Everyone on the Moloco team was super geared up as we planned for the big return of MAU in Las Vegas this year. After two years of no in-person events, we could hardly wait to meet, strategize, and raise a glass to many of our customers, partners, friends, and colleagues we hadn’t seen since 2019. And to add to our collective energy, there was nothing like arriving at Harry Reid International Airport and seeing Moloco’s big digital billboard ads all around the concourse and taxi lines.

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What was the buzz?

Everyone was talking about ATT, seller-defined audiences, and the post-privacy world. One of the most popular sessions from our friends Eric Seufert of Mobile Dev Memo and Allison Schiff of AdExchanger was about SKAN 4.0 with “Platform Changes and their Lasting Impact on Mobile App Distribution and Payment.”  And with Apple hosting its annual WWDC during the same week, everyone was speculating about what changes were coming for targeting and attribution and when.

There were also a lot of conversations about better optimizing first-party data and a both symbolic and realistic changing of the guard among the walled gardens. Would TikTok become the preferred ad platform for driving app installs? What platforms were people betting on and winning or losing with for their UA strategies in EMEA, APAC, and LatAm?

Mobile is going through a major transition, but apps are still highly dependent on the iOS and Android platforms, their app stores, and their governance policies. In addition to privacy, lots of folks were also talking about Apple’s and Google’s app store monetization practices and Epic Games’s legal battles for more revenue autonomy. 

Acquisition isn’t just about demand

On Wednesday during the conference, Moloco’s  GM of Growth Strategies, David Simon, co-presented a session on “Supply Chain Problems are Everywhere – Even in Our App Economy” with WeatherBug’s VP of Revenue and Marketing, Michael Brooks. David and Michael challenged the audience to think about how much value the exchanges and other actors along the ad impression supply chain are providing for the percentage of total revenue they take. 

Did you know that for every ad impression, there’s an average 22 different paths to the same outcome? And that suppliers take about 95 cents of every dollar spent on in-app advertising? Compare that to the 10 cents suppliers take for every dollar of legacy TV, print, and radio advertising or the 15 to 40 cents taken for most programmatically traded platforms like web, CTV, OOH, and search, and it becomes clear there’s a need for new approaches to value assessment and capture. [Hint: partnering with a modern DSP that optimizes bidding with machine learning is a good place to start.] .

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Many happy returns to MAU

The exhibit area for MAU filled the MGM Grand ballroom space. As far as the eye could see, performance marketers and UA managers looked happy to be there, happy to talk and hug, and, in Moloco’s booth, enjoy a complimentary matcha latte pulled by one of our professional baristas. 

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From advertisers to exchange and MMP partners, it felt amazing to see so many friendly and familiar faces together again IRL. We reconnected, met many new people, learned a ton, caught up on the latest and greatest, exchanged ideas, and left MAU Vegas 2022 feeling recharged and ready to unlock the value of mobile apps.

See you next time at MAU 2023!