Practitioner pattern · Hannah Parvaz (Founder of Aperture, a growth agency selling the paid acquisition, experimentation and product growth work discussed)
Spend on cheap awareness in November; push sales ads from December 1 into January
Same pattern for 12 years: November costs terrible, drop from December 1
Workedpaid-socialpricing
What they did
For digital subscription apps: November 1-30 performance is poor because e-commerce bids up ads, so put more budget into brand awareness and boosted posts that month. Costs drop on December 1; from about December 15 (last shipping dates) to the end of January ('Q5') is a strong window. Use New Year messaging, run a sale (in-app via RevenueCat or on the web) and push gifting.
What happened
Guest reports the same November spike and December 1 drop every year across 12 years of buying ads.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · App Optimization Through Experimentation — Hannah Parvaz, Aperture“from literally November 1st until literally November 30th, <laughter> the performance is just terrible.”
“And so like December 15th until the beginning of January is like Q5 for spend, because especially from December 15th, this is around when the post stops.”
“And then going into New Year, if your product can be beneficial for people in any way, you know, you go into this like New Year messaging, see really great results there.”
Related topics
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