How to turn organic winners into paid ads

1 The bottom line

Boost only organic videos that clear an engagement bar, then fund them in stages, from a small Spark test to Meta scale. Organic is the cheap testing ground, and paid is where winners scale.

2 Key takeaways

• Pick winners by engagement rate, not raw views. Rate predicts virality better than views do.
  • Drew Levin, SideShift18:24 calls 7.5 to 8% good and 12% likely to go very viral. A 9.6M-view video had a 16% rate.
  • Nick Lawton, SideShift28:47 puts spend behind videos at around 5% engagement.
• Stage the spend, starting tiny. The pixel signals early whether a video will work.
  • Drew Levin, SideShift30:11 starts a Spark test at $20 on any video above about 7.5% engagement.
  • Nick Lawton, SideShift32:30 goes from $100 a day to $300 and then $1,000 a day if ROAS is positive.
• Use Spark and partnership ads for cheap reach, and Meta ads for conversions. Only Meta ads have a button that gives conversion attribution.
  • Nick Lawton, SideShift34:14 says Spark only gives an attributable CPM, so real scale comes from Meta.
• Set kill and replicate rules before you spend. Most videos fade fast, and rules stop you funding them.
  • Drew Levin, SideShift37:03 kills a Spark when engagement drops below 5%.
  • Ryan Thorpe, Flo13:07 replicates a video only after it holds his metrics at a few hundred dollars a day.
• Keep a flow of new creators and creatives. One winning video runs out of steam.
  • Daniel Heintzman, Sway AI12:55 hit creative shortages when scaling with one influencer.

just because a video flopped doesn't mean that that video was for nothing.

Canyon (Kenyon Prasad), Sideshift

2.1 Find the organic winners

Score every organic video on engagement and comments, and compare it to the account's normal results.

• Work out engagement rate for every video and set a spend bar. Cited from Drew Levin, SideShift18:24
  • Add likes, comments, saves and shares, then divide by views.
  • A video with few views but a strong rate is still worth iterating on.
  • The SideShift28:47 bar is around 5%. Canyon (Kenyon Prasad), Sideshift50:10 sees 8 to 10% or more on videos that do much better as ads.
• Read the comments before you decide. Cited from Drew Levin, SideShift37:03
  • Rank candidates by comment sentiment first, then engagement rate, then average views.
  • Look for comments that ask about or mention the product.
  • Ryan Thorpe, Flo13:07 treats 10 to 100 comments as an early sign a hook works.
  • Daniel Heintzman, Sway AI12:55 found controversial videos that drew comments performed well as ads.
• Compare each video to the account's own normal.
  • Spark a video at three to five times the account's usual views Drew Levin, SideShift35:55.
  • Canyon (Kenyon Prasad), Sideshift50:10 looks for 5 to 10x a creator's normal views.
  • Ryan Thorpe, Flo11:35 reads a jump from the 0 to 300 view range to 5,000 to 10,000 views as a sign to scale.
• Test flopped videos too. Cited from Canyon (Kenyon Prasad), Sideshift50:10
  • A video that flopped organically can still win on paid.
  • Sideshift used these signals across its data to choose which of 11,000 posts to test as ads.

2.2 Check the video before you spend

Confirm the reach is organic, let a rising video run, and have the boost process ready.

• Check that a video's reach is organic, not already boosted. Cited from Casper, Payout10:21
  • Look at the like-to-view ratio, then check hashtags and descriptions where creators mark partner posts.
  • 2 million views with 2,000 likes was boosted. 50,000 likes on 2 million views is probably organic.
• Do not spark a video that is still ripping organically. Cited from Drew Levin, SideShift37:16
  • Let it run for a day or two before applying spend.
  • His example is a video past a million views that is still adding 100,000 a day.
• Build the boost process before a spike. Cited from Paul Warren, Margins43:30
  • Know how to boost on each platform ahead of time.
  • He regrets not boosting a viral TikTok with a Spark Code. The next spike came on Twitter, where he did not know how to boost anything.
• Look for videos that already read like your ad. Cited from Kenneth Schlenker, Opal46:20
  • Ask the poster to license it, then run it with only your logo attached.
  • Opal's video, made by a user inspired by the app, has dozens of millions of views and still runs as a top paid creative a year or two later.

2.3 Run a small Spark or partnership test

Put a little money behind each winner, watch engagement, and kill it when it fades.

• Start with $20 on any video above about 7.5% engagement. Cited from Drew Levin, SideShift30:11
  • Do it if the CPMs look low enough.
  • High-engagement videos usually run well below a dollar CPM on Spark.
  • GoWish reached #1 on the App Store almost entirely from Spark, which was its cheapest way to gain users.
• Run each Spark for a week and kill it below 5% engagement. Cited from Drew Levin, SideShift37:03
  • Spend $50 to $100 a day per video.
  • CPMs usually do not start rising until a video that began near 15% organic engagement falls to about 5%.
• Spark outliers for the account's sake too. Cited from Drew Levin, SideShift35:55
  • It makes later videos perform better organically.
  • It can also help lift an account out of a shadowban by showing it is legitimate.
• On Instagram, use partnership ads and optimize for targeting, not reach. Cited from Drew Levin, SideShift38:53
  • This is the opposite of the TikTok approach, because Meta favors follower-like audiences.
  • They see higher conversion on partnership ads than on Spark, even for UGC accounts with a few thousand followers.
• Post every creator video organically first, then boost, then spark the best. Cited from Ryan Thorpe, Flo11:35
  • Boost anything with traction, even around 10K views or lots of comments.
  • Run a real breakout as a spark ad from the creator's own account.
  • This gives four or five ways to push one video and saves the cost of paid testing in quiet months.

