A subscription app · B2C · Thomas Petit client
Let a signal specialist filter and send your ad events, and test it
One of two tests looks good, the other doesn't; not conclusive
What they did
What happened
- Effort
- Two tests
In their words
Signal Engineering: Strategic Data Filtering for Better Ad Performance — Thomas Petit, Independent Consultant
Thomas Petit… started talking about it, about this topic, was, one, I had the case I had two cases in in my portfolio, where one clearly had their events broken, so we need to fix it. And then, we thought, if we're going to fix it, let's fix it and make it smarter at this same time. And then, I had another client who who worked with a third party. They're already doing some kind of optimization on their own, and actually already a fairly sophisticated system.
Thomas PetitI thought, "What if there's something I miss? Let's go and ask some of the best out there about what they're doing," and we actually handed it over to them. We're running two tests, one is looking good, the other one not, so it's not completely let's say conclusive, but they definitely did stuff that we wouldn't have done on our own, and and go one step beyond. So, these two things about fixing, getting smarter, and going a step beyond, they all came at a moment where at the same time, I felt that 95% of the debate on paid media was about
Thomas Petitcreative production. I was like, "Sure, should be talked, but that's not the only topic." So, I like to take my contrarian hat and say, "I'm going to talk about something else." Suddenly, I also noticed a lot more talks about that, so either really good timing, or just people got inspired and worked on it. I think it was a little bit of both, but I'm I'm happy the topic has picked up a little bit. It doesn't mean that if you've got amazing signal …
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More from this episode
- Check that Meta and Google receive the same event counts as your own analyticsGaps of 30-50% are common; fix anything above 10% before touching ads
- Send trial starts, direct purchases, trial conversions and renewals as separate eventsDefault SDK mapping often lumps them all into one event; guest says fix it first
- Send ad networks only the trials likely to pay, as their own eventGuest's go-to first step when paid trial quality lags; no numbers given
- Tell Meta to value some users more or less instead of excluding themKeeps cheap under-25 reach instead of cutting it; no numbers given
- Report each user's expected value at month 13, not what they paid on day oneGuest's main advanced lever; no numbers given
- Look up each conversion's value from a server so you can change it without a releaseAvoids app releases for every price or currency change; says it makes a big difference
- Send your conversion signal within a day, waiting a few hours to see early useVoyantis showed timing matters; guest says signals after 24 hours are nearly useless
- Keep at least 10 conversion events per campaign per day before filteringUnder ~10/day optimization breaks; well above it, fewer better events win
- Report low-value users as worth less and high-value users as worth morePushes delivery toward top users but hides true ROAS; has backfired when overdone
- Send every event to every ad network, then pick a different signal for each
- Compare the value you report with real revenue by country, not just in total
- Send Google only the trials that look likely to payGoogle trials converted at ~15% vs ~40% elsewhere; the fix moved the needle
- Count a business user's yearly plan as worth 5 weekly consumer plansWorked at first; went stale after 18 months of price changes and needed fixing
- Change which events you send to ad networks, even as a young appBig uplift per the guest; details saved for a blog post
- Put all spend behind one channel and one optimization signalGrew from 0 to eight figures in two years, then had no fallback when it broke
- Tell ad networks which users reported high anxiety, since they pay far more
- Treat users who rush a 30-screen onboarding in under a minute as low valueHeld for one app; another app found its fastest finishers were its best users
- Change what you report as user value when cash matters more than long-term LTV
- Sell $5-10 top-up credits on top of subscription tiers
- Send buyers to web checkout once the store fee jumps from 15% to 30%Works for them, per the guest; no numbers
- Report a $1 value for non-payers who look likely to stick around
- Report your biggest spenders as mid-value so Meta doesn't stop early
Tags: signal-engineering, vendor, outsourcing