Jake Carp
Mobile app growth marketer who ran TikTok ads for app clients
Where to hear and read about Jake Carp1 episode or test
Jake Carp is a mobile app growth marketer who ran TikTok ads for app clients and reached 300k downloads in 12 months at installs under a dollar. The most useful lesson is to win on creative, test one variable at a time on small budgets, then scale by cloning campaigns instead of raising budgets.
we put $30 a day behind each of those ads and then tested each of these variables in isolation
The TikTok Ads Strategy for Beginners
Jake Carp: the story and the lessons
1What Jake Carp achieved with TikTok app ads
Carp got app installs under a dollar on TikTok. His approach reached 300k downloads in 12 months, with installs costing under a dollar. It relied on strong creative, small test budgets and many identical campaigns.
The target audience was 13 to 24 year olds, and the team posted organically before running any ads.
Carp proved ads in Australia, then moved them to bigger markets. Winning ads that worked in Australia were copied to the US, UK and Canada, still with CAC under a dollar.
2How Carp tests TikTok ads one variable at a time
Carp runs three ads at $30 a day and changes one thing. Each test changes a single variable, such as the call to action, location, age, interest, keywords, description or creative style. Everything else stays identical so the winner is clear.
Even a single word in the description changed performance.
He cuts each test after about a week. Results become statistically significant in about a week. In a call to action test, 'download now' pulled ahead in four or five days at 1.5% CTR and 25% CVR, beating 'install now' and 'get fit today'.
The loser is stopped and the next variable is tested.
Carp combines the winning variables after about a month. After about a month of isolated tests, the best setting of each variable went into one campaign. Budgets then rose to a few hundred dollars per ad group and performance skyrocketed.
Carp judges an ad on CPM, CTR and CVR. The targets are CPM under $6, CTR above 1% and CVR above 25%. An ad that hits all three converts at under a dollar per install.
Carp fixes weak ads by comparing them to his best. He keeps a list of best performers and a list of 'struggler' ads with lower CTR or CVR. Each struggler is checked for what it lacks, tweaked and rerun.
"We compare them to our best performance and say okay what are these missing."
3How Carp makes TikTok creative
Carp puts creative ahead of targeting. Location, interest and keyword tuning only trims CAC a little once the creative is right. Most viewers drop off in the first two seconds, so the ad needs a strong hook and a clear call to action at the end.
Carp paid young creators $50 per video. The ads were made by paying a younger brother's friends $50 each per TikTok, working from briefs built on trends.
His pitch was: "do you know any of your friends who want to be paid 50 bucks to make Tik toks".
He builds briefs from niche hashtag searches. Searches mix generic and niche tags, such as fitness or gym workouts, to shape a feed of what works. The goal is to apply the principles of a great video to your own niche, not copy it.
A winning style gets repeated every time.
Carp posts every creative organically before using it as an ad. Videos that get thousands of views organically signal a style that resonates, and new ads are modeled on them.
Organic TikTok is tough now, so he treats it as a testing ground more than a source of downloads.
Carp watches trending songs more than trending videos. Music is the most important part of a trend. A photo montage set to a viral song was among his best ads.
Carp uses spark ads to run creators' own posts. The creator generates a video code in their ad settings and sends it over. The creator gains followers and views, and the brand gains downloads.
Spark ads also help an account reach the 1,000 followers needed for a link in the bio. Ads can't run with a watermark.
4How Carp scales and targets campaigns
Carp scales by cloning campaigns, not raising budgets. Changing a campaign's budget by more than 15% resets it. One $500 campaign performed badly, but five identical $100 campaigns stayed strong.
He goes broad on TikTok targeting. When unsure, he adds as many interests, keywords and hashtags as possible and turns on targeting expansion, so TikTok can reach other areas it expects to perform well.
Carp narrows targeting when he knows the niche well. On a sports app aimed at NFL fans, targeting people who liked each individual team cut cost per install from about $5 to about $1.50.
Carp reuses winning TikTok ads on Instagram Reels. The same creative run as Reels through Facebook ads performed about the same. A campaign getting 10,000 users at a $1 CAC on TikTok did pretty much the same there.
Carp runs a $20 a day community campaign for followers. It promoted two videos that already did well organically and ran for months, growing the account by about 30,000 followers.
It brings followers, not downloads, so it runs alongside normal ads.
5Costs and traps Carp ran into
Carp paid overage fees on a tracking contract. Targeting iOS 14 and up users on TikTok needs a mobile measurement partner, and his team used AppsFlyer. Contracts are priced by download volume.
His advice: "don't get locked into a contract until you like kind of know...your downloads you're getting per month."
Carp captures the brand searches TikTok ads create. About 30% of people who see an ad search the app's name instead of tapping it. Many misspelled the name, so a cheap App Store campaign covered about a hundred misspellings.
Branded keyword search volume rose after the campaign, and turning ads off and on showed the same effect.
