“At first it will work at small scale, it would be super profitable — but then it's very short term. As you scale, you're going to find that performance marketing becomes less and less effective and that's where brand marketing starts to come into play.”

Performance marketing hits a ceiling at scale — brand is what keeps the funnel growing

Every app's performance marketing journey looks the same: cheap CPIs early, then rising CPAs as the platform exhausts high-intent audiences. Shireen Khi maps out the arc: performance works until it doesn't, at which point brand investment isn't optional — it's the only way to keep filling the funnel with people who are worth converting.