Upside

Upside achieves rapid, sustainable growth with AppDiscovery

AppDiscovery converted Upside’s ideal users at enormous scale, and quickly became a significant source of their installs.

Marketing Objective

User Acquisition

Upside

Background

Upside provides users with personalized cash back promotions on everyday purchases. With nearly 100,000 participating gas stations, grocery stores, and restaurants nationwide, Upside not only makes it easy for consumers to save money but also empowers businesses to attract more customers and drive more sales.

Learn more about how millions of people earn cash back using Upside.

Location

Washington, DC, USA

Company Size

200–500

Founded

2016

Upside

The Challenge

Increase scale while keeping costs in check

Upside’s cashback app has mass appeal (who doesn’t want to pocket cash back on everyday purchases?) and a dense network of participating businesses across the US. This translates to huge scale potential, which Upside hoped to leverage by incorporating new channels into their UA strategy. However, when testing a number of DSPs and ad networks, they had difficulty achieving cost goals, particularly for their iOS app. In cases where they were able to hit goals, they weren’t able to do so at scale.

The Solution

AppDiscovery’s CPE campaigns found savings-motivated users at efficient costs

Upside sought new users who would not just install their app, but activate cash back deals, signaling their potential to become frequent users. The cost associated with acquiring a user who completes an offer is therefore a key metric for measuring the efficiency of Upside’s UA, but this event can take up to two months to mature. As a proxy, Upside uses the cost per signup — an event that occurs earlier in a user’s lifecycle — as a reliable indicator of cost efficiency when evaluating a new UA channel.

Upside used AppDiscovery to launch a Cost Per Event (CPE) campaign optimized for cost per signup. Within the first few weeks, they saw significant install volume and a steady improvement in CPE. This, combined with the AppLovin growth team’s close partnership and expertise, gave Upside confidence in the platform’s ability to scale at their goals.

The Results

AppDiscovery became one of Upside’s biggest sources of new users

Soon after launching CPE campaigns on AppDiscovery, Upside saw a surge in installs as the AI-based advertising engine quickly learned to find users who’d be likely to engage with the app. CPE performance improved as the system calibrated: It decreased by 85% in the first month³ and then stabilized, ensuring Upside’s efficiency goals were consistently met. This success was especially notable for Upside’s iOS app, which had previously been difficult to achieve with other channels.

As Upside increased their spend by more than 20x in three months, they kept finding more users who met their goals, ultimately establishing AppDiscovery as one of their highest-volume UA partners.

In Summary

Dramatically increased UA volume

AppDiscovery became one of Upside’s biggest UA partners just months after launching.

Achieved CPE goals while scaling

Upside found large numbers of the right users at the right price thanks to AppDiscovery’s highly accurate targeting and expansive network of publishers.

With AppDiscovery, growing our app doesn’t mean compromising on our efficiency goals.

AppLovin’s team has always gone above and beyond in terms of proactive communication. We felt completely at ease increasing our spend towards this channel because we trust the team and the platform’s ability to not just scale, but scale efficiently. In the past when we’ve tested similar channels we’ve seen either efficiency without scale, or scale that compromises efficiency, but with AppDiscovery we get the best of both worlds.

Edward Benedito
VP of Growth Marketing

¹ AppLovin platform SOV: Oct 30–Nov 5, 2023
² AppLovin platform, iOS: Aug to Nov, 2023
³ AppLovin platform, iOS: Aug to Sept, 2023