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Marcus Johnson: [00:00:00] Atmosphere TV is the largest streaming TV platform purpose-built for shared social spaces like bars, restaurants, gyms, and airports. Atmosphere TV is the creator of CHIVE TV and over 30 mesmerizing audio optional channels that entertain over 150 million monthly viewers. Built for business, made for fun, Atmosphere TV

Marcus Johnson: Hey, gang. It's Friday, October 9th. Ran, Chris, and listeners, welcome to Behind the Numbers, an EMARKETER podcast made possible by Atmosphere TV. I'm Marcus, and joining me for today's conversation we have two gents. One of them is a media analyst living in New York. Our very own Chris Wood joins the show.

Chris Wood: Hi, Marcus.

Chris Wood: How's it going?

Marcus Johnson: Good, fella. Thank you for being here. Uh, we're also joined by a special guest living in Tel Aviv, CMO of AppsFlyer, Ran Avrahamy. Hello.

Ran Avrahamy: You had it in one, Marcus. Well done. Yes. Hi. Hi, Chris.

Marcus Johnson: Hi, Ran. Thanks for

Ran Avrahamy: having me.

Marcus Johnson: I shouldn't be as proud of myself as I am.

Ran Avrahamy: As you should. [00:01:00]

Marcus Johnson: Uh, anyway, when we've got a special guest on, we of course start with a speed intro.

Marcus Johnson: So two questions to get to know Ran, one for Chris, 'cause, um ... Well, will people- Actually, Chris, it's first episode. You know what, Chris? We'll give you both. Uh, Ran, you'll start. Ran, what does your company do, in a sentence, and what do you do for them in another?

Ran Avrahamy: Uh, all right. So in a sentence, uh, you know, Astrol at its core, we help businesses take all their messy, fragmented data and actually turn it into something they can measure and, uh, trust.

Ran Avrahamy: Uh, we do measurement and deep linking, data collaboration, AI, uh, you know, all of that kind of under, like, one roof. Uh, we've been doing this for 14 years with more than 15,000 businesses, so we- we've kind of seen it all.

Marcus Johnson: Mm-hmm. And what do you do for them?

Ran Avrahamy: So I lead marketing. I'm the chief marketing officer for Astrol for the last, geez, 12 and something years.

Marcus Johnson: Very nice. [00:02:00] Very nice. And Chris, people hopefully already know what your marketer does, but what do you do for us? It's your first show.

Chris Wood: Yes. I contribute on the media team to newsletters and write reports.

Marcus Johnson: Very nice. Uh, second question. Ran, you're first. What's the most interesting thing you've read, watched, or listened to recently?

Ran Avrahamy: I'm gonna be banal, but, um, I've been in the previous Oasis tour, uh, previous- last summer. Uh, so I've been on repeat and Morning Glory ever since. Wait, wha- what is it? So Oasis albums. So I've been to the Oasis concert- Oh, Oasis ... a year ago. Yes. And ever since- Great ... and ever since- Great answer ... I have three daughters.

Ran Avrahamy: All of them are, "What's the story, Morning Glory?" over and over- ... and over again. So I think we're good on the Britpop.

Marcus Johnson: Oh, I think, I like to think your, that was your answer because I'm an English host and I appreciate that.

Ran Avrahamy: No. No.

Marcus Johnson: All right, Chris, best of luck. You're not gonna top that though, mate. But what, what do you

Marcus Johnson: Unless you say you've been [00:03:00] reading Shakespeare lately. But what, uh- ... what is the most interesting thing you've been consuming recently? I mean,

Chris Wood: most interesting, the actor Tom Hardy is on a rap album, uh, that dropped a couple of months ago. Oh, English. Yes. Uh Czarface x Frankie Pulitzer. Frankie Pulitzer is the actor Tom Hardy, and he's featured with a roster of guests like Busta Rhymes and Method Man.

Chris Wood: It's really fascinating.

