management in their digital transformation from on-premise to the cloud.

“Building a trusted, sustainable business relationship with customers and partners is central to Uberalls continued success,” said Czerny. “My aim is to integrate business partners as well as customers into the customer success framework so that we can sustain and expand Uberalls market-leading position. I’m thrilled to be a part of Uberalls scale-up process and look forward to further developing value-focused customer relationships to help our customers realise their Near Me brand experience.”

Organic looks to Allen as project manager
Kate Allen has been appointed as Digital Project Manager at digital agency Organic. She will be working into Organics Operations Director, Charlie Lycett-Smith, working across multiple digital marketing and website development projects.

Having come from edtech company, Sparx, where she was a Project Manager, prior to this, Kate held the role of Operations & Projects Manager at City Science. In her previous roles, she delivered projects for Innovate UK, the NHS, and her local government.

“Organic’s focus on ‘Digital for Good’ attracted me to the agency, as I have always chosen to work for companies that focus on using technology to make a positive impact,” said Allen. “I am really looking forward to joining the PMO team + seeing where my new role takes me.”

Henley to lead sales at Q-83
Q-83, an influencer martech startup, has announced the appointment of Chris Henley as Head of Sales and Partnerships for the UK and Europe. Reporting to Managing Director and Founder Anthony Richardson, he will be responsible for generating revenue from agencies and brands within the UK and across Europe.

Henley has previously worked closely with brands such as NordVPN, Marks & Spencer, Stella McCartney, and Beano, as well as a number of traditional full-service agencies including PHD, Mediacom, Publicis, and MSL.

“I’m incredibly excited to be working with the innovative team at Q-83 and can’t wait to show what we have to offer to creators, brands and agencies alike,” said Henley. “Q-83’s technology offers something very unique in comparison to the vast majority of platforms within the industry and will assist the whole ecosystem in professionalising this industry. It’s a brilliant opportunity to be working with a company that pays so much attention to the creators out there. Without them, this industry would inevitably not exist.”

Molzi selects De La Mata to lead agency development
Gonzalo de la Mata has joined Molzi, a full-service Amazon seller agency, as its Head of Global Agency Development. He is tasked with building relationships with media agencies and supporting Molzi’s commitment to find and conquer Amazon growth opportunities for the world’s biggest brands.

De La Mata was formerly Managing Director UK at Adglow, where he was responsible for the Amazon sales performance of the agency’s consumer clients. Before that, he was Group Commercial Operations Director at Glow Digital Media.

“Covid-19 has reinforced to brands that if they’re not performing well on Amazon, they are missing out. Media agencies are reacting to the trend and supporting clients on the platform but are quickly realising that deep expertise and knowledge about the Amazon ecosystem is needed to succeed and accelerate growth quickly,” said De La Mata. “Advertising on Amazon has recently become a sophisticated weapon for marketers. It has proven successful for upper funnel campaigns with PPC and now the advanced programmatic DSP is giving brands more choice for conversions. Amazon’s latest results show marketers are investing heavily here.

“But generating Amazon sales is much more complicated than simply writing creative copy for ads. It requires a specialised and diverse team capable of executing on everything from the operational backoffice to retargeting campaigns. This is where Molzi’s experts can integrate with media agency teams to support clients at every possible step on Amazon.”

Host of promotions made at Kin + Carta
Kin + Carta, a digital transformation business, has made a number of promotions to bolster its leadership team. David Tuck has been promoted to Group Chief Executive of Kin + Carta Europe, Stephen Wilson has been elevated to Global Chief Technology Officer, and Matthew Froggatt has become Global Chief Strategy Officer.

Reporting into Global CEO J Schwan, Tuck will roll out a new go-to-market strategy that binds Kin + Carta’s three core pillars (Advise, Create and Connect) into one unified proposition across the European market. 

Wilson is charged with building a clear vision of the role technology plays in the business’ long-term vision. Tuck and Wilson were previously joint Managing Directors at Kin + Carta Create Europe – the MD role will now be held solely by Kin + Carta Create Europe’s Lindsay Ratcliffe.

Froggatt will play a central role in strategic planning and nurturing capabilities, alongside overseeing and supporting Kin + Carta’s B Corp initiative. He’ll be holding this role concurrently with his position as CEO of Incite.