2.4 Scale the proven winners on Meta

Move to Meta once organic works, and raise budget only while the numbers hold.

• Start paid only when organic works and the budget is there.
  • Nick Lawton, SideShift29:50 says to learn organic first, then add paid on proven winners.
  • His marketing budget threshold is above about $10,000 a month Nick Lawton, SideShift32:30.
  • He says the biggest differentiators are between solely organic teams and those running organic plus paid.
• Spend $100 a day in total across your winners for 14 days. Cited from Nick Lawton, SideShift32:30
  • Adjust the length to your trial length.
  • If ROAS is positive, go to $300 and then $1,000 a day.
  • If you get 75 cents back per dollar, the video lacked organic content market fit.
  • Others run up to $100,000 a day.
• Use Meta for conversions and attribution. Cited from Nick Lawton, SideShift34:14
  • Meta ads have a button. Spark ads have no anchor, so you only get CPM.
  • Paid also gives UTM, trial start and conversion data, which organic spikes cannot Nick Lawton, SideShift28:47.
• Run the actual winners, and raise budget weekly. Cited from Cedric Roberge, Pep AI6:32
  • Take videos that won on TikTok and Instagram and run them on Meta.
  • Scripts handed to creators to mimic other apps failed and lost money.
  • Cost per download is around $2.50, against a rule of thumb of under $5 being good. Spend is about $400 a day on Meta plus $150 on Apple Search Ads.
• Budget for the learning period. Cited from George, Wrestle AI29:45
  • Ads need a pixel learning period, so expect to burn about 2K in the first 2 weeks before good ROAS.
  • Large brands put about 80% of budget in performance and 20% in creative organic Nick Lawton, SideShift26:11.

2.5 Replicate winners and keep creatives coming

Turn a proven concept into many variations, and line up more creators before the first one runs dry.

• Replicate a video only once it holds your metrics at a few hundred dollars a day. Cited from Ryan Thorpe, Flo13:07
  • Turn the concept into a brief and have many creators make variations.
  • Most videos run out of steam after about $100 of spend.
  • A creator's Emma Chamberlain voiceover video reached 50 to 60 million views. The team then tested other famous voices on the same script.
• Turn reaction and stitch videos into ads. Cited from George, Wrestle AI9:03
  • Have a creator react to a first clip, such as a coach calling combos, then cut to the app.
  • A stitch-style ad for AdMax spent over $20k and returned close to $60k over about 3 months. It was still the top earner.
• Line up many creators, not one. Cited from Daniel Heintzman, Sway AI12:55
  • Repurpose a creator's organic promos as ads.
  • Sway went from about $30 to 40K a month organic to $2M ARR once ads started.
• Hand your paid partner the file or boosting code of any organic win. Cited from Casper, Payout25:08
  • A creator with equity has the incentive to keep supplying creatives.
  • Outside UGC creators charge $1,000 to $1,500 per video, and perhaps only 20 to 30% of ads are profitable.
  • One of his organic videos ran profitably on Meta ads for a few weeks.
• Rerun proven UGC as ads to build a loop between organic and paid.
  • Edward Tian, GPTZero42:20 plans to scale content proven with creators using budget.
  • Melissa Cash, Pok Pok29:00 promotes what pops in its paid creator program through Meta ads, mainly Instagram, to reach millennial moms.

2.6 Where they disagree

The sources differ on Spark versus Meta, the engagement bar, when to boost, and whether to separate the streams.

• Spark is a scale channel for some and only a reach tool for others.
  • Nick Lawton, SideShift34:14 says real scale comes from Meta, and Spark suits videos with a strong organic CTA.
  • Drew Levin, SideShift30:11 calls Spark the cheapest way to get installs for apps with good organic content.
• The engagement bar ranges from 5% to 10%.
  • Nick Lawton, SideShift28:47 uses 5%, Drew Levin, SideShift30:11 uses about 7.5%, and Canyon (Kenyon Prasad), Sideshift50:10 sees 8 to 10% or more.
  • Drew also uses 5% as the line to kill a running Spark Drew Levin, SideShift37:03.
• Boost early or wait.
  • Ryan Thorpe, Flo11:35 boosts at even around 10K views.
  • Drew Levin, SideShift37:16 waits a day or two on a video that is climbing fast.
  • Paul Warren, Margins43:30 regrets not boosting a viral video at all.
• Keep creator streams separate, or feed winners straight into ads.
  • Adam Turaev, Praktika48:02 keeps the organic program and paid work apart. Paid reproduces viral videos with its own influencers or contractors.
  • Casper, Payout25:08 and Melissa Cash, Pok Pok29:00 run the organic creator videos themselves as ads.
• Influencers first suits an untouched niche, while organic first suits the rest.
  • George, Wrestle AI29:45 says that with no competing apps, a small budget can return 10x with influencers. Then he moves to paid ads, which scale further.
  • Wrestle AI passed 100,000 downloads with about 10 creators and no paid ads until the week before the call.