Marcus Johnson: Gentlemen, great answers. Wow. That'll be a good show. Anyway Today's real topic

Marcus Johnson: How the lessons from mobile measurement can help with digital transformation Uh, all right, gents. So, uh, we've been working together. We collaborated, um, with yourselves, AppsFlyer, recently to better understand measurement challenges marketers are facing. And Chris, uh, you've been heading up, uh, this, uh, collaboration with, with AppsFlyer.

Marcus Johnson: Do you wanna tell us a bit about, uh, the research that we've been working, uh, together with them on?

Chris Wood: Yeah, sure. So, [00:04:00] um, at, at, at the core of the report is a survey of 157 brand leaders and agency leaders, um, about their, um, recognition of mobile grade measurement, um, what they're doing internally, uh, to transform, um, and to adopt these high standards for, uh, marketing measurement, and also, uh, to adapt to the changing AI, uh, transformation across, uh, digital channels.

Marcus Johnson: Mm-hmm. Ran, why, why now? Why was this a good time to look at this research now? And then second to that, what, um, jumped out to you most from, from the research?

Ran Avrahamy: Look, I think now is a wonderful time. It's like, uh, we're in this crossroads of both AI convergence and, like, multi-channel user journey type of orchestration.

Ran Avrahamy: Yeah. And I think it's a wonderful time to bring a lot of the goodies that we and the mobile community have learned throughout the last, I don't know, 10, 15 years, [00:05:00] uh, into the omni-channel space, and I think it's a wonderful time to get into that. Um, and, and also, look, we'll, we'll talk AI at some point in this conversation, and, uh, the risks, like, so, so, like, the risks and the opportunities are, are insane, and I think it's important for us to talk about both.

Ran Avrahamy: Probably we'll get there at some point this, in this conversation.

Marcus Johnson: Yeah. Um, a big part of this seemed to be the, uh, inefficiency o- of measurement as one of the, the takeaways from this research. Uh, so Ran, start with you for this one. How, how is the, uh, is inefficient measurement preventing advertisers from investing more in digital channels that could deliver higher returns?

Marcus Johnson: I really liked this finding. I thought it was fascinating, this idea that, um, uh, it's not just that you're putting money over here and not putting it over there, but how much are you not putting it over there because of things, um, that are preventing you from doing so?

Ran Avrahamy: You know, when we ran this survey, so actually we ran the survey, uh, we do that with a marketer just [00:06:00] under 106, about, like, 157, uh, senior brand and agency folks, uh, in the US.

Ran Avrahamy: Um, there were a lot of surprising stats, right? Uh, I'll probably go over some of them in the conversation. One of the stats that really, like, blew my mind was that almost, I think, 60% of, uh, of the people answering, uh, uh, say that they're under-investing actually in channels that could drive real value, right?

Ran Avrahamy: And, and it's not because that those channels are bad, uh, and, and, and that's, that sucks. It's, it's really because they can't- Uh, prove it's working

Marcus Johnson: Mm-hmm

Ran Avrahamy: And, and I think, like, this is the real story, right? It's not like channel quality problem. It's not about that. Uh, and, and by the way, we'll maybe talk later about more channels coming in on retail media, on, on, you know, ChatGPT ads, et cetera.

Ran Avrahamy: And, and channels are fine, but marketers that, you know, I say they, but actually we, it's also for B2B, [00:07:00] we can't really defend, uh, budgets internally, right? It's a lot of internal frictions.

Marcus Johnson: Yep. Yep.

Ran Avrahamy: And, you know, another stat that I have here is, like, 10% straight up said like, "Hey, we don't even have the visibility to know," which is, I don't know, Chris, I think it's almost as worse as, as before.

Chris Wood: 10.2%.

Ran Avrahamy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it, it, th- so the, the thing, what's happened in practice, guys, is that, you know, nobody wants to walk into a budget review with the finance team and, you know, fighting for more spend with, with numbers that they cannot trust themselves, they cannot stand behind them. Yeah. And so, you know, you k- like, keep feeding what's, I don't know, maybe more easy to prove, right?

Ran Avrahamy: Like, you- what you used to do before, and you actually starve potential opportunities, new channels that are probably, I don't know, maybe better, but you, you're not confident enough to go out and test them- Yeah ... because you can prove them.

