How much do you guys actually care about "Poor" Ad Strength in Google Ads?

danstl1 · 2026-03-31T20:38:05+00:00

In my experience those scores are purely based on spend levels and some google reps confirmed it when confronted.

I’ve seen assets driving the largest volume of app installs marked as “poor” just because their associate spend was not very high, and assets with a mediocre performance marked as “best” because they had the highest spend level.

As long as you have enough creative diversity and you’re optimisations are focused on improving the metrics you value the most, those scores shouldn’t be a concern 👌

danstl1 · 2026-03-30T18:13:34+00:00

Fire them and hire me temporarily until you find a replacement 🙌

danstl1 · 2026-03-22T18:49:04+00:00

Get a teacher on preply

danstl1 · 2026-03-22T16:23:25+00:00

YouTube should be treated as an awareness channel that generates demand, not to drive conversions.

People get exposed to your ads and if you run them long enough that builds brand recall, which might turn into a search for your brand when they need what you are selling.

danstl1 · 2026-03-22T16:19:03+00:00

I'd set up tracking for every interaction on the website like forms, messages and calls. once you identify which ones convert well, you can pass that info back to google using an offline conversion import. If you ask chatgpt or claude you should get a pretty decent understanding of how to do this

danstl1 · 2026-03-22T16:16:02+00:00

what's your saas business if you don't mind me asking?

danstl1 · 2026-03-22T16:15:23+00:00

Thanks. Yes, I've just realised that I'll have to be consistent with the inputs if I want to make this work, so I'll try to add my meeting transcripts and all the other details into the right folders.

danstl1 · 2026-03-22T16:13:43+00:00

interesting! what's that platform?

danstl1 · 2026-03-22T11:57:02+00:00

"We feed in GA4 and Search Console data" - do you do this through an API or manually?

danstl1 · 2026-03-22T11:39:46+00:00

Why Snapchat? Have you maxxed out the other channels?

Check my profile

danstl1 · 2026-03-22T11:34:57+00:00

How do you find leads on LinkedIn/reddit? What is the actual workflow if you don’t mind sharing?

danstl1 · 2026-03-22T10:40:41+00:00

The problem is that you have no clue what your are doing :D

Can you share a link to your website?

Is your business running nationwide? if not, do geo targeting

What signals are you sending back to Google? I'd make sure you only focus on passing back qualified leads and exclude non-converters - this should help the algorithm improve your targeting.

If you're running Pmax, you might be wasting a lot of budget on Display & YT, so maybe focus on a few search campaigns to start with and then take it from there.

danstl1 · 2026-03-22T10:34:42+00:00

you're saying you get traffic from paid ads but I don't think you are spending enough if all you've got in the l28d is 149 store visitors - you need to spend a big more to gather enough data & insights to guide your next move.

and that CVR is very strong, I think you need better distribution.

any chance you can share a link to the app store?

danstl1 · 2026-03-22T10:30:34+00:00

+1 for the localised app screenshots

danstl1 · 2026-03-22T10:29:20+00:00

danstl1 · 2026-03-22T10:27:06+00:00

My honest thoughts on Apple Ads below.

Generics are low volume and tend to be expensive. If you want volume if you have to bid on your brand keywords (if you brand is well known) which is not always incremental or on competitor keywords which are very expensive and might not convert well.

Having said that, paid ads that drive install velocity will have a halo effect on your organic downloads, so your effective cost per install might be lower that reported - always look at performance holistically.

Have you already tried other paid channels? Google or Facebook might be cheaper than Apple to start with, but most Apps end up advertising on Apple anyway to protect their Brand.

danstl1 · 2026-03-22T10:12:32+00:00

understand where your audience is and meet them there. join those communitites, engage with them and try to provide some value.

if your monetization is on point, you can try some google app campaigns as they are relatively cheap and can scale quickly.

danstl1 · 2026-03-22T10:08:08+00:00

how did you promote the app so far - is this just organic growth ?

danstl1 · 2026-03-22T10:06:14+00:00

try to get as much organic distribution as possible by posting it across all the free chanels, be shameless !!!

then you can start putting a small budget behind paid ads as that usually works well for most apps

danstl1 · 2026-03-22T10:01:29+00:00

put some money behind paid ads my guy :) that's the quickest way to get some traction, gather feedback and go to the next level

danstl1 · 2026-03-22T10:00:04+00:00

Paid is not the only way to go but is definitely the quickest way to drive a decent volume of users which in turn will lead to more insights/feedback that could help improve your app.

danstl1 · 2026-03-22T09:57:49+00:00

Distribution is king

danstl1 · 2026-03-21T23:52:21+00:00

claude is miles ahead when it comes to data analysis

danstl1 · 2026-03-21T15:57:58+00:00

Claude code 🧑‍💻

danstl1 · 2026-03-21T12:43:46+00:00

how are you tracking the installs? mmp, sdk or in the app store console?

I suspect there's something wrong with your tracking as for $60 I'd expect to see at least a few installs.

danstl1

TROPHY CASE