Case study · Campaign · Film · Growth · 2025–26
Multi-Channel App Growth
Eight weeks, five channels, 35,500 installs
- Year
- 2025–26
- Discipline
- Integrated media & creative
- Role
- Campaign lead — strategy, channel mix, creative direction
App installs are the only number that matters in a marketplace with two sides to fill. The question was whether upper-funnel channels — CTV, digital audio, radio, programmatic DOOH — could move that number at a defensible cost, or whether growth was going to stay locked inside paid social forever.
I planned and led the eight-week push: the channel mix, the creative system behind it, and the bilingual festive spots that carried the message into peak season. CTV came in at roughly a third of the blended cost per install, and the campaign returned $131K in added media value on top of what we bought.
The same discipline applied across the wider acquisition programme — channel mix, sharper audience strategy, constant creative testing — is what took cost per hire from $350 to $30 over my time on the account.
The bet
Upper-funnel channels can be held to a cost-per-install number. Hold them to it.
Results
- Attributed app installs
- 35,500+
- Blended cost per install
- $9.85
- CTV cost per install
- $7.37Well under upper-funnel benchmark
- Added media value
- $131K
Measured
8-week campaign · CTV, digital audio, linear radio, programmatic DOOH
- CTV installs
- 29,853$220K spend · 12.7M impressions · $7.37 CPI
- Digital audio installs
- 5,675$130K spend · 8.69M impressions · $22.91 CPI
- Linear radio impacts
- 9.17M$124K spend · awareness driver
- DOOH overdelivery
- +28%$130K spend · 5.94M impressions
- CTV overdelivery against plan
- +60%
How it was built
CTV earned its place
At $7.37 per install against a $9.85 blend, CTV was the single most efficient channel in the mix and sat well below upper-funnel benchmarks. That result is what moved CTV from an awareness line item to a growth channel in planning conversations.
Bilingual by design, not by translation
English and Spanish festive spots were built as equal cuts — casting, music and pacing considered separately for each — because the workforce we were recruiting is genuinely bilingual and a dub always sounds like one.
Overdelivery is a negotiation outcome
The +60% CTV and +28% DOOH overdelivery and the $131K in added value were not luck. They came from how the buys were structured, which is part of the creative job when budgets are finite.