Integrated growth — moving signals between surfaces

TL;DR

• Post-ATT, bought audiences and lookalikes are weak and ad networks are black boxes; “creative is the targeting”, so the edge is learning faster from first-party data.¹
• Data is abundant, signal is scarce: the part that says what one user wants and will pay for — and it usually stays trapped on the surface where it was collected.²
• Four signal types to look for: intent, conversion driver, engagement, value (value signals go back to ad networks — signal engineering).³⁴
• Loop: observe → hypothesis → validate by experiment on one surface → re-validate and adapt on each next surface → automate once proven.⁵⁶
• Quick win to try this week: put your best UA creative on the App Store page, and your best ASO test wins into UA creative.⁷

Details

Cases (Phiture clients, Andy Carvell).

• Adobe Acrobat Reader, Japan: analytics showed Japanese users mostly edited PDFs, unlike elsewhere. A PDF-editing custom product page, a main listing that stressed editing, and Apple Ads keywords about editing routed to it → +30% impression-to-download.⁸⁹
• Odyssey (US radio/music): listening peaked at commute “drive time”; surveys confirmed in-car use; driving-themed paid creatives and App Store description/creative performed well.¹⁰¹¹
• HBO Max: CRM pushes were generic “new this week”; the in-app ML recommender already had per-user picks. Engineering built an internal API so Braze could fetch each user’s recommendation → large lift in push engagement and hours watched (no figure given).¹²¹³
• ASO ↔ UA: Photoshop’s ASO wins worked in paid creative; Onyx (hunting/outdoor maps) ran it the other way, UA winners lifting store conversion. Coherence between ad and store page adds a “halo” on paid spend; scale with a custom product page per winning creative.⁷¹⁴

Who does it. A “growth intelligence layer” — at first just the growth team checking each surface for transferable signals; later rule-based automation and AI agents for user-level personalisation.¹⁵¹⁶

When a test fails it is either the wrong signal or the wrong application of a good one; redesign before discarding.⁶

Hot take: product-led growth (build 2–3 years and hope) has “expired”; siloed teams are “tired”, integrated growth is “wired”.¹⁷¹⁸

Disagreements / caveats

• Few numbers besides Adobe’s +30%; most results are described as “huge” or “very meaningful”.
• The paywall application is in Personalising the paywall with what onboarding (or the ad) already told you; matching ad and destination is the same idea as Message match between ad and landing page and Custom product pages — matching the App Store page to each ad.
• Feeding value signals to networks: see Signal engineering — auditing and shaping the conversion events ad platforms optimise on.

See also

• Deciding what to build — OKRs, funnel analytics and A/B-testing every product change

Footnotes

1. Why your paywall is failing (and how to fix it) | Andy Carvell, Phiture @ 05:34 — Andy Carvell ↩

2. Why your paywall is failing (and how to fix it) | Andy Carvell, Phiture @ 00:00 — Andy Carvell ↩

3. Why your paywall is failing (and how to fix it) | Andy Carvell, Phiture @ 23:56 — Andy Carvell ↩

4. Why your paywall is failing (and how to fix it) | Andy Carvell, Phiture @ 24:50 — Andy Carvell ↩

5. Why your paywall is failing (and how to fix it) | Andy Carvell, Phiture @ 22:20 — Andy Carvell ↩

6. Why your paywall is failing (and how to fix it) | Andy Carvell, Phiture @ 27:16 — Andy Carvell ↩ ↩²

7. Why your paywall is failing (and how to fix it) | Andy Carvell, Phiture @ 19:55 — Andy Carvell ↩ ↩²

8. Why your paywall is failing (and how to fix it) | Andy Carvell, Phiture @ 02:07 — Andy Carvell ↩

9. Why your paywall is failing (and how to fix it) | Andy Carvell, Phiture @ 02:59 — Andy Carvell ↩

10. Why your paywall is failing (and how to fix it) | Andy Carvell, Phiture @ 10:41 — Andy Carvell ↩

11. Why your paywall is failing (and how to fix it) | Andy Carvell, Phiture @ 12:14 — Andy Carvell ↩

12. Why your paywall is failing (and how to fix it) | Andy Carvell, Phiture @ 13:38 — Andy Carvell ↩

13. Why your paywall is failing (and how to fix it) | Andy Carvell, Phiture @ 14:30 — Andy Carvell ↩

14. Why your paywall is failing (and how to fix it) | Andy Carvell, Phiture @ 20:42 — Andy Carvell ↩

15. Why your paywall is failing (and how to fix it) | Andy Carvell, Phiture @ 25:36 — Andy Carvell ↩

16. Why your paywall is failing (and how to fix it) | Andy Carvell, Phiture @ 26:23 — Andy Carvell ↩

17. Why your paywall is failing (and how to fix it) | Andy Carvell, Phiture @ 07:05 — Andy Carvell ↩

18. Why your paywall is failing (and how to fix it) | Andy Carvell, Phiture @ 08:16 — Andy Carvell ↩