VINVAE

🎤 When Will My Life Begin👇

[VINVAE @vinvae]

Album out now.

https://t.co/J7u3ipld1m

[Mau Baron @maubaron]

we've spent more than $100,000
on tiktok ads alone

this is the #1 way to scale your app in 2026

here's the exact system that took our app
from $3k to $25k/month purely on ads:

- post organically first, find your format
- set up an MMP for attribution
- push EVERYTHING as a spark ad, not just the viral ones
- one broad campaign, US only, dump all your videos in it
- start at $100/day and scale 15-20% a week
- turn off any creative under 1.5x ROAS

keep in mind:

the algo knows better than you
one of our best ads had 300 organic views

your ads should look like organic posts

creative fatigue is what kills paid ads
which is why you need a content machine
feeding the ads machine every single week

find winners with organic
scale them with paid
that's literally it

[Marco @maxzrco]

Meta ads on a small budget, PART 1

I spent $5k on Meta ads in the last 30 days.

The most expensive mistake I made:
Tested 10 creatives in one ad set.

Meta dumped ~90% of the budget into ONE of them.

The other 9 never got a fair shot. I thought they were losers.

The fix:
→ Pause each creative at ~2,000 to 3,000 impressions (set up a rule for that)
→ Meta is forced to push the next one
→ Repeat until every creative got the same exposure
→ Judge on CTR, CPC & CPM, not CPA (too little data for CPA)

They weren't bad creatives. They just never got budget.

[Varun Rustomji @vrustomji]

I've finally cracked the UGC machine:

- did nearly 9.4m views and 18k downloads for my iOS app
- $0.20 CPI and $0.40 CPM
- spent nearly $3.5k over 5 creators

reply in the comments with any ugc related questions, happy to help and solve for free!

[Alex Olim @alexolim_]

Howbout has 30+ branded ambassador accounts posting the same photo carousel daily.

slide 1: aesthetic friend photo with a text hook that creates curiosity.

slide 2: a packed calendar screenshot with funny events like "sneaky link," "cry in uber," "rob a bank." People screenshot them, share them, and read every entry.

the app is never the hook. the chaos inside the calendar is.

make the reveal worth swiping for and the distribution takes care of itself.

[walid @TheWalid]

just chatted with the founder of Howbout... iykyk. ex corporate lawyer, now on track for 10M users and #30 in social networking and #10 in the UK

he runs 60+ ambassadors with Claude. creators in this program get paid ~$9 per carousel they post

how he actually got there:

1/ months of testing landed on the simplest possible format. app screenshot + a still. two images

your version will look different. the point isn't the carousel, it's finding the simplest thing that sells your app and cutting everything else so you can scale your tech UGC program

2/ simple format = no scripts, no training. there's basically no learning curve for creators. every carousel is another shot at the algorithm and each one costs him ~$9

3/ he hated paying for content that didn't perform, so he flipped the model. He tells creators exactly the format that works to go viral and pays bonuses based on virality, but the creator has to pass a trial week first based on performance to make it into the program

4/ that only works because they want to work with Howbout. you can't cold DM someone the chance to maybe get paid to be an ambassador. ambassadors tell their friends and now they get 20–30 inbound creators a week.

5/ so it's the hunger games. if creators aren’t performing they’re cut weekly and there's a waitlist of ~500 people waiting to become ambassadors. their place is earned not guaranteed.

he builds the system. they make the content! running all of this himself with Claude. super sharp guy

[Stacy @stacy_siz]

Meta ads for beginners, PART 1
(small budgets)

Over the last few months I’ve spent $20k on Meta ads.
When I started, I knew nothing.

I’m still a total newbie, but I’ve learned a ton!

I’m going to make a few posts about what I learned so you can save time and money. I’ll try to explain things simply.
--------------------------------
DISCLAIMER: this is just my personal experience with Meta ads.
I watched YT videos, went to webinars, read stuff, asked AI, ran experiments and burned money.

A lot of the time I wanted clear answers and got vague ones. So this is me summing up what I actually figured out on my own.
--------------------------------
First, the basic terms.

1. Hierarchy

You have your account
→ it has BMs (Business portfolios), which are basically “your company”
→ each BM can have ad accounts

An ad account is basically your project. When you start running ads:
ad account = separate project

This is where the Meta algo learns (at some point).

You also connect a pixel (Meta now calls it a “dataset”). It tracks what people do on your site and sends those events back to Meta. This is the data the algo learns from.

2. Ad structure
> You have a campaign. This is where you pick your objective (sales, leads, etc) + geo.

> Then you have ad sets.
This is where you set your targeting, but now NOBODY SETS INTEREST TARGETING.

With the new Meta algo
your creative (your ad) = your targeting

eg: if you show an old lady, Meta will figure out you’re targeting boomers
eg: If you use specific slang or terms, it targets the people who talk like that

And ad set is where Meta does most of its learning.
It looks at the people who buy from that specific ad set and tries to find more people like them.

Meta’s docs say an ad set needs about 50 events in a week to exit the learning phase.
You can treat each ad set as a separate concept you’re testing. Meta figures out which concepts work better, and each one learns at its own pace.