Marcus Johnson: Yeah. [00:08:00] I really liked the way this question was phrased. Um, do you believe your organization is currently over-investing in channels that are easier to measure at the expense of channels that may actually drive more value?

Marcus Johnson: Um, it's a fascinating way of, of looking at it, because as I was saying before, it's not just we don't wanna put them over there. We've done the research, and we've decided that's not the place. It's that we can't prove to people that that's the place we should be, and that's why we're avoiding that corner of the market.

Marcus Johnson: I was thinking about different analogies to this, um, of dollars kind of left on the table, uh, so to speak, and I was thinking about when you go into a store to buy something, and there's, like, a long line at checkout, like, how much a retailer's leaving on the table because someone walked out of their store.

Marcus Johnson: They'll never be able to measure that. Um, you know, they'll never be able to prove, look, people are, the long lines are a problem. We need to stop, we need to cut them down so people don't just walk out, or things were locked behind glass. How many people left the store because of that? Or shopping online, the page didn't load fast enough.

Marcus Johnson: The shipping [00:09:00] times were, were too long. Shipping was too much. I had to create a profile. There's all these things that people don't do, and it's hard to measure that even though you know that that's a significant part of your business.

Ran Avrahamy: Y- y- y- you know, uh, on top of that, think about experimentation, how hard it is to put- Yeah

Ran Avrahamy: like, investment into ex- uh, experimentation where, look, everything is, uh, the, the scrutiny is high, right? For every marketer, it has been the same for years, but probably more, uh, so than before, mainly because of the expectations of AI that, that board members, you know, finance teams bring to the, to, to marketers.

Ran Avrahamy: But how do you justify ex- experimentations? Mm-hmm. Much harder than before. And- And you just leave those channels aside-

Chris Wood: Yeah.

Ran Avrahamy: Unfortunately.

Chris Wood: Yeah. I mean, just to kind of pile on that, Ran, um, the study asked specifically about ROI and the pressure to prove ROI. 49.7% of marketers said that [00:10:00] they felt significant pressure, and nearly 30%, uh, extreme pressure, which is a lot of pressure going around.

Marcus Johnson: That's a lot. Not much left but no pressure. Under pressure. Maybe

Ran Avrahamy: that, that should be the

Chris Wood: highlight. Dun, dun, dun,

Ran Avrahamy: dun, dun. Under pressure.

Marcus Johnson: Yeah.

Ran Avrahamy: Exactly.

Marcus Johnson: We might have to cut that 'cause we, we don't have that kind of money, Chris. You just... That was a perfect rendition of the actual song. Uh, um, so, uh, let's, let's talk a bit about, um, mobile grade measurement.

Marcus Johnson: Ran, what does, what role does mobile grade measurement play in shaping digital transformation strategies across, across channels? And for context, the survey defines... Uh, w- well, Chris, how did we define mobile grade measurement in the, in the piece?

Chris Wood: Mobile grade measurement, instead of, um, comparing, you know, s- stack, uh, tech stacks and mobile marketing partners and measurement partners, we asked specifically on, you know, mobile grade measurement, and 93% either recognized it or said that they're, uh, do- making changes [00:11:00] to adapt across channels, um, to meet that standard.

Chris Wood: And I think part of that is really just because of l- of long tradition and, uh, the hurdles that the mobile space has faced. And a- another thing is that mobile is really kind of, uh, the hub when it comes to cross-channel marketing- Mm-hmm ... um, when we have, uh, you know, upwards of 80-plus percent of people using second screens when they're watching, say, CTV and streaming.

Marcus Johnson: So Ran, mobile grade measurement, measurement capabilities to handle privacy constraints, fraud, and cross-device identity. Yeah. What role is that playing in shaping digital transformation strategies across channels?

Ran Avrahamy: Look, I've-- I, I love mobile as, as a, as a channel, as a community. Mobile marketers, I think, are gonna be the next CMOs.

Ran Avrahamy: Um, and it's really... And, and I've, I've been doing this for almost 20 years, uh, specifically in mobile. And I think when you think about it, you know, mobile got dealt, like, with the [00:12:00] hardest hand, honestly. Uh, you know, we had to solve, uh, uh, you said it, right, privacy, regulation, fraud, identity issues- Mm-hmm

Ran Avrahamy: across two different platforms like iOS and Android, totally different set of rules.

