App Growth: From Cheap Installs to Valuable Users

Strategy, setup and optimisation of app-install campaigns for a marketplace app, from launch through scale — building on my years as a Google Ads account strategist.

Cheap installs, low value: optimising for cost per install brought users who opened the app once.

Event volume: deeper in-app events were too rare for the algorithm to learn from at first.

Creative fatigue: App campaigns need a constant supply of fresh video, image and HTML5 assets.

Mapped the in-app funnel in Firebase/MMP and picked a mid-funnel event with enough volume to optimise on.

Moved bidding step by step: tCPI → tCPA on in-app actions → tROAS, waiting for each learning phase to stabilise.

Split campaigns by geography and goal to keep learning clean.

Ran an asset-testing rotation and A/B experiments on bids and creative.

Optimisation shifted from install volume to users who completed meaningful in-app actions.

A scalable campaign structure with a clear path from launch to value-based bidding.

A creative pipeline that kept performance stable instead of decaying.