Thinking

What we worked out, written down.

61 newsletters and 8 case studies on creative volume, testing, and the handoff between an ad and the page it lands on.

Newsletters

• AppLovin for ecommerce: what the explainers get right and the step they skip The most-watched AppLovin ecommerce explainer is accurate on format, attention and attribution. Its advice to copy your Meta winners is how most accounts plateau. The missing step is native creative supply. 31 Oct 2026
• Booksy's creative playbook, read against the five stages of creative operations Gus Murillo described how a marketplace app runs creative: read first, brief from the read, edit for volume, keep the human. Where it matches our method and the two places we would push further. 31 Oct 2026
• What commerce brands should take from mobile gaming UA: the complete guide Creative as supply, concept systems, reading below the asset, the first second as a variable, creative as targeting, the bake-off. What transfers with care and what does not. 31 Oct 2026
• Hook, gameplay, CTA is right. Here is what it leaves out. Upptic's 2026 creative framework, where we agree, and the two variables it stops short of: the end card, where most clicks happen, and the destination, which has to keep the promise. 31 Oct 2026
• Hooks and creative briefs: the complete guide A hook is a promise. Five hook families, motivation over demographics, where concepts come from, writing with a model without slop, the concept system, and the pre-flight checklist. 31 Oct 2026
• Mobile game ad creative by genre: puzzle, merge, builder, racing, hidden object, casino, and the Rotate Rings case The device that wins and the one that has worn out in each genre, what to test first, and the October 2026 case of a fake-ad mechanic that became a game with a million daily users. 31 Oct 2026
• Playable ads: the complete guide (build, test, placement, end cards, brands) One interaction, no tutorial, payoff in seconds. Where playables fit by placement, why the end card is the most under-tested asset in mobile, and how brands use the same logic. 31 Oct 2026
• The networks know your users better than you do. So the creative is the targeting. A 20-year games marketer says the ad networks already find the best users. The production consequence: brief to a motivation, build variants the network can learn from, read what it funded. 31 Oct 2026
• UGC ads for performance: the complete guide (actors, creators, AI, and the organic brief) UGC versus produced by job, why we cast actors not influencers, casting to a role, the four meanings of organic, where AI wins and humans still do, and why the edit is where volume comes from. 31 Oct 2026
• What AppLovin's CEO says the channel rewards, and what it means for your creative Adam Foroughi's October 2026 Northbeam interview, quoted and read for the people making the ads: the 30 to 60 second unit, frequency coming down, AI not ready for long clips, 60 percent of conversions within an hour. 31 Oct 2026
• The best performance creative agencies for apps and games in 2026 Nine agencies that make ads for apps and games, taken from what the answer engines recommend and checked against each one's own site, with the three questions that sort them. 30 Oct 2026
• AppLovin creative: the complete guide for apps, games and commercial brands (2026) What AppLovin rewards and why Meta habits fail there: the published numbers on creative volume, length, captions and offers, how to produce 182 creatives from six concepts, why the landing page wastes most of it, and how to prove the channel adds demand. 30 Oct 2026
• Landing page vs product page for paid ads: the ad-to-page handoff, audited and measured A hook is a promise and most landing pages break it. How to audit the ad-to-page handoff in an afternoon, what to build first, the published presell numbers, how to measure creative on purchases rather than clicks, and how to prove a new channel adds demand. 30 Oct 2026
• The top performance marketing agencies for apps, games and commercial brands in 2026 The names AI assistants give for 'top performance marketing agency', the names they give for apps and games, each in its own words, and the three questions that sort them. 30 Oct 2026
• The best AppLovin creative agencies in 2026, and the four questions that sort them AppLovin scales on creative supply, not budget. The agencies that publish an AppLovin practice, in their own words, and how to tell whether a shop can actually feed the channel. 30 Oct 2026
• The best UGC agencies for mobile games in 2026: influencer-led, marketplace or studio-made The agencies AI assistants name for UGC and games, the three production models behind them, what good game UGC looks like per AppLovin's data, and the one question that separates them. 30 Oct 2026
