How to Make Ads for Apps (That Work) with Social Savannah

Webinar Replay

March 6, 2025

Savannah Sanchez

Founder of The Social Savannah

With over 10 years of experience, Savannah is a Media Buying & Ad Creative Expert working with top eCommerce brands including Dr. Squatch, Blendjet, Gainful and more. With an M.B.A. from Chapman University, she combines her data analytics training with ad creative expertise to provide the best results for her clients.

What you'll learn

Learn how to unlock the power of facebook ads for apps. Discover how Social Savannah uses Foreplay to create ads for apps that really work, and create holistic ad campaigns for apps that scale.

Key Takeaways

How Social Savannah creates ads that reliably drive desirable engagments with apps
How to use Foreplay's Spyder to see your competitors best performing app ads
How to use AI Briefs by Foreplay to empower your creative team with your best app ad inspirations

Jack (00:02)
Hey guys, welcome to Foreplay Fireside. I'm super pumped that you're all here. This is not going to be a typical event. This is going to be super interactive. So whatever you want to talk about, put it in the chat and we're going to be replying to it. So if you have an idea, drop it in the chat and let's get social. And on the topic of being social, this is Savannah from the social Savannah. Zach, do want to give her a little intro? Not that she needs an intro.

Zach Murray (00:26)
Yeah, for sure. mean, yeah, have, Samantha Sanchez on for this, fireside chat. I'm talking about a topic that I think is actually like really cool. obviously I feel like a lot of like the large voices in like ad creative and stuff like that are always talking about like DTC and, and e-comm and CPG. but I mean, from what we know in terms of like some of our largest customers and people that are spending the most on advertising, like apps and gaming is a massive category.

And I think the principles, the formats and everything like that, there is definitely some overlap between CPG and e-commerce. but there's, know, a ton of, of new, and, like innovative formats that Spana is going to go over today on how to actually drive, whether it's app downloads or subscriptions and things like that. so, you know, whether you're running those types of offers right now, or you're, you know, a creative that's working a lot with CPG brands, this could be a really cool kind of opportunity to like expand what you're working on.

And I know Savannah's work with some of the largest apps in the category, made some incredible creative. And so she's got an amazing presentation and she's going to walk through that, like always with her fireside chats along the way. If you have any questions, just drop them in the chat at any point. You don't need to wait till the end and then we'll do a Q and A at the end. So with that, I'll get handed over to Savannah to take it away.

Savannah Sanchez (01:45)
Thanks so much, Zach. So excited to be here and really excited to be talking all about apps today. I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen. So just let me know if for some reason it doesn't work. Just one second here.

Jack (02:01)
This is when Savannah accidentally shares her DMs on Instagram.

Savannah Sanchez (02:05)
Exactly. Gotta

make sure do not disturb modes on all the good stuff. Alrighty. Can you see my presentation?

Everything good? Alrighty, let's get right into it. So thank you so much, Zach, for the introduction. For those of you who aren't familiar with my work, my name is Savannah Sanchez, also known as The Social Savannah. You may have seen me post some of my ad examples on LinkedIn or X.

Jack (02:18)
Yeah, look good.

Savannah Sanchez (02:34)
I've worked with over 200 brands in 2024 alone for some of the largest apps, including Noom, Bumble, Jackpot, Lottery, Poshmark, Ipsy, just to name a few. So today I'm really excited to be diving into some formats that work well when you don't have a physical product. So whether you're an app, service-based business, these are all hooks and formats that you can recreate for your service and have it work well on Meta and TikTok. So...

Without further ado, let's dive into it. And every example I share today will all be ones I've developed on my team. So the first examples I wanna share is called the before and after format. And I'm gonna play these examples because they do have some sound that helps to enhance the ad experience. But essentially we want to share with the user.

what your life was like before you discovered the app or service versus how great it is after. So I'm going to go ahead and play so you can hear the audio.

So as you can see, we use audio to really enhance the experience showing the screaming and how scary it is before she discovered dating on Bumble and then how her life improved after. So you can definitely rework the script to really go for any app or service and then showing the app logo and it in the app store at the end. I'll share my second example now.

So ending with the app store screenshot or showing the app logo is a great way to end the ad, especially with the download Bumble today, CTA. So you definitely don't have to do this concept with music. I also want to show an example of how to do before and after without any music. I think the music helps enhance it, but you can also just tap on the screen. Different texts pops up saying my life before my life after and showing how her life is improved now that she has discovered this new app. So this is one I would highly recommend.

men testing, only takes one talent, no voiceover, less than 15 seconds, very easy to execute, but extremely effective. Next, we have the self skit. So when I work with clients for apps and services, self skit is probably my go to ad format because we always see it work really well. And it's very easy to do and looks really organic to reels and tick tock.

So in the first example, we set it up as like a fake FaceTime. As you can see, she's FaceTiming herself in a different outfit, talking to her old self versus her new self once she discovered Bumble. So this is a really great format because it doesn't need to feature any products. It's just showing the model in two different outfits, having the conversation back to back with each other, just essentially filming them.

on the other side of the room and then editing it together as if they're having a conversation. And this format is just really engaging and we see great watch times on this. So I would highly recommend testing the self-skip format.

Another easy format to do is a slideshow about rating things. So for this one going on our Bumble theme, we did rating things that Bumble has helped to improve my life. So we, she's improved confidence. She's made her, she now feels more empowered 10 out of 10. So you can definitely do the slide show format to talk about your top value props. doesn't have to be video.

