Health & fitness is one of the most challenging and competitive verticals in the mobile industry. According to the latest Health & Fitness App Report 2025, the market for health & fitness apps continues to grow. However, with market growth, competition also increases. Apps in this category often use mixed trial strategies, which require extra effort to attract and retain users. It’s crucial to quickly prove the product’s value to recover the cost of acquisition.
CPA breakdown by each funnel step in %
Source: AdQuantum
One of the most effective approaches in the Health & Fitness vertical today is web-to-web campaigns, where users complete a quiz on the web. After the initial onboarding, they proceed to payment or registration. This approach captures more user data, builds psychological commitment, and boosts LTV.
The success of these campaigns comes from a clear system of three components: the pixel, the creatives, and the funnel itself.
The formula for success
Source: AdQuantum
Our approach to web-to-web: Three key factors for success
Many companies struggle with high CPA when running web-to-web, but the problem usually isn’t the traffic channel. More often, it’s that a crucial component of the system is underdeveloped.
When we launch a campaign, our first step is to figure out which of these three areas (pixel, creatives, or funnel) is the weakest. That way, we can focus on fixing the biggest bottleneck while also improving the other parts.
- The pixel is crucial. In some projects, it learns quickly and starts performing well after just $2,000-10,000 in spend. However, typically, these first investments go into learning, finding, and filtering the right audience.
- Creatives typically have the most significant impact on CTR and early funnel conversions. Strong creatives immediately drive more engagement and help lower acquisition costs.
- Then, there’s the funnel, which is especially important for the progression to the second screen of the quiz.
Our approach is built on constant testing and improvement across all three areas. We work on developing high-performing creatives, building efficient funnels, and training the pixel so that it learns to find and bring in the right users, the ones most likely to convert and pay.
The goal of the campaign and the main challenge
Our client for this success case was the Health & Fitness app. They wanted to grow fast but faced a common issue: a high CPA with web-to-web campaigns, making scaling unprofitable.
The main goal of the campaign was to achieve stable unit economics and acquire paying users. The campaign was run on Meta.
Step by step: What was done
Launch tests for funnels, paywalls, and creatives & begin training the pixel
From the start, the campaign’s goal was to build one strong funnel and test it with three different pricing options. We chose the three pricing models that showed the best potential, began training the pixel, and continued with further tests.
A key metric in this case was the progression to the second screen of the quiz. This is typically the step where many users drop off. The benchmark for this stage is a score of at least 60%. If it drops to 40%, scaling the campaign becomes nearly impossible.
We reached the required 60% right at the beginning, so we set this moment as our starting point, marking CPA as 100%. This allowed us to track future improvements along with other key metrics, such as click-to-paywall, paywall-to-purchase, paywall-to-checkout, and checkout-to-purchase.
After achieving this benchmark, our next step was to finalize the best pricing model, which became the basis for the next stage of testing and scaling the campaign.
Funnel and creative optimization
After that, we tested several funnels and picked the one that performed best. Then we defined the main creative direction and let Facebook optimize which ads to show more often. At the same time, we continued to collect pixel events and set up the initial audiences.
During this process, we discovered that the best CPAs came from two groups: women under 45 and men aged 45 and older. So, we built separate funnels specifically for these segments.
We launched separate campaigns for men and women and also split them by age, targeting younger and older women as well as younger and older men. We also started actively using auto-rules to automate budget management as we scaled the campaigns.
Audience-based funnels + creatives
Source: AdQuantum
Advanced сreative strategy
At this stage, we found two top-performing creatives that were designed for a broad audience.
For fitness ads, the four key elements that matter are:
- The result
- The easy way to achieve that result
- Expertise
- Social proof
It’s essential not to combine all four of these elements into one creative. It can overwhelm people. Instead, we mix them across different ads, making sure each one focuses on no more than three of these points.
A big goal for us was to find the proper wording — CTAs and key phrases — that would click with the target audience and drive conversions. At the same time, we wanted to lock in a consistent visual style and color scheme. Testing showed that shades of red, brown, and yellow performed best, so we decided to use that palette for all future creatives.
During this period, static creatives started working better than videos, which began to underperform. We quickly picked up on this trend and shifted to static formats.
Scaling the campaign and switching to ABO
Then, we gathered more top-performing creatives and gradually scaled our campaigns. However, we faced an issue: campaigns using ASC (Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns) and CBO (Campaign Budget Optimization) were unstable, and scaling with AAA(Advantage+ App Campaigns) was ineffective, with unpredictable results.
We decided to switch to ABO(Ad Set Budget Optimization), where each ad set had only one creative, and the budget was controlled at the ad set level. We started by launching one creative per campaign with small budgets and used auto-rules to scale up.
Over time, the best creatives collected more data and were duplicated, while the underperforming ones were automatically paused.
We set up detailed auto-rules to maintain this optimization: turning off ad sets up to $400, turning off ad sets above $400, and mirroring these rules for turning them back on. Additionally, we implemented rules to re-enable campaigns at midnight (account time) for the last 3 days if they were still within KPI but had been stopped the day before.
Campaigns were also paused and restarted strategically during hours when the US was asleep, since spend analysis over time showed minimal incoming results during that window. For scaling, we took a balanced approach, typically increasing budgets by 50% when performance was well ahead of targets, avoiding overly aggressive jumps.
Auto-rules played a significant role in keeping the campaign structure efficient and scalable, helping us reduce acquisition costs to 32.39% of the original level.
Funnel update and checkout improvements
At this point, we rolled out the most significant update to the funnel – we replaced four separate funnels (previously set up for two female and two male age groups) with one dynamic funnel that could adapt to different segments. We also prioritized Apple Pay at checkout, which made the payment process faster and smoother.
New creative concepts and stable growth
In the final phase, we focused on developing new creative ideas and continued to grow the acquisition volume in a more controlled way, keeping CPA stable at around 30.77%. At this point, the CPA was slightly higher compared to the previous stage, primarily as a result of more aggressive scaling efforts.
At this stage, the main challenge was to keep results predictable and steady while increasing spending. It became clear how important it is to monitor your core metrics closely, as they show whether your pixel, creatives, or funnel is the weak link. This stage highlighted again that minor adjustments to the funnel can significantly boost overall performance.
Results
By the end of the project, we had reduced CPA by over 70%, achieved strong funnel progression rates, and built a structure that could scale reliably.
The drivers of success weren’t just great creatives or a good funnel alone. It was the combined effect of three things working together: a properly trained pixel, well-tested creatives, and a carefully optimized funnel.
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