| Source | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jubXNF8X64 |
|---|---|
| Readwise URL | https://read.readwise.io/read/01kw1fattwvqqvsabzbve71fk7 |
| Readwise ID | 01kw1fattwvqqvsabzbve71fk7 |
| Author | Adam Lyttle |
| Category | video |
| Site | YouTube |
| Published | 2026-06-19 |
| Saved | 2026-06-26T08:04:26.076000+00:00 |
| Tags | adam-lyttle, app-development |
Readwise Summary: A full walkthrough of how I create high click-through-rate ads for my apps. I cover the hooks, the visuals and the testing process I use to find winners… so you can apply the same system to your own apps.
Want to generate high converting static ads for your app? Check out https://makeappads.com
You can get the hookgen script here: https://github.com/adamlyttleapps/hookgen
Check out Clip Surge here: https://clipsurge.app
And you can see Will’s guide to $10k/MRR here: https://x.com/athcanft/status/2042794694560879061
Follow my journey here: Website: https://adamlyttleapps.com Twitter: https://x.com/adamlyttleapps Github: https://github.com/adamlyttleapps Instagram: https://instagram.com/adamlyttleapps TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@adamlyttleapps Substack: https://adamlyttleapps.substack.com
Shout out to my amazing video production team at https://clipwing.pro/
#indiedev #indiehacker #appmarketing #metaads #facebookads #aso #iosdev #buildinpublic #solofounder #appstore #vibecoding #saas #mobilemarketing #performancemarketing #startup
One of my ads for my app is getting a 13.9% click-through rate. The industry standard for Meta ads click-through rates is 1.5 to 2% and anything above 2.5% is considered excellent. So, 13.95% is nearly seven times the industry standard and it’s not just a one-off. Every ad in my account beats it. My worst performer is 3.81% which still clears the excellent bar.
Most of them sit around about the 5 to 7% mark, which is exactly why the question that I get asked the most right now is how do I create these high click-through rate ads for my apps. So, today for the first time I’m going to show you my exact process. There’s three simple steps: coming up with ad ideas, generating the ads quickly, and rapid testing to find the actual winners. And step three is the one that surprises everyone because I don’t actually test
my ads on Meta ads first. More on that in just a moment. I’ll walk you through the full reasoning behind each one and how I’ve baked this entire process into makeappads.com. You paste your App Store URL and it generates high click-through rate static ads for your Meta campaign. Step one, coming up with ad ideas. It all starts with the idea for the ad and this is by far the trickiest part. Well, for me
anyway, because when you’re making an ad your instinct is to tell the viewer about the features that you’ve built. And I’m going to lean heavily on the apps that I’ve built this year to show you real examples of the whole process and why they failed. When I first started marketing Spesh I thought it was a slam dunk. You see photo gallery and throwback apps advertised everywhere [clears throat] on Meta and I’m thinking this is going to be simple. There’s a
huge market. Everyone would want this. All I have to do is tell them what the app does, and I’ll get sales left, right, and center. But I was wrong. My first ads were all about the features. Turn your photo gallery into memories and generate videos. But it didn’t work. Here’s the realization that I had. Someone searching on the App Store has already typed in a keyword. They already know what they want to do. They’ve already decided that they’re going to download an app to do it. Meta ads is a
little bit different. These ads appear mid-scroll. The person seeing it never knew that your app existed until this exact second. And they didn’t even realize that turning their photo gallery into a video was a problem that they even had. So they scroll right past. And if you’ve ever touched Meta ads, this is probably the exact wall that you’ve hit as well. No clicks, it costs a small fortune, so you give up and try something else. But before you give up on Meta ads, I want you to try something