As you can see in all my examples, I have a small team of creators and what we do is we will take our creators and shoot new content with them every week and we'll test a different ad format. Like for instance, one week we'll do the skits, the next thing we'll do slideshow reading things, we'll do a before and after. So with any ad account, doesn't apply just to services and apps, it's really for any ad account when you're trying to scale, it's important to test.

a broad variety of different concepts, whether it's stills, skits, slideshows, all different types of UGC, different demographics, different models to really unlock scale. Meta definitely favors net new content. So it's really important to be constantly feeding the algorithm with new concepts.

Of course, for any app or service, a success story is going to be a bread and butter of convincing people to try your app and service. So what we did is we took b-roll of the creators having a great time with their partner and showing how lovely their life is now that they've met their partner on Bumble.

So being able to visually show any success stories is going to convince someone to try our app in service. So seems pretty obvious showing the results is what is going to convince people. It's not always just telling people like, download this app. You also want to visually show the results of here's how your life has improved once you use it.

Next we have the walk and talk. So this is a great format because it looks very organic to Instagram stories or TikTok. We are trying to replicate where as if a influencer is just picking up their phone, wants to go on a rant, goes live or posts an Instagram story. So people tend not to scroll past these types of ads because it looks like an organic post. People don't automatically think it's an ad.

So it's a very natural, authentic conversation. So I'm walking around their neighborhood talking about why they can Bumble a try and why they recommend that you do the same. So very natural format doesn't require any products, just requires a creator, phone and walking down the street 15 to 30 seconds is really the sweet spot here.

Another really great format for apps and services is the man on the street interview. So we set up this scene where our creator goes and interviews someone on the street, which is our friend asking about dating stories, dating horror stories, and then says, have you heard of Bumble? This is why it's so great. So again, looks really native to the feed looks organic to the content that's already trending on reels and tick tock, which means people aren't going to swipe away.

So this format is extremely popular and one that I think will continue to perform well throughout 2025. As you can see, ending with the CTA download Bumble as well as the app screenshot is a best practice.

The next format I want to talk about is the whiteboard. So I included a few different examples of how you can include a whiteboard in your ad to get your main value propositions across. You can use it in the hook. You can write down three reasons why you should try a service. You can create graphs like we are on this third example, buying a whiteboard on Amazon for $10 is probably one of the best and cheapest investments I have made to create great content.

when you don't have a physical product to show. Sometimes if you just have a creator who's talking to the camera, it's easy to get lost in what they're saying because there's no visuals. But if you can write down in an interesting way on a whiteboard the main points that you want the viewer to see, that's going to help tell your story so much better.

Another way to tell your story is by using the notes app. So you can either do it like we did in this example where we have a checklist of how the rapid fire reasons you should try the new map. And then we added some UGC at the bottom just to make it that little bit more engaging. On this first example, we overlaid some notes that you can check off to show that these are her goals.

So that's just a really engaging and eye catching way to do your edit. And then on this one, we wrote your dreams of becoming Instagram famous can be a reality as if she's writing it in a notes app. So an easy way to just make your ad that much more engaging and eye catching.

Another really great format is the paper flip. So this is an easy concept execute as well. All you need is a printer and a great offer. So for the first one we printed out, uh, like we're targeting struggling sleepers. We try our a hundred night free trial. So something like this is very engaging to get people to watch on the second example. We showed how the app can increase your followers and your likes. So if you want to become Instagram famous to use this app.

So this format keeps people watching and keeps people engaged.

Another thing you can do if you're targeting, if you're marketing an app or service is do something interesting with writing in the first three seconds. So for this example, we wrote on a cake how to make your Insta famous to get that thumb stopping effect within the first three seconds. So I'm always trying to think, is there interesting ways we can write with food or do something weird or interesting in the hook to, to catch attention.

And as you can see too, it's also useful to include multiple creators in your content along with app or website screenshots. Sometimes we find it better showing multiple creators instead of just one. So just another variable to test and to add to your ad account testing, just having one creator versus a mashup of multiple. We see both work. really just depends on the client. So it was something that I add to our testing.

methodology that we want to test both versions, one just featuring one creator face, one showing a mashup of multiple creators.

I also wanted to show some examples. This one is specific to Alma therapy. So if you have a website, what you can do is you could put post-it notes on top of your website to call out the main value propositions. It just looks that much more engaging and gets people's attention more. Another format I wanted to share is about saving you money. So I'm about to save you a lot of money on therapy costs and you can have the creator point up at the text. Any hooks around saving money?

especially in this economy, I've seen perform really well. Any ways that you can advertise yourself as providing value and being a goodbye is something that I've seen work really well for apps and services. Another format I would recommend testing is myth versus truth. So for this one, said myth therapy has to cost a lot of money. Truth. You can actually find affordable therapy through Alma. So debunking common misconceptions in your industry.

for your ad and then using the green screen effect over your app or website to be more engaging is what I would recommend.

Another classic editing technique that has really worked well for years is the TikTok comment response. So essentially in the hook of the ad, you are having a TikTok comment overlaid and the creator is talking to the camera to answer the question that the TikTok commenter had. So this works well because of course it looks organic to TikTok. It doesn't look like an ad. You can answer common FAQs or misconceptions that people have about your apps and services.

and then go into app screenshots, website screenshots with the green screen effect to explain why the app and service can solve their problem.

Another example I wanted to give is for my client, affordable health plans. So these are for all of you out there that are running lead generation ads. One hook that's been working really well for lead gen is reasons to visit affordable health plans.org. showing the shot of someone on the computer, going to the website, filling out their information. It only takes a few minutes to get helped. You have a wide variety of plans to choose from.

