Apptivate: App Marketing Explained

Jyoti Pannu, Product Manager at Booking.com, shares how AI is transforming the way travelers discover, plan, and book their next adventure. From AI trip planners that surface new possibilities to the integration of GenAI and ChatGPT into the core product, Jyoti explains why travel discovery is moving beyond simple search, how user intent is now mapped through nuanced signals, and what the rise of LLMs means for attribution, retenti...

Lenny Rabin, founder of direct advertising group Brown Boots and their reward app platform GoKart, joins Taylor Lobdell to dissect the evolution of rewarded user acquisition, focusing on how direct publisher-advertiser relationships can solve long-standing industry inefficiencies. Rabin, with over a decade in rewarded traffic and ad tech, explains why most publishers dislike third-party monetization platforms, how custom tech stack...

This special ‘Best of 2025’ episode compiles standout insights from top mobile marketing leaders who joined Apptivate this year. Across five segments, the show digs into the realities of AI in ad production, growth lessons from global brands, the rise of community-driven retention, loyalty tactics for the holiday season, and the intersection of brand authenticity with performance marketing. Guests include Andre Kempe (Admiral Media...

Lisanne Vera, VP of Growth at KashKick, joins Taylor Lobdell to talk about the incentives economy, a marketplace where leisure becomes an asset. From her early affiliate-marketing roots to leading growth at one of the fastest-growing rewards apps, Lisanne unpacks how KashKick designs offers that respect user time, prevent bait-and-switch dynamics, and build long-term trust. She discusses how micro-earnings sustain engagement, why t...

It’s often said that for e-commerce brands, the holiday season is the 5th quarter of the year. Sue Azari, e-commerce industry lead at AppsFlyer, joins Taylor Lobdell for a tactical breakdown of how the smartest e-commerce apps move from Q4 user acquisition to Q5 retention and remarketing. From UK and EMEA trends to global shifts in spend, Sue details why remarketing spend surges fivefold at the end of the year, how loyalty and pers...

James Dickins, Team Lead of Technical Support at Gamelight, joins Taylor Lobdell to discuss how rewarded UA and behavioral targeting shape user acquisition in 2025’s privacy-first landscape. From the company’s laser-eyed cat mascot to the mechanics of lookalike models, James explains how his team balances precision with ethics and how algorithms are trained on aggregated behavior data. He also discusses creative testing and when hu...

Shilpa Reddy, CMO of Down Under School of Yoga and former Marketing VP at Acorns, maps her journey from fintech to wellness and explains why the same principles drive both: make time-tested tools accessible, and build a community that keeps people engaged. She breaks down her three-stage marketing flywheel, and shows why marketers must dismantle the false divide between direct response and brand storytelling. The conversation moves...

Alejandro Hernandez, Senior CRM Notifications and Lifecycle Specialist at Babbel, explains how AI and human creativity intersect to drive retention in language learning. He shares how Babbel uses ecosystem segmentation, predictive models, and deep links to re-engage millions of learners worldwide. From predicting churn with behavior signals to ensuring that every push notification feels like a supportive nudge rather than spam, Ale...

Advi Bishnoi, Head of Consulting at Social Plus, argues that in 2025, retention has overtaken acquisition as the real growth engine for apps. From Ulta Beauty to Harley Davidson, Advi has helped brands turn community features into measurable revenue streams. In this episode, he explains why micro-communities and in-app social layers transform loyalty programs, how first-party data becomes indispensable in a privacy-first world, and...

Louis Tanguay, founder and managing director of App Growth Summit, traces his arc from music magazine founder to film marketer to architect of a global mobile industry community now marking its 100th event. Louis explains why mobile marketers keep missing the basics: custom product pages, team silos, overreliance on AI and how AGS forges authentic connection in a field where ‘networking’ usually means sales pitches. Louis argues fo...

Piotr Prędkiewicz, Senior Marketing Analyst at FORMEL SKIN, exposes the myth of ‘perfect data’ and charts the future of privacy-centric analytics in mobile growth. With a career spanning fintech, dating and health tech, Piotr unpacks how to track users legally, ethically, and creatively before they even register. He also discusses why device data is always noisier than you want, and where most marketers go wrong on privacy, attribu...

Seema Shah, VP of Research and Insights at Sensor Tower, dispenses with the industry’s fixation on superficial growth metrics. Her analysis exposes the fundamental asymmetry in e-commerce: scale without retention leads nowhere, and price wars favor only those insulated by infrastructure and sunk-cost bias. Shah parses the machinery of loyalty and why brands that depend on incentives or viral hacks collapse as soon as ad spend falte...

Moshe Even-Israel, Head of Business Development at Scrambly, unpacks the real stakes and shifting standards in the rewarded user acquisition ecosystem. From onboarding and fraud, to retention and data transparency, Moshe interrogates both the promise and pitfalls of incentivized platforms. This episode covers vendor selection, long-term retention strategies, KYC (know your customer) challenges, and the real metrics for measuring UA...

Udhara de Silva, who leads loyalty marketing for Singapore Airlines in Australia, walks through the launch and rapid growth of Kris+, the digital rewards app that enables members to earn and spend miles in restaurants and retail stores – a first for any airline rewards app outside of Singapore. The discussion tracks why Australia was chosen as the testbed, the challenges of localizing a QR-based payment app in a card-centric market...

Andre Kempe is the CEO of Admiral Media, a performance marketing agency based in Europe. He returns to Apptivate to discuss the role of AI in creative development for mobile app marketing campaigns. Find out what types of apps can leverage AI in their ads, where the human touch still outperforms the machine, and where AI makes the biggest impact from a mobile marketing standpoint.

Questions Andre answered in this episode:

Daniel Lupu is the Senior Marketing Manager at Skyscanner, a search engine for deals on flights, hotels, and car rentals serving 110 million users monthly. In this episode, Daniel shares lessons and results from the tests he’s run. He discusses his team's approach to navigating SKAN, the creative strategies they’ve implemented, and his observations of the relationship between paid and organic search ads on Apple.  

Questions Dan...

In this episode, we chat with Luca Stefanutti, the Director of Growth at adidas Running, the fitness app formerly known as Runtastic. They touch on the app’s role within the larger brand, key performance metrics, implementing new insights within large teams, and Luca’s point of view on some of today’s hottest app marketing topics, like AI, creatives, and the relationship between incremental and organic traffic.

Questions Luca an...

In this episode of our Apptivate podcast, we chat with Liam Branaghan, the Performance Marketing and Strategy Lead for Uber. Liam’s teams focus on driving growth for Uber Eats across EMEA, while supporting overall brand and business goals. In this episode, you’ll learn about the evolution of Uber’s regional marketing teams and how they merged into a single global team. You’ll also hear about their work to refine their localization ...

There are a lot of data sensitivities when it comes to marketing in the healthcare and wellness space. This week on Apptivate, we speak with Kevin Bell, the Performance Marketing Lead at Mochi Health, about navigating Facebook’s recent changes to events for advertisers in these industries. Kevin gives you the background on the platform’s changes, and how his team adapted their marketing strategy to meet Facebook’s new criteria unde...