This episode is a tactical breakdown of AppLovin as a scaled acquisition channel—what's actually different vs Meta, what you should change in creative + campaign structure, and how to think about incrementality + reporting so you don't judge it with the wrong yardstick.

Miranda Pettinger, Performance Marketing Manager at 365 Holdings explains how they onboarded to the platform when Meta was underperforming and AppLovin started popping off in buyer circles. They used a Triple Whale onboarding credit to test with low risk, and at the time it wasn't even self-serve (you had to Slack the rep for changes).

The short on "why AppLovin works" is AppLovin's rewarded inventory creates an opt-in attention trade ("watch this 30s ad, get coins"), which changes the psychology from "I'm annoyed by ads" to "I'm choosing to watch this." That makes the creative game feel closer to a 30-second TV spot: you've got time to explain, objection-handle, and sell in one sitting.

From there it turns into a playbook with these Keytakeaways:

• 18:30 Bidding / structure: ROAS vs cost-per-purchase, why value doesn't work for some catalogs and how to structure campaigns

• 19:40 DPAs + catalog control: Why DPAs can help if you've got lots of variants and the importance of controlling what products show up.

• 25:50 Measurement reality: AppLovin tends to under-report purchases, especially at scale, so you want to validate with post-purchase survey, MER/traffic lift and/or a 3rd party data tool.

• 29:30 Incrementality / overlap: The Meta+AppLovin overlap and how Meta+Google overlap is likely way bigger.

• 33:55 Creative testing: unlike Meta where "testing vs scaling" can feel walled off, AppLovin can allow new winners to climb fast inside the same campaign, without dumping spend on junk.

• 38:30 End cards: offers matter a lot. How animation helps, and showing variants (colors/metal types) can lift clicks

To connect with Miranda, you can follow her on x at https://x.com/mirandpettinger

To connect with Andrew Foxwell send an email Andrew@foxwelldigital.com

To connect with Brad Ploch send him a DM at https://x.com/brad_ploch

To connect with Zach Stuck send him a DM at https://x.com/zachmstuck

Learn More about the Foxwell Founders Community at https://foxwellfounders.com/

This episode is basically a tactical hands-on walkthrough for using AI in creative, without turning your ad account into generic "AI slop."

Will Sartourious, owner of Selfmade.co, an agency that focuses on AI personas and AI performance creatives, joins us to lead us through his AI creative process and the importance of AI adoption in the social creative space. He primarily lumps current AI creative usage into two buckets:

• Type 1: "Clone this ad for me." Fast volume, but you drift into sameness.

• Type 2: Use AI to do the thinking work (research, synthesis, structure), then let humans do the "mushy middle" that differentiates. He's big on building PAM clusters (Persona–Angle–Motivation) so strategists aren't winging it and you can see where your creative gaps are before you ship more ads.
  
  From here we get into the nitty gritty of his current workflows:

• Static → GIF/video: why GIFs often beat statics in clean A/Bs, and how to generate animated variants fast.

• Tool split: Will uses Claude for more "creative" thinking, but uses ChatGPT specifically because it reads on-ad copy more reliably critical when your prompt needs to include every word that appears on the creative.

• Prompt iteration loop: generate → inspect output → feed output back in → ask for prompt correction (ex: "the copy disappears—fix it so it stays on screen").

• Midjourney reality check: great for vibes/backdrops and motion experiments, but "sucks at product rendering," so you generate the scene and then swap in the real product using other tools.

1. How to find the missing creative angles in your account before spending another dollar.

2. Cut out the Middle man: How you can stop using stock photos entirely with AI, without the brand even noticing.

3. The fastest way to turn a winning static into a GIF without opening any editing software.

4. Why including every word of on-ad copy in the prompt matters more than being a "prompt genius".

5. Why this AI tool is a secret weapon for AI creativity (It's literally 10X better than ChatGPT).

6. The feedback-loop method to improve prompts without manually tweaking yourself into madness (we've all been here).

7. The 1 tip that will make your AI people look less "plastic" and more realistic (texture/pores/realism)

8. How Will used Sore to close a client live mid-call and how you can too.
   
   Grab Will's notes and see the final products produced during the episode, here.

This episode is sponsored by Northbeam, the marketing attribution platform that we love here at Scalability School. If you're ready to cut through the noise, stop guessing, and actually see which ads are driving your business, book a demo at www.northbeam.io/demo, and tell them Scalability School sent you. Join the club.

To connect with Will Sartorious, you can follow him on x at https://x.com/will_sartorius
or www.Selfmade.co

To connect with Andrew Foxwell send an email Andrew@foxwelldigital.com

To connect with Brad Ploch send him a DM at https://x.com/brad_ploch

To connect with Zach Stuck send him a DM at https://x.com/zachmstuck

Learn More about the Foxwell Founders Community at https://foxwellfounders.com/