This is a really great format and hook to test, especially if you have a more boring app or service like shopping for healthcare plans. Usually what we'll do is we'll just include a lot of shots of people on their computer, browsing the website on their phone, browsing the website, and then some after shots of them working out and how their lifestyle has improved now that they have an affordable health plan. Going along with the theme of saving money.

Stop overpaying for health insurance and throwing money in the trash. A great visual hook to use to get people to pay attention to the rest of the ad. And lastly, we have here's the secret to getting affordable healthcare. So people always want to know hacks to save money, secrets. So that's a really great cliffhanger per se to get people to keep watching the rest of the ad is to start with teasing people a little bit saying, I have a secret to tell you about getting affordable healthcare.

Keep watching to learn more.

Another B2B example I wanted to share is Zapier. So for the first that we made, it is a skit with your future self versus your current self. So being a little bit over-dramaticized with your current self, saying how frustrated you are, he's putting his hand through his hair and then showing how cool his new self is now that he's discovered Zapier and how much it's improved his life in this process. So it's a version of the self-skit concept that I showed with Bumble.

I also wanted to show how this can apply to a B2B business. Another variation of the self-skit is doing a skit of you versus a friend. So you're saying everyone at work spending all this time on manual processes versus your friend who looks happy, he is organized, he's efficient, who's finishing his work so much easier with Zapier. So that's a great formats test, you versus a friend.

And then lastly, wanted to just share another green screen example. We use the green screen effect so often with apps and services that I really just can't include enough examples of showing the green screen. So essentially we have the creator sit in front of a white background or a green screen, like as you can see here, he's just in front of the white background. And then we superimpose him on top of the clips and on top of the app. So definitely would say that

Green Screen is part of the bread and butter of creating ads for apps and services along with skits.

Here's some examples from Jackpocket lottery. So on this first example, we did answering FAQs about Jackpocket lottery and we use the TikTok comment question overlay to make it look more organic. So especially for an ad for retargeting, doing one where it's answering FAQs can just help answer those common questions and objections. So this is a format that I would say would work the best for retargeting. If you're an app or service, it's answering the frequently asked questions.

The second example I have is POV. So POV, found an easy way, an easy and convenient way to get a ticket for the next mega millions. And then of course you want the creator to be a little bit over the top in her reaction. She was all excited that she won the lottery or got her ticket. So showing those reactions is really important. And then mixing that in with app screen recordings.

And lastly, we have the problem versus the solution. So the problem, wanting an easier way to order lottery tickets, the solution, you're presenting your app and service as the easy solution to the problem that your app and service solves. And then of course, the very dramatic reactions of how happy he is now that he's discovered it.

Lastly, I wanted to show this format that's been working really well. It's the hook. If you are searching for this, then you need to try this. So in the hook, we have the search bar, best way to order a lottery ticket. And then we show that this is the answer. So it's a very eye catching hook to use and just addresses the problem head on when people are searching for this because they have this problem. Don't worry, we have the solution for you. So this is a really great way to hook people in in the first

three seconds. Alrighty. Well, I hope you liked some of these ad examples for apps and services and the strategies that I'm seeing work well for my clients. I will email out this deck to my newsletter subscribers. So you are welcome to sign up for my newsletter at the bottom of my website, which is in the red text below. And I will email you out these examples that you can study them and hopefully apply them to your app and service. Alrighty. I hope you guys got a lot of

lot out of this and I'm happy to answer any questions that you have at this time.

Zach Murray (19:50)
Awesome, thanks, Vanna. Yeah, I think we had a couple questions sort of pop in throughout. And so I'll kind of just go from the top. We'll put them up on screen and kind of break them down. And then if anybody that's on the call right now that still has questions, get them in right now. And we're going to kind of get through these live. So the first one from Siva.

She was wondering, I mean, I think this is what everybody wants to know is like, you know, what does the kind of the CPA and ROAS look like on the three Bumble ads? I'm not sure if you know that top of hand, but even just touching on, you know, what the differences might be in like expected CPA in the category, you know, someone's kind of getting into this. How should they be like managing that, that sort of like temperature that they've had previously, maybe, you know, running, you know, direct to consumer than into apps.

Savannah Sanchez (20:40)
sure so of course I probably can't

to say the data from my clients, if I wouldn't appreciate that if I told them, if I told the world their private ROAS and CPA data, but I can talk more broadly to the metrics that we look at to measure success for apps and services. So the main measure of success for an app would be like cost per download. And so what we will do is when I look in an ad account, I like to get a baseline of, what is their average cost per download before we started running these ads? And then once we start

rejecting these UGC styles, then we wanted to see what percentage less cost per download has our ads created versus what they were running before. So it's all relative to what their average is in the ad account.

Zach Murray (21:27)
Cool. And then do people think about funnels a little bit differently in terms of what sort of messaging you're giving to people at different stages of the funnel of an app download? Like I think some of this UGC storytelling stuff obviously is, it kind of feels very organic content. Is there anything that you use also further down the funnel? Once someone kind of is aware of the app or the service, does anything else kind of pop up?

Savannah Sanchez (21:55)
For sure. I would say in the top of the funnel, it's more about awareness, telling people as I exist, the top value propositions, like a lot of the examples I showed today. And when you get to the middle of the funnel, you don't want to keep just harping on about the main.

value propositions and what your app does, you want to approach it as, okay, this person is already familiar with us. They've been to our app or they've been to our website once they've seen our ads before. Why didn't they end up purchasing? So it's hitting those objections head on of, um, is it the price? Is it the quality? Those are, that's what you want to answer in the ad so that people feel confident about making their purchase. You have to approach it from a way of, there was a reason why they went to your website and didn't purchase. Let's see if we

can address those in our ad copy. So that can be including testimonials, so social proof, showing five star reviews, PR. Everyone says it's great. You could try it for yourself, methodology, answering frequently asked questions, showing real customers their success stories. That's what I would focus on in the bottom of the funnel versus the top, which is just awareness focus.

