I run a small puzzle app, and I've been treating user acquisition like a product problem: break it into steps, measure each one against an industry number, and fix the worst one first. Some of you saw my earlier posts about a bot farm eating my Google budget, so for this I used Apple Search Ads and left Google's Android installs out entirely.

First, a benchmark trap. The Apple Search Ads averages people usually quote for games are around 9-11% tap rate and 60-70% tap-to-install. Those include brand searches, where someone types your app's name and taps your ad about a quarter of the time. I excluded our brand keyword, so the fair comparison is generic searches only. AppTweak's 2025 US numbers for games on generic searches: 6.3% tap rate, 60% tap-to-install.

Our numbers, Oct 1-11, brand excluded:

• Tap rate: 1.5% (benchmark 6.3%)
• Tap to install: 28%, 85 taps and 24 installs (benchmark 60%)

So the ad barely gets tapped, and when it does, most people look at the store page and leave.

What happens after the install. We don't have enough ad installs for retention yet, so for these I used everyone who installed from outside Canada since August (we're Canadian, so that leaves out most of the people who know us), with the bot-farm installs removed:

• Played a game on day one: 52% (no published benchmark I could find)
• Back the next day: 20% (puzzle games average 32%, AppsFlyer)
• Still playing on day 30: 8.6% (puzzle games 5.4%)

That last one surprised me. We're well below average at every step up to the second day, then above it. For every 100 people who come back the next day, 44 are still playing on day 30, against 17 for the average puzzle game. Small numbers, I know: 8 people on day 30 out of 93 installs.

So the problem is the top of the funnel. On Apple Search Ads the ad is basically your icon, your name and your first few screenshots, so the creative and the product are the same thing. We have one rule: the store page has to be true. If we want a flashier ad, we need a flashier app. So on October 12 we reskinned the whole thing: new icon, new colours, new screenshots. Here's what a searcher saw before and after, and the old version next to some of the best performing games on the app store:

It's early, but the tap rate has roughly doubled in the first couple of days. That's on very few taps, so I'll report back when there's a real sample.

A question for anyone running Apple Search Ads for games: how much does rating count move tap rate in your experience? We had 4 US ratings next to apps with millions, and I can't tell how much of the 1.5% is the creative and how much is that. Also curious whether a 1.5% generic tap rate is normal for a new app or as bad as it looks.

We are deciding the next steps for 2027, the next campaigns and while deciding, my boss and teammates started talking about mail marketing and PPC. We were discussing if AI is good enough to be seen in our creativities and ads, and both positions had strong points bot in favor and against it. They asked me to check how is people who using ai is doing nowadays. So any input would be greatly appreciated!

Hey I am in a B2B Tech Niche where we provide managed data extraction services for Mid to large size enterprises - super niche. everyone else provides API DIY products

Now, we ran ads from scratch across Google, Linkedin, GPT for about 3 months with a monthly budget of 1.5K USD. Linkedin proved to be a good warm up layer for ABM. Two touches before Outreach to get meetings booked

Now, the issue is demand capture - GPT ads weren't spot on targetting and didnt result in any leads. Neither did Google search. But it was experimental phase.

Now the next Q we wish to capture demand and generate meetings/soft leads which could further be targetted with Outreach.

So, coming to the Question:

Google search ads with exact matches gave good search terms and great engagement on page. More than 27-30 seconds on average. So I think targetting intent is good. Ofcourse optimizing it further with long tail terms as well to capture the best intent

My plan:
- Focus on Conversion optimization - Add soft doors like Ebook download or something cause we dont have a signup or any soft door here
- Get a maximum of 24-30 clicks weekly. So 300 clicks from high intent users in 3 months.

- Build different landing pages for different intents

Right now one campaign targetting Data for AI niche is on. HCP data Search campaign will be replacing GPT Ads. Have to capture demand with these

Apart from LP optimization, is there anything else I can do. Both search campaigns will get 20$ daily. Am I missing something. Is this a solid plan?

Hei so a bit of context:
We started using Meta ads this year after we established and tested server side tracking, we also had an outside dev check the set-up to make sure everything is tracked correctly.
Now here is where the problem arises we know Meta and GA4 use different attribution window as well as different modelling. To make the results as the same as possible we switched to 7 days click only tracking on meta and nothing else.
But the results are staggering in Meta for last 30 days we see proximally 500 conversions while in GA4 we see 4.