“We have some of the world’s best thinkers at Kin + Carta, innovating and leading the development of products and platforms that make the world work better, and delighting our clients with the quality and value of our work,” said Schwan. “David, Stephen and Lindsay played an integral role in the creation of Kin + Carta and they are natural appointments to grow these roles and spearhead our evolution. We’re also delighted to have Matthew provide impetus into the ongoing evolution and execution of our Connective strategy and our B Corp ambition.”

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HTC opts for Maitre as new CEO

Yves Maitre has become chief executive officer at consumer electronics business HTC. The move sees Cher Wang continue as chairwoman of the HTC board.

Maitre joins the Taiwanese company from Orange, where he held senior executive positions for over 14 years, most recently as EVP of consumer equipment and partnerships. Prior to joining Orange, Yves spent six years working for consumer electronics company Thomson Multimedia where he served in senior positions in the US and Singapore. He has also held roles across supply chain and product management.

“HTC has long been a bellwether for new technology innovation and Im honoured to be selected by the Board of Directors to lead the next phase of HTC,” said Yves Maitre, CEO at HTC. “Across the world, HTC is recognised for its firsts across the mobile and XR space. I am incredibly energised to grow the future of both 5G and XR alongside HTC employees, customers and investors.  We will set out immediately to continue the transition from building the worlds best consumer hardware to also building complete services around them to make them easy to manage and deploy.”

Plant named president of UM unit

UM, IPG Mediabrands’ full-service marketing and media agency network, has appointed Anthony Plant as executive vice president, global president of J3 – UM’s dedicated media unit for Johnson & Johnson. Succeeding Eileen Kiernan, who was recently elevated to global chief executive officer at UM, Plant will oversee the agencys largest global client, with a focus on advancing Johnson & Johnsons goals, plans and ambitions and implementing best-in-class media planning at the global, regional and local levels.

Plant brings more than 25 years of integrated communications experience. While leading IPG Mediabrands Japan, he established the complete suite of media disciplines, driving new client partnerships with BMW, Hachette, Benesse, Coach and Skechers. Prior to his five years in Japan, Plant was stationed in China and Southeast Asia for nine years where he worked with clients including P&G and Mead Johnson, in addition to launching a shopper marketing agency. Before Asia, he worked in London managing Disney, Visa and Burger King accounts across EMEA.

“Global perspective is critical to delivering the highest form of innovation and collaboration, and I am excited by the challenge to lead J3 into the future,” said Plant. “Johnson & Johnson has been innovating in the healthcare space for over a century, making it the leader it is today, and I look forward to partnering with our clients and teams to translate J&Js global ambitions into excellence, through better science, better art and better outcomes.”

YouAppi chooses Yoshii to lead Japan

Sawato (Stephan) Yoshii has been hired as country manager for Japan at in-app advertising platform YouAppi. Based in Tokyo, he will lead a team of 12 (including himself) which supports YouAppi’s Japanese clients and partners.

Yoshii joins YouAppi from InMobi where he was head of sales in Japan. Before InMobi, he was country manager for Xaxis, WPP’s programmatic media company, in Japan. And prior to that, he was director of global business development for Opt, a digital ad agency within Dentsu.

“I’m excited by YouAppi’s mobile-first technology which offers marketers, agencies, developers, and publishers a comprehensive and proven solution – from user acquisition through re-engagement – for achieving their goals for revenue and monetization,” said Yoshii. “With Japan both a strategic market in terms of marketers and publishers targeting Japanese users and for Japanese brands and developers seeking global reach and revenue, I’m motivated to grow Japan’s share of YouAppi’s revenue.”

Rayala takes charge of information at Yext

Digital knowledge management platform Yext has turned to Deepika Rayala to take up the role of chief information officer. She will spearhead Yexts global IT organisation, driving the enterprise applications and analytics, infrastructure, and operations roadmap that enable Yext to deliver its platform to businesses around the world.

Boasting more than 20 years of IT experience, Rayala previously drove IT application delivery as the vice president of enterprise applications and project management office at Apttus. Prior to Apttus, she led and worked on large IT transformation programs at Broadcom and Genentech, executing strategies to modernise and align the IT application landscape with the companies business goals.

