How Sprive scaled installs 2.8x through creative strategy

Sprive came to us at an inflexion point. A TV campaign was on the horizon, and the pressure was on to make the most of the spike in brand awareness it would bring. But the ad account told a more complicated story.

The creative was clean. On-brand. Safe. It looked like what you'd expect from a fintech company with a clear product and a considered visual identity, and that was exactly the problem. There was no structured testing framework, no variety in format, and no way to understand which messages were genuinely moving people toward a download and which were just filling impressions.

The brief was clear: build a creative infrastructure capable of finding what works, scaling it fast, and making paid social genuinely pull its weight ahead of the TV launch.

Phase one: Creative strategy and diversification

We started by shifting the creative philosophy. Rather than producing polished one-off assets, we built a testing machine, which was diverse in format, honest in tone, and anchored in the specific emotional and rational journeys that lead someone to download a mortgage app.

The first move was to commit to video, as static creative has a ceiling. Video, especially UGC-style content that feels native to the feed, has both better stopping power and more room to tell a story. We diversified the creator base, introduced lifestyle formats alongside UGC, and began testing motion animation as a way to explain financial mechanics visually.

We also applied a rigorous approach to the existing ad set: identifying fatigued creative early, rotating it out before it dragged down account efficiency, and ensuring new assets were sufficiently differentiated to generate real signal.

Phase two: Full-funnel restructure

At month six, with enough performance data to draw meaningful conclusions, we rebuilt the funnel from the ground up.

Top of funnel - Educate

The insight: most people have no idea how much their mortgage is actually costing them. We leaned into that, with three content pillars, Mortgage Education, Financial Advice, and How Sprive Works, each designed to earn attention by making the abstract tangible. Stat-led visuals, simple language, and the kind of clarity that makes someone stop mid-scroll because they've just realised something about their own finances.

Middle of funnel -  Engage

Once someone understood the problem, we needed them to see themselves in the solution. We built around Founder Stories, Saving Scenarios, and Community-Driven Proof, real people, real numbers, real journeys toward mortgage freedom. Personalised simulations that let people imagine their own savings. Credibility cues that made Sprive feel like the obvious next step, not a risk.

Bottom of funnel  - Convert

The final barrier to download is almost never price; it's trust. Is this app secure? Will it be complicated to set up? Is it actually worth it? We tackled all three directly with Social Proof and Reviews, App Demos, and Urgency and FOMO content. Clear demonstrations, five-star evidence, and prompts designed to reduce hesitation and drive confident, immediate action.

We also expanded into TikTok during this period, opening up a new acquisition channel and giving us fresh creative surface area to test.

What changed

The numbers moved in ways that told a coherent story.

Spend scaled 3.4x

Installs scaled 2.8x

The real signal was in engagement. CTR nearly doubled, from 1.10% to 1.83%. Thumbstop rose +31%, from 21.2% to 27.8%, proving that the new creative was materially better at earning attention in a noisy feed.