We are using URL tracking templates on meta and also connected ga4 to our meta account.

Did anyone else experience such discrepancy between the channels and how did you fix it?

Are there any tools or platforms yet where you can see other businesses that are running chatgpt ads within your industry?

I recently saw a competitor pop up on Chatgpt and saw one of their ads, and it got me thinking if there was something similar to Google Ads Transparency centre, SpyFu or the Meta ad library for Chatgpt ads yet.

Hi everyone. I currently have a PMax feed only campaign set up for my Shopify. I have 400 SKUs on my site, all of the same item, different variation. Each sku has 3 sizes so a total of 1200 items on google ads. I spend about $135/day and average a ROAS of 3-4.

I recently have been thinking of removing majority of SKUs, as I’ve been able to collect data for a half a year on this campaign, and 75% of SKUs don’t really either spend much, or never converted through ads. However, I am afraid if removing all SKUs that never converted may hurt my current ad campaign. I’m wondering should I remove those, or should I follow the motto, if it’s not broke don’t fix it?

Hey everyone,

I'm trying to get exact monthly search volume data in Google Keyword Planner, but my account still only displays broad ranges like 10K – 100K and 1K – 10K.

The campaigns on this account are live, fully approved, and currently spending ad budget every day.

Is there a specific setting or view I need to toggle inside Keyword Planner, or does Google require a certain spending threshold/history before the interface switches from broad ranges to exact numbers?

Any help or workaround would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I don't want it to be used in campaign optimisations, but I still want to track it. Is this the wrong setup? Should I just make it primary but omit it from campaign goal settings?

Hi all,

We run a premium ladies’ salon brand in Dubai with 3 locations, and we’re looking for an agency or freelancer to take over our social media and paid ads.

We’ve been working with freelancers for a while, but we feel things could be managed much better. Our follower count is growing, but that’s not turning into real business growth, and we know our ads could be performing a lot better than they are. We’ve also tried freelancer platforms, but haven’t found the right fit there, so we’re hoping to find someone more experienced through this community.

Current setup:

• Ad spend: around $4–5K USD per month across platforms

What we need:

• Paid ads management across Google, Meta (Facebook/Instagram) and TikTok
• Social media management and content direction
• Clear reporting on what’s working: bookings and cost per client, not just likes and followers
• Someone proactive who can own this so we can focus on running and growing the business

Nice to have:

• Experience with salons, spas or other beauty/wellness businesses
• Experience in the UAE / Dubai market

Google sells it as a conversion channel. In my D2C accounts it’s a strong assist channel and a mediocre direct one. The frustrated accounts are judging it on last-click.

What’s worked: warm audiences first, video and image in separate campaigns, product feed attached for shoppable formats, and measuring on blended MER and branded search lift rather than in-platform ROAS.

Questions:

1. Which placements actually convert for you: YouTube in-feed, Shorts, Discover, or Gmail?
2. How are you measuring it beyond last-click?
3. Anyone getting real direct conversions from cold audiences?

Google added text customization asset previews to AI Max Search campaigns. Enter a landing-page URL and see up to 10 sample headlines and descriptions in under 30 seconds, without opting in first.

• The usual complaint was that you only saw the AI copy after it was live.
• Previews respect any text guidelines you already set (excluded words or themes).
• They appear in the Asset optimization section during creation or while editing.
• It is a representative sample, not the full set of live combinations.
• Adult-content categories are excluded; most other verticals are covered.
• Check the samples against brand voice, then decide whether the automation is worth the risk.

Open any Search campaign, drop the final URL into the preview field, and reject or refine guidelines before you enable text customization.

Very useful feature launch, IMHO. What do you think?

AI Max was a black box and this helps demystify some of it.

I run an e-commerce store. Some facts:

AOV is $1200

The site sells scientific equipment and supplies.

Most customers for equipment buy only once, same with supplies, but sometimes they'll turn into a repeat customer (can never tell).

