How Brain Craft scaled its subscribers in the US with Mapendo’s CTV performance-based campaigns

We’re thrilled to unveil our latest user acquisition success story, introducing you to Brain Craft, a mobile-first company, whose apps count more than 20M subscribers worldwide. Brain Craft  partnered with Mapendo to run UA campaigns for 2 of their apps, GIF Maker and No Crop. What makes this story successful is the close collaboration between Mapendo and Brain Craft, which provided us with regular feedback and support. Indeed, their responsiveness and their trust in our technology was crucial for the campaigns’ success.

The Challenge 

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Acquire high-quality users who would become subscribers

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Given their already well-established user base, especially with the chart-topping GIF Maker, Brain Craft wanted to focus on quality rather than quantity. They were looking for user acquisition platforms to reach new valuable audiences, meeting their post-install KPIs and generating a positive ROI. The team at Brain Craft has developed a highly effective user funnel for their apps and the quality KPIs were crystal clear from the very beginning. 

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The Solution

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Add performance-based CTV campaigns to scale new subscribers efficiently

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Mapendo and Brain Craft launched their partnership by running UA campaigns in the US, at a fixed CPA, aiming at new users who would go through free trial and eventually subscription. During this initial stage, the team at Mapendo tested multiple creative assets provided by the advertiser (both display and video formats). While videos had higher CTRs as expected, banners were more effective in terms of both costs and quality. 

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However, Mapendo and Brain Craft agreed to add performance-based CTV campaigns, testing this new channel in order to scale volumes. Running UA campaigns on CTV helped increase new users considerably, but they initially needed improvements in terms of install-to-free trial and free trial-to-purchase rate. 

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Creative testing and Mapendo’s proprietary ML algorithms quickly optimized the performance of CTV campaigns to meet Brain Craft post-install KPIs. As a result, new users increased significantly, together with free trials and purchases, while costs were the same as before. 

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The Results

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Brain Craft and Mapendo assessed CTV campaigns’ quality and extended their partnerships to fuel GIF Maker growth in new countries  

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Adding CTV campaigns, installs increased by more than 300%, as did free trials and purchases. Especially, ML- driven optimization across all channels made sure all quality KPIs were met or exceeded, increasing ROI and keeping costs low. 

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Seeing these results, Brain Craft confirmed the positive performance of CTV, and more than tripled their Ad Spend with Mapendo by the end of the second month.  

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In addition, both teams agreed to launch CTV campaigns in new GEOs beyond the US, further scaling the growth of new users for both GIF Maker and No Crop.