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9 tactics from Eric Seufert
Thriving as an App Developer Despite Apple's ATT
Watch the full episode“what apple did not like was that they had kind of lost control over uh content discovery on on the iphone right so when when the app store was first launched i mean that was how you discovered apps right it was it was through going to the app store... that changed over the years and the way that people discovered apps um was through advertising right and primarily facebook advertising”
ATT Was About Apple Reclaiming Distribution Control — Not Just Protecting Privacy
The most accurate framing of ATT is Apple reclaiming the gatekeeping role Facebook had taken from it. When ad-driven discovery replaced App Store editorial, Apple lost leverage to trade featuring for iOS feature adoption. ATT reset that balance. Developers who understand the true motivation can better predict Apple's future platform moves.
“with these you know day seven row as campaigns and value optimization and event optimization campaigns facebook with all of its data and ai in an incredible targeting efficiency has kind of in some ways been doing the job of developers it's been finding those unique profiles user profiles of who's actually going to spend money”
Facebook Was Doing Your User-Profiling for You — Now You Have to Build It In-Product
For years, Facebook's targeting replaced in-product personalisation: describe your ideal user and Facebook found them via creative experimentation across hundreds of millions of profiles. Post-ATT, that black box is degraded. Developers must now rebuild in-product personalisation — show users different content based on observed behaviour — which is harder but more durable.
“you always have to turn on paid ua you've always got to turn on paid marketing there's varying you know sort of timelines you know over which you have to confront that reality but it is a reality you've always got to turn it on”
Organic Growth Always Hits a Ceiling — Paid UA Is a Question of When, Not If
Apps that rely purely on organic hit an asymptote. Eric has advised PE funds on dozens of acquisitions — the pattern is always the same: organic-first teams never build paid UA capability, the business stalls, and the acquirer installs a CMO who triples it via paid. Build that muscle early to avoid the painful forcing function.
“if you've only you know grown via you know just sort of like organic traction and organic like magnetism and you've you've gone through like many sort of cycles of app or product iteration to sort of optimize the product for that group of people... then you've optimized for the group that's that at the greatest potential scale of your of your product is a minority”
Optimising for Organic Users Tunes the Product for the Minority at Scale
Organic users are self-selecting, high-intent early adopters who look very different from the mass-market paid users who represent 60–80% of daily installs at scale. If you've only A/B tested with organic users, you've tuned the product for a minority. Bringing in paid traffic early reveals what the majority of future users actually need.
“facebook had become like kind of a drug for them i mean it's just like they were addicted to it and it was just so easy to only use facebook... that's a classic sort of blunder from a from just a commercial perspective you never want to be totally dependent on another platform”
Single-Platform Dependency Is a Classic Blunder — ATT Just Made Everyone Experience It
ATT devastated teams who ran all their UA through Facebook because diversification felt unnecessary when the machine worked perfectly. The lesson is not specific to ATT — it applies to any distribution channel. Single-platform dependency means you are one policy change away from a business crisis. Build multi-channel capability before you need it.
“they sort of they take whatever boundary you set or whatever standard you set around efficiency and they they reach that but no more right... they could blow out your campaigns and get you 400 row ass but if you told them you only need 110 by day 7 that's what that's what you're going to get”
Ad Platforms Hit Your ROAS Target Exactly — Set It Too Low and Leave Money Behind
Facebook and Google automated bidding hits your ROAS target exactly — not beat it. If you set Day 7 ROAS at 110%, they'll buy cheap traffic to dilute the average down to that number if they start over-performing. Set bid targets based on a real LTV model, not a conservative floor you feel comfortable with.
“trying to work out some pipeline of like we try concepts on android where we can still do kind of mass testing and then we promote the the conceptual winners to ios but then we've got you know fewer variants success there so we've got to kind of adapt that for the ios environment”
Test Creative Concepts on Android at Scale, Then Promote Winners to iOS
Post-ATT, mass creative testing on iOS is severely degraded — no closed attribution loop. Android retains granular tracking, making it the right place to test creative concepts at scale. Winners then get adapted for iOS where you run fewer, more validated variants. It's lossy signal transfer but the most practical workaround available.
“you go you fast forward two years or three years and a really good app that'll be flipped because you've you've retained people the the vast majority of people that use your products every day are old... you're not optimizing for the newbies anymore because there's way fewer than you've got to keep the old timers involved and engaged and happy”
As Your App Ages, Shift Product Focus From Activating Newbies to Engaging Old-Timers
Early-stage apps are dominated by new users, so product decisions should optimise for first-week activation. In a mature app with strong retention, the vast majority of daily actives have been around for years — and shipping features that confuse them to chase new users is a revenue risk. Tracking cohort composition by age tells you which product strategy to run at each phase.
“like snap it's totally different like the way to approach an app is totally different than facebook the way to approach tic tocs totally different snap right the way to approach outbrain taboola totally different than any of those you know the way to approach youtube is even different”
Post-ATT, Each Ad Platform Needs Its Own Creative Approach — There's No Facebook Template
Facebook's dominance let developers ignore multi-channel expertise because its targeting worked regardless of creative format. Post-ATT, diversifying means genuinely learning each platform's distinct creative and targeting logic — Snap, TikTok, YouTube, and Outbrain each require different creative formats, audience structures, and bid strategies. There is no one-size-fits-all approach.