App Ads Expert? The Ultimate Guide to Finding Help

If you're pulling your hair out trying to find a "Google App Ads specialist" in London, you can probably stop. The truth is, you're looking for the wrong thing. This obsession with finding a hyper-focused niche expert is often a trap. I've seen agencies that only do one thing, and frankly, they often lack the fundamental marketing and advertising knowledge to adapt when things inevitably change. They know the buttons to press inside the Google App Campaign interface, but they don't understand the 'why'. They can't tell you why your user acquisition cost just doubled overnight, because they've never had to troubleshoot a campaign outside of their tiny sandbox.

What you actually need is a top-tier paid advertising expert who understands user acquisition as a whole, someone who sees the entire board, not just one piece. An app campaign isn't magic; it's just another channel. The principles of finding the right audience, crafting a compelling message, and optimising for a profitable outcome are universal. Whether you're selling a SaaS product, an eCommerce subscription box, or app installs, the core challenge is the same: finding people with a problem and convincing them you have the solution. Someone who's successfully driven thousands of signups for a software product on Meta Ads has transferrable skills that are far more valuable than someone who's only ever run app install campaigns and nothing else. They understand funnels, user psychology, and commercial realities. That's what gets results, not a fancy job title.

So, Should I Just Hire Any Old PPC Agency in London?

Absolutely not. The London agency scene is a minefield of slick presentations, Shoreditch offices with ping pong tables, and big promises. Many are brilliant at selling themselves but fall flat when it comes to actually delivering a return on your ad spend. The key isn't finding someone with "App Ads" in their service list; it's finding an agency that can prove they know how to make money for their clients, full stop.

You need to cut through the fluff. Forget the awards and the fancy client logos on their site. You need to look for evidence of commercial success. Have they actually driven user growth? Have they delivered a positive return on ad spend? Are they transparent about their results? You're not hiring a creative partner to make pretty ads; you're investing in a growth engine for your business. Their job is to put more money in your pocket than you give them. It's that simple.

TBH if an agency starts talking about 'brand awareness' and 'reach' for your new app, you should probably walk away. That's often code for "we don't know how to get you paying customers, so we'll show you some big vanity metrics instead." For a new or growing app, every single pound spent on advertising should be aimed at acquiring a user who will, eventually, generate revenue. Awareness is a byproduct of success, not a strategy to get there.

How Do I Actually Vet an Agency Then?

This is where you need to do your homework. It comes down to two things: their track record and the quality of their thinking.

First, take a deep, hard look at their case studies. Don't just skim them. Are they detailed? Do they talk about the actual business results, like revenue generated, return on ad spend (ROAS), or cost per acquisition (CPA)? Or is it all vague nonsense about 'increased engagement'? And don't get hung up on finding a case study for an app exactly like yours. That's a fool's errand. What you're looking for is proof they can acquire users for digital products profitably.

For example, we worked on a campaign for a software client and got them 3,543 users at a cost of just £0.96 per user using Google Ads. For another app in the sports and events space, we drove over 45,000 signups at under £2 per signup across a mix of platforms. These results show an understanding of user acquisition, funnels, and optimisation. That's the expertise that matters. If an agency's case studies are all for local plumbers and restaurants, they probably aren't the right fit for your tech product. If they don't have any public case studies at all, or if they're cagey about sharing numbers, that's a massive red flag. They're either inexperienced or their results aren't worth sharing. Neither is a good sign.

Second, get them on a call. This is your chance to interview them, not the other way around. Don't let them just run through a standard sales pitch. Ask them tough questions. What would their initial strategy for your app be? What audiences would they test first? What do they see as the biggest challenge or opportunity? What metrics do they believe are most important? A good expert will ask you questions. They'll want to know about your user's lifetime value (LTV), your churn rate, your monetisation model. They'll be trying to understand your business, not just sell you a service. If they just promise you the world and guarantee a low cost-per-install without knowing any of this, they're lying. You can't promise anything in paid advertising; you can only test, learn, and optimise based on the data.

Some agencies, like us, offer a free initial consultation or account review. This is a brilliant way to get a taste of their expertise. You can see how they think and get some actionable advice for free. It's a great way to see if you trust their judgement before you commit to anything.

What's More Important: The Platform or the User?

Here’s a bit of a contrarian view for you. Everyone gets completely obsessed with the platform, with the mechanics of "Google App Campaigns". They read a few blog posts, watch a few tutorials, and think they've cracked it. They haven't. The platform is just a tool. A very powerful tool, yes, but still just a tool. A hammer is useless if you don't know where to hit the nail.

