“I look at UA as supplemental to everything else we're doing, not the other way around. If I'm fishing in the exact same pond as every other weather app, how am I going to create a competitive advantage?”

Treat paid UA as amplifier of organic — not the foundation of the strategy

Every weather app buys the same keywords; every competitor bids on the same Facebook audiences. Michael's response: build brand through PR, partnerships, and native content distribution so that paid spend amplifies an already-working organic engine. Apps that make paid the foundation have no competitive moat — and discovered this the hard way when ATT degraded their attribution.