Habits Building Application

Insight

Company entered the engagement with a clear objective — to rapidly scale user acquisition — but with a critical constraint.

Growth needed to come not just in volume, but in quality.

The goal wasn’t simply installs. It was acquiring users who would engage, activate, and build habits within the app. This introduced a more complex challenge: performance could no longer be measured at the top of the funnel alone.

Early campaigns confirmed that while installs could be generated efficiently, the real bottleneck existed deeper in the journey — between install and activation.

At the same time, broader market conditions were shifting. Rising auction costs and increasing competition meant that acquiring attention was becoming more expensive, even as engagement remained strong.

This reframed the problem:

The challenge was no longer how to generate installs — but how to build a system that consistently delivers high-quality, activating users at scale.

Execution

We approached the project as a full-funnel system, rather than a channel-specific campaign.

From the outset, our focus was on building a continuous optimisation loop across acquisition, activation, and retention.

The foundation of this system was structured experimentation.

Campaigns were built around iterative testing cycles, with each wave introducing new creative variations while retaining proven performers. Over time, this created a compounding effect — where each iteration improved on the last, rather than restarting from zero. In total, the system scaled to hundreds of ads across multiple campaigns, enabling rapid learning and precise optimisation .

Targeting followed a similar philosophy. Instead of relying on a single audience definition, we combined role-based targeting with geo-based expansion, allowing the algorithm to identify high-performing segments dynamically.

As performance matured, the strategy evolved beyond installs.

We shifted optimisation toward Tri’s key activation event effectively training the algorithms to prioritise users more likely to engage meaningfully with the product. This transition marked a fundamental shift from volume-driven growth to value-driven acquisition.

At the same time, we introduced supporting systems:

• Retargeting campaigns to recover partially onboarded users
• Cross-platform budget allocation (Meta, Google, Apple) to maximise efficiency
• AI-assisted iteration to accelerate testing cycles

This transformed the account from a campaign structure into a scalable growth engine, capable of adapting to both market conditions and user behaviour.

Results

The result was rapid, high-impact growth — underpinned by a system designed for scale.

Within the initial phase, campaigns reached millions users and generated more than thousands app installations.

More importantly, the system sustained and evolved beyond early growth.

• Installs generated in a single month grew across platforms
• Significant amount of users progressed to activation and engagement
• Cost per install maintained almost at the initial level, despite rising market costs

While acquisition costs slightly increased over time — driven by market inflation and deeper optimisation — engagement quality remained strong. Stable click-through rates and improving install rates confirmed that creative and targeting continued to resonate with the right audience .

The key outcome was structural transitioning from campaign-based growth to a full-funnel acquisition system, where performance is continuously optimised not just for installs, but for meaningful user activation and long-term engagement.