The real secret, the thing that separates the campaigns that fly from the ones that burn cash, is a deep, almost obsessive understanding of the user. Not their demographics. "Females, 25-40, living in London, interested in fitness" is a uselessly broad profile that tells you nothing of value. It leads to generic ads that speak to no one.

You need to define your user by their pain. By their specific, urgent, frustrating nightmare. Your user isn't just a job title or an age bracket; they are in a problem state. For a meditation app, your user isn't 'interested in wellness'. They're a junior analyst working in Canary Wharf, staring at the ceiling at 3 AM, heart pounding with anxiety about a presentation tomorrow, frantically typing "how to stop my mind racing" into their phone. For a budgeting app, your user isn't 'interested in finance'. They're a young couple in Clapham who just had their mortgage application rejected and are now desperately trying to figure out where all their money is going.

Once you understand that specific pain, everything else falls into place. The ad copy writes itself. You know what they're searching for. You know what message will grab their attention. You're no longer selling an 'app with features'; you're selling a solution to their nightmare. You're selling a good night's sleep. You're selling the dream of a house deposit. That's how you create advertising that actually works.

Okay, I Know My User. Now What About the Ads?

Once you've got that crystal-clear picture of your user and their pain, you can start thinking about the actual ads. Google's App Campaigns are clever, they use machine learning to find users for you, but they are not psychic. They rely entirely on the quality of the assets and information you feed them. Rubbish in, rubbish out.

Your ad copy, your videos, and your images are the most critical inputs. This is where you speak directly to that user's pain point we just talked about. I'd recomend using the Before-After-Bridge framework. It's simple and incredibly effective.

Before: Paint a picture of their current world, their state of frustration. "Another Sunday night, dreading the week ahead. Your to-do list is a mess, and important tasks are falling through the cracks."

After: Show them the dream world your app creates. "Imagine waking up on Monday morning feeling calm and in control. You know exactly what you need to do, and you end the day feeling accomplished, not exhausted."

Bridge: Position your app as the bridge to get them there. "Our app is the bridge. It organises your life so you can focus on what matters. Download now and get your first week of Pro for free."

You need to test this relentlessly. Test different pain points. Test different 'after' states. And most importantly, test your creative formats. For apps, video is often king. A simple, user-generated-style (UGC) video showing someone actually using the app to solve a problem can be far more effective than a slick, polished corporate ad. It feels more authentic and trustworthy. We've seen UGC videos produce incredible results for SaaS clients, and the same principle applies to apps. Get some of your early users to record short videos talking about why they love your app. It's gold.

And don't forget keyword intent if you're using other channels like Apple Search Ads or even Google Search to drive people to your app store page. You need to target people who are actively looking for a solution.

Everyone Says I Need 'Awareness'. Are They Right?

This is one of the biggest and most expensive myths in advertising, especially for startups and new apps. You will hear agencies and so-called 'gurus' talk endlessly about the importance of 'brand awareness'. They'll advise you to run campaigns with the objective set to 'Reach' or 'Brand Awareness'.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: when you do that on a platform like Meta or Google, you are giving the algorithm a very specific, and very unhelpful, command. You're telling it: "Find me the largest number of eyeballs for the lowest possible price."

The algorithm, being the ruthlessly efficient machine it is, does exactly what you asked. It goes out and finds the users within your targeting who are least likely to click, least likely to engage, and absolutely, positively least likely to ever install your app or spend any money. Why? Because those users are not in demand. Their attention is cheap. By optimising for 'awareness', you are actively paying the world's most powerful advertising machine to find you the worst possible audience for your product.

Real awareness—the kind that actually builds a business—is a byproduct of having a great product that people use and love. It comes from a competitor's user switching to your app and telling their friends about it. It comes from delivering value. That only happens through conversion. For an app, the ultimate conversion isn't even the install; it's a valuable in-app action. This could be completing the onboarding, starting a free trial, making a first purchase, or forming a habit by using the app for 3 days in a row.

So, forget awareness campaigns. You need to set your campaign objective to optimise for what you actually want. Start with installs, but as soon as you have enough data, you should be optimising for those deeper, more valuable in-app events. You'd rather pay £5 for a user who starts a trial than £0.50 for a user who installs the app, opens it once, and then deletes it. The first one might build your business; the second one is just a vanity metric that wastes your money.

What Kind of Results Should I Realistically Expect in the UK?

