Moongate · B2C · sleep noise app
Remake one winning ad ~400 times with new hooks and use cases
Well over $1M spent on the concept
What they did
What happened
In their words
Marcus Burke - How to Build a $2M/Month App (Copy Me)
… he passed out instead of picking up the kids and then the hook is just like she opens the door the front door with a key and then opens the door and then you're like laying there on the couch and that was how long that was like five seconds and then it just transitions to this like glowing green orb and then it like zooms in slowly okay this is green noise and then every every couple seconds it's giving like a sentence are those sentences like
intention like it seems like some of them are benefits some of them are features like are is it very intentional like the structure of this ad it has been tested quite a bit there were probably 100 versions of this for this client for example we found that a lot of people use their noises to mask their tinnitus. So then we had like tinnitus specific ones, like how can you use this for like relief there? So what's that language people use to describe their pains and like their desires and how can you basically frame your product as a solution in their language? That's usually very, very powerful. So of this concept, there was probably in total 400 iterations
that we did where we, of course, a lot of different copy, but then also different scenarios with different people sleeping outside inside um in very absurd situations and less absurd ones do you know how much you spent on this specific ad creative i would say over the course of that it's lifetime and all the iterations it's probably well above like a million dollars or so um but a million dollars on this specific ad format yeah i would i would think so wow that's crazy it's it's so unexpected too especially a lot of people from the ugc organic world they see something like this and
they're like there's no way this is like high converting because in the organic world you're just so used to it has to be like a super outrageous hook and then the demo has to like clearly show the product because there's no cta in organics and this one like barely shows the actual app it's really interesting do you have like a list of formats that are like the best uh in the past i don't know six months uh for app install ads generally i'm …
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from this episode
- Say 'app' or show a demo so the App Store isn't a surpriseMost winning app ads do this; installs suffer otherwise
- Run short videos with a wall of text in the audience's own pain wordsOne of the main working formats; no numbers
- Feed 10-20 Reddit threads to Claude to write ads in your audience's wordsHis standard process; no numbers
- Make ad variants with AI: create an image first, then turn it into videoUsed for clients; not compared with creator videos
- Mix app demo clips into everyday videos, like a chore list for ADHD
- Run ads that look like normal posts; let a web page do the selling
- Send Meta ad clicks to your blog instead of the App StoreClaims to be one of the first to scale this way; no numbers
- Compare cost per trial with trial-to-paid rate for each age groupAges 25-34 cost the most; older users looked under-served
- Give ads that deliver differently, like mostly Facebook feed, their own ad set
- Split ads into groups by format and message, each with its own budget
- On a small budget, put all ads in one group and pick winners weekly
- Have every ad team member interview one user a weekTaught the team most of how to write ad copy; no numbers
- Post on LinkedIn 2-3 times a week
- Fix the store page, onboarding and paywall alongside paid ads
Tags: meta, creative, iteration, sub-audiences, absurd-hook