Blinkist · B2C · book summaries app
Hook ads on a famous CEO's reading habit, then pitch the app
Among the app's most successful ads, per Thomas
Workedpaid-social
What they did
Blinkist ads showing a famous CEO and claiming they read huge numbers of books, making viewers want to be as smart and successful, then transitioning naturally to book summaries as the easy solution.
What happened
Described as some of Blinkist's most successful ads.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · What it Takes to Succeed with Paid User Acquisition — Thomas Petit, App Growth Consultant“I don't know, for example, some of the most successful Blinkist ads, they're about showing famous CEO or whatever and say, "Okay, this CEO is reading 500 books a day," and that's already so close to the value prop of what Blinkist is doing that they can transition very easily and it's fairly natural”
Related topics
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- Send Taboola and Outbrain ads to a page that reads like an articleBlinkist cracked this channel; Facebook traffic gets a different flow; no numbers
- Send Taboola and Outbrain ads straight to the App StoreStore install rate stayed very low; web funnels worked better
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More from this episode
- Only run ads that return at least 2x the spend right awayHit 2x on Apple Search Ads, but only up to a limited scale
- Buy buyers where sellers pile up, and sellers where buyers waitLooked expensive, but kept the other side from leaving
- Buy 500 new users a day early to test onboarding, paywall and ads
- Spend on ads if they pay back by day 366, counting first renewals
- Don't start Meta, TikTok or Google ads below $10-20K a month per platformBelow that, campaigns can't learn; $20 a day is money lost
- Before buying ads, check your goal, cash you can lose, and revenue per installUnder $1 per US install on a subscription app, paid won't work
- With only $5-10K, test messages with small Google search and Apple Search Ads buysRarely profitable, but shows which keywords and messages make people tick
- Start with each ad channel's free tracking; add an MMP once you'll run several
- Watch how total installs, trials and subscribers shift as spend changes, per countryCatches bad trials and losing segments that ad dashboards miss
- Test very different ad ideas first, then make variations of whichever gets tractionA rare winner can be 100x and change a company's course
- Get ads from in-house designers, agencies, many creators and even the CEO's selfie videosCreator-made content has been winning on paid social for 1-2 years
- Hook viewers with the topic they care about, then make clear it's an appToo much clickbait crushes install rate and the platform stops delivering
- Monkey Taps: Run a screenshot of one of your app's notifications as the adBest ad of all time for the app; didn't work when Thomas copied it elsewhere