33% lower cost per paying subscriber from real couples on camera

Tallybird helps couples run a shared budget. Its ads were screen recordings and feature lists, and they were very good at one thing: cheap installs. Most of those installs came from single people hunting for a free expense tracker, who deleted the app within days. Cost per install kept falling while revenue stayed flat, which made for some awkward monthly reports. The dashboard looked healthy until you reached the line that paid the bills.

We moved the ads’ goal from installs to trial starts and rebuilt the creative around a moment every couple knows: who paid for what, and who’s keeping score. Nine real couples filmed short conversations at their kitchen tables. Each got three prompts and no script, and kept going until they forgot the phone was there. The app only appeared once the problem was out in the open.

Our video studio added screen recordings as cutaways, subtitles for silent viewing, and hooks taken from the couples’ own lines. The best opener was one partner saying, “I have paid for every takeaway since March and I have the receipts.”

Installs fell a little, as expected, and nobody missed them. Trial-to-paid conversion came in 1.7x higher, because the people arriving already had the problem Tallybird solves. Cost per paying subscriber dropped 33% in ten weeks, and the monthly reports got a lot less awkward.

The team now screens every new ad with one question: would a single person bother clicking this? If the answer is yes, it goes back for another look.