New AI Game Tools will Bring New Trends
The mobile game market is entering another speed cycle, and this one could be bigger than the last one in hypercasual.
In my recent post on , I ar...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on May 04, 2026
The New Definition of a Builder: How AI is Democratizing Creation
Two years ago, you needed to learn how to code to build games. You needed to understand memory management, complex syntax, and the arcane details o...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on April 23, 2026
Apple's New Commission Policy: A Controversial Step Beyond the App Store
In a move that has sent ripples through the tech and business communities, Apple implemented that redfines the boundaries of its financial power. ...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on January 24, 2024
Unity's fall from grace
When Unity first , the mobile game developer community shook. Unity, a long time proponent known to fight for indies, started charging its communit...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on October 05, 2023
The DMA's impact on mobile ads
The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is a new piece of legislation from the European Commission that aims to rein in the power of tech giants like Google,...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on July 27, 2023
Hypercasual is not dead - it's just marketing
There's been some buzz lately around the idea that the hypercasual games market is dead. Several publishers have come forward expressing their beli...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on June 06, 2023
The slippery slope of a subscription based internet
Advertising revenue is an essential component for developers and their businesses. It provides a way for apps to be offered for free to consumers w...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on March 02, 2023
Policies can change application business models
In recent years, the advertising-based monetization model for apps has been disrupted by privacy regulations from governments and policies from pla...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on February 27, 2023
Marketing and ChatGPT
The advertising industry is constantly evolving, and the use of ChatGPT with data warehousing will change the learning curve for digital marketers....
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on January 18, 2023
Twitter and Apple
Apple/Google and Elon Musk are going to butt heads in 2023. With Elon looking to orient Twitter's revenue to subscriptions and include more "free s...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on November 23, 2022
Boxplots and risk management
I'm having more conversations around risk management ever since the beginning of this year with smaller app developers. With recent tightening happ...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on September 10, 2022
Chaos invites innovation
Shifts in technology go through chaos before harmony. The word "Privacy", at least in adtech circles, is the new breeding ground for chaos - govern...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on June 25, 2022
SKAN 4.0 helps FB recovery on mobile ads
Apple announced SKAN 4.0 at WWDC 2022 and some of its additions indicate Apple is taking steps to a more usable framework to drive advertiser perfo...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on June 12, 2022
Facebook's New Challenge
Sheryl Sandberg decided to leave Facebook during one of the most transformative moments in the mobile adtech ecosystem. It's impossible to know why...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on June 01, 2022
Markets
Tech markets are reeling as the Fed increased it's funds rate +0.5% and is projecting to further increase the rate another +0.5% at the next fed me...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on May 15, 2022
Apple Ads Growth
Apple's ad business is growing extremely quickly. At the moment it's estimated that Apple's Ad business revenue is ~$2.5B @ a 50% gross margin. By ...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on August 15, 2021
Is Apple attacking FB?
People generally agree that Facebook encroaches on privacy by using personal data to build hyper-targeted ads. This puts Facebook's business model ...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on June 14, 2021
Apple's next move on privacy
Apple recently stopped directly sending SKAdNetwork postbacks from end user devices to Ad Networks. In order to block individual device IP addresse...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on May 29, 2021
Platform vs Ad Network IPO valuations
Mobile adtech is having a moment in the financial markets because of the recent IPO and M&A activity in the space.
<h3>Publicly traded sales multi...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on April 29, 2021
Mobile's unintended slippery slope
Apple posted a on ATT a couple months ago and one of the questions caught my eye:
<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/images/wv.jpg" width=...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on April 21, 2021
Is privacy weaponized?
The data infrastructure powering a lot of consumer facing digital technology is undergoing its own form of woke-ism. At the forefront is "privacy"....