“It is such an exciting time to join Yext as it disrupts the search world with brand-verified answers and expands globally,” said Rayala. “I am looking forward to working with Yexts executive team and a remarkable IT team to deliver the right balance of optimal and innovative solutions, with the goal of enabling operational efficiencies and increasing customer and employee satisfaction.”

Sprinklr appoints Haley as general counsel

Dan Haley has been hired as the first general counsel and corporate secretary at enterprise social media management software firm Sprinklr. He will bring his government and private sector experience to overseeing the company’s global legal functions.

Haley joins Sprinklr after almost seven years at AthenaHealth, where he served as general counsel and later chief legal and administrative officer. He was responsible for ensuring the company followed comprehensive regulations around how medical records are stored, transmitted, used, and safeguarded. Before AthenaHealth, he was a partner at the McDermott Will and Emery law firm. Haley has also held senior positions in state-wide political campaigns, in the Massachusetts state government, and at federal political committees.

“I’m excited to take on this role at a crucial time in Sprinklr’s history, as we plan for the next decade of the company’s story,” said Haley. “Starting with an existing strong foundation put in place by the existing team, we are going to build a first-class legal function to enable accelerated innovation, sustained growth, and continued customer delight.”

Four new faces arrive at Beeswax

Programmatic buying platform Beeswax has added Charlotte Seagers as enterprise account manager, Hannah Cooper as EMEA programmatic trading specialist, Gemma Coffee as EMEA sales director, and Flora Evans as EMEA solutions consultant. Based in the London office, the new recruits will all report to EMEA commercial director Cadi Jones.

Seagers joins from Rezonance, where she was vice president of platform. Her role is to develop executive relationships with Beeswax customers, consulting on strategic opportunities to grow their business trough custom algorithms using their first party data, and transparent reporting and analytics.

Cooper will work with clients on customised algorithms and create bespoke advanced mathematical scripts to optimise their results from Beeswaxs Bidder-as-a-Service, while Coffee arrives from her job as partnerships director at GroundTruth with more than 10 years of sales and business development experience.

Last but not least, Evans brings six years of EMEA experience from Rubicon Project, where she worked prior to her most recent gig as account and product manager at AI-powered food discovery platform Spoon Guru. She also spent some time at Amazon.

“These additional team members will help grow our business in EMEA and improve results for customers. Gemma Coffee brings more than a decade of solid experience to the existing sales team at Beeswax and will reach more next-generation marketers looking to optimise the in-housing of their programmatic activity and media companies taking a more strategic approach to programmatic advertising,” said Jones.

“Flora Evans uses her advanced technical knowledge drawn from years of experience in the advertising industry supporting premium publishers to ensure brands and media companies seeking to transition from legacy Demand-Side Platforms to Beeswax can do so swiftly to maximise their returns.

“Charlotte Seagers’s excellent strategic consultative skills and technical experience will help support customers in growing their businesses, alongside Hannah Cooper’s brilliant combination of practical and academic mathematical knowledge to optimise the performance customers see from Beeswax’s platform on an ongoing basis.”

Ebiquity selects Sobo to direct strategy

Jide Sobo has been given the newly created role of director of strategy and innovation at Ebiquity, an independent media and marketing consultancy, progressing from his previous role as director of digital.

Sobo has worked in digital marketing for the last 15 years advising clients such as J&J, Danone, Kingfisher, Morrisons, Burger King, Tesco and partnering with mobile operators where he helped develop early mobile advertising propositions. Before joining Ebiquity, he was head of mobile for MEC.

“Clients are dealing with a myriad of challenges as a result of a quickly evolving media landscape and are turning to Ebiquity for independent analysis and advice,” said Sobo. “Ebiquity is in a unique position to help brands drive greater business impact through robust, independent, data-driven solutions. I’m excited to build on Ebiquity’s existing digital leadership to help clients solve marketing challenges at the frontier of change, such as search and ecommerce, influencer marketing, and voice.”

Renfrew and Carvajal hired at Journey Further

Performance marketing agency Journey Further has recruited Sam Renfrew and Magnolia Carvajal to its conversion team. Renfrew has been hired as lead optimisation developer, while Carvajal has been appointed as conversion specialist.

