What user acquisition covers
User acquisition is everything that brings new users into your app. It splits into three groups:
- Paid: Meta, Google, Apple Ads, TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit, LinkedIn, ad networks, affiliates and paid influencers.
- Owned: your website, email list, social accounts, QR codes in stores or on packaging, and referral programs.
- Organic: app store search and browse, word of mouth and press.
Paid UA gets the most attention because it scales on demand, but owned and organic channels often bring the highest-value users, and paid spend can lift organic installs as a side effect.
The UA loop
Mature UA teams run a weekly loop:
- Launch campaigns with clear audiences, creatives and events to optimize toward.
- Measure installs, events and revenue by campaign, ad set and creative.
- Compare cost and value: CPI, cost per event, retention and ROAS at fixed days.
- Reallocate budget toward what beats target, pause what does not.
- Refresh creatives before fatigue sets in.
A worked example: in week one, campaign A spends $5,000 for 2,500 installs and $3,000 of D7 revenue (0.6x). Campaign B spends $5,000 for 1,600 installs and $4,500 of D7 revenue (0.9x). If your D7 break-even signal is 0.7x, budget moves from A to B, even though B's CPI is higher.
How measurement shapes UA
UA decisions are only as good as the attribution under them. Common failure modes are counting organic installs as paid, letting two networks claim the same user, and judging campaigns before revenue has time to arrive. iOS privacy rules add another layer: SKAN and AdAttributionKit report at campaign level with delays, so iOS decisions rely on conversion value design and modeled signals.
User acquisition with Linkrunner
Linkrunner is an MMP built for growth teams running UA across Meta, Google, Apple Ads, TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit, LinkedIn, ChatGPT Ads, affiliates and more. It attributes installs deterministically first, syncs spend from Meta, Google and Apple Ads, reports ROAS down to creative and keyword, and sends mapped events back to networks as postbacks. See ROAS measurement or pricing: the first 25,000 attributed installs are free.