He tests new TikTok features but does not adopt them blindly. A format that showed a pop-up page during the ad was tested, and people hated it.
He also suggests asking TikTok for a whitelist to get early access to new features and audiences.
Carp warns new advertisers against random early spending. New advertisers should plan first and test everything over time.
The TikTok Ads Strategy for Beginners
A practical beginner playbook for TikTok app ads: test one variable at a time, scale by duplicating campaigns, and lean on creative over targeting. Jake Carp used it to reach 300k downloads in 12 months, with installs costing under a dollar.
Carp got app installs under a dollar on TikTok. His approach reached 300k downloads in 12 months, with installs costing under a dollar. It relied on strong creative, small test budgets and many identical campaigns.
The target audience was 13 to 24 year olds, and the team posted organically before running any ads.
Carp proved ads in Australia, then moved them to bigger markets. Winning ads that worked in Australia were copied to the US, UK and Canada, still with CAC under a dollar.
Carp runs three ads at $30 a day and changes one thing. Each test changes a single variable, such as the call to action, location, age, interest, keywords, description or creative style. Everything else stays identical so the winner is clear.
Even a single word in the description changed performance.
He cuts each test after about a week. Results become statistically significant in about a week. In a call to action test, 'download now' pulled ahead in four or five days at 1.5% CTR and 25% CVR, beating 'install now' and 'get fit today'.
The loser is stopped and the next variable is tested.
Carp combines the winning variables after about a month. After about a month of isolated tests, the best setting of each variable went into one campaign. Budgets then rose to a few hundred dollars per ad group and performance skyrocketed.
Carp judges an ad on CPM, CTR and CVR. The targets are CPM under $6, CTR above 1% and CVR above 25%. An ad that hits all three converts at under a dollar per install.
Carp fixes weak ads by comparing them to his best. He keeps a list of best performers and a list of 'struggler' ads with lower CTR or CVR. Each struggler is checked for what it lacks, tweaked and rerun.
"We compare them to our best performance and say okay what are these missing."
Carp puts creative ahead of targeting. Location, interest and keyword tuning only trims CAC a little once the creative is right. Most viewers drop off in the first two seconds, so the ad needs a strong hook and a clear call to action at the end.
Carp paid young creators $50 per video. The ads were made by paying a younger brother's friends $50 each per TikTok, working from briefs built on trends.
His pitch was: "do you know any of your friends who want to be paid 50 bucks to make Tik toks".
He builds briefs from niche hashtag searches. Searches mix generic and niche tags, such as fitness or gym workouts, to shape a feed of what works. The goal is to apply the principles of a great video to your own niche, not copy it.
A winning style gets repeated every time.
Carp posts every creative organically before using it as an ad. Videos that get thousands of views organically signal a style that resonates, and new ads are modeled on them.
Organic TikTok is tough now, so he treats it as a testing ground more than a source of downloads.
Carp watches trending songs more than trending videos. Music is the most important part of a trend. A photo montage set to a viral song was among his best ads.
Carp uses spark ads to run creators' own posts. The creator generates a video code in their ad settings and sends it over. The creator gains followers and views, and the brand gains downloads.
Spark ads also help an account reach the 1,000 followers needed for a link in the bio. Ads can't run with a watermark.
Carp scales by cloning campaigns, not raising budgets. Changing a campaign's budget by more than 15% resets it. One $500 campaign performed badly, but five identical $100 campaigns stayed strong.
He goes broad on TikTok targeting. When unsure, he adds as many interests, keywords and hashtags as possible and turns on targeting expansion, so TikTok can reach other areas it expects to perform well.
Carp narrows targeting when he knows the niche well. On a sports app aimed at NFL fans, targeting people who liked each individual team cut cost per install from about $5 to about $1.50.
Carp reuses winning TikTok ads on Instagram Reels. The same creative run as Reels through Facebook ads performed about the same. A campaign getting 10,000 users at a $1 CAC on TikTok did pretty much the same there.
Carp runs a $20 a day community campaign for followers. It promoted two videos that already did well organically and ran for months, growing the account by about 30,000 followers.
It brings followers, not downloads, so it runs alongside normal ads.
Carp paid overage fees on a tracking contract. Targeting iOS 14 and up users on TikTok needs a mobile measurement partner, and his team used AppsFlyer. Contracts are priced by download volume.
His advice: "don't get locked into a contract until you like kind of know...your downloads you're getting per month."
Carp captures the brand searches TikTok ads create. About 30% of people who see an ad search the app's name instead of tapping it. Many misspelled the name, so a cheap App Store campaign covered about a hundred misspellings.
Branded keyword search volume rose after the campaign, and turning ads off and on showed the same effect.
He tests new TikTok features but does not adopt them blindly. A format that showed a pop-up page during the ad was tested, and people hated it.
He also suggests asking TikTok for a whitelist to get early access to new features and audiences.
Carp warns new advertisers against random early spending. New advertisers should plan first and test everything over time.