Renfrew, who joins Journey Further from Asda, will be responsible for building onsite experiments and then helping clients implement winning tests into production environments.

Previously of Travelopia and Tesco, Carvajal will manage the end-to-end research and experimentation process, conducting analysis, forming hypotheses and ensuring smooth transition to testing and implementation.

“It’s been great to welcome Sam and Magnolia to the team. Their client-side experience in particular will help in delivering our more consultative and transformative approach to CRO,” said Jonny Longden, conversion director at Journey Further.

“We’re looking to redefine how the discipline is understood, moving away from the idea of ‘hacking’ conversion rates to data-driven web development. We want to help our clients use conversion optimisation as the sole process for improving their website, ultimately embedding a culture of experimentation in their businesses.”

Amp makes appoints in US and Germany

Vijay Iyer has been hired by Amp, a Germany-based sound branding agency, to lead its first US office in the New York. He will be tasked with strengthening the company’s relationships with current US headquartered global clients across FMCG, finance and consultancy, as well as building Amp’s influence across the market.

Iyer, who has 20 years experience in global marketing and communications, moves to amp from General Motors’ (GM) international communications team, where he led business planning and future talent strategy. Prior to this, he held multiple international communications, brand and product marketing, executive roles, including leading global communications for GM’s connected car and OnStar business, overseeing the marketing and PR efforts of Cadillac and Chevrolet Europe, and serving as one of the founding members of GM’s car sharing start-up Maven.

Amp has also moved to strengthen its leadership team at its Munich home, hiring Anselm Büchler as head of strategy. He will lead the agency’s efforts in research, design thinking, and forward-looking strategy development across its portfolio of clients.

Büchler, who previously served as a design thinking coach and communications lecturer at the Kyoto Institute of Technology, brings with him a wealth of experience in innovative brand communication and eco-friendly customer experience design. Prior to joining Amp, he held multiple international leadership roles at design and brand communications agencies consulting clients such as Fresenius, Ride Snowboards, Colani and Dachser.

“Expanding our team to New York will help us improve the service we offer current clients based in the region, whilst helping us meet the additional demand generated by our landmark research into audio branding, the Best Audio Brands Ranking 2019”, said Michele Arnese, CEO and head of creativity and strategy at Amp. “With a growing number of European clients also seeking Amp’s support in developing and rolling out their sonic brand strategies, further strengthening our team in Munich was also critical. We are therefore delighted to have Vijay and Anselm join us at this important inflection point for our agency.’’ 

Chen takes charge of product at VidMob

VidMob, a video advertising company, has picked Humphrey Chen as its chief product officer. He will oversee the development of VidMobs core product, the Agile Creative Studio, as well as the advancement of the companys external facing APIs, as it continues its work to build an open API for creativity.

Chen, who will also oversee VidMob’s collaboration with MIT to advance its machine learning-based recommender systems, previously served as head of Amazon’s Rekognition computer vision service. VidMob’s Agile Creative Studio has been working with Rekognition for almost two years, leveraging its computer vision solution and proprietary technology to help marketers tag creative attributes.

“Since the early days of working with VidMob, Ive been fascinated by the powerful implications of their creative data platform,” said Chen. “Their fundamental respect for the irreplaceable power of human creativity, coupled with their belief that a technology platform can be built to enhance it and make it smarter has the power to change industries. Im thrilled to join the team and help advance their mission.”

Rokt looks to Lim to lead financial

Holly Lim has become the first chief financial officer at eCommerce martech company Rokt. Based in Rokt’s New York office and reporting to chief executive officer Bruce Buchanan, she will lead global financial strategy with corporate development, business analytics, finance and legal teams reporting into the new CFO org.

Lim joins Rokt from CFO positions at TuneIn and SoundCloud, and previously served as group finance lead/operations and strategy at Googles Advanced Technologies and Projects (ATAP) group. At TuneIn, she was responsible for revamping business processes and systems to help the company execute at speed and on strategic planning initiatives that shaped the companys late-stage vision and core internal investment strategy.

“The Rokt team has developed a unique opportunity in the martech space and Im excited to work across the companys global organisation and partner with teams to drive continued growth and profitability,” said Lim. “Im looking forward to joining Rokts executive team and certified Roktstars in driving the business forward and breaking new ground with our enterprise customers.”