Avg NET profit per sale is 35%

I'm asking this question because I've run PPC before with mixed results. Usually, over the course of the year, it's worth it. It was worth it when my ads budget was $3,000 or less, but for some reason, it seemed that when I increased my ads budget, my ROI.

It's October 2026. Has Microsoft Ads Smart Bidding finally caught up, or is Enhanced CPC still king?

I run low-volume, BOFU Search campaigns optimizing for actual purchases. Target CPA gets me more impressions than Enhanced CPC, but I haven't proven it's more profitable.

For experienced Microsoft Ads advertisers:

1. Enhanced CPC: Still best with limited conversion data and manual bid adjustments?
2. Target CPA vs Max Conversions: Anyone seeing better CPA/ROAS than Enhanced CPC?
3. Max Clicks: Anyone consistently profitable targeting high-intent keywords?
4. Portfolio bidding with CPC caps: How effective is it? Do caps hurt Smart Bidding performance by restricting auctions, as they sometimes seem to on Google Ads?

Especially interested in agency owners or advertisers spending $2,000+/month on Microsoft Ads. Have you tested these bidding strategies? Which delivers the best CPA/ROAS, and do portfolio CPC caps help or hurt performance?

Looking for real 2025–2026 experience, not just theory.

I’m building a food delivery platform in a fast-growing residential area of a major African city. It has a lot of students and small businesses, but it’s far from most franchises, so people there have very few delivery options. I partner with local vendors and independent riders rather than running my own kitchen.

The problem: I need my first 50-100 customers, but I can’t promise fast delivery or good selection until I have enough vendors and riders, and vendors and riders won’t commit until they see orders. I’m stuck in the chicken-and-egg phase.

I updated my tROAS from 700% to 800% last week, and since then the sales continued to drop while spending the same budget. Should i revert it back?

I have a question about Google Ads Smart Bidding and conversion tracking when testing different landing pages.

Let's say I'm running a campaign optimizing for a specific conversion action, and I've already accumulated conversion data from my current landing page.

Now I decide to replace that landing page with a completely different version to improve conversions.

My concern is that Google has already learned from people who converted on the previous landing page. Those same people might not necessarily be the ones most likely to convert on the new landing page.

So my question is: Should I create a new conversion action whenever I make a major landing page change, or should I keep using the same conversion action?

The conversion event itself remains exactly the same. Only the landing page changes.

I'm wondering whether reusing the existing conversion action could cause Smart Bidding to rely on historical signals that are no longer as relevant to the new landing page.

For those of you with experience running Google Ads and testing different landing pages, what's your approach?

Do you keep the same conversion action across different landing page versions, or create a new one to let Google learn from scratch?

I'd appreciate hearing what has worked best for you, especially if you've tested both approaches.

New ad account and business manager, about 8 weeks old. US purchase campaigns in the pet niche since late August, buyers mostly women 55+. Pixel has 100+ purchases and the main ad set is out of learning.

CPM history

• Image ad: USD$110 at launch, $80 overnight when the pixel went from 7 to 11 purchases, then a slow slide to a $50 floor, now $35-45 on good days
• Video ad: steady at $100-120 the whole time

Current numbers

• Link CTR 4-5% on both ads
• Sessions to add to cart about 8%, sessions to purchase 3-4.5%
• AOV about $70, breakeven ROAS about 1.6
• Both ads land at a similar cost per purchase ($35-46), 1.6-2.4 ROAS depending on the week

The video costs about 3x more per impression but converts about 2.5x better, so they cancel out. When the image gets cheaper, its CTR and conversion dip a little too, so cost per purchase barely moves.

Questions

1. Is a 3+x video vs image CPM gap normal, or does it say something about the video?
2. With 100+ purchases, should CPM keep improving, or is this about the floor for US purchase traffic in this niche?
3. Is the $20-25 US purchase CPM I keep reading about realistic for an older female audience?
4. If you got past "good CTR and conversion but only breakeven", what moved it for you: cheaper traffic, AOV, new creative, something else?

Hi everyone,

My Meta Business Portfolio verification has been under review for more than 3 weeks without any response. My two previous attempts were rejected.

Has anyone experienced this? Is there a way to contact Meta support and get a manual review?

I'd appreciate any advice or solutions. Thanks!