Zach Murray (23:04)
Cool. And so Alex is wondering how you're targeting audiences in this category. Obviously you showed different, like, you know, out of examples from Bumble and Zapier, those are obviously, you know, two very different audiences with different interests, but how are you like approaching that? Are you targeting 100 % with the creative? What does that look like for you guys?

Savannah Sanchez (23:23)
For sure. would say in 2025, the creative does the work in terms of the targeting. think the machine learning on TikTok and Metta has gotten so advanced where you can essentially have a broad audience as you're targeting and TikTok or Metta will analyze the creative and be able to determine which users are going to respond best to this type of ad.

And then as the ad is being shown to users, it uses that data. It keeps building on top of each other. these type of people clicked on the ad. We're going to show it more to these type of people. So I would say in today's day, it's less about choosing audiences or lookalikes or finding like the perfect interest to target on meta and Tik TOK. It's more about having a variety of creatives, giving it enough budget to be able to serve to enough users so that

the algorithm can learn which type of people are responding well to the ads and continue to amplify it to the right audience. So it's really letting the platforms do the targeting.

Zach Murray (24:27)
Cool. And so Blaine's wondering, they have sort of a situation here where click-through is super, super great on the ad, but people aren't downloading or not starting a trial. What sort of questions would you go through in terms of trying to analyze? Obviously, we don't have the ad in front of us, but what things would you test to improve that performance of click-through, which seems to be very strong, into app download or whatever that conversion?

optimization is going to be.

Savannah Sanchez (24:58)
Sure, so I would say, can you repeat the question? Sorry, I was just on blank. I have an answer.

Zach Murray (25:05)
Yeah, yeah, Blaine's got like a really

solid click through rate on an ad, but it doesn't seem to be converting. Yeah.

Savannah Sanchez (25:11)
yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. I remember now.

I think I was thinking of my answer and then my brain went blank. So essentially if you have a great click through rate, but the CPA is struggling or people aren't downloading or clicking, I would say this is actually a pretty common problem that a lot of brands run into, not even apps, but also people in DTC. So if your ad is doing well, has a great hook, great click through rate, I actually encourage my clients to look beyond the ad because my clients always be like,

Okay, how can we tweak the creative? I'm like, well, the creative is actually not the problem here. People are watching it. They're clicking through. They're just not buying. So that's when I would take a step and look first at, what is the landing page? Sometimes we'll find that the website is loading super slow. And I'm like, Hey, there's nothing like we could do in the creatives. Your website is glitchy and slow. Of course you aren't buying or your checkout isn't optimized. What is your offer? People are going to website, seeing a crazy price, clicking out.

So my first step is to analyze beyond the creative. If we are seeing great creative metrics in terms of the hook and click through rate, I don't want to keep just spinning our wheels on the creative front because it sounds like the creative is doing its job. It's getting people into the website. Now it's time to think through what are the variables on the website or the offer or the app that is making people not follow through on the purchase. And it's also going to depend on the AOV or the product category.

because a very expensive purchase like buying a thousand dollar car, signing up for a very expensive offer, people aren't necessarily going to click on an ad, go to the app or website and purchase right then. It's something that is going to be a longer consideration funnel. Maybe they need to see five ads, get an email, get texts, get a phone call before they end up spending thousands of dollars. So the product price is also a very important factor here to consider if people are going to purchase right when they click on the ad.

Zach Murray (27:10)
So the next one's from Ivan. And I think this really aligns with kind of the state of where we're at right now with new ad creatives. think creative volume is like the trend for 2025. Everyone's thinking about how they can scale up volume. But on the back end of that, figuring out in reverse engineering, what is the rate of success that we're targeting for new ad creatives? And so with your team, and I'm sure this comes into even like client retention for you and managing expectations. And so what do you communicate with clients as like,

setting expectations for if we test 10, if we test 100 ads, what should the expectation be on a win percentage?

Savannah Sanchez (27:49)
For sure. I would say it also depends on how established they are as an advertiser. If they are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on Metta successfully, and they want to bring me in to have new creative variations, they already know that their offer and their website and their value propositions is working because they have proven creatives and they're able to really a certain amount of scale. So at that point I need to either do as well as they are doing or hopefully beat their existing efforts.

And I would say like realistically, if you are creating eight ads, maybe one of them is a winner. And that's for like a proven ad account where you know that the offer is good. You know, the website is good. It has good value props. If the win percentage was like 90 or a hundred percent, the ads we make are going to like beat the ad account. I would be on a private Island with jet probably on a ball team. So I think we, like, I want to be honest and realistic that not every ad is like a home

Zach Murray (28:41)
You

Savannah Sanchez (28:48)
Like there's no like secret sash of finding like the home run. It's about first eliminating all of the variables. Okay. So the website and the offer is good. Then it's about testing different hooks, different types of creators, different formats. So going through like all the different formats that I presented today. And if one out of eight ends up being one that helps scale the ad account, I would say that's a pretty good win percentage. If you're starting with a client that has no proven winners, no proven success on meta or TikTok,

I would say that it goes, can either go, it's hard. Cause I can think of so many different client examples where a client wasn't running anything on Metta and then we give them some good creatives and now they're able to scale. So of course there's success, but the problem that I see, especially with starting with a new brand or a new client that has no.

no existing winning ads is that sometimes it's like, well, we can make the best creative in the world, but if the website sucks, if the product sucks, if the offer sucks.