a little bit different. I want you to focus on the reason why someone would actually want to download your app. And you need to be able to say that reason in a simple sentence. For Spesh, like I really struggled with this. An app that turns photos into videos, an app that surfaces your memories, an app that lets you relive the special days. Nothing truly captured what the app actually does, which is it kind of turns your live photos into a video montage you can share with friends and families. All
those hidden moments stuck in your phone turned into a video. And it finds the best days. It runs this complicated calculation across all of your photos and finds the ones where you’re the most happiest. Yeah, that’s a lot to communicate in an ad. Then I stumbled across Will’s guide to lazy maxing, where he documented his entire process of earning $10,000 a month using TikTok ads to sell his apps. And look, some of these techniques, they’re just not for
me. But there’s one part that really stood out. Show the transformation. A simple before and after of what the app does, what the user’s life looks like after using it. His app was an app called Glowly, an app that shows you a cleaner skin and what it looks like on you. And the transformation is visual. It’s instant. A before shot of a face, then an after shot of that glow-up. Now, after his guide dropped, there’s been a flood of developers building these looks
maxing apps, all demoing that exact same transformation. And like I said in a previous video, just because everyone’s doing it doesn’t mean you should too. But I saw Will’s app and I realized looks maxing is just the low-hanging fruit. It’s the obvious transformation that you can show in an ad. But that same format can apply to other apps, too. Well, except Spesh. I really struggled to find the transformation here. So, maybe the format doesn’t
actually work with every app. Which brings me to Piano Pads, the project that I’ve been working on for a while now. And the transformation here is crystal clear. A kid trying to learn the piano, struggling with every note, just smashing the keys. Then you cut away to the same kid just an hour later, recognizing notes and playing his first song. An app that teaches your kid note recognition in 7 days. That’s it. Now,
we’re onto something. So, here’s the lesson I learned. Spesh is a utility app disguised as a memory app. It’s really hard to sell on Meta ads because it’s really hard to show the reason why someone would even care. Piano Pads has a very clear transformation, a before and after that’s easy to communicate within a few seconds. Not every app is a good fit for meta ads. If it’s a utility, maybe find a different channel. App store optimization or even Google search might serve you better. But if
it’s outcome based and it has a real transformation that you can show on screen, then you’re onto something. Step two, generating the ad. In my head, I thought this was going to be easy. Like I can just record stuff or use AI. I mean, there’s hundreds of ways to make a video now. But actually making a video ad is kind of time consuming. Even with the latest AI tools, you still need to do some manual editing. You still need to design structure and it still has to
work. The good news, a transformation ad gives you the structure for free. You got the before, the after, the demo and then a title. For Piano Pals, I recorded my son playing badly, then recorded him playing well. No AI user-generated content here. Literally just 1 minute of recording on one morning during the chaos of getting the kids ready for school. Then a few hours later, I spliced it all together. Now, adding that demo in matters more than you
think. You’ll hear people tell you that your ad is the top of the funnel. And when I started to hear this, I had no idea what it even meant. But here’s what I figured out. Your app has a sales funnel whether you like it or not. Any app store, it looks something like this. Top of funnel is your store listing. The first thing the user sees before deciding whether to download it or not. Then inside your app, you’ve got the whole onboarding process. That sits between the download and the purchase.
