Profitable growth in a post-identifier world | UGC & video ad creative production to drive ROAS & scale

I help mobile app companies–including gaming companies like Applovin, East Side Games, Jam City and Scopely, and apps like Bumble, Lingokids, Mojo and FitMind(among others) –acquire new users and achieve profitable, scalable growth in a Generative-AI world.

Offering both managed user acquisition services and done-for-you creative production for teams running their own ads, our clients have continued to not only grow after Apple’s privacy changes, and many have seen their ROAS improve by an avg. of 20-40%.

The secret to our clients’ success is the combination of our deep expertise from having produced 10k+ ads and managed over $100M in ad spend, and our ability to rapidly produce UGC and video ads at volume that can be used to dial in exactly what works, and discard what does not.

📹 HOW WE DO IT📹 

Leveraging a combination of both human and AI creators, we’re able to rapidly produce UGC & video ads that are based on rock solid strategy and research. By testing 50+ (or more) variants a month even at small budgets with our signature rapid testing and iteration process, we’re able to rapidly isolate key elements of winning UGC. This is essential, with our data showing that the tiniest changes can lead to outsized performance.

💻AI VIDEO YOU ASK?💻

Yes, AI video. Now not just AI video, we use both human and AI creators. With the advent of AI we’ve been able to rapidly scale and test in a way we could not before. While many in the industry worry that AI 
Creative appears robotic and doesn't invoke emotion, we’ve found it depends on the inputs you give and the strategy behind your ads. 

📈 RESULTS CREATED📈 

-70% ROAS uplift and 69% CPI improvement for Adventure Communist, an idle-clicking game.

-Tested 100+ creatives for Games2Win, drove 350K+ installs, and 100% increase in ROAS.

-Unlocked month on month growth for hampr, a hyperlocal laundry app while improving cost per purchaser by 55%.

🏎GET STARTED🏎

Reach out here on LinkedIn to get a free consultation on leverage AI-fueled creative production to supercharge your growth.

Email us at: hi@rocketshiphq.com

Shamanth M. Rao

Performance Marketing Designed for Scale, Ex-Calm | Creative Strategy and Paid Social Consulting & Coaching @ themetagame.us | Fully Scaled Creative Services @ 10scale.co | Meta, Google, ASA and TikTok ads

I started my career in derivatives trading and turned my knowledge of markets for the better, making the world happier and healthier at Calm as a Growth Marketing leader.

Now I am an agency owner, consultant, coach and advisor supporting products that make a positive social impact.  Over the years I have supported hundreds of millions of dollars of media spend on life changing products and political campaigns.

I am a student of the game and love both learning and teaching others. Check out my blog where I spill all the secrets at blog.themetagame.us!

On a personal level, I’m passionate about mindfulness, making art, the outdoors, and other people. My mission is to make other people's life better by leveraging technology and creativity.

Nick Candler

Over the years I have shifted from copying others to leaning on my own insights and creativity. 

We still rely heavily on frameworks, but 10 Scale’s approach now is largely to find the gaps in strategy that we think competitors are missing.

I am most proud of that work with our client Speak, who we scaled under the core insight that learning languages isn’t cold and formulaic, learned technically through conjugation, flash cards, and streaks. Language is primarily embedded in culture and should be learned through immersion.

That understanding is in part social listening and in part lived experience. I got a D in high school Spanish, but learned conversational Spanish by immersing myself in daily life, in late night parties, in music, books and tv shows. 10 Scale was built in Oaxaca and Colombia on the long trip where I broke through, opening me to a beautiful new version of reality and sense of identity that wasn’t available to me with English. 

The implied learnings from the success with Speak is people don’t aspire to learn Spanish arbitrarily — they aspire to be closer to Latino culture and to have their identity or perspective changed as a result.

That core story is now being heavily copied, lifting the whole category.

My point is this — just like learning a language, creative work is not intended to be totally rules based and arbitrary. You can learn to do creative work through completely technical means and achieve success through brute force. I know, because I literally wrote the book on it. But it’s going split up the pie for everyone. It’s only by embedding the work in cultural understanding and insight that you’re going to gain an edge and make a contribution that grows a category.

