Ad spend · 8 days
$212₹20.3k
An honest 8-day read on the Meta ad. The ad only began spending Jun 5 — so any "LTV per Instagram customer" measured since April is mostly your organic creator audience, not the paid spend. This version measures the one thing the data actually supports: the incremental lift the ad drove.
You estimated revenue per install bottom-up: trial-start rate × trial→paid × net-of-Apple × price. The arithmetic is correct — but it rests on three assumptions we can now check against reality.
The cleanest thing the data can prove: incrementality. For weeks before the ad, Instagram trials trickled in at ~1–2 a day from the creator's organic following. The moment paid spend started on Jun 5, that rate climbed — to 5, then 8, then 15 trials in a single day as budget scaled. Organic doesn't jump like that. The ad is doing something real.
It's too early for true LTV: these customers are 8 days old and most are still inside their free trial. But we can already weigh what the ad cost against what's actually been collected from the customers it drove — and even this incomplete snapshot is past break-even.
Read this as a payback clock, not a verdict. At day 8 the ad has already returned ~$1.10 net for every $1 spent — before the bulk of trials convert. Annual conversions ($89) and renewals land over the coming weeks, so the mature figure is realistically 2–4×. Honest headline today: break-even and rising.
The earlier version scoped “Instagram” to installs since Apr 20 and reported $13.07/customer and a 7.9× return. But the ad ran none of those first 7 weeks — that cohort is overwhelmingly your creator's organic following, acquired at $0. Narrow it to the real paid window and roughly half the customers disappear:
The right way to credit the ad isn't “who typed Instagram” — it's the lift in §02 (organic was flat; the ad period jumped) plus cash-collected-vs-spent in §03. Per-customer LTV only becomes trustworthy once this Jun-5 cohort finishes its trials.
At 8 days this is a payback clock, not a final score. Net revenue collected already edges past break-even — and it only climbs as trials convert and annual plans bill over the next 2–3 weeks.
Net ROAS = (gross collected × 0.85) ÷ ad spend = ($270.88 × 0.85) ÷ $212 = 1.1× at day 8 — already positive before most trials convert. The 2–4× projection assumes the Jun-5 cohort converts at the 42.6% trial→paid rate measured on mature cohorts.
| Metric | Value | Source | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ad first spend date | Jun 5, 2026 | Meta Ads | measured |
| Ad spend · Jun 5–12 (8d) | ~$212 · ₹20.3k | Meta Ads | measured |
| IG trials/day — before ad | ~1.4 | Mixpanel · May 19–Jun 4 | measured |
| IG trials/day — during ad | ~5.4 · peak 15 | Mixpanel · Jun 5–12 | measured |
| IG trial lift (incrementality) | ~4× ↑ | derived | directional |
| Incremental trials (window) | ~32 | derived | directional |
| US·IG customers · Jun 5+ | 30 | RevenueCat | measured |
| US·IG revenue so far · Jun 5+ | $270.88 | RevenueCat · gross | incomplete |
| US·IG ARPU so far · Jun 5+ | $9.03 | RevenueCat · 8d young | climbing |
| Net ROAS · day 8 | ~1.1× | derived | incomplete |
| US trial → paid (mature) | 42.6% | RevenueCat · May cohort | mature |
| Net of Apple commission | 85% | Small Business Program | confirmed |
| “Apr 20+ Instagram ARPU” | $13.07 · 7.9× | superseded — mostly organic | discarded |
The ad started Jun 5. iOS trials convert after a 3–7 day trial, so most of these 30 customers haven't converted yet. Every per-customer and ROAS figure here is a floor that rises — wait ~2–3 weeks for a real read.
“Who typed Instagram” mixes organic + paid. The defensible claim is the incrementality in §02 — organic was flat ~1.4/day for weeks, then jumped with spend. That gap is the ad's true contribution.
30 customers, ~32 incremental trials, $212 spend. One annual buyer ($89) or one refund swings these meaningfully. Directional, not precise — confirm as volume builds.
Meta's dashboard shows 0 attributed trials — SKAN + ATT, not a bug. RevenueCat & Mixpanel are the real scoreboard; the cleanest paid read is AppsFlyer's Facebook-attributed cohort (next step).