From Launch to $40M in UA spend, Without Breaking the Payback Ratio
We built integrated growtn and monetization from launch for an app, scaling it to profitable growth and multi-millions in ad spend.
$40M Annual UA spend at peak, from a standing start
Top 10 Both app stores
360° UA and monetization owned under one P&L
0 → scale Launched the title and led growth through every stage
THE CHALLENGE
A new title with no performance history, in a category where the economics leave no room to be wrong. Revenue comes from ad monetization rather than in-app purchase, so lifetime value is measured in days, not months.
Every dollar of acquisition has to stay under a lifetime value the game itself has to earn. Scaling spend a hundredfold without that ratio inverting is the entire problem.
WHAT WE DID
Owned both sides of the equation rather than one. On acquisition: sustained creative testing at the cadence the category demands, and a network mix rebalanced continuously as each channel's efficiency shifted with scale.
On monetization: ad placement, waterfall and mediation work to raise what each installed user was worth. Raising lifetime value is what created the headroom for acquisition to keep spending — the two were managed as one number, never traded against each other.
THE TAKEAWAY
In ad-monetized mobile, acquisition and monetization are a single equation. Most organizations split them across two teams that optimize against each other. Owning both is what let spend scale this far without the payback window breaking.