Performance Marketing Designed for Scale | President @ 10scale.co | Meta, TikTok, Google, ASA, + | All our secrets free @ Blog.TheMetaGame.US

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The pace of competitor copies has gotten hysterical, and creative moats are as important as ever. During my time at Calm, I established two creative moats that made copying our ads extremely difficult:

1) Celebrity partnerships
2) 3D ASMR

Both were relatively inexpensive in business terms but provided just enough friction to make us extremely hard to punch at.

Looking forward to chatting more about it in Phil's Maven course!

Founder and CEO @ Elemental Growth | Former Product Leader @ Faire, Quizlet, and Ibotta | NEA Venture Advisor and Angel Investor

From 2019 - 2022, Nick Candler and his team at Calm ran 5,500 ads that converted an incremental 1.2 million subscribers.

There were two creative strategies that drove much of this impact:

🤩 Celebrities: Exclusive content created by celebrity partners.
🤨 Oddly Satisfying: Using micro-reward loops and ASMR to evoke calm.

Nick's team also used "social listening" tactics to pick up on trending memes before they went mainstream as a source of inspiration.

In my Maven course on Consumer Subscription Growth, Nick teaches these techniques, highlights how they propelled Calm's growth, and explains why creative is increasingly all that matters for driving paid ad efficiency.

The next cohort starts in February. Sign up today to claim your spot! 👇
https://lnkd.in/gf_ndutV

In 2025 I landed 4 clients in the top 10 of their category's app charts for the first time. What has set me apart as a marketer and cemented my hit rate with clients has been leveraging social listening to achieve the proper product positioning and get through to their target audience.

Two undervalued hacks I've discovered in 2025 has been using trending audio and rage bait.

What makes trending audio valuable isn't just having something that sounds good and people know -- it's a way to hack the algorithm and reach your desired users.

Rage bait drives up engagement and expands your reach.

Perhaps the best marketers I've ever seen at signaling in-group behavior, riding algorithmic trends, and rage baiting isn't a consumer brand.

It's the white house.

In a recently deleted recruitment post, the department of homeland security used "We'll have our home again" by Pine Street Riots. Clicking through the associated posts on Instagram for this audio, one finds a range from low engagement powerlifting videos and esoteric black pill memes with phrases like "hitler didn't go far enough", to ultra-viral pro nazi / white nationalist /anti liberalism content.

By integrating this highly controversial trending audio they've put on a masterclass on how to maximize reach and connect with a target audience by using social listening and rage bait.

For all my marketers concerned about police live murdering two Americans in Minnesota with no recourse and wondering what comes next, let me ask you this question:

What do think is going to happen when a cohort of the most ideologically motivated groypers hits the streets and starts enforcing their will with absolute immunity, financial incentive, and $70 billion of resourcing?

PLEASE call your congressman, your senator, and all your elected officials, and in no uncertain terms be clear. ABOLISH ICE. A moderate position is not sufficient. End this madness and say no to the police state, to government surveillance, and all ideological fundamentalism.

Links and resources in comments ⬇️

Gold is gapping up to unprecedented levels today. 30 year bonds have gotten cold feet.

As a former bond trader, the story markets tell me is that the world is slowly losing faith in the United States as a trade partner and debtor, and that it’s not too late to reverse course.

Silicon Valley showed out in overwhelming numbers for Donald Trump in 2024, launching a wave of media appearances that almost certainly secured his victory.

Their argument? A combination of lawfare or political capture by way of illegal immigration was sweeping the nation. 

The payday loan apps and crypto businesses that they claimed were being politically targeted are still getting debanked and the Overton window has shifted so much on immigration that we’re labeling liberal white women with whistles as terrorists and talking about why it’s okay for Border Patrol agents to shoot them in the face on national television.

Their argument, retroactively, was bullshit.

The federal government can apply all the pressure they want to culture or to the fed, but the 30 year cannot be tamed. Any attempt to manipulate it will likely blow up in the United States face and accelerate an inflation spiral. 

Silicon Valley power players are still using their media channels to give cover for this administration, but have the opportunity to change course before they lose all of their credibility and we go down a path that can’t be reversed — economically and politically.

taplio

The Battle

Shamanth M. Rao

Nick Candler

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The Battle

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Nick Candler

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Nick Candler's LinkedIn Performance

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