Ethics of Advertising

Podcast: Understanding the Shopify Product Network (with Amanda Engelman)

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0t4t73AajImnE40UtvF8gm?si=36d5ce3270a04e1a My guest on this week's episode of the podcast is Amanda Engelman, Shopify's Director of Product for Advertising. The…

December 30, 2025

Perplexity introduces advertising; exploring the AI-search incentive problem

Perplexity, the AI-powered "answer engine" that responds to user queries with natural language summaries, will introduce an advertising product in…

August 26, 2024

Why did SKAdNetwork fail?

SKAdNetwork 4.0, an update to Apple's native app install attribution framework, was introduced two years ago at WWDC 2022. SKAdNetwork…

The big economy of small advertisers

In July 2020, more than 1,000 advertisers joined a boycott of Facebook's advertising platform organized by a group of civil…

The Advertiser’s Dilemma with PMax and Advantage+

Google's Performance Max (PMax) and Meta's Advantage+ tools are designed to allow advertisers to automate campaign optimization tasks without human…

January 31, 2024

What is an “appropriate fee” for a social media subscription?

This week, digital privacy activist group noyb filed a complaint against Meta with the Austrian Data Protection Authority (DPA). The…

December 1, 2023

Podcast: The journey to probabilistic attribution (with Michael Kaminsky)

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1uVqjRevhmdrlR9WO3hsJJ?si=6c6361a78f9d4361 In Episode 2 of Season 2 of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast, I speak with ⁠Michael Kaminsky⁠, the co-founder…

November 15, 2023

Brand strategy in an information war

Meta, Snap, and Pinterest each offered commentary on the impact on their businesses of the current tumult in the Middle…

November 14, 2023

The black box inside the black box

Google announced yesterday that its Generative AI tools are now available to be used to create "headlines, descriptions, and images"…

November 8, 2023

Apple and Google race to attribute the internet

As mobile platform operators, both Apple and Google command significant control over the internet economy. This control is often expressed…

November 1, 2023