Season 6, Episode 6: What is signal engineering? (with Itai Kafri)

Mobile Dev Memo Podcast

In this episode of the podcast, I speak with Itai Kafri on the topic of signal engineering. Itai is the Head of Product Growth at Voyantis and previously held senior roles at TikTok and ironSource.

I've defined signal engineering as "the process of designing and capturing high-quality outcome proxies (eg., pLTV) so they can be reported back to ad platforms in real time such that those platforms optimize campaign targeting for them." Given the rise of platform-integrated automation, signal engineering is an emerging and increasingly critical tactic in digital marketing.

In my conversation with Itai, we consider:

• The purpose and goal of signal engineering.
• How platform automation (eg., ASC, PMax) has intensified the value of signal engineering.
• Whether signal engineering is best accomplished using existing events or by experimenting with new, purpose-built events.
• Who within the organization is best positioned to manage the signal engineering experimentation process.
• What a team should aim to proxy with signal engineering.
• The different approaches that various types of advertisers take with signal engineering, eg., mobile games vs. ecomm vs. subscription apps.
• The commonalities that exist amongst the companies that have seen the most commercial success with signal engineering.

Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:

• INCRMNTAL⁠⁠. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
• ContextSDK. ContextSDK uses over 200 smartphone signals to detect a user’s real-world context, allowing apps to deliver perfectly timed push notifications and in-app offers.

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