Many women are now building a strong industry presence and taking leadership roles as the gender gap in tech industry leadership roles decreases.
To acknowledge and recognize their contribution and get to know them better, we continue our blog series featuring women game changers in the mobile industry.
Sha Liang
Partner Development Manager at AppsFlyer
- What’s the most unforgettable experience you had working at AppsFlyer?
The best experience I’ve had working at AppsFlyer was participating in our All-Hands event last year. AppsFlyer flew in 300 people from 12 offices to spend time with each other for one week at our headquarters. Besides making memories with some of the best people I’ve known, what really stuck with me was seeing how much effort our leaders put into making this such a valuable and unforgettable event. It is truly special to see leadership care so much about the personal and professional growth of each individual. It was also inspiring to see the level of enthusiasm and spirit from my EMEA, APAC and other colleagues from around the world. It’s a great feeling to realize your international colleagues have the same drive as you to be successful, and knowing your company is willing to go above and beyond to provide you with the resources needed to support your goals. It was a true example of what it means to build a culture. -
What is your favorite feature of AppsFlyer’s product and why?
My favorite feature is our fraud product, Protect360. As a Partner Development Manager, I like it because it was built with the mindset that combating fraud requires collaboration across the different players of the ecosystem. Not only can media partners receive fraud postbacks with detailed information on what’s blocked, but they can get access to the Protect360 analytics dashboard with advertiser permission. This enables conversations between the media source and the advertiser on how to combat fraud. In addition to providing real-time protection, Protect360 also gives advertisers the freedom to create their own fraud KPIs. The marketers know their apps the best so AppsFlyer provides all the data in these beautiful histograms and tables with fraud key indicators, allowing marketers to run their own analysis. Because of how successful we’ve been in the market these past few years, AppsFlyer can be found on over 98% of the world’s smartphones. This gives us the largest and most comprehensive fraud database which helps make our algorithms better! -
What is the biggest misconception about the mobile advertising industry?
The biggest misconception is that advertising is easy, or just marketing BS, when there is actually very advanced technology behind the ads you see on your devices. Mobile advertisers realize the importance of not just tech, but good products that work when building their tech stack. Companies that do well in the mobile advertising space are nimble, smart, and tech-savvy. You can’t survive on relationships alone.
- What do you think are the top trends that will shape the mobile industry in 3-5 years?
Automation will continue to evolve and shape our personal lives as well as the way we buy, measure and optimize advertising. More specifically looking at the attribution space, I think we will see more sophisticated multi-touch measurement to provide a single view of the user with different touchpoints across platforms. It will be interesting to see how this trend is affected by the ongoing conversation and regulations around user privacy. Just like any maturation of a market, regulations will start to appear. We, as an industry, just need to make sure we’re not slowing down progress while still protecting our users. Our wonderful, quirky, ever-changing industry won’t survive if we don’t work together to keep it thriving. - What for you is the most effective way to develop good relationships with partners?The most effective way to develop a good relationship is a basic concept: support your partners. It’s surprising how many companies don’t have a dedicated partner team. Coming from a publisher/DSP background, the support from our measurement partners made a big difference in the success of my campaigns. One of the reasons I joined AppsFlyer is that they knew from the start that media partners played an important role. So much so that we’ve built a robust team of over 30 people worldwide. I remember talking to Aarki’s CEO, Sid Bhatt, at MAU and having him tell me that AppsFlyer has the best partner support. To me, that meant we made it easier for Aarki to be successful with our mutual clients, and that makes all the difference.
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What’s your favorite way to spend your free time?
I spend my free time dancing! You can find me at the dance studio or anywhere with a good house DJ. -
Name an art (literature/music/movie/painting/etc) that has changed your perspective on a particular topic.
I will cheat on this question and say the figure drawing class that I’ve been taking for the last three years has changed the way I view the world. It has taught me how to have richer experiences in life. The studio is called 23rd Street Studio and it’s located in the Mission District of San Francisco. If you want to delve into the creative process, I highly recommend this. -
What would you do if you won the lottery?
I would give some to my family, give some to NGOs that I am passionate about, and save the rest to figure out what to do with later. Oh! And travel the world! -
Who’s the most inspiring woman for you?
There are so many! I am inspired by the everyday warrior women around me. Women who have ambition have to be everything nowadays and it gets tiring. So I have major respect and admiration for the women who are leading the charge in their everyday lives because that’s where it counts (and rarely noticed). So thank you for inspiring me. :-) -
What is your personal philosophy?
Go big or go home. Be brave. Be kind.