Hey, the ads were great. just, no one wants to buy it. Like we did our best with what we had. So I see the whole range, but luckily like I've been doing this since 2020. lot of my clients been working with me for new ads every single month for the past year. Some of them even multiple years I've been working with. So I do have a good client retention. So our ads are working, but it really just depends on where the brand is at too.

Zach Murray (30:17)
Got it. One we have from Kubi is wondering, are there any, I think we kind of touched on this a little bit, are there any specific formats that work really well at different levels of the funnel?

Savannah Sanchez (30:32)
Yeah, so I think at top of the funnel, like those self-skit ones, like before and after, the man on the street interviews, the ones that look very organic to the feed, to get people to stop, get people to watch the ad and learn about you is great for the top of the funnel. Using comedy is also a great thing to do to capture attention. And then once people have been to your website, have been to your app, that's when you want to start hitting on the misconceptions or objections to why people would buy in your ad creatives.

Zach Murray (31:03)
Cool. Okay, the next one feels like it's a plant, but John's asking where you come up with fresh new ideas and inspiration for ad-creative.

Savannah Sanchez (31:13)
John, you're not a plant, but it's a great question. think that's why so many brands and agencies, including myself, rely on foreplay to come up with new ad ideas. I've done so many ads for so many brands, probably thousands of ads every month that we're creating. And the biggest thing that I run into is just not having enough new ideas.

trying to find inspiration for what other big brands are doing. So it's really part of the daily process to do research on foreplay, to look at what other top brands are doing. I use the spider tool to spy on other brands to see what their top ads are, what's been running the longest. And then being able to organize that in an effective way. That's really what foreplay is helpful for me, like being able to create client-specific boards, idea-specific boards, like I have boards.

just for my ad examples for skits or for whiteboard or for paper flip. Like I keep everything organized and that way when I'm onboarding a new client, I can easily go back into my foreplay boards and pull out examples that I like, share the links with creators. So at this point, I feel like I couldn't live without foreplay and I'm not being paid to say that. It's just the truth. I use it every day. It's so integral to our process and I...

to think of how I was doing this before, which was just like screen recording ads, saving them to a Dropbox, posting them on Facebook. It was so inefficient. And now I feel like Foreplay has solved all those problems.

Zach Murray (32:46)
Well, awesome. Well, that's cool to hear from me. And thanks, John, for tossing that one up there. I think I'll have to take this recording and run that as an ad. So Steve is wondering, you seeing most apps go to landing page or directly to app install?

Savannah Sanchez (32:51)
There you go.

Zach Murray (33:05)
Is it a mixture of both or?

Savannah Sanchez (33:05)
I would say mostly

to the app install. That's the most common that I'm seeing.

Zach Murray (33:09)
Yeah,

yeah, it's like low, low friction.

Savannah Sanchez (33:13)
Yeah.

Zach Murray (33:17)
So I'm just kind of catching up here.

Okay, this is an interesting one from Mina that's asking, are you seeing mostly people optimized for the app install or for like the in-app purchase? And obviously it depends on the business goals and things like that. But is it one of these things where, know, optimizing for add to cart, it's probably never a good idea. Is optimizing for app download also never a good idea or what do you kind of see with that?

Jack (33:22)
It's a fun change to it.

Savannah Sanchez (33:45)
No, I think it's nuanced and it depends on the brand. I've seen it work. I never like saying like, this definitely doesn't work or this definitely doesn't work. I'm more of the, I'm more like the, depends because I've seen everything. I've seen people do crazy stuff in their ad accounts where you think it doesn't work and then it does. So I will never rule out a strategy saying don't do add to cards or don't do this. For the question about,

like optimizing for subscription, like the long-term value of a customer versus an app download. I've seen brands where they just want to get as many people in the door as possible. The CPA per download or for that first purchase is crazy, but they know that once they have someone in the funnel, once they get the free trial offer or whatever it is, that first one that the lifetime value of that customer will end up, the math will end up working out.

So I've seen some really crazy instances where the CPA is so high to get someone to do that first download or the first purchase, but the brand has the data to be confident of like, no, we know that most people would sign up. They'll be a member for six months. We'll make this much on that. The math all works out. So I would say don't be too zeroed in on like that initial CPA cost if you're a subscription business, because it can look crazy high, but it's just about knowing your data and whether it's going to work out on the backend.

Zach Murray (35:07)
Cool. Brett's asking if there's like a standard hook rate for apps. Is there anything that's, you you kind of use as like anything lower than this, it's horrible, anything above this, you know, we might have something here.

Savannah Sanchez (35:21)
You know, I don't know, because I would say for, some of the ad accounts I look into, it depends just depending on the brand and the ad account. Like for instance, one brand, if someone's watching three seconds of the video, like that first hook, if they get to that three seconds, that's considered really good. Where for other brands, they really only consider it good if they're watching at least 10 seconds and then purchasing. So I would say as like a, average metric, I like to make sure people are watching at least the first

first

two seconds. So that would be considered the hook in most instances. We would consider that a success if they're getting to that first two seconds, but it's so dependent on the brand and their own baseline.

Zach Murray (36:04)
Cool. So Henry's asking, what are the most common mistakes you're seeing apps make? So, you know, maybe a new app comes to you, like we need new ad creative. Is there a common theme where you're like, everybody's doing this and it's not working? What is like the first things that you're cutting in terms of strategies and or pivoting from?