• Playable ad studios compared: who makes playables for mobile games and apps in 2026 The spec every playable has to meet, the specialists and the agencies that make playables alongside video, in their own words, and what to ask before commissioning one. 30 Oct 2026
• What is performance creative? A definition, and how it differs from brand creative Ads made to be measured and changed: the unit, the metric, the cadence, why creative is now the targeting, and what a performance creative agency actually does. 30 Oct 2026
• Creative operations, defined: the five stages, the checklist and the mistakes that cost most Creative ops is the system between a brief and a tested ad. The five stages, the pre-flight checklist, the six expensive mistakes, and when to run it in-house. 30 Oct 2026
• Incrementality testing for ad creative: the bake-off, the holdout, and what to hold constant How to tell whether a new channel or a new creative set adds demand or re-counts the customers you already had, with the two mistakes that make a result unreadable. 30 Oct 2026
• End cards: what they are, the specs, and how to test the least tested asset in your account The screen after the video carries the install decision. What an end card is on each network, what a good one does, and how to test it as its own variable. 30 Oct 2026
• AI UGC: what it is, where it wins, where actors still do, and the three rules before it ships Generated creator-style ads in 2026: what Veo 3, HeyGen and image-to-video are actually good at, the contract limits on client IP, and how to judge a generated asset. 30 Oct 2026
• What it takes to make AppLovin pay An ad buyer ran AppLovin next to six other channels for one client and shared every number. Ten lessons on offers, creative, ROAS targets, and patience for in-game video ads. 30 Oct 2026
• On AppLovin, the ending does the selling Savannah Sanchez's AppLovin webinar, pulled into ten lessons: long-form story ads, a flipped pacing formula, end cards, creative volume, and patience. 30 Oct 2026
• How many creatives do you actually need for AppLovin? AppLovin's own June 2026 data says top campaigns run 182 active creatives on average, and that campaigns using every available creative beat manually curated sets by 7 to 23 percent. Here is what producing that volume actually takes. 25 Sept 2026
• A hook is a promise. Most landing pages break it. We spent years getting the first second of an ad right. Then we started reading the pages those ads point at, and found the cheapest growth most brands are leaving on the table. 24 Sept 2026
• AppLovin vs Meta Ads: what actually changes for your creative Most comparisons of these two channels argue about targeting and attribution. The decision that actually determines whether AppLovin works for you is a production decision, and almost nobody frames it that way. 23 Sept 2026
• Landing page vs product page: why your ad traffic is probably going to the wrong one We read live ad libraries for a living. The most common and most expensive defect we find is not in the creative. It is that every specific ad points at a generic page. 20 Sept 2026
• Measure creative on purchases, not on the ad. Hook rate, hold rate and thumbstop are diagnostics, not outcomes. A note on which numbers should decide what gets made next. 18 Sept 2026
• What commerce brands can take from mobile gaming user acquisition Gaming advertisers run tens of thousands of creatives per campaign while ecommerce advertisers run about a thousand at the high end. The gap is not budget. It is four operating habits, three of which transfer cleanly. 17 Sept 2026
• End cards are the most under-tested asset you own On AppLovin the end card is the last thing between your video and the click, and almost nobody varies it. Since June 2026 it also got much cheaper to make. 16 Sept 2026
• How to prove a new channel adds demand instead of re-counting it Every brand diversifying off Meta asks whether the new channel brings new customers or just re-labels the old ones. It is answerable with a bake-off, and most teams never run one. 14 Sept 2026
• Brief to motivation, not to demographics “Women 25 to 44” is not a brief. It produces a performance nobody can direct and an ad nobody recognises themselves in. 12 Sept 2026
• We are AI-native and we still pay actors. Here is where each one wins. After a year of running generative tools alongside a roster of real creators, an honest account of what each is genuinely better at, and the line we will not cross. 11 Sept 2026
