AppsClicks
The operating manual — end-to-end

Six steps from signed SOW
to compounding revenue.

Not a slide deck. Not a playbook. The exact day-by-day mechanics we run on every account — from kickoff call to scaled, validated user pipelines.

The JourneyDay 0 → Week 12
01Intake02Creative03Launch04Validate05Measure06Scale
01
Intake & Strategy

Day 0–3. Discovery, scoping, instrumentation.

We sit with your growth team and your finance team on the same call. By end of day three you have a signed brief, validated postbacks, a cohort baseline and a payback model your CFO already approved.

  • SDK health check + postback audit
  • Cohort baseline from last 90 days
  • Leak pattern scan (12 default signatures)
  • Competitive share-of-voice snapshot
  • Attribution fabric wired end-to-end
Campaign Brief
File: brief-q2-2026.json
Account: Northstar Studios
App categoryCasual · Match-3
Primary marketUS · UK · DE · JP
Payback horizonD30 ROAS ≥ 25%
Target CPI corridor$1.80 – $2.60
MMPAttribution partner ready
Signed · postbacks validated · baseline ready
Playable · 22sVariant 01

Core loop teaser

Three rapid clears, combo moment, CTA at satisfaction peak.

CTR 8.1%
Video · 15sVariant 02

Character reveal

New hero arc, narrative hook, soft install prompt at s11.

VTR 62%
UGC · 18sVariant 03

Player reaction cut

Three-creator montage — authentic voice, caption-first edit.

CPI −34%
Static · 1080×1080Variant 04

Offer grid

Launch-week starter pack, price-anchor framing, gradient CTA.

IPM 18.4
02
Creative & Targeting

Day 4–7. Variants shipped, audiences drawn.

Twelve to eighteen creatives go into rotation — playables, UGC, static, video — each mapped to a hypothesis, each tagged for incrementality. Audience vectors are drawn from your own wallet, not IAB boilerplate.

RPG veterans
D7 non-payers
Look-alike Q1 payers
High-LTV EU cohort
Weekend session seekers
03
Launch

Day 8. Twelve channels ignite in one window.

No drip. No partial rollouts. Every approved placement goes live in a 90-minute launch window — fraud filters armed, bid curves uploaded, budget caps enforced at the impression layer.

Channel deploymentigniting
Meta
FB + IG + Reels
TikTok
Feed + Spark
Google
UAC + Display
Unity
LevelPlay
ironSource
Network + Aura
Applovin
AppDiscovery
Snap
Stories + AR
Reddit
Promoted posts
X
Perf + Amplify
Pinterest
Idea pins
Mintegral
Global mobile
Liftoff
Accelerate
Geos
49
Adsets
184
Creatives live
72
Launch log09:14 → 09:47 UTC
Fraud rules armed at impression layer. Bid curves watched in 15m buckets. First real-time validation cycle opens at hour +1.
04
Real-time Validation

Day 9–14. 1,000 validated installs — scored, deduped, attributed.

The dashboard is not a report — it is an operating cockpit. Every install is examined the second it lands: device entropy, install-to-open velocity, cohort match, payback fit. Anomalies fire in under 30 seconds.

  • Impression-level fraud signatures (12 defaults + account-custom)
  • Automatic bid pull-back at anomaly detection
  • Creative retirement after 3-day IPM decay
  • Budget auto-reallocation across winning cohorts
Live ops
Validated installs
0
Fraud filtered
0.0%
D1 retention
0%
eCPI
$0.00
Install velocity (last 24h)+34%
Cohort lifted
JP iOS D1 retention +11.4% vs baseline
05
Attribution & Measurement

Week 3–4. From 128M impressions to 38K LTV-positive users.

Every value-positive user is traced back to the exact impression that produced them. Scroll through the funnel — each stage reveals the dedupe, incrementality and payback work that isolates signal from noise.

Dedupe across sources
SKAN postbacks reconciled against MMP install events, removing double-counted attributions down to the impression.
Incrementality on every cohort
Holdout groups run continuously — lift measured per geo, per creative, per daypart, not per campaign.
Waterfall back to source
Every payer is traced to the first-touch impression — creative, placement, bid event, time-of-day.
Payback curves by cohort
D7 / D30 / D90 payback modeled per cohort, fed back into bid curves within the same hour.
Attribution waterfall30-day rolling
ImpressionsAcross 12 channels + DSPs
128.4M
ClicksCTR 2.5% · fraud filter applied
3.2M
InstallsDeduped against SKAN + MMP
214K
Validated usersPost-install behavior confirmed
196K
Payers (D7)Unique paying cohort
42K
LTV-positiveProjected LTV > target CPI × 1.4
38K
Dedupe
98.7%
Lift
+21.4%
D30 ROAS
1.38×
Pinned section
scroll →
06
Optimize & Scale

Week 5–12. Winners compound. Losers retire. Pipeline grows.

Once the attribution fabric is locked, scaling becomes a disciplined compounding exercise. Budget flows automatically to the cohorts returning margin, and secondary geos unlock in sequence as payback confirms.

ROAS compounding+104% over 12 weeks
BaselineWeek 3+22% ROASWeek 6+58% ROASWeek 9+104% ROASWeek 12W0W3W6W9W12
Budget compounding
Winning cohorts receive 2× budget every 72 hours until efficiency edge is reached.
Geo breakout
Secondary geos unlocked as payback proves in tier-1. 49 markets available, staged by LTV fit.
Creative laddering
Every winning creative seeds 3 new iterations. Losers retire within 48h of IPM decay.
Cohort re-bidding
High-LTV lookalikes bid 30–55% higher at the impression layer than broad acquisition.
The Gantt

12 weeks. Zero guesswork.

Every step has a defined owner, a defined input and a defined output. This is the cadence on every account.

Week 0Week 12
01Intake & strategy
Day 0 – 3
02Creative & targeting
Day 4 – 7
03Launch
Day 8
04Real-time validation
Day 9 – 14
05Attribution & measurement
Week 3 – 4
06Optimize & scale
Week 5 – 12
013 days
Intake & strategy
Discovery call, data ingestion, payback model, signed brief.
024 days
Creative & targeting
12–18 creatives shipped. Audience vectors drawn from first-party wallet.
031 day
Launch
12 channels ignite in a 90-minute launch window, bid curves active.
046 days
Real-time validation
1,000 validated installs. Anomaly alerts in <30 seconds.
052 weeks
Attribution & measurement
Dedupe, incrementality, waterfall attribution to first-touch impression.
068 weeks
Optimize & scale
Budget compounding, geo breakouts, creative laddering, cohort re-bidding.
Kickoff

Ready to run the playbook? Day 0 starts tomorrow.

Book a kickoff. We’ll run the full audit on your account in 72 hours, with the first validated installs served inside the same quarter.

10d
avg. onboarding
49
markets served
48h
to first installs
+38%
avg. ROAS uplift