Marcus Johnson: Yeah.

Ran Avrahamy: Um, and nothing else had, you know, that squeeze, like, this early in the life cycle. Mobile is pretty new. I, I mean, it's like-

Marcus Johnson: Yeah ...

Ran Avrahamy: 15 years, uh- Yeah, still ... or so for, for, for smartphones. And relatively speaking, it's still new.

Ran Avrahamy: So I think, you know, uh, you know, we in the mobile community, we were forced to actually, like, build a real infrastructure. Like, it's not an, just a dashboard. It's like real, uh, plumbing, right? Stuff that stay accurate even when signals drop out, and they, they do drop out a lot, like, with, you know, feedback loops that, that constantly checking themselves over and over again, uh, and, and proving that accuracy.

Ran Avrahamy: You know- Mm-hmm ... we were really able to create [00:13:00] something like a source of truth, uh, within that chaos. Uh, you know, we love calling it the mobile jungle over the last couple years. Um, and, and think about it just for in the last, you know, six years, mainly since 2020, uh, uh, with, uh, iOS 14 coming up and changes, uh, for, uh, from the Apple side and then Google and then the back.

Ran Avrahamy: So a lot of chaos, a lot of mess that I think m- the mobile community, both from a technology and operation perspective, learned a lot and can bring That type of lessons and that type of insights and that type of infrastructure into the omni-channel world.

Marcus Johnson: Mm-hmm.

Ran Avrahamy: And, and I think, uh, uh, Chris, you said this before, uh, that was really surprising that, uh, I think you said 93%, right, I think of, of, of leaders in that survey are either, like, doing this in other channels already or say that they need to.

Ran Avrahamy: And, and I think mobile basically solved this, like, five, six years ago, [00:14:00] uh, and, and before everybody else had to. Mm. And I think, I think it's a huge opportunity, uh, uh, to learn the lessons we've had in mobile and bring them that, bringing all those lessons into the omni-channel, uh, and, like, digital transformation world.

Ran Avrahamy: And then we actually see this with, with customers of ours that didn't even consider or still don't consider themselves, like, mobile-first companies, but are going through this transformation specifically in the last three, four years and are seeing incredible success.

Chris Wood: Yeah. Yeah, so Ran, 24.2% of respondents said they're building now those kinds of, uh, pipes.

Chris Wood: Um, 23.6% have already applied partially, uh, to other channels, and 14.7%, um, for most or all of their other, uh, channels.

Marcus Johnson: Mm. Yeah.

Ran Avrahamy: A- a- and growing, and, and, and there is a lot more room to grow. Yeah.

Marcus Johnson: Yeah, I like this sentence in the piece, "The confidence in mobile measurement, our survey found, stems from how operators in the space develop [00:15:00] consistent signals over time."

Marcus Johnson: Ran, to your point, because it's such a new space it feels like no one is an, like, not an expert, but you know, like with banks, you trust your bank has been around for a billion years. And companies that have been around for a long time, even if it is in, in the grand scheme of, you know, mobile or the internet, if you've been around for a, as you said, Appsflyer, like a number of years, you've been doing it for a long time, there is something to be said for we figured it out, we have experience in this.

Marcus Johnson: Um, Chris, a- another part, uh, uh, of this section said that the confidence in mobile standards in the survey, um, w- was related to the growth i- in mobile, uh, app advertising. What, what would we expect in terms of mobile app install ad spend growth?

Chris Wood: I mean, EMARKETER forecasts, uh, show that, um, mobile app install ads, um, spend up 13.3% in 2024.

Chris Wood: Wow. 9.2%, um, still, uh, for last year and this year [00:16:00] in 2026. Um- Okay ... in-app ad spend up 12% in 2026. Um- Okay.

Marcus Johnson: Still

Ran Avrahamy: a very good- A- and I think, guys, there, there's something there to, to be said We're probably gonna talk AI in a second, right? Me- me- in relations to- Mm-hmm ... to fragmentation and the challenges of it.

