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David Vargas

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Targeting Older Audience Segments?

If you are targeting older audience segments (+35yo) --> This is what you are looking for ๐ŸŽฏ 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

๐Ÿ”ฅ 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 yearโ€™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, Iโ€™m sharing the four trends that stood out most to me:1๏ธโƒฃ Another year, another drop in trial conversionWith such a saturated market, itโ€™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% dropโ€”likely influenced by the explosion of AI fitness apps, which have been massively scaling through influencer marketing and web-to-app flows2๏ธโƒฃHard Paywalls can work but only if value is […]

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Conversions on iOS Campaigns: Meta Underestimates, Google Overestimates

๐Ÿ“ขIf you run iOS campaigns on Google Ads and Meta using their modeling technologies simultaneously, you need to know this: ๐Ÿ‘‰Google ALWAYS tends to overestimate conversions๐Ÿ‘‰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.โžกGoogle modeled installs: 537โžกSKAN installs: 427โžกASC App Referrer: 419 installs With ASC and SKAN being so close, itโ€™s hard to trust Googleโ€™s numbers.ย (I know ASC & SKAN are not attributed in the same way, and they're even different conversions)โžกGoogle modeled trials: 139 […]

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Be careful when you upload one unique size in Meta!

๐ŸšจBe 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 everything๐Ÿ˜…๐Ÿ˜…

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This is why I love working with Meta Ads

This is why I love working with Meta Adsโœจ Because of the speed to detect winning concepts!!Just look at that beautiful screenshot๐Ÿ‘‡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 couldnโ€™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 ๐Ÿ˜‚ 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????? ๐Ÿ˜ณ ๐Ÿ˜จ 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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Be Careful with TikTokโ€™s Attribution Settings!

๐Ÿšจ Be Careful with TikTokโ€™s Attribution Settings! ๐Ÿšจ Today I am sharing a case study that I recently saw with one of my clients on TikTok.We started this channel to see if we could outperform Meta with the new creatives that we produced so we simply copied the setup that was working well on Meta:๐Ÿ‘‰One campaign based on signup (upper funnel event) --> Campaign 1 - Event 1 if you look at the screenshot๐Ÿ‘‰One campaign based on an activation event (lower funnel event) --> Campaign 2 - Event 2 if you look at the screenshotAfter running both campaigns for a couple of weeks, we analyzed attribution types to compare them with Meta and Google. We do this because we have a strong organic presence in the country that we are targeting so we wanted to avoid as much as we […]

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Be Careful with the new adROAS campaigns in Meta

๐ŸšจBe Careful with the new adROAS campaigns in Meta๐Ÿšจ As I recently shared on LinkedIn (Iโ€™ll leave the link in the comments), Meta has rolled out a new Value Optimization (VO) campaign specifically for mobile games that monetize mainly through ads rather than in-app purchases. For now, this is only available on Android..I started testing this with one of my clients, and the initial results were impressive. We were reaching profitability in a much shorter period compared to other main channels like AppLovin and Google. Naturally, we began scaling gradually, as you can see in the graph.But then... things took a turn. Once we reached $1k/day in ad spend, we saw a drastic drop in efficiency, which is clearly reflected in the declining ROAS.The main reason seems to be the steady decline in retention rate (see screenshot 2), which is […]

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๐†๐จ๐จ๐ ๐ฅ๐ž ๐€๐๐ฌ ๐ฐ๐ข๐ฅ๐ฅ ๐ฏ๐ž๐ซ๐ฒ ๐ฅ๐ข๐ค๐ž๐ฅ๐ฒ ๐œ๐š๐ง๐ง๐ข๐›๐š๐ฅ๐ข๐ณ๐ž ๐ฒ๐จ๐ฎ๐ซ ๐จ๐ซ๐ ๐š๐ง๐ข๐œ ๐ญ๐ซ๐š๐Ÿ๐Ÿ๐ข๐œ

