Practitioner pattern · Thomas Petit (Thomas Petit client that requires 2x immediate return on paid, Thomas Petit marketplace client with lopsided categories, VC-backed startup where Thomas first ran the whole budget)
Don't start Meta, TikTok or Google ads below $10-20K a month per platform
Below that, campaigns can't learn; $20 a day is money lost
Workedpaid-socialpaid-search
What they did
Size budgets by event volume: each campaign needs roughly 10-20 optimization events (e.g. trials) per day. At ~$500/day (~$15K/month) a US subscription app might get 100-200 installs and 10-20 trials. So aim for five-digit monthly budgets, about $10-20K per platform, and optimize for downstream events (trials) rather than installs, clicks or impressions, because platforms keep high-converting inventory for advertisers optimizing on deeper events. Narrow manual targeting on Meta at ~$20/day is technically possible but penalized with poor delivery and high prices, and privacy thresholds leave both you and the platform blind. $50K/month is where 2-3 channels and budget splits become possible.
What happened
In Thomas's experience, under-funded algorithmic campaigns are doomed to fail even with a great product; 0-50K/month is the hardest zone.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · What it Takes to Succeed with Paid User Acquisition — Thomas Petit, App Growth Consultant“I'd say somewhere between $10,000, $20,000 a month, I wouldn't start anything below that. Otherwise it's doomed to fail.”
“but then you start having these 10, 20 events per day in the campaign that I believe are a bit of a minimum, otherwise it's going to really struggle. If you're sending Facebook two events a day,”
“One is if you're not optimizing like for downstream events, it's most likely you're going to be served garbage, because Facebook and other platform,”
Related topics
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