[CodesInChaos]

Conversion rate issues aside, why did they choose pre-launch ads over post launch advertising?

Some apps rely on a critical mass of users on launch (multiplayer games, social networks, dating sites, etc.) so generating hype pre-launch is important for these.

But this looks like an app where it doesn't matter for a user how many other users there are. So slowly ramping up your ads after launch, while you work out bugs and other flaws looks like a much better approach to me. This also allows you to track ad effectiveness and adjust as you go, instead of taking a big gamble.

[andreaskam]

We felt that getting a lot of traction on the launch day might give us some good momentum in the charts. With hindsight, I'd wish we'd saved our money and spent it after launch, when we could sense check the figures that Google Ads is reporting.

[l5870uoo9y]

Or target a few low competition keywords with custom landing pages and get the traffic for "free". Looks like Google has plenty of traffic in that segment and low competition.