Zen Lift — 4.6× Android install scale at flat CPA

Challenge

Zen Lift had strong organic but hit a paid ceiling on Meta — every dollar above $50K monthly spend pushed CPA past the payback threshold. Their team needed a second scale channel without sacrificing the unit economics that made the app investable.

The internal hypothesis was that TikTok and UAC could absorb roughly $80K/month each at flat CPA. The risk: most apps in their vertical had failed to scale TikTok beyond test-budget mode.

Approach

• Opened Google App Campaigns with tROAS wired to their Adjust post-backs
• Built a TikTok creative pipeline — 18 UGC-style variants monthly
• Daily rules protecting CPA as budgets scaled
• Spark Ads strategy: 4 organic creator videos repurposed into paid each week
• Rebuilt the meditation app's onboarding completion event as the optimisation target on UAC (not raw install)
• Weekly creative call with the in-house design team to maintain a brand-safe but TikTok-native voice

What we shipped

• 60 TikTok creative variants in 90 days across spark and traditional ad formats
• A UAC asset group strategy with 4 separate audiences keyed off Zen Lift's onboarding cohorts
• Automated Smartly.io rules — pause-on-CPA-spike, scale-on-D3-retention, refresh-on-fatigue
• A creator playbook for the in-house team to brief their own UGC creators going forward

Results

Install volume scaled 4.6× in 60 days at flat Android CPA — every $1 of incremental spend held the same payback as their established Meta budget.

TikTok became the second revenue channel by day 75, contributing 31% of paid installs at the end of the engagement.

Meta stayed stable alongside — no cannibalisation, no creative bleed. The team now runs three paid channels at scale with the same internal headcount as before.