Founder Playbook · Sub Club by RevenueCat
9 tactics from Thomas Petit & Eric Seufert
Subscription App Trends 2022
Watch the full episode“the way you target audiences is by actually crafting the the targeting into the into the ad itself and facebook still has like first party data on engagement on the ad and click-through rate and view rate that shows them oh yeah they said it looks like these people like it”
Post-ATT: Creative IS the Targeting — Facebook Reads Engagement Signals on the Ad Itself
After ATT removed third-party audience signals, Facebook shifted to using first-party engagement data on the ad itself — view rate, CTR, completion rate — to infer which audience segments the ad resonates with. The practical implication: demographic and interest targeting matter less; the creative must encode the targeting. A fitness-for-seniors ad does not need an age-targeting layer if the creative itself filters the right audience.
“i would be just very focused on like what i think my most viable channel is probably facebook right i would be driving as much traffic as i can to the web and trying to wrap my arms around that as much as i can right because everything you send to the app store now is going to be mostly like muddied”
Small Apps Post-ATT: One Channel to Web, Capture Email and UTMs, Then Push to App
Eric Seufert's advice for solo or small-team app developers post-ATT: master one channel driving traffic to a web landing page before touching anything else. The web retains UTMs, captures email addresses, allows rich onboarding personalisation, and is fully measurable — everything that is opaque when sending users directly to the App Store. Only expand to more channels once the web-to-app funnel is proven.
“at the moment we're taking roughly 400 pairs at the first renewals which means like a massive amount of users like dozens of thousands of users and there are a lot of people who try to test way too early”
Don't A/B Test Pricing Until You Have ~400 Renewal Pairs — Most Apps Test Way Too Early
Thomas Petit argues most apps lack the cohort size required for statistically valid pricing tests. His team (with six dedicated people) needs ~400 pairs at first renewal — which translates to tens of thousands of users per variant. Before hitting that scale, make radical pricing changes and read directional signals rather than running underpowered A/B tests that will produce false confidence in noise.
“if you're an app the idea that someone's going to see your product without prompting them first with an ad is insane no one goes to the app store and just browses around you go to amazon and you browse around you don't do that with the app store you only go to the app store after you've clicked an ad”
Nobody Browses the App Store — Brand Marketing Doesn't Work Without Direct-Response Follow-Up
Eric Seufert's rebuttal to the brand marketing escape hatch: app users do not proactively browse the App Store the way they browse Amazon or a grocery store. Brand advertising is only valid for apps if it elevates the click-through rate on a subsequent direct-response ad — it cannot substitute for it. The magical thinking that brand awareness will drive unprompted App Store visits is non-falsifiable and lethal to growth budgets.
“you've got to compound subscribed users you just have to make that compound over time that means you have to retain those subscriptions so if you're doing a one-year subscription your most important metric is year two renewals right if you're doing a three month subscription your most important metric is month four renewals”
Compound Subscriptions by Maximising Renewal Rate at the End of the First Period
Subscription apps grow like compound interest: the core metric is not trial conversion or even first-period revenue, it is renewal at the end of the first paid period (year 2 for annual, month 4 for quarterly). Everything — pricing, content freshness, social features, onboarding depth — should be evaluated against its impact on that single renewal moment. Getting that right compounds over years.
“the dirty secret is a lot of these creative shops had templates and they gave you the same ads they were giving to your competitor right there's just no way now once you've got to build this stuff yourself and it's got to really be informed by deep knowledge of your product”
Creative Agencies Used Templates Shared Across Competitors — In-House Is Now a Necessity
Eric Seufert exposes the pre-ATT creative agency model: most shops ran lightly-customised template ads for competing apps simultaneously. That drove CPM inflation as competitors bid against each other using the same creative concepts. Post-ATT, with spray-and-pray no longer viable and conceptual distinctness now the key differentiator, in-housing creative is not optional — it is the only way to build real competitive advantage in paid UA.
“if i take one example of a mid-size app like like you say we did build this in-house took us 18 months to get to first active actionable results i'd rather see in 2d with one eye than being completely blind like it's a no-brainer”
Building a Media Mix Model Took 18 Months — Still Better Than Being Completely Blind
Thomas Petit's team spent 18 months building an in-house media mix model before getting the first actionable results. The lesson is not that it is too hard — it is that the results are worth it even if imperfect. The new reality is blurrier than pre-ATT deterministic attribution, but blurry signal beats no signal. His heuristic: triangulate with both an in-house MMM and a paid incrementality provider to increase confidence when models converge.
“first it was like okay i'm normal photo editors like general generic photo editors basically doing photoshop on your mobile in a more simple way and then now what we're seeing is a lot of the space is gearing towards creator how to make better tiktoks how to make more professional stories because there's a huge demand on that”
App Category Waves: Fitness Then Meditation Then Creator Tools — Ride the Next Wave Early
Thomas Petit maps health/productivity app evolution as wave patterns: general fitness came first, then meditation opened the adjacent space (enabling Reflectly after Headspace/Calm), now creator tools — professional TikTok/Reels editing — are the next wave. CapCut is the breakout leader dragging 20 medium-sized apps with it. Identifying the wave early, before the category is saturated, is the highest-leverage moment to launch.
“i'm more worried for some investment that things that some very niche mental health or whatever mental health is huge but the approach that we start seeing are more and more niche and i'm not sure those are gonna be billion dollar company but it can be very viable business for one five ten fifty people uh no problem”
Niche Mental Health Apps Can Be Great Businesses Without Becoming Calm or Headspace
As the meditation/mental health wave fragments into niche sub-categories (sleep, workspace wellbeing, social emotion), Thomas Petit observes that most will not become billion-dollar companies — and that is fine. A highly profitable niche subscription app for 1-50 people is a perfectly valid outcome. The mistake is raising venture capital with billion-dollar expectations for a market that structurally caps at $5-20M ARR.