In the latest episode of After the Download, RealityMine CEO Chris Havemann sits down with Josh Berrios, Principal Growth Manager Mobile App Partnerships on Google's apps team. With six-plus years helping some of North America's largest app businesses scale, Josh brings a rare frontline perspective on what separates the winners from the also-rans. The conversation covers the shift from volume to value in user acquisition, the real impact of AI on the app ecosystem, why iOS attribution still keeps marketers up at night, and what it actually means to build a loyal user base. Here are the key takeaways.
For years, app growth meant one thing: more installs. That playbook is running out of road.
"Downloads have stayed relatively stagnant year over year," Josh explains. "The larger increase, percentage-wise, is in revenue." What that tells him is that users are becoming more selective. Markets across most major app categories are saturated, and the battle has shifted from acquisition volume to user value.
The metric that reflects this shift? ROAS over cost per install. Josh is direct about it: teams still obsessing over cost per acquisition are having an educational conversation they need to have with their finance departments. "Your strategy is only as good as the data that you're sharing. It's as simple as that."
"Your strategy is only as good as the data that you're sharing. It's as simple as that."
This has direct implications for how app businesses think about their users. Not all users are equal. Josh uses a fitness app example to illustrate the point: one user signs up for a free trial and does nothing, another builds a dietary plan, completes three workouts, and reaches out to a trainer within the same seven days. The behavioral difference between those two users is the signal that should be flowing into your acquisition channels. If it isn't, you're optimizing blind.
Josh's first piece of advice for any app business is to get serious about data maturity, and he means it in a very specific way. Data maturity is about sharing the right signals with your acquisition channels so that what you're optimizing for in your campaigns actually matches the users you want.
Quite often, Josh finds that companies have a strategy, but they’re assessing a campaign based on metrics that they're not telling Google about. The disconnect between UA teams, marketing, and finance is where a lot of value gets lost.
The businesses doing this well are the ones sharing first-party data, maintaining direct lines to C-suite stakeholders, and ensuring everyone from the CMO to the UA manager is aligned on what a valuable user actually looks like. It sounds obvious. In practice, it's surprisingly rare.
Apple's privacy changes from iOS 14 onwards have made attribution on iOS harder for everyone, and the problem hasn't gone away. Josh is candid about this: probabilistic signals have been widely adopted, and scan has become an increasingly restrictive way to recognize attribution.
The mistake he sees some businesses making is pulling back from iOS investment because the attribution picture is murky. That's the wrong response. iOS users are, by some measures, three to four times more valuable than their Android counterparts, and in the US, iOS devices outnumber Android. Leaving that opportunity on the table because measurement is hard is a costly choice.
His advice: lean into every available attribution solution, and don't let imperfect measurement become an excuse to underinvest in your highest-value users.
No conversation about the app industry in 2026 is complete without AI, and Josh has a measured take. He's worked with businesses that are using it exceptionally well and others that are essentially "sprinkling AI on everything" because it feels urgent.
The businesses getting it right have brought in dedicated AI leadership to build a structured approach. The ones getting it wrong are boardrooms deciding they need AI quickly, without a clear understanding of how it actually fits the business. "If you're going about this in a very structured fashion, those are probably the folks doing it right."
Where he does see genuine, immediate value is in creative production. The ability to iterate quickly on video, images, and copy, especially for seasonal moments or current events, is a real differentiator. App campaigns live or die on creative quality, and AI is meaningfully accelerating that cycle for the businesses using it thoughtfully.
On the bigger question of whether LLMs like ChatGPT and Google Gemini are fundamentally reshaping how consumers discover and choose apps, Josh sees it as a generational shift that's still playing out. It's real, it's growing, and dismissing it as hype would be naive. But the transition will be gradual rather than overnight, and businesses that wait for clarity before acting will likely be better positioned than those racing to stake claims they don't yet understand.
Chris pushes Josh on the question of loyalty versus disloyalty, and the answer is refreshingly straightforward.
Josh recalls advice from a founder he works closely with: invest in the product above everything else. If you're genuinely solving a problem for your user, and solving it better than anyone else, retention follows. If you're not, someone else in the market is.
"There's too much competition, there are too many tools to help grow much faster. So if you don't have a particular use case in mind and a solution that fits that use case, you're going to get left in the dust."
In a saturated market, the competitor is, as Chris puts it, "one click away." Loyalty that comes from inertia or switching costs is fragile. Loyalty that comes from a genuinely superior product experience is the only kind worth building toward.
Josh closes the conversation with a clear framework, and it's worth stating plainly.
1. Data maturity. Understand who your users are, what they're worth to your business, and share those signals with your acquisition channels. Your campaign structure is only as good as the data behind it.
2. Master iOS. Don't let attribution complexity become a reason to underinvest. iOS users are your most valuable audience. Find ways to measure properly, and don't leave revenue on the table.
3. Invest in creative. Speak to each of your distinct user personas specifically. A contractor, a real estate agent, and a homeowner using the same app need to see themselves in your ads, not a generic version of each other. Use the AI tools available to iterate faster and get to market smarter.