That’s the middle of the funnel. When you’re on meta ads, your ad creative is the top of funnel. It’s the first thing a potential user sees before clicking through. So it has to communicate what your app actually does, and the cleanest way is a short demo. Without it, they’ll see the transformation, they’ll get a bit curious, they’ll click, and then when they land on your landing page, they’ll think, “What on earth are you trying to sell me?” The ad has to get them just ready enough to download your app. Okay, so let’s say you don’t
actually want to be on camera. You don’t want to film video ads all day long. Or maybe, let’s say you’re a 42-year-old bald man building an app for mothers. Showing your face probably isn’t going to work out. This is where AI user-generated content really comes in. You record yourself doing the exact action you want to show on screen, then you use SeeDance to swap yourself for an AI avatar, or use a tool like Swappable
that does it for you. This was built by Will, the Lazy Maxim guy from earlier. And this works surprisingly well. It’s called a reaction hook. A face that looks shocked, or confused, or whatever emotion you want to portray. Then you snap to the app in action. And you know how those YouTube thumbnails are always this over-the-top face that looks shocked or excited? It’s the easiest way to communicate an emotion, and it works. The reaction ad is basically the YouTube
thumbnail trope in short-form content. Step three, rapid testing to find the winning ads. So, you’ve got your winning idea, you’ve got your ad format, you’ve even put together the ad yourself. Now what? Most people think it’s time to throw that straight onto Meta ads and let the downloads roll in. And honestly, I thought that, too. But there’s a missing step here, the headline text. This little bit of text right here is the difference between a 0.2%
click-through rate and a 20% click-through rate. It’s that important. But what do you write? Where do you start, and how do you find the winner? For this, I turn to Claude. I’m making an ad for Meta, a before and after of my son playing piano. Struggling in the before, then an hour later recognizing notes and playing his first song. Then the app is shown in action. Create 20 viral headline hooks that grab attention, allude to the app, and trigger curiosity. Then I wrote myself a
quick script that generates a separate video for each of those hooks. I’ll put a GitHub link in the description below. If you don’t want to run this yourself, Joel Wrightler has built a tool called Clip Surge. You give it three intros, three demos, and three call to actions, and it splices everything together for you to generate 27 videos to test. The best way to test whether an ad will work on Meta is to run the ad on TikTok. Yep, you heard me right. When you run an ad
on Meta, especially a brand new account, you get stuck in what’s called the learning phase. And that can last up to 2 weeks while you’re burning cash trying to find the winner. TikTok ads is surprisingly more efficient. It finds a winner in around about 2 days. For my test, I spent 50 bucks to find the winner. Create a new campaign, leave everything on automatic, don’t overthink the targeting, just set it to English speaking countries, US, Canada, UK,
Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. Then you upload all the generated ads and let it run. After 2 days, review the results. What you care about is the impressions, clicks to destination, click-through rate to destination, and the 6-second view rate. Only assess ads shown more than 2,000 times, and you want the click-through rate to be above 10%. Now, a bit of a warning. TikTok ads seems to get a lot of bad traffic or bots clicking on your ads. So, those
numbers aren’t a true picture of real people clicking. This is where the 6-second video rate saves you. To catch a bot, you just look at how many people actually watch 6 seconds of your video. Anything over 50% is good. And here, we have our winners. Out of the videos I uploaded, these hooks came out on top. This app taught my kid piano in 1 hour. I’m shook. [snorts] An app just replaced my kids piano teacher. I can’t believe what this app
taught my 4-year-old. No app should be able to teach piano this fast. And this app teaches kids piano and parents are losing it. Then, I take those winners and run them on Meta. Now, you might be asking yourself, why not just run those ads on TikTok? When I ran this experiment on another app, I got 1,101 visitors from TikTok, and only 16 of them actually interacted with my landing page. Compared that to Meta, 880 people
viewed the landing page, and 55% of them interacted with my landing page. 48% of them actually hit the paywall, and 15 actually purchased. That’s 1.7% a little under the web-to-app average. So, from this little experiment, TikTok traffic just doesn’t engage in a meaningful way, at least not with this niche. TikTok is great for finding what stops the scroll, the top of the funnel, but go any deeper
and it kind of just falls over. An app just replaced my kids piano teacher. Got 24.8% click-through rate on TikTok. On Meta, it got 8.76%. But the early winner, this app teaches kids piano and parents are losing it. 17.82% on TikTok and 13.95% on Meta with a cost per click of just 17 cents. So, there you have it. My entire
process for creating high click-through rate ads for Meta. First, come up with ad ideas that show an actual transformation. But, before you spend a cent, ask yourself, is my app a utility or does it have a legitimate real transformation? Second, generate the ad with the before, after demo and call to action framework. Use AI to stand in for you on camera if you don’t want to be on camera, but expect some manual editing in the process. And third, that headline
hook is everything. It’s the difference between 13% and 1% click-through rate. Automate the headlines and test them all on TikTok for a few days. We’ve spent today on the top of the funnel, the actual ad and its click-through rate. Right now, I’m running some experiments on the rest of the funnel, how to turn those clicks into actual conversions, actual purchases, actual money in your bank account. And I’ll show you those results soon. Subscribe so you don’t
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