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David Vargas

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State of Creative Optimization: 2025 Edition

Since the last post in this format was well received, I thought it would be interesting to also share my key takeaways from the new State of Creative Optimization report by AppsFlyer. I’ve had the opportunity to work with many different app categories over the last years, and the behavior of creatives varies significantly across them. Here are my key insights, along with real experiences:1️⃣🏆 Constant creative testing is key: I’m not reinventing the wheel here—creative testing has become increasingly important due to changes in algorithm behavior and the faster burnout rate of creatives.Regardless of your app vertical, if you don’t build a creative production system that allows for constant refreshes with a good volume of new concepts, your campaigns will quickly experience ad fatigue, leading to a drop in performance. This point is well supported by the report: both gaming […]

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Modeling attribution on iOS?

How to navigate the messy world of SKAN, AEM, and probabilistic attribution — plus two practical frameworks to get a clearer picture of campaign performance. SKAdNetwork (SKAN) was, and still is, the most significant change in the app industry over the past decade. As a UA consultant, I still remember the good old days when we could run multiple value optimized (VO) campaigns on any ad network and achieve positive profitability within 30 days using deterministic attribution. Yeah, I won’t deny it. Having identifiers for advertisers (IDFAs) was great from a performance perspective but our privacy was seriously attacked by most companies that were promoting their stuff on the internet. The industry needed to evolve after the Facebook-Cambridge scandal and Apple was the fastest and most aggressive player to address this issue by deleting the unique parameter that allowed us […]

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Apple Search Ads recent move to SKAN

I hadn't shared my thoughts on ASA’s recent move to SKAN yet. But now that the decision has officially taken effect today, I think it’s still a good time to discuss what I expect from this. Apple has decided to align their ad network aligned with the rest of channels by using SKAN but only limited to versions 1-3 which is in my opinion, an embarrassing decision. We must remember that SKAN 4.0 was launched in October 2022!!!! 🫠 If the creator of this attribution framework isn’t even able to implement the latest version in its own ad network, you can imagine how "ready" SKAN 4 really is…But putting that aside, let's talk about what we can expect from this pivoting decision and I will be quite straightforward with my opinion as usual:👉You must expect a drop in all SKAN […]

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Finally, Thanks Meta!

SKAdNetwork (SKAN) 4.0, the latest version of Apple's privacy-preserving framework for mobile app install attribution, was officially launched on October 24, 2022. Today, 1076 days later, Meta is adopting that version😂😂😂😂😂😂Thank you guys! You have really shown proactivity at the highest level.

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SKAN can work better than AEM for Some Apps

📢SKAN can work better than AEM for some apps Yes, you read that right.AEM is not a silver bullet.It can fail when, for some reason, Meta is not able to fingerprint their users 😬(because yes, they obviously do fingerprinting😂)Today, I’m sharing a real case where this happened.We started a Trial Start campaign in early February using AEM to feed the algorithm with real-time signals which indeed helps the campaigns to optimize better.The campaign started to show more signals on AEM than SKAN during the first weeks but with the time, SKAN started capturing more CTA conversions daily (as shown in the graph), making a HUGE difference on the CPT for each attribution methodology.In my case:👉Cost per trial (last 14d) according to AEM: $71👉Cost per trial (last 14d) according to SKAN: $49🤯Difference: SKAN is 30% cheaper, making my campaigns profitable—unlike AEM.Despite […]

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Targeting Older Audience Segments?

If you are targeting older audience segments (+35yo) --> This is what you are looking for 🎯 Today I am sharing a real data case with one of my clients.In this case, our core audience was men over 35. After setting up the initial campaigns in Meta, I started experimenting with the creatives as I usually do.We had all kind of angles and concepts (UGC, static banners and motion videos) within the same ad group because we had not more budget to create separate testing ad groups. However, by analyzing the engagement metrics of our videos, we identified the key elements that resonated with our core audience. I primarily rely on the following metrics to evaluate the performance of creatives::-CPA-CPI-Outbound CTR-Hook Rate-Hold Rate-Install Rate-IPM-CVR from Install to Target ActionWith these metrics, you can easily determine which creatives perform best and […]

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My Takeaways from State of Subscription Apps

🔥 My key takeaways from the State of Subscription Apps 2025 Beyond the new candlestick charts that I really love (I am a HUGE investing freak), this year’s State of Subscription Apps report is packed with insights on how subscription apps have evolved. This is, in my opinion, the best report on the space, and for the first time, I’m sharing the four trends that stood out most to me:1️⃣ Another year, another drop in trial conversionWith such a saturated market, it’s no surprise that trial conversion rates are down across nearly all categories. Looking at specific categories, Fitness & Health seems to be one of the most affected, with a 4.6% drop—likely influenced by the explosion of AI fitness apps, which have been massively scaling through influencer marketing and web-to-app flows2️⃣Hard Paywalls can work but only if value is […]

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Conversions on iOS Campaigns: Meta Underestimates, Google Overestimates

📢If you run iOS campaigns on Google Ads and Meta using their modeling technologies simultaneously, you need to know this: 👉Google ALWAYS tends to overestimate conversions👉Meta ALWAYS tends to underestimate conversionsAnd to prove it, I will share a recent case I had with one new client which I recently audited and had NOT SKAN schema in place (they just had cv=0 for installs and that's it)First, let's analyze Google Ads numbers: They were running one AEO campaigns for "start_trial" in the US. Since they didn't set up any event in SKAN schema, these trials were purely modeled by Google.➡Google modeled installs: 537➡SKAN installs: 427➡ASC App Referrer: 419 installs With ASC and SKAN being so close, it’s hard to trust Google’s numbers. (I know ASC & SKAN are not attributed in the same way, and they're even different conversions)➡Google modeled trials: 139 […]

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Be careful when you upload one unique size in Meta!

🚨Be careful when you upload one unique size in Meta! I am seeing some accounts (not all the ones I have access to so I guess they're rolling this out gradually as well) where they enable flexible media by default on the second step after uploading one video.Besides that, they've also put a new option to disable it in case you want.My take on this is pretty clear: Another step towards fully automated campaigns where we just lose the control over everything😅😅

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This is why I love working with Meta Ads

This is why I love working with Meta Ads✨ Because of the speed to detect winning concepts!!Just look at that beautiful screenshot👇Purple line shows the top performing creative in one of my BAU campaigns on Meta. It held the #1 spot for nearly 30 days, even though I rotated over 10 creatives every week.We couldn’t find anything that outperformed it until February 19th, when we tested a simple, almost ridiculous 15-second video.From that day on, algorithm slashed the spend and reach of my top creative by 90%, reallocating ALL the budget and into these "stupid" videos 😂 And I love this! I love how fast the algorithm tells you that you found the needle in the haystack. In just one day you can detect this and create +50 iterations of the same concept by changing hook, music, transitions and all […]

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META: Is this for REAL?

Meta is this for real????? 😳 😨 I mean, this looks like a clear intention to me. I honestly expect that they will get rid of manual campaigns at some point and this is scary. This is forcing advertisers to feed their crappy inventories!!!Man, this industry really kills me more times than I deserve.I CAN'T EVEN FIND AN OPTION TO DISABLE THIS SH****!!!!!!

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