A subscription app · B2C · Thomas Petit client
Change what you report as user value when cash matters more than long-term LTV
What they did
In their words
Signal Engineering: Strategic Data Filtering for Better Ad Performance — Thomas Petit, Independent Consultant
Thomas Petit… the platform side? And in part, yes, and it's already what they're doing. But they've done as much as they could, and they've gone very, very far. The last piece, in my opinion, is on our side, because it's so unique, and because I don't want the platform to deal with my data the exact same way that they deal with the average of my sector, I want it to be the closest possible to my And sometimes, even my own internal goal, they change over time.
Thomas PetitI'll tell you one example. I have one particular case where we used to optimize towards predicted LTV, and then suddenly we realized that cash flow was more important, and we realized that it was not the same user who bring the maximum LTV/CAC or return after 5 years, than the one who bring it after 3 months. And we're like, "Okay, right now it's more important that we maximize short-term payback." All right, okay, let's change it, you know? And this is not something the platform is going to decide for me, like I have to decide this for myself,
Thomas Petitbut also because every configuration is a little bit unique. That said, I believe there will be AI and machine learning, but not on the platform side to decide, on my side. That could come from Amplitude or Mixpanel, that could come from RevenueCat, who says, "Look, we've got access to all your subscribers, and we've detected that there's 20% of those that are very low value, 20% of those that are extremely high value, and we're going to package …
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- 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
- Let a signal specialist filter and send your ad events, and test itOne of two tests looks good, the other doesn't; not conclusive
- 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
- 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, payback, cash-flow