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In an effort to understand just how much data influences mobile marketing, YouAppi, a growth marketing platform for mobile brands, surveyed 543 in-house and agency marketers on the current need for critical data. According to the report, 98 per cent of respondents – consisting of both brand and performance marketers – said they’ve increased their organizational investment in data. 97 per cent of all respondents have seen improvement, and more than half of those would go so far as to call the improvements significant.

Respondents listed the specific areas they had invested more funds into, which included reporting and dashboard technology (81 per cent), their in-house data analytics teams (64 per cent), purchasing 3rd party performance data (47 per cent), adding more data-centric roles on internal teams (46 per cent) and hiring outside agencies for data analysis (24 per cent).

Marketers even admitted their roles were changing with the increasing importance of data, as 96 per cent of respondents said their job duties have become more data-focused, and 57 per cent consider the change in their duties significant. Of all job roles, marketing executives (62 per cent) were found to have the most drastic change in duties in relation to focus on data and metrics.

With the increasing importance of data, marketers believe job roles and function may need to be remolded. 96 per cent of all respondents agreed that brand marketers would benefit from developing the data skill set a performance marketer may possess, and 91 per cent said performance marketers should adopt the positioning and creative expertise of brand marketers.

Over half of all marketers revealed they are confident their job isn’t going anywhere, with 64 per cent saying they have zero concerns regarding job security. YouAppi discovered that over the last two years, 46 per cent of hiring has happened at the performance marketer level, and an additional 32 per cent of respondents said their companies are hiring both brand and performance marketers equally.

In the coming year, respondents are predicting a continued increase in marketing investments, with 91 per cent of performance marketers and 54 per cent of brand marketers anticipating more budget and expenditure changes in their respective departments.

“It’s fantastic to see more organizations take advantage of the skills and expertise that performance and brand marketers bring to the table, and create an environment where these two disciplines can better complement one another” said Moshe Vaknin, founder and CEO of YouAppi. “As marketers continue to invest in more sophisticated data analytics, and find creative ways to make that data actionable, they will see measurable results that connect them in powerful ways to their end customers.”

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With more than half of retail traffic now taking place on mobile and opportunities constantly evolving, the importance of having an effective mobile strategy in place and maintaining it cannot be overlooked. Our summit gives brands the opportunity to the pick the brains of their peers and a range of technology experts, while looking the latest trends, ideas, and practical examples in the space.

If you weren’t able to attend the conference, here is a selection of the best gems of wisdom shared during the event.

“We take the idea that ‘your employees are people’, and I know that sounds really crass to say. But they are not resources, they are not a robot that comes in and presses buttons on a till. They are people who care about selling the goods that you want them to sell and they care about the service they give their customers.”

“It’s to work the way that we live. It’s time to use that fantastic mobile technology to deliver an experience at work using mobile technology to actually deliver experiences for employees, not just for consumers, that really make them enjoy their work.”

The day kicked off with Ilicco Elia, head of mobile at Deloitte  speaking about how mobile technology can be used to create apps that help employees to do their jobs more easily and efficiently.

“Mobile should be your friend, and I feel like we’re getting to a point where it could well be, especially as you release a branded retail app.”

“Branded retail apps are potentially a massive untapped goldmine. If not anything, it’s because you’re reaching consumers who may well have demonstrated brand affinity by organically installing your app. They may well have installed your app at the point of purchase, demonstrating that they’ve actually bought your product before.”

William Melzler, VP of business development at YouAppi discussed the how retailers can develop brand affinity and loyalty via branded retail apps.

“Do you know where your data comes from? When you’re planning campaigns, and you’re executing and measuring those campaigns, do you truly know where you’re getting that data from? When you’re working with partners are they being really clear and transparent with you?”

Valid questions that retailers need to be asking themselves with GDPR on the horizon from Warren Mills, client partner at Weve.

“A lot of people talk about location being a core signal, and it is, but we believe when it’s combined with other signals as well – things like bank-verified data – that’s where the power really comes with the data. Building that holistic audience together is really important”

Mills continued by looking at how location data can be used in combination with other forms of mobile data in the planning process for retail campaigns.

