In our Campfire Stories, we spotlight Appi Campers and share their stories in their own words. In times like these where we are adapting to new circumstances every day, we invite you to get to know us and lean on our community — the app marketing experts and your camp friends — as we continue to grow, step forward, and learn together as a community.
Liz Emery’s Campfire Story
Liz Emery is the Senior Director of Mobile + Ad Tech Solutions at Tinuiti. She’s responsible for driving innovation & performance in partnership with all Tinuiti divisions including Client Strategy, ASO, Search, Social, Display, CRM & Analytics. She focuses on staying at the forefront of the industry & enabling insights to transform Tinuiti’s Mobile approach.
Future-Proofing Mobile Marketing Solutions in the Digital World
My Beginnings in Mobile
I started my career working at a traditional agency. I worked on TV, print, radio, and a little bit of desktop digital. At the time, mobile phones - especially smartphones - were new, and I was just getting a taste of what working in Mobile was like. I was that overconfident, 22-year-old post-college grad and I thought I completely understood the digital world, and knew how everything was done. Then, I started running a couple of mobile app user acquisition campaigns, and the experience was extremely humbling.
A Deeper Dive into Mobile App Acquisition
What the heck is GPS technology? How do I tag this? It was a major learning experience, and it took me time to get the lay of the land. Even though I made a lot of mistakes in the beginning, I fell in love with it. My role wasn’t quite the same as running a digital campaign, or working on web banners or videos, like I had been doing previously. There was an entire different approach to strategy involved, and more of a focus on specific performance. I think a lot of people are scared of Mobile because of the high learning curve. But once you learn it, it clicks in a way that forces you to think differently.
After my time working in a digital agency, I worked in multiple different facets because I wanted to understand the Mobile app space from all sides. I did pre and post-sales at a network before transitioning to sales for a couple years, and working in Mobile Programmatic. Then, I worked at a small agency in Denver and grew into the Head of Growth and Partnerships, overseeing all execution, media channels, display, search and social.
Three years ago, I started working at Tinuiti. My goal was to make our Mobile App offerings strong and ensure our overall offering was well-rounded for clients. This included leading the build-out of our mobile app display processes and campaigns, while refining those for the offerings that did exist. This covered a wide range of practices including expanding our app store optimization offering to include A/B testing, the development of projected models, and partnering with our privacy lead to build out the privacy practice. The overarching theme was moving toward a cookie-less/Device ID-less world. We lose visibility in Mobile, so the question remains: how do we close that gap in signal loss?
Entering the Privacy Era & Future-Proofing in Mobile Marketing
We knew that when Apple announced iOS 14.5, this would change how mobile app advertising is done. I partnered with the privacy lead + Marketing at Tinuiti to figure out what the privacy changes are, how it will impact our platforms and clients, and the possible solutions for this. I created projected models, talked about the importance of unified measurements, which are a combination of data science pieces, MMM and MTA studies, and incrementality testing.
I aimed to understand how we could go beyond our dependency on identifiers to see a clear picture of how media is performing on multiple attribution facets. As such, my main focus has been on where we’re going, and what the future holds.
I asked, How should we be using first party data? What data should brands and marketers be collecting to bridge the gap of having less third party data? To answer these questions, I developed “future-proofing mobile marketing solutions” and began building a future roadmap for what marketing should look like in this privacy centric world.
A Head Start on Creating Future-Proof Mobile Marketing Solutions
What I like the most about Mobile is what most people tend to hate - we tend to experience a lot of big changes, like privacy-centric ones, first. Privacy changes will also hit desktop, OTT, and CTV, but those in Mobile will have already had the opportunity to come up with solutions. While working in Mobile may not be for the faint of heart, it gives you a chance to be creative. If you like the challenge and opportunity to think differently, and be at the forefront of the digital technology revolution, then you will find your home in Mobile marketing.
Tips on Future-Proofing Mobile Marketing Campaigns
For those looking to future-proof their mobile marketing strategies, specifically in this privacy era, here are a couple of tips:
- Do an audit of your marketing technology stack. Take a look under the hood to understand what first party data you are already collecting and want to collect. When analyzing your user experience, the goal is to be compliant, and collect the best first party data with the right tools in place.
- Talk to your partners! An important step in navigating changes is collaborating with your partners. They should be able to guide you through targeting and attribution efforts, while remaining aligned with how the world has changed.
- Review your attribution efforts and think about what different metrics you could add as a plus. What will be beneficial to you and your users? Is it adding projected models or another type of metric? There are tons of options out there, and the bottom line is deciding what makes the most sense for you.
