CloudX just announced Agentic Buying, a move onto the demand side. CEO Jim Payne returns to explain whether it’s an ad network, a DSP, or something new. And whether CloudX can vertically integrate while still calling itself neutral.

Chapters:
1:23 – Traction: Adoption and Publisher Uplift
4:35 – What TEE 2.0 Actually Is
8:22 – Agentic Buying: Ad Network, DSP, or Something New?
10:54 – Flat Take Rate vs. Arbitrage
14:15 – How Targeting Works Without RTB
18:51 – AI Creative: Agentic Playables and Video
23:23 – What "Neutral" Really Means
29:58 – What Stops CloudX From Becoming the Incumbent?
33:38 – The Uplift Denominator: Compared to What?
38:24 – Do You Compete With Traditional Mediators?
40:58 – The 18-Month View
42:27 – Convince the Skeptic

If you work in mobile UA, ad monetization, or run a publishing business weighing CloudX against your current setup, this one is built for you. Subscribe to Mobile Signal for mechanism-level decodes of the biggest moves in mobile ad tech.

AppLovin is the apex predator of in-app ads, and it just keeps pulling away. 59% revenue growth, 90% incremental flow-through to EBITDA, and self-serve going global this month. So can anyone actually catch it?

Host Josh Chandley (WildCard Games) decodes AppLovin's Q1 and the entire competitive field with two seats you rarely get in one room: financial analyst Matthew Kanterman (Blue River Financial Group) on the numbers, and Vincent Février (ex-MoPub mediation, Tap Nation) on the demand and supply sides.

Chapters

• 00:00 AppLovin: The Apex Predator of In-App Ads
• 02:07 Insights on AppLovin
• 06:13 The Self-Serve Moment
• 16:24 The Impact on Gaming Advertisers
• 24:13 Strategic Shift to Consumer Apps
• 31:57 The Impact of Self-Serve on App Monetization
• 37:34 The Role of Targeting in Ad Monetization
• 38:15 AppLovin's New Social Media Venture
• 42:05 Unity's Strategic Shift Post-Iron Source
• 55:49 Meta's Potential Return to iOS
• 1:01:59 Winter is coming.
• 01:08:13 Google's Position
• 01:13:03 Ranking Network Competitors
• 01:16:00 CloudX: A New Player in the Market
• 01:20:18 Future Predictions

Networks own targeting. They set the bids. Ad creative is the last input mobile gaming advertisers still control. Now Meta is generating ads with AI at scale, and AppLovin has over 100 advertisers in their network-generated creative pilot. The window for advertiser-led creative in user acquisition is closing fast.We decode whether advertiser-side tools can win this race with Olivia Barnett, COO of Craftsman+. Her company just launched an AI-powered partnership with AppMagic, ingesting thousands of playable ads weekly to train design recommendations and automate creative production. The bet: third-party creative tools can find signal the networks can't see, because networks optimize for auction yield, not differentiation.We break down the structural tension in mobile ad tech: when both sides train AI on the same winning patterns, does everything converge into optimized sameness? We get into why network-generated creative isn't actually free, how Craftsman+ went from 10 playables per designer per week to 40, and what happens when the algorithm doesn't just distribute your ad. It writes it.This is Episode 2 of The Signal. A podcast where mobile gaming operators decode the mechanisms behind user acquisition, monetization, and growth.--------------------------------------- Josh Chandley, President and COO, WildCard Games https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshchandley/ Olivia Barnett, COO, Craftsman+ https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliviacdbarnett/--------------------------------------- For inquiries: josh.thesignal@gmail.com