Savannah Sanchez (36:22)
Yes, the main thing that I see apps and services do is that there's no humans in the ads. They're just doing screen recordings of the apps. It's just text overlays, maybe photos. And that's just so boring to watch and not organic to the feed of what people are watching on Instagram and TikTok. So.

that's where brands struggle is like, how can we incorporate UGC humans in the ads, but we don't have a product. So how do we do it where it's still engaging? And so that's why I'm using like the skip formats, the walking on the street, talking straight to the camera, the green screen. So not just showing the screen recordings of the website, but having a person over it and talking. I think that's the thing that a lot of these ads are missing is the human element.

They're testing a lot of images, lot of slideshows, a lot of app screen recordings with voice overlays, but incorporating the UGC portion of it is the most difficult part for them. But I think if they followed the examples I shared today, that would be a really great start.

Zach Murray (37:22)
Um, so Steven's saying he's recommending making more static ads because creators take a long time. If they don't use the app, they make mistakes. So, you know, I think that's like a problem with process, not always like format. And so how do you make sure that when you're handing off briefs to creators and things like that, do you have like a checklist or what are the things that you implement to make sure that when you hand stuff off, that you're getting back what you want, and then you can benefit from the value of, of, uh, of video creatives, right. And not just relying on statics.

Savannah Sanchez (37:51)
For sure. I would say this is the biggest challenge people run into is working with creators. And that's why I'm in business. That's why I'm able to, to, to run my business is that brands get frustrated, not getting the footage they want from creators, follow the back and forth, editing it together. It's timely. It's frustrating. And it's complicated where if you're able to find a good agency, like myself who has a network of trusted creators can brief them correctly, get the right scripting points, get

get everything that they need to put together a good ad into the formats that we know to perform and to that in an easy and efficient way. That's worth its weight in gold. And that's how I've been able to, to feed myself is by solving that problem for brands. Cause working with creators directly can be really frustrating. I would say my tips for working with creators is really kneeling down the brief. So I am so specific about the shots that we want. I provide visual examples of how we want the unboxing done, the type of lighting that we want, the

talking about like unboxing a product or how we want them talking to the camera. A lot of the creators I work with, I've been working with for years, literally years. So every week I'm shooting new content with them. So they know exactly what I'm looking for. They're seasoned vets. A lot of them are actresses and do this professionally. So I'm able to get good content from the first go because I've spent the time to really train an expert team and to nail down the brief to get the shots and the scripts and everything.

really dialed in. I would say brands fail when they aren't specific. They're just saying like, here's our app, go download it and record a video. You're definitely not going to get what you want if you aren't being specific about the shot lists and the scripts in my opinion. So it's about taking that time to do all the prep work for the creators, like finding foreplay examples, writing down the scripts, shot lists, handing that to them, and then they can do their best work. So one other thing about

using foreplay in our process for creators. What I've noticed because I used to be a creator. I'm, I'm a very visual learner. If I am reading a brief and it says like unboxing and good lighting, that can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But if I can link out a foreplay ad creative that another brand is running where it's a beautiful unboxing and I can share that with them nine out of 10 times, I get the result I want because I'm showing them visually. I need a

unboxing and bright lighting just like this and they can watch the video and then make the ad. So providing the ad examples is absolutely key. Don't leave anything up to interpretation or chance.

Zach Murray (40:31)
age-old saying a picture is worth a thousand words, right? Like it's, if you're trying to get to a visual outcome, provide a visual example. So this one, John's asking, creating ads and targeting for very niche products, like even like foreplay. I mean, I'll also hand this over to Jack, because he runs the foreplay ad account. But Savannah first, how do you approach like a very, very niche, you know,

Savannah Sanchez (40:34)
Yes.

Zach Murray (40:58)
where it's not singles, Like Bumble would be singles looking for love. It's like probably a large portion of the population. Creative strategists looking for new tools, it's smaller, but how do you approach that differently than something that would be a consumer app?

Savannah Sanchez (41:14)
I would say influence or marketing, like finding the leaders in that space, whether it's ad creative experts or the leaders in your niche and being able to tap into their audience is really key. If you can't do broad targeting on Facebook or even interest targeting might not even be narrow enough.

And so that's where I would look into strategies like whitelisting. So essentially being able to get the influencer or the creator who's an expert in her niche, getting access to their profile on Meta and being able to run ads through their profile, that would be the best strategy in my opinion. But I'm curious to hear what Jack has to say about that as well.

Jack (41:54)
Yeah, I have some interesting ideas on this one. I feel like if this was old school marketing, we were out on the street in like a mascot costume. I'm thinking of that scene in Breaking Bad where the guy's spinning the sign. Or we're giving out brochures, I don't know, for a gym. We would be looking for our target audience. So like, let's say you're marketing for a gym. You wouldn't give your brochure to the 80 year old, right? Or to the kid in a pram, right? Probably give it to people who are between, I don't know, 20 and 40 years old.

so that you can get people to actually come to your gym. That's what our ad platforms are doing for us with every single piece of data. We're not manually typing in, show my ad to people who, I don't know, 20 to 25. It's finding those people if they're the right people who perform that desired action that you want them to perform. But yeah, I couldn't agree more on influences. I think one of the things with influence is that advertisers, marketers, discount, as well as the CPM.

When you pay for that content from an influencer, from somebody who already has distribution, you're getting a really good CPM, let alone you're getting content that you can run in your own ads when you're distributing it yourself. we work with a bunch of creators, and when we pay for a post to be made and collaborate with them and we're paying for that production, because it takes time to produce this content, we're also getting that distribution through whatever channels they have on social. So yeah, I couldn't agree more on influencer.

