Practitioner pattern · Thomas Petit (Sells consulting services and runs a paid signal-engineering workshop at App Growth Annual; works with Voyantis)
Tell Meta to value some users more or less instead of excluding them
Keeps cheap under-25 reach instead of cutting it; no numbers given
What they did
In their words
Signal Engineering: Strategic Data Filtering for Better Ad Performance — Thomas Petit, Independent Consultant
Thomas Petit… latest device on on Android, the Google Pixel and the the latest Samsung Galaxy and a couple of others, they convert just as well as an iPhone, those. Like, they only represent 5% to 10% of the market, and the rest have a terrible conversion rate, but I certainly So, you so you could like try to weigh in those, and Facebook has been working on this signal engineering, because there's very few other levers that we can do, but Facebook has finally
Thomas Petitput out of beta one that we used to call it bit modifier for very, very long time. And I could tell Facebook, "Oh, when you're seeing one of those Google Pixel, straight assign 20% plus than any other users, because I know they're going to convert easier, they're going to renew longer," and so on. "But when you're seeing one of those old Android 7 or whatever, don't even show them the ad." But then, very often, your choice is binary. Like, let's take the edge, because in subscription, edge is a very common factor for people entering a free trial and not converting.
Thomas PetitFor a very long time, the solution was, okay, stop advertising to people below 25, and then I don't have this problem anymore. I was like, but I'm actually missing out on something, is that there's a lot of inventory, part of what I'm doing, I mean, my app fits 15 to 25-years-old, it's just that I have this free trial issue that is going there, I just want to factor it. I just want to I don't want to exclude everybody below 25, because I'm I'm limiting my options, and so this is just another way to do it differently.
Thomas PetitSomebody asked me recently, "Oh, but now that I have the bit modifier, I can tell Facebook that the sub-25 are 30% less valuable, I don't need to do all this filtering of trials." I'm like, I prefer to hammer from both sides personally, [laughter] but sure, like it's it's kind of a potential replacement, but it's not available everywhere. The low-hanging fruit is probably going to be unqualified trials, because it's such a common factor. But it …
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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
- 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
- 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: meta, value-rules, bid-multiplier, targeting, age, device