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on April 12, 2021
Applovin IPO
I've worked in the mobile ad and gaming industry for the last 10 years and Applovin is one of those stories for the books. I saw the company grow u...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on March 11, 2021
Adtech & Content will converge
Apple's shifted view to a more focused privacy centric platform won't simply change the way advertising is bought and sold. Undercurrents continue ...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on January 12, 2021
Unity's revenue is mostly ads
I recently looked at Unity Software's market cap and found something weird: their LTM revenue multiples are north of 20x. What the?! I've known thi...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on November 15, 2020
SKAdNetwork
As I continue to interpret Apple's documentation around SKAdNetwork ATT framework, I'm realizing that SKAdNetwork is a remedy to historical IDFA mi...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on September 04, 2020
UA during COVID
COVID-19 is decimating global unemployment and users/consumers will inevitably change their spending behavior in their mobile applications. Below i...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on April 05, 2020
Gitlab and remote teams
Due to COVID-19's quarantine measures, many companies forced their teams to work in a 100% remote setting. Gitlab was the first $1b+ company founde...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on March 25, 2020
Rating each other
Some notes that I have from managing a team from the last couple years:
1. Systematic error in rating the performance of others. Asking multiple c...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on January 20, 2020
Reprogramming
The biggest takeaway from "What you do is who you are: How to create your business culture"(1) is that companies often require cultural reprogrammi...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on November 14, 2019
Ego is the Enemy
The author of , Ryan Holiday, believes that a person's ego manifests itself in all parts of life, deterring people from their long term greatness a...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on October 30, 2019
Constructing teams
I recently read the book and found the General's story about AQI/terrorism useful and informative. The military General (author) undermines an AQI...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on September 08, 2019
Takeaways from a Hypercasual keynote at ChinaJoy
ChinaJoy 2019 was my first experience speaking to 500+ game developers in China. You can view my presentation here:
<a href="https://www.slideshar...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on August 08, 2019
Tech stack for remote working
Remote working requires a technology stack that enables people to work together. I operate a 20 person company based in the United States with empl...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on August 03, 2019
Marketers make good PMs
Marketers are getting access to more customer data than ever before. Detailed customer data helps digital and creative marketers continuously acqui...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on July 10, 2019
Privacy and incentives
With all of the privacy concerns surrounding Google and Facebook ad data, Apple's "Sign In With Apple" product was perfectly timed for release. Don...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on June 04, 2019
Monopolies are built from the psychology of "free"
I want to deconstruct a statement from my last :
_"The ease of using using a free product blinds many of us from scrutinizing the product's true c...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on June 01, 2019
A new $5B privacy market
When away for its upcoming privacy fines, I visualized a bunch of government officials and corporate lawyers jumping for joy. A large bag of money...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on May 10, 2019
Low inflation and low unemployment. What's going on?
The was developed in the 1960s, inversely correlating inflation and unemployment. Using data from 1961-1969 here's what can be observed:
<p style...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on May 01, 2019
Facebook's rounding error
I was flipping through and found an interesting tidbit. The way FB reports its DAU/MAU is with a flat 66%, rounding to the nearest whole number. S...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on April 28, 2019
Quick query on portfolio effects
This post is just a quick note.
I was helping a customer the other day and wrote the following back-of-the-envelope query for them:
```
select co...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on April 19, 2019
Portfolio network effects (Part 3: cross promotion & monetizing)
One of the assumptions that was baked into the mathematical model in my last post on is that cross promotion is done perfectly so there is no cann...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on April 15, 2019
Customized attribution models
Attribution is an important marketing discipline that allows teams to develop effective budget allocation processes when acquiring new customers fo...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on March 23, 2019
Prediction in marketing (an intro to the concept)
Prediction is an area of marketing that is getting a lot of attention for its usability in identifying highly profitable channels and building a pr...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on March 10, 2019
Mobile attention is increasing - where does it go?
It's a well known fact that people spend increasing amounts of time on mobile devices. Data also indicates that the average number of apps on an in...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on February 10, 2019
Mobile app VPNs
FB was for paying users $20 to download a "research app" that collects all their mobile device activity. The goal for Facebook? Understand how use...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on January 29, 2019
Apple and Google's mobile platform tax
Techcrunch recently that Netflix is bypassing its in app payment mechanism to counteract the 30% platform tax that Google and Apple charge its dev...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on December 31, 2018
Analyzing monetization efficiency risk
*Here we are going to examine the first lever of risk through the lens of the ad revenue business model. We will look at the monetization efficienc...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on December 17, 2018
User beware?
A recent article came out in the discussing how a multitude of mobile apps collect location data and resell it to advertisers for better ad target...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on December 10, 2018
Investment risk for a digital marketer (Part 2: LTV quality models)
*Marketers invest capital to acquire users and, in limited budget scenarios, they need to make decisions about the quality of revenue acquired for ...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on December 07, 2018
Investment risk for a digital marketer (Part 1: intro)
*When marketers calculate returns for UA campaigns, they become more accurate in predicting return performance over time. In an "infinite budget" s...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on November 09, 2018
Network effects in your mobile app portfolio (Part 2: modeling)
*This is a follow up to . As discussed in the previous post, smart app developers think about maximizing their portfolio ROI, not just their indivi...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on October 21, 2018
Network effects of your mobile app portfolio (Part 1: intro)
*The underlying technology that allows web developers to quantify network value across their portfolio of web properties is different than what's a...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on October 14, 2018
Customizing attribution logic increases cashflow
* indicates that testing different methods to allocate LTV across multiple user touch points (multi-touch attribution or MTA) will produce better b...
Posted by
Christopher Farm
on September 02, 2018