Zach Murray (43:19)
Cool. And so I saw you replied to Luke here in the chat, but in terms of casino and gambling apps, is there anything that stands out in terms of winning strategies in that niche? I mean, I think it's, I always...

I'm envious of people that sell vices because I feel like it's just easy. But obviously it's super competitive and things like that, but people looking to gamble, it's like you give them an option to gamble. There's not that much of a consideration period, right? Like if someone wants to gamble, they want to gamble. yeah, so how do you approach that when working with...

Savannah Sanchez (43:52)
No. You want to or you don't.

Zach Murray (44:01)
whether it's gambling, casino apps, things like that. Is there any different approach than, you know, Bumble or Zap?

Savannah Sanchez (44:07)
Yeah. I mean, I think the examples I shared today, which you can get from signing up for my newsletter at the bottom of my website, I included specific ones from Jack pocket lottery. Uh, one of them was answering FAQs point of view, um, the problem versus the solution, tick tock comment overlay. So definitely take a look at those and replicate those. But I would say like, like what you were saying, Zach, there's not a consideration period. It's just, how can we get their attention? How can we hook them in the first couple of seconds?

It's all focused on awareness. Whereas another type of app where there's consideration or more expensive purchase at the end, then you're going to have to maybe provide more social proof, more PR.

more guarantees, a great offer. This is more about how can I capture attention and make sure someone doesn't scroll past us on the first two seconds. So I think that's where you could be a bit more experimental, like with comedy showing like very extreme reactions, like someone winning, like, wow, like throwing money everywhere. Like you want to think about what's going to be.

really eye catching in that first two seconds. And I think being on the more extreme, like weird out of the box ideas, I think you can really win with a casino or a lottery type app.

Zach Murray (45:20)
Cool. So yeah, we're at 45 minutes now and we kind of came to the end of the questions. One question I have for you is, you know, we're kind of, you know, a few months into 2025, I already feel like the landscape is different than, you know, March and February of 2024 and how much attention people are going, putting into ad creative. And so how are you, do you have any hot takes or predictions for, you know, this year to come? Is there any formats that you think are really going to be interesting? Like, what are you the most excited about for the rest of this year?

Savannah Sanchez (45:49)
Yeah, I mean, it's a lot has changed, but a lot of stayed the same. Like I think for what I've been doing for the last few years, like really focusing on this like UGC, TikTok style content, that still is what's performing best. So people are coming to me still wanting the type of content that I showed today.

I think AI ads is telling that's kind like a hot button topic. A lot of people want to learn how to use AI and ads and maybe not use influencers. I think that's one thing that it just isn't here in 2025 yet is like really great AI creatives that can replicate someone authentically talking to the camera. So there's, there almost seems to be like a

opposite reaction to AI. Like brands are coming to me saying like, want this to look really human. We want to tell real stories. want to like, we want to not look like an AI ad. So I'm noticing this like AI counter movement growing where it's like, how can we make this ad look more human and more organic? While as like there's other brands that are fully going in on AI. And like, I mean, you guys have probably seen a bunch of them on, four plane stuff. I'd be curious to get you guys take on, on the AI creatives as well.

Zach Murray (47:00)
I think like anything when technology changes, most of the time it's additive and not subtractive. so, right now, if you're a brand that's producing a hundred new ad creatives a month, it's costing you X dollars and you're happy with that. I don't think what you should be trying to do is figuring out how to get your production cost to zero. I think it's just like, well, how can we turn this into 300 ads a month?

you know, keeping what's working and, maybe AI ads allow you to test a lot more messaging where you can get some like leading indicators and then you roll it in traditional production cycles. So I think Jenna, the way people should be thinking about it is like, you know, abundant mindset. How do we scale this further? Not like, like how do we cut our production costs? Cause at the end of the day, it's like the incremental amount that you spend on.

the production versus a winning ad actually an ad spend spent to meta. It's like the production is free. It doesn't matter. And so I think that it's the mental shift should be, okay, how can we accelerate our, way that we've been producing ads and winning, with AI, but I wouldn't try to like replace the thing that's working for you. I do think that's kind of just like, that's like a side quest that I think leads to nothing great.

Um, but yeah, I think it's additive. it's be, it's going to be really, I mean, the one thing I'm super jealous of is I wish I was like very, I wish I was like 18 years old, uh, and had all day to just play with AI tools, um, because they are really cool. And there's like so much like wonder and, and excitement and, um, like I still play a lot with just like mid journey cause I like digital art and things like that, but I'm envious of, you know,

Savannah Sanchez (48:24)
Hmm.

Zach Murray (48:55)
someone who's young that doesn't have a bunch of calls to get onto that can literally spend 10 hours a day playing with AI tools. Because I think a lot of really cool stuff's being built. And I do believe that it's going to be 100 % additive to what we're seeing as the team makeup and production workflows.

Jack (49:17)
Yeah, I'm split on AI. If anyone has any opinions that they want to share, feel free to call in and I'll let you into the room. part of me thinks the consumer doesn't care, right? If there's a really good AI video and it's talking about the Blueberry Belly Blaster 2000 and, you know, don't know, Karen sees it, she might buy it anyway. She might not even know, right, that it's AI. And then a part of me thinks that it's...

Savannah Sanchez (49:28)
and

Yep.

Jack (49:44)
disingenuous, right? We're lying to consumers with AI. And I think that that might be a problem. I don't know.