• The edit is where creative volume is won or lost Most teams try to solve volume by shooting more. The cheaper answer is upstream of the shoot and downstream of it, and almost never in the middle. 10 Sept 2026
• UGC or produced: pick by job, not by fashion The whole category moved to UGC because it was cheap and it worked. That is precisely what makes produced work valuable again in specific places. 8 Sept 2026
• What a creative operation looks like when it actually works Production, media and analysis usually sit in different tools, different meetings and different companies. Each handoff loses the context the next step needed. 6 Sept 2026
• What Veo3 is actually good at, and what it still cannot do A year of running generative video in production, written down honestly rather than as a demo reel. 4 Sept 2026
• Creative conventions differ by vertical more than teams expect A device that carries a supplement brand can sink a finance one. A short field guide to what actually changes between categories. 4 Sept 2026
• A pre-flight checklist for a creative batch Nearly every expensive problem on a shoot was decided weeks earlier. Ten things to have signed before anyone books a day. 2 Sept 2026
• Turning a still image into a video ad A workflow we use when the product exists, the budget does not stretch to a shoot, and the library still needs feeding. 31 Aug 2026
• Why your AppLovin account plateaued Four causes, in the order we find them. Only one is a media problem, and it is the least common. 29 Aug 2026
• Sound is half the ad and most teams treat it as the last five minutes A lot of creative looks good and still fails. Very often the reason is audio, and it is the cheapest thing on the list to fix. 25 Aug 2026
• Running the same ad on every platform is a budget decision disguised as a strategy Cross-posting one asset is not efficiency. It is paying full price on every channel for an asset built for one of them. 19 Aug 2026
• In defence of cheesy ads Mobile gaming's most ridiculed creative convention works, and understanding why it works is more useful than sneering at it. 12 Aug 2026
• “Make it feel organic” is not a brief It is the most common request we get and the one we most often get wrong, because it means four different things. 5 Aug 2026
• Playables: the shortest possible version wins Most playables are too long, too instructive, and too faithful to the game. A note on what to cut. 29 Jul 2026
• Speed versus quality is the wrong argument The useful question is not how fast or how good. It is which decision this asset exists to inform. 22 Jul 2026
• Four things about attention that survive every platform change Channels change constantly. These do not. 15 Jul 2026
• Why we work with actors rather than influencers Not an ideological position. A production one, arrived at after enough scheduling disasters. 8 Jul 2026
• We stopped calling ourselves a creative partner The phrase describes a relationship rather than an outcome, and it quietly set the wrong expectation on both sides. 1 Jul 2026
• The most useful creative research is your own ad library Teams commission research about their category while ignoring the labelled dataset they already own. 24 Jun 2026
• A working taxonomy of hooks Five families, what each one is actually doing, and the failure mode of each. 17 Jun 2026
• Where our concepts actually come from Not brainstorms. Four specific inputs, in rough order of how often they produce something that runs. 10 Jun 2026
• There is no perfect ad, and chasing one is expensive The pursuit of the definitive asset is how teams end up with one very polished thing and no information. 3 Jun 2026
• High-end creative still has a place, and it is not where you think Everyone moved to cheap and relatable. That is exactly what makes the expensive asset valuable again. 27 May 2026
• Where the line is on brand safety, and who actually draws it Performance creative and brand guidelines collide constantly. A note on resolving it before production rather than after. 20 May 2026
• Which gaming conventions transfer to commerce, and which do not We brought a gaming playbook into consumer brands. Some of it worked immediately. Some of it needed throwing out. 13 May 2026
• The pre-production mistakes that cost the most Nearly every expensive problem in a shoot was decided before anyone turned a camera on. 6 May 2026
• Using a language model to write ad scripts, without producing slop The tools are genuinely useful for this and the default output is unusable. The gap is entirely in how you prompt. 29 Apr 2026
• Notes from a conference, one year on Which of the confident predictions from the industry circuit actually held. 22 Apr 2026

Case studies