UGC for apps: what 11.5 million views did for installs
Most UGC case studies stop at views. Views are nice, but if you make an app, the real question is whether any of it turned into installs. So here is a whole funnel, week by week, from a campaign our team ran on NewWave.
Pose Genius is an AI camera app that coaches your poses. It was new, in a crowded category, and paid ads were not moving installs. Nine creators made 184 videos over eight weeks, with pay tied to the views each video earned.
The numbers
| Week | UGC views | App Store impressions | Downloads |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 28K | 1,435 | 52 |
| 2 | 91K | 1,319 | 59 |
| 3 | 198K | 1,731 | 258 |
| 4 | 746K | 3,616 | 921 |
| 5 | 2.3M | 14,970 | 5,193 |
Views kept climbing after week 5 and peaked at 3 million in week 7, for 11.5 million over the eight weeks. From week 1 to week 5, weekly views grew 82 times, App Store impressions 10 times, and downloads 100 times.
What stood out to us
- Downloads grew much faster than impressions. In week 1, about 4 in 100 impressions became a download. By week 5 it was about 35 in 100. Our read: people arriving from a creator video already knew what the app did, so more of them installed once they reached the listing.
- The first three weeks looked slow: 28K, 91K, 198K. New accounts were warming up and we were still finding the formats. This is where it is tempting to stop.
- Growth came in steps, not a line. Views roughly tripled from week 4 to week 5, once a format caught on.
- Cost fell as volume rose. We paid $11.05 per 1,000 views at the start and $0.90 at scale, because paying on views moved the budget toward what worked.
Curiosity hook
Aesthetic ideas
Pain point + fix
Pose tutorialWhat we would copy
- Plan for eight weeks, not two, and judge the funnel at week 5.
- Run several formats at once and move budget to the winner every week. See 4 UGC hook formats.
- Pay on views, so the budget follows the videos people actually watch. See UGC rates.
- Put App Store impressions and downloads next to views every week, so you can see whether reach is turning into installs.
- Use dedicated accounts and warm them up first. See warm-up posts.
The full story, including how the creators were picked, is in the Pose Genius case study.