Zach Murray (49:50)
Yeah, but like, were we

lying to consumers with scripted UGC? Yes. Right? It's all in Fugazi.

Jack (49:55)
Maybe.

Savannah Sanchez (49:55)
love it.

Jack (49:58)
Yeah.

Savannah Sanchez (50:00)
Yeah,

that's true.

Jack (50:02)
But I also think that to some extent, consumers are really adverse to being served AI UGC. If they notice that it's AI, I don't feel like that's going to work. you know, whatever achieves the goal of the campaign at the end of the day, right? But if you're running AI just to run AI and you're actually destroying the opportunity to build trust with your consumer, then I think that that's a problem too.

Savannah Sanchez (50:10)
Hmm.

Zach Murray (50:27)
Yeah, like saving $3,000 a month on creators versus growing your business, you know, $150,000 in a month with really great creative and building community and things like that. It's like, okay, one saved you $3,000, the other one made you $150,000. it's, again, I don't think people should be looking at it as cost savings. You should only be looking at it as growth potential and like all things. And the other piece with it is...

I've seen a lot of really cool examples of AI creatives or like really cool things that have been, you know, made with AI and say, that's safe. That was done like really quickly. have yet to see a meta business manager screenshot with an AI only campaign outperforming something else. And we know that this industry loves screenshots more than anything. And most of them are doctored. So I'm like, okay, cool. Like you're making a bunch of stuff.

Savannah Sanchez (51:22)
AI generated screenshot,

of course.

Zach Murray (51:25)
Yeah, but I still haven't seen the AI testing campaign, you know.

Savannah Sanchez (51:32)
Hmm.

Zach Murray (51:33)
So it's like, until that happens.

Jack (51:33)
Right, it's always an AI workflow that generates

a thousand ads, but do they work?

Savannah Sanchez (51:38)
I think the way that Zach is thinking about it is how I think about it and how all the top brands are. It's about how we can make the process better. So whether it's like helping with script writing or iterations, one way that we're using AI is we use a software called 11 Labs.

which does voiceover generation. So for instance, if we have a winning ad, we can use 11 labs to generate some new voiceovers of testing different hooks. So that save us from having to go back to the creator, having to record different hooks. We can then just have AI generate the exact same voice as the creator. But instead of saying this, she says this for the first three seconds. So now we have 10 different hooks to test and it's not having like a testimonial, like it can't match someone's

speaking to the camera, but if you are just having a voiceover and maybe showing app screenshots or your product, whatever it is, it makes it so much easier to test different iterations in terms of the hook. So that's been one way we've been using AI and seeing success with it. So yeah, I agree. I think it's about making more iterations and making the process faster, but not about having like an AI avatar talk to the camera. As Henry said in the chat, the AI videos have bad mouth to audio syncing. It just doesn't feel realistic yet.

which I 100 % agree with. I think that that's gonna hurt your brand more than paying for a creator. If people are saying like, this brand's using AI people to talk about how great it is, I don't trust them at all.

Zach Murray (53:06)
Hmm. Yeah, mean, the audio singing will get fixed, right? I remember like the first little bit of mid-journey images, like everyone's hands were like weird and like messed up, right? And it's like, okay, a couple of months and like everyone's now AI can make hands, right? So like, you know, you have to assume that, you have to assume that the mouth thing will get figured out. But I agree, I think it depends on also what category you're in. If it's a super high trust category,

Savannah Sanchez (53:19)
Thank

Zach Murray (53:34)
and someone like identifies it's like an AI ad. Okay, like, does that build trust? No. I mean, does it degrade trust? Maybe, but it definitely doesn't build trust. I don't know. It's gonna be interesting to see, you know, kind of where everything goes. It feels cool to be like living through it. Cause I think it is, you know, it's going to make an impact on the industry, like all industries.

Yeah, it should be cool to just like sit back and watch and like when new tools come out and then it can save you time, like in the same way that instead of you having to spend an hour going back and forth with the creator to get a different hook, to be able to do that in two minutes, it's better for you. And I bet the creator didn't want to like rerecord that voiceover, right? And so, you know, both of you can go and do something cool. And so think that's what I'm the most excited about, but yeah, I think this is a good time to, to, to rap.

Savannah Sanchez (54:14)
way.

Jack (54:20)
You know that.

Zach Murray (54:25)
There will be a recording of this posted on the YouTube channel. If you did sign up for this, we'll send you a link to the recording once it's up and uploaded. And then definitely go to Savannah's website, sign up to her newsletter. I've been just subscribed to it for a while now. And Savannah, is there anything else you want to kind of like plug or push people to? And we'll wrap up.

Savannah Sanchez (54:45)
No, please, please go to my website if you want to check out some of my ad examples. I have a specific part of my portfolio just for apps and services. So if you want to dive through a ton of different examples, save them to your foreplay board. Highly encourage that. I'm also an expert on foreplay and I am routinely adding new foreplay examples to my foreplay expert board. So it's not just a one and done thing. I'm constantly updating it. So, but also highly recommend to check out my expert board on foreplay to see the new ads that I'm saving on there as well.

Zach Murray (55:16)
Cool, awesome. Well, I appreciate the time and I appreciate everybody kind of log in, dropping in some really great questions. I think we got some good stuff out of this and yeah, I'll see you guys at the next Fireside Chat with Foreplay.

Savannah Sanchez (55:28)
Thanks so much. Have a good one. Thank you, chat. Appreciate you all joining.

Zach Murray (55:30)
See you guys.

Jack (55:33)
Thank you so much, everyone. Bye.

How to Make Ads for Apps (That Work) with Social Savannah

Savannah Sanchez

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