That’s where it gets expensive, because you need a steady volume of events coming in (more on this later).

3. CBO vs ABO
What are these and when do you use which?

This one confused me for a long time.

CBO = you set the budget on the campaign and Meta splits it between ad sets
ABO = you set the budget on each ad set

I spend around $5 - 10k a month, so for me CBO just doesn’t make sense.

I ONLY use ABO. Why?

Say I create 3 ad sets, each with the same budget, like $100.
By day 3-5:
- one is profitable

- one is breaking even

- one is losing money and barely getting sales.

That’s my concept test. I kill the bad ad set, then either put a bit more budget into the winner or launch a new one.

Each ad set needs a lot of events to learn, and my budget is limited. So I need to control things manually and move fast. That way I also learn for myself what works and what doesn’t.

In the next posts I want to cover the stuff that always confused me:
> what events to send and how? what is event quality?
> how much money do I need to spend?
> how do I find my CPA?
> how do I create ads? how does a target persona help?
what columns and metrics should I watch?
> how do I find the weak spot in my funnel? is it my product or my ads?

Follow for more!

P. S. screenshot doesn't cover renewals etc

[MaxTalksTech @MaxTalksTech_]

Gm

What’s working:
- Influencers (Flat rate 50% upfront)
- UGC (performance based deals)
- Apple Ads (shockingly great)
- Shipping awesome features
- Ask Claude to maximize your TTM (Time to fun, hook users from Day 1)
- Reading Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act

What isn’t:
- Meta ads (testing a new creative today)
- AI UGC (still a bit slop)
- Being under caffeinated

NYC App Week next week, let’s boogie

[ATHENA @1999vogue]

My dream is to be rich and have a nepo daughter

[Jonny UGC @jonnyscales]

Every phase of canvas UGC for consumer apps:

$0-$5K/mo = founder-led content

$5K-$10K/mo = slideshows + low-cost formats at volume

$10K-$20K/mo = 3-5 dedicated UGC creators

$20K-$50K/mo = 10-20 creators + dedicated content strategy + creator management

$50K-$100K/mo = 30-50+ creators, multiple formats, aggressive testing

$100K+/mo = full creator army + organic-to-paid pipeline

[Salim @rsalimx]

son, this is genuinely terrifying 😭

this is a golf ai caddie app, prolly making ~$50k mrr

they found one format that works and instead of posting it once they’re running it across multiple accounts at the same time

the whole thing is ai illustrations, easily made with gpt image 2

golfers are a rich ICP btw, way bigger purchasing power than most niches on tiktok and nobody’s making slideshows for them

you’re clearly one format away from $10k mrr

[Vadim @VadimStrizheus]

@Ritesh_Yadav_14 I would recommend to start posting UGC content yourself everyday

And then use Higgsfield to faceswap your hooks

[Open Book @carlmonkft]

For app builders, I hope this can help you with marketing

It's a complete guide with clear examples from my own UGC campaign of 30M views covering:

ugc principles, content iteration, hiring, payout, management, viral engineering, everything you need https://t.co/t7znL8Mrz2

[max @MaxHirsch13]

The easiest way to go viral for your app is UGC reaction videos:

Record yourself looking shocked, with Snapchat text overlay (on higher part of the screen) saying "Bro who was gonna tell me this existed" or "AI can do WHAT now" and then pan to a separate phone (NOT A SCREEN RECORDING) showcasing your viral feature.

IDK why more people aren't doing this

[Branko Vojnovic @vojnovicb04]

@GauthierEcom CBO is good bcs its super consolidated, it makes no sense to make multiple CBOs if you are targeting the same country. Also, there is always some volatility even on a bigger budgets.

Start adding more concepts to the main CBO campaign and force spending with min budget setting

[Ecomify - AI Creatives & Ecom @ecomifyyy]

@GauthierEcom ajoute tes nouvelles créas dans la même CBO. Le plus important c'est de faire des bonnes créas. Check les meilleurs créas de n'importe quel niche et t'adapte à ton prod

[Enguerrand @EnguerrandEcom]

@GauthierEcom Les CBO, c’est devenu trop fort, faut plus se prendre la tête : balance tout dans la même CBO, si tu as des winneuses, elles prendront le spend

[gauthier.ecom @GauthierEcom]

Je galère vrm à comprendre comment fonctionne meta,
J'avais une CBO à 100€/day qui tournait à 2.2 de ROAS constant, j'ai donc ajouté un nouveau batch de créa dans une nouvelle CBO à 50€/day,
Résultat des courses, les deux CBO crash depuis 2 jours...

Quelqu'un pour m'éclairer

[Jonny UGC @jonnyscales]

I'm begging you:

- start a canvas ugc campaign
- research viral content already targeting your ICP
- use proven viral formats with strong hooks and open loops
- post 10x a day minimum
- study retention and engagement
- add more context in your ugc videos to increase conversions
- scale what works

[Vincent @justVvincent]

i generated 250M+ views in 1 month for @WisprFlow’s UGC program

500M+ total program views

here’s exactly how i’d build a viral UGC program in 30 days