“Session times are coming down because we’re becoming better at mobile. It’s starting to become part of recognising what apps are about and it should be more frequent, lower timed session. There’s a really important point about KPIs with this and tracking the right things. It’s much better and more successful to have a higher frequency of lower timed sessions in retail than it is to have less frequent, longer sessions.”

“Apps aren’t just another digital channel, they’re the glue that brings together digital and store.”

Paul Barnes, Northern Europe territory director at App Annie looked at the power of the app market and challenges facing retailers within the space.

“Why are we still thinking that consumers move according to the media we buy? You can’t afford to be top-down planning anymore because that power has shifted. It has to be from the ground up, it has to be consumer-led.”

Retailers have to shift the way they look at consumer behaviours in order to target people, according to Alex Wright, head of insight at Blis.

“We’re launching a fitness boutique, and we’re calling it Sw3at. If you’re in Malaysia, Mumbai, North London, or Manchester, you can come and watch the close live or delayed. And we’ve developed a bit of kit where we can then track your fitness, so we can send you push notifications… It’s beginning to understand how we can use these modern developments to support our core product.”

As part of his presentation, Daniel Herman, CEO of Bio-Synergy, gave the audience an insight into how his sports nutrition brand is targeting audiences and keeping them motivated to exercise through mobile and social.

The post The 10 best quotes from our Mobile Retail Summit appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

Check out our MWC 2018 tag for more coverage and videos from the mobile worlds biggest show.

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Mobile Marketing discusses the fine art of acquiring and re-engaging loyal mobile app users with Moshe Vaknin, founder and CEO of YouAppi.

With more than 2.2m apps in the Apple App Store and 2.8m in the Google Play Store as of March 2017 (source: Statista), and estimates suggesting that as many as 3,000 more apps are released every single day, it’s becoming harder than ever for app publishers of all colours – from brands to eCommerce companies to games developers – to get their apps seen and downloaded.

For many of these publishers, the first recourse is advertising – and rightly so. The ‘build it and they will come’ mentality is of little help where mobile apps are concerned. To stand out from the sea of other apps competing for users’ attention and home screen space, you have to make some noise.

The problem with the reliance on advertising, however, is that many app marketers think that noise is all that matters. If they make more noise than the competition, by spending more money and serving ads more frequently, the downloads will surely follow, or so the theory goes. This idea is in fact perpetuated by the numbers. Often, an advertiser who throws a lot of money at advertising their mobile app will reap the benefits in terms of healthy app download numbers. But look beyond this snapshot and the cracks begin to appear. Because in truth, the scattergun approach to mobile app marketing merely results in large numbers or irrelevant downloads, where the app may be used once or twice or never again, and the app publisher never sees any revenues as a return on the investment they have made in acquiring that user.

Growth marketing platform
YouAppi’s approach is different. The company offers a fully managed, 360 growth marketing platform for mobile brands, designed to dramatically increase acquisition and retention of high-value customers. The company is not interested in delivering a download for the sake of a download, but rather, in acquiring loyal users, who are likely to return frequently to the app, and to have a high lifetime value. It delivers on marketers’ distinct KPIs across five pillars, covering the tech (machine learning), the ad format (brand video and rewarded video), and the desired outcome (user acquisition or re-engagement).

“Big advertisers spend a lot of money to acquire new users for their apps, but they need to acquire valuable users, so they use our 360 platform to identify users who match their existing valuable customers and reach out to them,” explains YouAppi co-founder and CEO, Moshe Vaknin. “We partner with big publishers of all types of apps – content, music-sharing, games etc. – and through these partnerships we have built up 2bn user profiles. Then when an advertiser is looking to acquire new users for their app, we can map these profiles and build user categories based on their relationships with different groups.

“Over time, we gain a good understanding of which types of user are most likely to respond well to ads for different types of apps, whether it’s shopping, mapping, education or whatever. Then when we advertise these apps to them, we log their responses to increase our understanding of what types of app appeal to them.”

Those 2bn user profiles span 4,200 apps and mobile sites in over 200 countries and territories. For each user, the AI and machine learning-driven platform analyses 66 unique data parameters, including behaviour and interests, demographic information and location. All of which adds up to over 250TB of data analysed every day, in real time, to target the right user with the right app.