Marcus Johnson: Yeah.

Ran Avrahamy: But when you think about it, one of the things that we've seen in the second part of 2025 and also continuously in 2026, that the bottleneck has shifted, um, from building and shipping products. It used to be the bottleneck, right? You had to build this entire organization of engineers and developers and, and the bottleneck was there of, of production, and it's now moving into the attention and distribution.

Ran Avrahamy: Um, and we've seen, I believe, around 60% increase in, in iOS apps being deployed into the App Store- Mm ... uh, in the second half of 2025. [00:17:00] And, and that's massive, right? That's a lot, many more apps in the- Yeah ... App Store for the pretty much the same amount of, uh, population. And the, the fight for distribution and attention is getting, it just getting growing.

Ran Avrahamy: And, and again, we, we didn't even talk about, and again, we're October, we didn't even talk about, uh, uh, Muse by Me- Meta, Instinct, other agents that are popping up, and a lot more opportunities for connectors that, that, that Mark Zuckerberg just talked about a couple of, uh, days ago. There's a lot more opportunities in there, and we see this really as like, sort of like the golden era of, of marketing and advertising.

Marcus Johnson: Mm-hmm.

Ran Avrahamy: I obviously we're very happy about it. Uh, but there's a lot of opportunities coming up.

Marcus Johnson: Yeah. Um, yeah, so A- AI, we touched on it for, you know, mentioned it a few times, but AI's supposed to fix everything. I think that's what everyone's kind of assuming- Mm ... it's going to do. Um, so I'll pose this one to you, Ran.

Marcus Johnson: Why doesn't AI fix, [00:18:00] uh, your measurement problems? Put another way, why did a sizable group of marketers see measurement challenges as a barrier to AI transformation?

Ran Avrahamy: Uh, the AI question, Marcus. Yeah, and this is, this, this is an answer that probably people don't love hearing.

Marcus Johnson: Mm.

Ran Avrahamy: Uh, so I'm sorry in advance.

Ran Avrahamy: Take it. We'll appreciate hearing it. But again, I'm saying this, you know, I have a very-- I love my job, and because I do marketing for marketers, and I run marketing myself, right? So it's like I have both the seller hat and the buyer hat myself.

Marcus Johnson: Mm-hmm.

Ran Avrahamy: And I've learned this, the following sentence, the, the hard way, is that AI doesn't create its, like, own inputs, like it just amplifies them, right?

Ran Avrahamy: And, you know- Mm ... when you have clean data in, you get better predictions out. Mm-hmm. But when you have messy data in, you know, you just, like, get confident wRang answers at [00:19:00] scale said with, like, total conviction.

Marcus Johnson: Yeah.

Ran Avrahamy: Right?

Marcus Johnson: Yep.

Ran Avrahamy: It-- AI can be very persuasive if he, she, it wants to. And another very interesting insight I took from the report was that, like, 36% said that actually siloed data actually is their, like, biggest AI barrier.

Ran Avrahamy: Yeah,

Chris Wood: absolutely. Okay. That was the top

Ran Avrahamy: response. Right? Absolutely. Yeah. And, like, 34% said that there's, like, it's about inconsistent measurement definitions. And when you add that up, that's not really, like, an AI problem. That's more of a- Yeah, data problem ... like, a data foundation problem. Yeah. Yeah, it's a data problem, like, wearing some sort of, like, an AI costume.

Ran Avrahamy: And, uh, seriously, and it's like it's worse than like- It's terrible ... we always had bad data, right? Yeah. We always had that. That, that's, uh, you know, we, we made a business out of it. And, but honestly, this is much worse than, like, that old school bad data because we're at a, a very [00:20:00] interesting intersection. I said this before, that on one side, we-- you have insanely high expectation, right?

Ran Avrahamy: Of, like, less resources because AI, uh, but, you know, go out there and get better results And also, the second thing is like that AI, it, it moves super fast, like it's a machine-level speed, right? And before, when it was like old school bad data problems, you have a human that, you know, I- I- ideally caught that bad number at some point, slow down, and fix it.

