Google Ads: The App Founder's Guide To Finance

So you've built a personal finance app and now you want to use Google Ads to get users. Let's be brutally honest from the start: this is one of the toughest gigs in paid advertising. You're not just fighting for attention; you're fighting against user inertia, deep-seated distrust of financial products, and Google's own incredibly strict advertising policies. Most founders in your position just set up a generic App Campaign, point it at 'installs', and then watch their funding burn with very little to show for it. They get thousands of downloads from users who open the app once and then vanish, never to be seen again.

That's not a growth strategy; it's a slow-motion bankrupcy. The truth is, marketing a finance app successfully on Google isn't about getting the most installs for the lowest price. It's about surgically acquiring the *right* users—the ones who will actually engage, deposit money, and become profitable customers over time. This guide is about how to do just that, based on our experience running campaigns for B2B SaaS and high-growth apps. Forget the vanity metrics. We're talking about real, profitable growth. If you're serious about not just surviving but scaling, you'll find our complete guide for personal finance app growth an essential read.

First, can you even get your ads approved?

Before you even think about audiences and budgets, you have to face the gatekeeper: Google's ad policy team. For financial services, they are notoriously unforgiving. This isn't like selling t-shirts. You're in a restricted category, and one wrong move can get your entire account suspended, sometimes permanently.

The most common reason finance apps get rejected is a lack of transparency. Google needs to see everything, and so do your potential users. On your app's landing page and within the app store listing, you must clearly and conspicuously disclose:

-> All associated fees: Monthly fees, transaction fees, withdrawal fees, everything. Don't hide it in the small print of a 20-page T&Cs document. It needs to be upfront.
-> Your physical contact address: This is a massive trust signal for both users and Google. If you're a legitimate financial company, you have an office. Put the address on your website.
-> Regulatory information: Are you regulated by the FCA in the UK? Are you insured? You need to state this clearly and link to the relevant public registers. Without this, you look amateur and untrustworthy.

I remember one client in the fintech space who came to us after their account was suspended. They'd been running ads for weeks, but a small change to their landing page copy triggered a re-review, and Google's bots flagged them for not having a clear fee structure visible on the page. It took us nearly two weeks of back and forth with support to get them reinstated. That's two weeks of zero growth. You have to get this right from the very beginning. Getting ads approved, especially in competitive markets like the UK, is a specialised skill, which is why we've put together a specific guide on getting UK fintech ads approved.

Think of it from the user's perspective. Would you trust an app with your money if you couldn't figure out how much it cost or who was behind it? Of course not. Google is just enforcing that common-sense standard at scale.

Why chasing cheap installs will bankrupt you

Okay, let's assume you've cleared the compliance hurdle. Your ads are approved. The temptation now is to create a Google App Campaign (often called UAC), set the goal to 'Installs', and try to get your Cost Per Install (CPI) as low as possible. This is the single biggest strategic mistake you can make.

Google's algorithm is incredibly powerful, but it's also incredibly literal. When you tell it to get you cheap installs, it will do exactly that. It will find users who download apps for fun, users who are bored, users who respond to flashy ads but have zero intention of ever actually using the product. You'll get a chart that goes up and to the right, your download numbers will look fantastic, and your investors might even be impressed for a month. But your revenue won't move. Why? Because you've paid to acquire an audience of non-customers.

You need to shift your entire mindset from acquiring installs to acquiring high-value users. What's a high-value user for a finance app?
-> Someone who completes registration and passes KYC (Know Your Customer).
-> Someone who links a bank account.
-> Someone who makes their first deposit.
-> Someone who subscribes to a premium tier.

These are the actions that actually lead to revenue. Your entire paid acquisition strategy should be built around optimising for these 'in-app actions', not the initial install. It's a fundamental shift, focusing on an app ad strategy that targets high-value users, not just installs.

The Only Math That Matters: LTV > CAC

This brings us to the most important calculation for any app founder: Lifetime Value (LTV) versus Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). If you dont' know these numbers, you're just gambling. If your LTV is higher than your CAC, you have a scalable business. If it's not, you have a leaky bucket.

Calculating it isn't as hard as it sounds. Here's a simple formula:

LTV = (Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

Your CAC is simply what you pay to acquire one customer who completes that high-value action (e.g., first deposit). Let's say you pay Google Ads £20 on average for every user who makes a deposit. That's your CAC. If your LTV for that user is £100, you have a 5:1 LTV:CAC ratio. That's a license to print money. You can now confidently tell your ad manager to go and find as many £20 depositors as they possibly can.