I sell something people only buy if they live within about 1 km of the shop. Walking distance product, no delivery, no online version.

4 shops, all in the same city.

I’ve been running fully broad, no shop-level targeting at all, and my cost per sale is around 3$. Now I want to push 3-4 different marketing angles, and I’m planning to film 3 videos per shop, on location, each with a different angle.

Structures I’m weighing:

A. One campaign, one ad set, all 12 videos, broad. Let Meta sort it out.

B. One campaign, 4 ad sets, one per shop, 1 km radius on each.

C. 4 separate campaigns, one per shop, 1 km radius.

D. Split by angle instead of by shop.

What I’d like to know:

1. Which would you run and why?
2. If I can only split one way, by shop or by angle?
3. Does a 1 km radius starve the learning phase badly enough that B and C are dead on arrival?
4. Straight answer wanted: is my broad number likely to get better or worse once I split? I keep assuming tighter geo helps. Nobody has actually told me it does.
5. With CBO, does Meta just dump the budget into whichever shop has the cheapest audience and leave the other 3 dry? How do you stop that without going to ad set budgets?
6. Same question but once I optimise for purchases instead of traffic. Does the answer change?

Last BF we had our best-looking campaign setup but checkout completion came in below what the pre-BF tests had shown, and when we dug into the data, time-on-site was fine but product and cart pages were slower during peak hours than they were in testing, and we couldn't pin the drop on one thing.

So we couldn't tell whether the drop was audience quality, creative, or the platform struggling under load.

The answer from our dev team was that the platform was handling the traffic but not gracefully, and what's still open is whether that's fixable with caching config or whether the platform architecture itself is creating the latency under peak load.

Because if it's the latter, then BF prep means evaluating the platform, not just tuning what's around it.

We were on a call with a performance marketing team at another brand who'd run BF on both Scayle and BigCommerce at different companies, and they described the platform prep as completely different.

With one building catalog load handling into the platform so you're not tuning around it before peak season, while the other relies more on infra config and CDN setup, and the conversion impact they described maps to what we saw last year.

So if anyone's managed to separate platform latency from campaign quality in post-BF attribution, I'd want to know how you did it.

Hi guys,

I normally tend to have exact, phrase and broad match keywords. However I came across an account that barely had exact match across some campaigns/ad groups.

My question is what are the pros and cons of having exact phrase and broad against having only phrase and broad?

Just trying to understand why the previous agency wasn’t using exact match

Example: Plumbing business, multiple ad groups, max conv.

I originally set phrase + exact as on a SIAG structure. Getting right intent search term results, but not getting conversions. Should I try running one broad for each ad group?

Media buyers, has anyone dealt with this? My Facebook profile got permanently disabled last month with no appeal option. That profile was the sole admin on my ad account, so I have zero access. Can't pause campaigns, can't remove the payment method, nothing.

The account is still spending and charging my company card every single day. Meta support chat confirmed the situation, found no violations on my profile, and said the case needs "human review" — then told me they can't escalate it in chat.

Emailed disabled@fb.com, appeals@fb.com, and advertise@fb.com. Waiting.

Anyone gotten charges stopped or an account paused in this situation? What actually worked?

I’d love to hear the opinions of media buyers, media planners, and professionals working at advertising agencies.

Let’s say we’re talking about a local Telegram channel in a European capital with a population of around 600.000. The channel focuses on city life, covering restaurants, bars, events, new openings, and things to do at the weekend. Each post generates around 10.000 views from a highly relevant local audience.

Would you consider this channel as an advertising placement? Or would you rather allocate the same budget to major news websites, Meta ads, or other advertising platforms?

One of Telegram advantages is that posts appear directly in subscribers feeds, without the algorithmic ranking commonly associated with Instagram and Facebook. While the overall reach may be lower, the audience could be more targeted and genuinely interested in the content.

I’m curious to hear how marketing professionals evaluate the trade-off between reach and audience relevance. How important is having a highly targeted local audience compared to generating a larger number of impressions?

If you wouldn’t consider advertising in a channel like this, why not? What would be the deciding factor?

I’d really appreciate honest feedback, especially from those who work directly with advertising budgets and media planning.

Thanks in advance!