What this does in practice is to take a large chunk of the guesswork out of mobile app user acquisition. So if a company wants to work with YouAppi to attract new users for its eCommerce fashion app, for example, it can tell the advertiser with a high degree of confidence that it would expect to attract between, say, 50,000 and 100,000 new high-quality consumers per month for that app.

“We run the initial campaign for 48 hours and then, as the responses come in, the platform optimises the campaign using AI and machine learning, focusing on the best-performing segments at the expense of the others,” says Vaknin. “Then we can scale that out to find more of these users and lookalike users to maintain the same level of new user acquisition over time.”

It’s an approach that has gone well with advertisers. Among the companies buying into YouAppi’s user-centric approach are Spotify, iHeartRadio, Rovio, SGN, Draft Kings, Etermax, Miniclip, Jump Ramp Games, Huuuge, Glu, Poshmark, StubHub, Realtor.com, HomeAdvisor, Tokopedia, Go-Jek, Lazada and many more global brands. And over the last five years, it has delivered over 300m app installs.

Re-engagement
While it seems logical that the YouAppi approach and platform would deliver better results for advertisers, Vaknin is not naive enough to think that once they have downloaded an app, users can be left to their own devices. Even the most loyal customer needs a nudge now and again, so alongside user acquisition, re-engagement is a key part of the YouAppi platform.

“Research shows that 60 per cent of app users stop using an app after they have opened it five times, so a re-engagement strategy and mechanism are vital,” says Vaknin. “Our technology can help clients identify the point where the user stopped engaging with the app and approach them with the right message to bring them back to the same point in the app to use it again. We use a creative optimisation engine to help each client reach each user in the most relevant way, and it works. Overall, 30 per cent of our clients’ users who are targeted through a re-engagement campaign come back to the same point in the app and become revenue-generating customers again.

“The KPIs are different for each client. For car makers, for example, they may want to bring users back to the app to sign up for a test drive for a new model at their local dealer. Whatever the KPI, however, the important thing is to target the user with the right message that has the greatest chance of bringing them back to the app.”

As we all increasingly look to our mobile phones, and the apps we have on them, to help us manage our lives, the competition for brands to get on users’ devices is only likely to increase. Seen in this light, YouAppi’s approach seems to make sense for everyone in the ecosystem, including the brands that want to get their apps seen and downloaded by the right people, and the users themselves. After all, don’t we all prefer to be targeted with things we have shown an interest in, rather than being bombarded with noisy, irrelevant spam?

The post Finding loyal app users at scale appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

It’s not just dinner feasts and holiday treats that consumers have a proven appetite for during December – its also the most mobile time of year, as research proves that mobile consumption peaks during the festive season.

Recent research. conducted by Dimensional Research for YouAppi, shows that 85 per cent of consumers will use a mobile app for holiday shopping this year, and 95 per cent of companies see this period as an opportunity to engage potential customers via mobile. This is obbiously great news for mobile marketers. However, the research also highlights that while opportunities abound for companies to achieve their best ROI of the year, there is still a serious disconnect between what consumers want on mobile and what marketers are delivering.

Simple mistakes are costing mobile marketers millions, leaving revenue on the table during one of the most lucrative sales periods of the year for retailers and brands to boost their annual bottom line. With this in mind, here are six things marketers should do to ensure a successful mobile marketing strategy:

Plan ahead
The vast majority of marketers (97 per cent) face particular challenges during the holiday season – everything from infrastructure to the need to be culturally sensitive. The biggest problem (cited by 38 per cent), however, is there is “not enough time to execute everything we want,” with a full 76 per cent of marketers admitting they struggle with a lack of time to prepare for the holiday marketing onslaught. So, planning campaigns well in advance is essential to ensuring mobile marketers maximise their holiday ROI.

Don’t peak too early
Many retailers now adorn their shop fronts with holiday decorations as early as October (or even August and September in some cases). It can be tempting to jump on this bandwagon, but our research shows most consumers (54 per cent) are not receptive to Christmas-themed messages until after Thanksgiving. Brands that start pushing Christmas buys too early risk being the brand that triggers festive fatigue – making audiences zone out, rather than buy in.

