Mobile App User Acquisition

Mobile app install campaign across social and in-app advertising channels

Context

A fintech startup preparing to scale its personal finance app needed to acquire high-quality users who would remain active beyond the initial install. Previous campaigns had delivered volume but suffered from poor retention — over 80% of users churned within the first week, making the unit economics unsustainable for the company's growth targets.

Kalithea Media built a multi-channel user acquisition strategy spanning in-app display networks, Meta (Facebook and Instagram), TikTok, and native app-install formats. By combining creative testing at scale with post-install event optimization, the campaign attracted users who not only installed the app but engaged meaningfully with core features, dramatically improving the LTV-to-CAC ratio.

Fintech app onboarding screens with user acquisition metrics overlay

Multi-channel app install campaign architecture with MMP integration

Our approach and solutions

Quality-first user acquisition across the channels where your next best users spend their time.

Multi-channel media mix

Orchestrated campaigns across Meta, TikTok, premium in-app display networks, and native app-install placements — balancing reach and quality to find optimal user acquisition corridors for each channel.

Post-install event optimization

Shifted optimization targets beyond installs to downstream events — account creation, first transaction, and subscription activation — ensuring ad spend drove users with genuine product engagement.

Creative velocity testing

Produced and tested over 60 creative variants per month across formats (video, playable, static, native), rapidly identifying top performers and retiring underperformers to maintain creative freshness.

MMP integration and fraud prevention

Integrated with the client's mobile measurement partner for deterministic attribution, while deploying fraud detection layers that identified and blocked install farms, click injection, and SDK spoofing.

Our key strengths

Retention-focused acquisition

We optimize for users who stay, not just users who install. Our models predict D7 and D30 retention probabilities at the audience segment level, directing spend toward cohorts with the highest lifetime value.

Platform-native creative expertise

Each channel gets purpose-built creatives — vertical video for TikTok, carousel stories for Instagram, rich media for in-app — maximizing relevance and performance within each platform's unique environment.

Incrementality measurement

Beyond last-click attribution, we run geo-holdout and ghost bid experiments to prove true incremental lift, ensuring every dollar of acquisition spend generates real growth rather than cannibalizing organic installs.