As brands navigate an increasingly fragmented marketing landscape, the real competitive advantage lies not just in advertising platforms or AI tools, but in the quality and connectivity of customer signals across every channel, according to Ran Avrahamy, Chief Marketing Officer of AppsFlyer.
In the “signal economy,” marketing signals are inherently omnichannel. Behavioral data generated from campaigns on Meta, Google, TikTok, retail media networks, and connected television (CTV) combined with engagement from media exposure and outcome signals from conversions collectively reveal how marketing investments shape customer behavior.
“These signals are already used to optimize campaigns and allocate budget,” Avrahamy explained. “But their value extends far beyond individual campaigns. Structured correctly, they provide a system-level view of how the entire marketing engine is performing.”
Measurement infrastructure plays a pivotal role in this ecosystem. Independent measurement partners connect disparate platforms and transform raw events into actionable metrics such as attribution, incrementality, and return on investment (ROI).
Signals originating from a brand’s owned environments particularly mobile apps become integral to this broader system when properly structured.
For many brands, the mobile app serves as the defensible nucleus of the signal system. It is where authenticated, first-party customer behavior is most visible and where the richest, most consistent signals can be generated.
“Those signals do not stay inside the app,” Avrahamy noted. “When structured and connected through robust measurement infrastructure, they extend outward across the entire marketing ecosystem, informing campaigns on every platform and helping brands understand how customers move across channels.”
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This interconnected view enables brands to evaluate how their investments perform holistically across channels, rather than in isolation. The same high-quality signals powering today’s campaign optimization are rapidly becoming the foundational inputs for tomorrow’s automated, AI-driven marketing systems.
“As AI becomes more embedded in marketing operations, the quality of those underlying signals will increasingly determine how effective those systems are,” said Avrahamy.
“Brands that generate strong, reliable signals at their core particularly within their owned app environments will have the clearest foundation for AI-driven optimization across their omnichannel marketing systems.”
In the signal economy, victory belongs to brands that deliberately build signal strength at the center (in their owned properties like the app) and then intelligently extend it across the full customer journey from awareness on social platforms to conversion and loyalty.
Avrahamy’s perspective underscores a strategic shift: as privacy changes and platform fragmentation continue, the mobile app is no longer just a direct-response or loyalty channel. It is emerging as a powerful signal generator that can supercharge performance across every touchpoint in the modern marketing mix.
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