Give consumers what they actually want
This is particularly applicable when it comes to how they pay. Most marketers (60 per cent) prefer to push customers towards in-app purchases, but this turns off the majority of buyers – a mere five per cent of consumers prefer to buy holiday gifts via in-app purchase. The overwhelming consumer preference is to use their existing credit card from their profile (35 per cent) followed by PayPal (30 per cent). Make sure consumers can purchase from you in the way they prefer.

Let them see the loot
80 per cent of marketers are poised to miss the vast opportunities that rewarded video presents, simply by not making it part of their 2017 Christmas campaigns. With 54 per cent of consumers saying they’ll watch video at least some of the time, this is a huge mistake. Overwhelmed marketers who feel they don’t have enough time may view video as an added, unnecessary stress. It needn’t be, though. Most consumers agree that short videos – 15 seconds or less – are best.

Make the packaging beautiful
69 per cent of mobile holiday shoppers confirm that special offers catch their eye. For instance, the most effective ‘packaging’ uncovered in the research is coupons (cited by 40 per cent), followed by limited-time deals (33 per cent). This tells us marketers need to ensure they are developing compelling creative to grab the consumers attention.

Ensure your app works
It sounds simple, but this is where many mobile marketers stumble. When asked to cite their wish for a holiday mobile buying spree, 45 per cent of consumers said “a bug-free experience.” This was followed by “an app experience that flows easily and makes sense” (36 per cent), “is quick” (35 per cent), and “is seamlessly integrated between the app and the online store” (31 per cent).

Mobile marketers who plan and execute holiday campaigns with these key components in mind will have their moment under the mistletoe and reap the biggest ROI rewards.

Jennifer Shambroom is CMO of YouAppi

The post The Most Mobile Time of Year – YouAppi appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.

Check out our Dmexco tag for more coverage from this years gathering of digital marketers

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The study, conducted by Dimensional Research, found that 94 per cent of the 218 global mobile marketer and agency employees surveyed in May and June said that mobile video best practices are different from traditional desktop video best practices. And it’s the differences between mobile video and legacy video implementations that are creating the challenges for mobile marketers and their agencies as they increase their use of mobile video.

96 per cent of respondents claimed they faced challenges with mobile video. The leading challenge, cited by 44 per cent of them, was ‘developing compelling creative’. So mobile marketers seem to understand that repurposing video from other platforms won’t cut it on mobile.

The second leading challenge, cited by 35 per cent of respondents, was ‘finding properties to effectively deliver video’. This challenge of finding the right properties and channels was also seen in another question, where 42 per cent of respondents said that they run their mobile videos on six or more channels, while 17 per cent run mobile videos on over 20 different channels.

A third major challenge cited by respondents was the broad range of metrics and KPIs used to measure performance. Respondents cited no less than15 different, including Cost Per Install (CPI), Clickthrough Rate (CTR), Video Completion Rate (VCR) and Cost Per Completed Video (CPCV), with none used by more than half. 55 per cent of respondents said they are using three or more KPIs, yet despite this, 46 per cent said they are not satisfied by their ability to measure the success of their mobile video programs.

“This research shows that mobile marketers are dealing with a huge number of different metrics and KPIs for video, and an enormous range in the types of measurement,” said Dimensional Research founder and principal, Diane Hagglund. “When you combine this with fact that not even half can agree that any of these metrics is worth tracking, it clearly indicates a metric standardization challenge for the industry.”

Despite these challenges, however, marketers see tremendous opportunities with mobile video. Among the respondents who work in a range of mobile marketing and mobile user acquisition positions not solely focused on mobile video, 94 per cent said that the importance of mobile video has increased in the past few years and 93 per cent said that mobile video will continue to increase in importance in the coming years.

Asked about channels and applications, 75 per cent of respondents found Facebook important, followed by in-app advertising on other apps (69 per cent); YouTube (66 per cent); the company’s own app (20 per cent); and Snapchat (18 per cent). And when asked about running time, 70 per cent of respondents said that the ideal length for a mobile video is 15 seconds or less.
There’s more information about the study here.

The post Marketers keen on mobile video, despite creative and measurement challenges appeared first on Mobile Marketing Magazine.