This is the million-dollar question, isn't it? The honest answer is: it depends. Anyone who gives you a fixed Cost Per Install (CPI) figure without knowing your app, your audience, and your market is just guessing. However, based on our experience running hundreds of campaigns, we can give you some realistic ballparks for a developed market like the UK.

Costs are driven by click costs (CPC) and the conversion rate of your app store page. In the UK, a CPC might range from £0.50 to £1.50 or even higher for competitive niches. Your conversion rate from a click to an install might be anywhere from 30% to 60% if your page is well-optimised. Let's do some rough maths.

As you can see, your CPI could easily be anywhere from under £1 to £5 or more. We've managed campaigns that have achieved brilliant results, like the 45k+ signups we got at under £2 each, as I mentioned earlier. We also worked with one medical job matching SaaS and managed to reduce their Cost Per User Acquisition from a painful £100 down to just £7 through relentless optimisation. It shows what's possible, but it takes work.

The key factors that will push your costs up or down are:

• -> Competition: London is one of the most competitive markets in the world. You're bidding against a lot of other apps with big budgets.
• -> App Quality & Ratings: A slick, bug-free app with great reviews will convert better and lower your CPI.
• -> Monetisation Model: If you have a high-value subscription, you can afford to pay more per install, which allows you to be more aggressive.
• -> Creative & Messaging: As we've discussed, this is huge. Better ads lead to higher click-through rates and more qualified users, which lowers your costs.

My App Installs are Costing a Fortune. How Do I Fix It?

If your CPI is through the roof and you feel like you're just burning cash, it's time to stop and diagnose the problem. The first question you need to ask isn't "How low can my CPI go?" but "How high a CPI can I afford?" The answer to that lies in a number that most app founders ignore: Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

Knowing your LTV is your superpower. It's what allows you to move from guessing to making data-driven decisions about your ad spend. Here's how to calculate a basic version:

In this example, each user you acquire is worth £85 to your business. Now you have your benchmark. A healthy ratio of LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is often cited as 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £28.33 (£85 / 3) to acquire a single paying customer. Suddenly, a £5 CPI doesn't look so scary, does it? If 1 in 5 installs converts to a paying customer, you can afford a £5.66 CPI and still be profitable. This is the maths that unlocks scalable growth.

If your costs are still too high, you need to look at your funnel. Where are people dropping off?

• -> High Impressions, Low Clicks: Your ad creative or message is the problem. It's not grabbing attention or speaking to the right pain point. Go back to the drawing board.
• -> High Clicks/Installs, Low Registrations: Your onboarding process is broken. It's too long, too confusing, or asking for too much information too soon. Simplify it.
• -> High Registrations, Low Trial Starts/Purchases: People get into the app but don't see the value. Your 'aha!' moment isn't happening. You need to improve your app's core loop or make the value proposition clearer, faster.

Structuring for Success: How Should My Campaigns Look?

A messy campaign structure leads to messy data and poor results. You need a logical structure that allows you to test effectively and understand what's working. While Google App Campaigns automate a lot, you still have control over the core structure.

A simple, effective structure for a new app might look something like this:

The key here is separation. You separate by operating system (iOS vs. Android) because performance can vary wildly. As you grow, you might also separate by country or even by major cities like London if you notice significantly different user behaviour. Inside each campaign, you use different Asset Groups to test your creative themes (your different pain points and messages). After a week or two, you'll see which messages are resonating, and you can double down on the winners and turn off the losers.

This structured approach is how you move from gambling to a predictable system for user acquisition. It takes discipline, but it's the only way to scale effectively without setting your money on fire.

This is the main advice I have for you:

Trying to grow an app is tough, especially in a place like London. It's easy to get overwhelmed and make expensive mistakes. Here's a summary of my main recommendations to keep you on the right track.

As you can probably tell, this isn't as simple as just throwing some images into a Google App Campaign and hoping for the best. It's a complex process of strategic thinking, financial modeling, psychological marketing, and relentless data analysis. Getting it wrong can cost you tens of thousands of pounds and months of wasted time.

This is where getting expert help can make all the difference. A good agency or consultant doesn't just press the buttons for you; they provide the strategic oversight to make sure every pound is spent effectively. They've made the mistakes before on someone else's budget, so you don't have to make them on yours. They can help you find your profitable acquisition channels faster, scale more aggressively, and ultimately build a more successful business.

If you're feeling a bit stuck and want a second pair of expert eyes on your app's growth strategy, we offer a completely free, no-obligation strategy session where we can review what you're doing and give you some actionable advice. It might just be the most valuable 20 minutes you spend on your marketing this year.