This single calculation changes everything. It stops you from freaking out when you see a £5 Cost Per Install, because you know that a £20 Cost Per Deposit is wildly profitable. It's the core principle of how to acheive profitable user acquisition scaling.

To make this tangible, try our interactive calculator below. Adjust the sliders to reflect your own app's metrics and see how small changes in churn or revenue can dramatically affect the value of each user you acquire.

How to Structure Your Google Ads for Profit

Armed with your target CAC and a focus on high-value actions, you can now build campaigns that actually work. A scattergun approach won't cut it. You need a deliberate structure that targets users at different stages of awareness.

For a finance app, this usually means a combination of two campaign types: Search and App Campaigns.

1. Search Campaigns: Capturing High Intent

These campaigns target people who are actively typing problems into Google that your app solves. This is your lowest-hanging fruit. You're not trying to convince them they have a problem; they already know they do. Your ad's job is to present your app as the best solution.

Keywords here are everything. Forget broad terms like "finance app". You want to target long-tail, specific keywords that signal intent:

-> "how to track my spending uk"
-> "best budget app for couples"
-> "alternative to monzo"
-> "compare isa accounts"
-> "app to invest in stocks for beginners"

Each of these searches represents a specific pain point. Your ad copy and landing page must speak directly to that pain point. If someone searches for "best budget app for couples", your ad headline should be something like "The #1 Budgeting App for Couples". Clicking through should take them to a page that highlights features for shared finances, not a generic homepage.

2. App Campaigns (UAC): Scaling with Machine Learning

This is Google's powerhouse for app promotion, but you must use it correctly. Instead of optimising for 'Installs', you create conversion actions in Google Ads for 'registration_complete', 'first_deposit', or whatever your key action is. You then tell the App Campaign to optimise for that specific action.

This is where the magic happens. You're giving the algorithm a much smarter goal. It will now use its vast data to find users who not only install apps but who also exhibit behaviours similar to people who have previously completed your high-value action. It's a game-changer. Your cost per install will go up, but you're cost per *valuable action* will go down. This is the only way to scale profitably. It can feel complex, especially understanding the pricing models, but we've broken down how app install pricing works in another guide.

Your job is to feed the machine with good 'creative assets' - multiple video ads, image ads, and text headlines. The algorithm will then mix and match these to find the winning combinations for different placements across Search, YouTube, Display, and the Play Store. One of our medical job matching SaaS clients, for instance, reduced their cost per user acquisition from £100 down to £7 just by restructuring their campaigns and feeding the algorithm the right conversion goals. It's that powerful.

Retention is Cheaper than Acquisition

Finally, remember that your ads are only the start of the journey. Acquiring a user for £20 who then leaves after a month is a waste of money. The most profitable finance apps are masters of retention. A lower churn rate dramatically increases your LTV, which in turn means you can afford to pay more to acquire a customer, allowing you to outbid competitors and scale faster. It's a virtuous cycle, a flywheel for growth.

While paid ads are focused on the acquisition part, the data they generate is gold for your retention efforts. What ad creative brought in the most engaged users? What keywords are used by customers with the highest LTV? This data should feed back into your product and CRM teams. For instance, if you find that users searching for "ethical investing app" have double the LTV of other users, you should probably build more features around ethical investing and use that messaging in your onboarding emails.

Your advertising doesn't stop when the app is installed. You should be running retargeting campaigns to bring users back. Did someone start the registration process but not finish? Hit them with an ad on YouTube reminding them to complete it. Did they install but not make a deposit? Show them a video explaining how easy it is to get started. A solid retention strategy, as we outline in our app retention guide, turns your leaky bucket into a fortress.

Marketing a finance app is a marathon, not a sprint. It requires a level of sophistication far beyond what works in other categories. You have to nail compliance, ignore vanity metrics, understand your unit economics deeply, structure you're campaigns intelligently, and build a product that keeps users coming back. It's tough, but it's far from impossible. By focusing on acquiring valuable users from the start, you build a sustainable engine for growth rather than just a flashy download chart.

The entire playbook for app founders is more complex than a single article can cover, but these principles are the foundation. For a deeper look, our full app marketing user acquisition playbook covers these topics in more detail.

This is the main advice I have for you:

Navigating the world of Google Ads for a finance app is complex. Below is a summary of the core strategies we've discussed that you should implement to move from burning cash on low-quality installs to acquiring profitable, long-term users.

If you've read this far, you understand that growing a finance app is a serious challenge that requires a specialist's touch. Trying to figure this all out through trial and error is an expensive way to learn. If you'd like an expert eye on your current strategy to identify your biggest opportunities for profitable growth, consider scheduling a free, no-obligation consultation with us. We can walk through your account and give you actionable advice you can implement right away.