๐Ÿšจ๐†๐จ๐จ๐ ๐ฅ๐ž ๐€๐๐ฌ ๐ฐ๐ข๐ฅ๐ฅ ๐ฏ๐ž๐ซ๐ฒ ๐ฅ๐ข๐ค๐ž๐ฅ๐ฒ ๐œ๐š๐ง๐ง๐ข๐›๐š๐ฅ๐ข๐ณ๐ž ๐ฒ๐จ๐ฎ๐ซ ๐จ๐ซ๐ ๐š๐ง๐ข๐œ ๐ญ๐ซ๐š๐Ÿ๐Ÿ๐ข๐œ๐Ÿšจ At least for a while.Today, Iโ€™m sharing another real case study with a client I recently partnered with.Our goal is to accelerate the growth in one of their key markets (mostly dominated by Android) so, in early January, we launched paid campaigns on Google Ads.When we started the campaign, we were so surprised because the CPA (in this case cost per signup) was ridiculously lower compared to previous tests on Meta or TikTok so we started to monitor the organic traffic to see if Google was just targeting users who searched our brand because we were seeing a huge spend in Serch (screenshot 2)Was Google just targeting users already searching for our brand?Quite obvious right? Since we started the campaign, our organic started a very declining trend as you can see […]

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Don’t Use Seasonality Adjustments in Google Ads to Spend More!

๐ƒ๐Ž๐โ€™๐“ ๐”๐’๐„ ๐’๐„๐€๐’๐Ž๐๐€๐‹๐ˆ๐“๐˜ ๐€๐ƒ๐‰๐”๐’๐“๐Œ๐„๐๐“๐’ ๐ˆ๐ ๐†๐Ž๐Ž๐†๐‹๐„ ๐€๐ƒ๐’ ๐“๐Ž ๐’๐๐„๐๐ƒ ๐Œ๐Ž๐‘๐„! โŒโŒโŒ According to Google's documentation:"Seasonality adjustments are an advanced tool that can be used to inform Smart Bidding of expected changes in conversion rates for future events like promotions or sales"On paper, this sounds like a great solution to test when youโ€™re struggling to increase spend (as was my case).But in practice?Using seasonality adjustments essentially tells the algorithm: "Hey Google, my conversion rate is gonna be higher so send me the WORST quality users ever because my creatives will convert them anyway!"As mentioned above, we wanted to scale the spend during Christmas and hereโ€™s what happened when we aggressively adjusted conversion rates (claiming our Christmas creatives would convert 100% better):โœ…We could scale (+41% spend)โŒBut CPA was the worst of the year (+62% compared to the previous period)โŒThe worst CPI of […]

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How paid campaigns affect your appโ€™s organic traffic

Explore the connection between paid campaigns and organic app growthโ€”and how to make them work together. Nearly all apps today use paid campaigns to grow. After working with more than 95 apps over the last six years, Iโ€™ve seen how important paid traffic isโ€”not just for driving installs but also for improving organic traffic. In the long run, organic traffic is what creates the consistent cash flow apps need to scale effectively. Paid campaigns significantly influence organic traffic, no matter the channel. Yet, paid campaigns and ASO (App Store Optimization) are often handled by separate teams. To thrive itโ€™s essential to understand how these two areas work together. In this post, weโ€™ll cover: Why optimizing ASO is crucial before running paid campaigns. How ASO and paid user acquisition (UA) support each other. Real-world examples of how paid campaigns can boost […]

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ADC feature for iOS campaigns on TikTok?

Should you trust the Advanced Dedicated Campaigns (ADC) feature for iOS campaigns on TikTok?๐Ÿค” The answer is simple: 1000% yes!Today, Iโ€™m sharing a quick case study that demonstrates how using ADC can feed your iOS campaigns with more signals, leading to better performance.In this case, the experiment was done with 2 MAI (Mobile App Install) campaigns with same audience creatives. The only difference? One used ADC while the other didn't.This client recently started with TikTok Ads so the account was new, so ADC was not available initially. Therefore, I had to start without ADC in my first campaign whose results are here:๐Ÿ‘‰Spend: $6k๐Ÿ‘‰CPM: $5.71๐Ÿ‘‰CTR: 0.36%๐Ÿ‘‰CPI: $3.52๐Ÿ‘‰Install Rate: 45.41%After running this campaign for a week, I finally enabled ADC so I just duplicated the old campaign but activating ADC to compare performance. Here's what happened:๐Ÿ‘‰Spend: $4.5k๐Ÿ‘‰CPM: $3.96๐Ÿ‘‰CTR: 0.31%๐Ÿ‘‰CPI: $2.89๐Ÿ‘‰Install Rate: 44.67% […]

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