Ran Avrahamy: But, but now, like an AI workflow just keeps on going faster- Mm-hmm ... and, and, and, and nobody actually noticed.

Marcus Johnson: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ran Avrahamy: That's a huge problem. Yeah. When there's no human in the loop, and when there's a lot of bad signals and bad data getting into that feedback loop, nobody catches it. Yeah. At least before someone caught it, someone had a KPI around that.

Marcus Johnson: Yeah.

Ran Avrahamy: Like a bleeding [00:21:00] test cycle on steroids.

Marcus Johnson: Yeah.

Chris Wood: I mean, less than half of respondents, uh, or half of them said that they, uh, will keep a human in the loop, uh, more than half the time. Um, and, uh, 27.4% said rarely are they taking optimization recommendations from AI. Hmm. So they can't even tap into that extra firepower.

Chris Wood: Uh-

Marcus Johnson: Yeah. Um, we've talked a lot about, uh, pressure. This word's come up a bunch. I think it's, um, valid. Uh, Ran, how are organizations responding to the growing pressure to prove ROI?

Ran Avrahamy: But I, I think, should I answer this as a CMO or as a CMO of Adsquare? The, the pre- Look, the pressure is real, guys, you know? And it's, um

Ran Avrahamy: Uh, an- another interesting stat that I saw is, like, uh, 50%, I think Chris, you also said this before, 50% say that, like, significant pressure to prove ROI everywhere, and, like, 30% say, [00:22:00] uh, to the extreme- Extreme ... actually. Yep. E- e- extreme. It's like pressure is not a, a, a bad enough word. It's like extreme pressure.

Ran Avrahamy: So it's basically the whole industry. Like, like, 80% is, like- Yeah ... uh, pressure or more. And I think here is the collision, right? M- I, I said this, you know, before, that ROI pressure is hitting at the exact same moment as AI adoption, right? Adoption just increases. Models are just getting improved. Again, pressure top-down, bottom-up is getting higher.

Marcus Johnson: Mm-hmm.

Ran Avrahamy: And people are being asked to prove much more, much faster with tools that are running, like, at that same, like, machine-level speed. And again, going back to the data problem, if your data is shaky underneath all of that, it's just a very tough combination.

Marcus Johnson: Yep.

Ran Avrahamy: And the ones that we see getting ahead of it are the ones that are treating measurement like an infrastructure, [00:23:00] and not like some reporting layer on top, like screwed on top- Yeah

Ran Avrahamy: or, or at the end.

Marcus Johnson: Mm-hmm.

Ran Avrahamy: And again, as I said at the beginning, and that was the thesis of, of, of the report and the survey, that mobile has essentially already built that model, right? And, and everyone else is just catching up to it right now. Kind of catching

Chris Wood: up, yeah. I mean, um, w- blind spots for cross-channel attribution, um, the top one was social media, 50.3%, and CTV streaming, 47.1%.

Marcus Johnson: Uh, all right, gents, uh, I think here's the, the top takeaway from the episode. Uh, marketers are under so much pressure to prove ROI, as we've mentioned, but bad data and bad signals are only amplified by AI, not made better by it. Uh, so don't treat measurement as just a dashboard or something to do at the end.

Marcus Johnson: Uh, treat it more as infrastructure for better signals. Um, if you guys want access to the full report, it's called Mobile Measurement Playbook: Opens a Way Forward for Omnichannel Marketers. Link in the show notes, [00:24:00] uh, if you wanna get access to that. Unfortunately, that's all we've got time for for today's episode.

Marcus Johnson: Thank you so much to my guests. Thank you to Chris.

Chris Wood: Flew right by, Marcus. It was

Marcus Johnson: really a pleasure. It goes quick. Uh, thank you so much to Run.

Ran Avrahamy: Thank you so much, Chris, Marcus.

Marcus Johnson: And thanks to the whole production crew, Stuart, who runs the team, and Mike helping us out with this one. And to everyone for listening and to behind The Marketing Marketer Podcast made possible by Atmosphere TV.

Marcus Johnson: Thank you to you. We'll be back on Monday, of course, but until then, happiest of weekends.