2025 UA Planning: Incorporating Non-Traditional Targeting and Optimizations
As we look ahead to 2025, User Acquisition (UA) continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace. Traditional strategies, such as search and social, are no longer sufficient to capture the attention of today’s diverse and discerning audiences. To stay competitive in this dynamic landscape, marketers must embrace innovative approaches to targeting and optimization that deliver measurable results. In this blog, we’ll explore five non-traditional strategies—spanning audience segmentation, conversion optimization, and creative techniques—to help you drive higher performance and elevate your advertising campaigns in the new year.
1. Leverage Concurrent Campaigns to simultaneously achieve multiple goals
Running a single campaign across one channel or audience segment may no longer be enough. Instead, forward-thinking UA teams are deploying Concurrent Campaigns with strategically aligned goals that work together to maximize impact.
Why does this matter? Concurrent campaigns allow for targeting multiple goals within an audience and have a higher likelihood of incremental lift. By tailoring your message to specific KPIs while maintaining consistent branding, you can unlock greater overall performance. For instance, a gaming client implemented Concurrent Campaigns targeting both CPI and purchase events was able to reduce their CPI’s by 27% and increase purchases by 136%.
Pro Tip: Use performance data to identify campaign targets that align well together and optimize to the highest-performing combinations
2. Harness Device Language Targeting for granular personalization
Personalization is at the heart of effective UA, and Device Language Targeting is one of the most impactful ways to deliver it. By having your campaigns dynamically adjust to the language settings on users’ devices, you can connect with audiences in ways that feel culturally relevant and hyper-specific.
For example, a mobile gaming client was running an evergreen campaign in Canada using English language creatives where over 20% of their spend was reaching native French speakers. Once DLT was implemented to address that segment of the audience, they saw an incredible 20% improvement in the campaign’s ROAS performance.
Pro Tip: Incorporating DLT into your existing worldwide campaigns will drive higher engagement and overall performance.
3. Tap into Virtual Events to unlock behavior-based targeting
Virtual Events (VE) offer a powerful way to gain deeper insights into user behavior and optimize campaigns for maximum performance. Unlike standard tracking, Virtual events are unique to your goals and combine multiple user actions — such as registrations and “add to cart” events — into a single, trackable entity, helping advertisers zero in on high-value behaviors that drive results.
For instance, setting up a VE to identify users making large or multiple purchases within a specific timeframe can provide a clear pathway to optimize for these valuable actions. In one example, a non-gaming social app client created a VE using early retention and lifetime value (LTV) metrics. When the campaign started targeting that VE, it achieved 29% ROI in less than two months and continued to see success as the campaign scaled.
Pro Tip: To reduce time to goal and accelerate campaign performance, create a VE that optimizes toward multiple intermediate actions — such as app engagement or small in-app purchases — that are predictive of final conversions.
4. Utilize App-to-Web campaigns to drive mobile web performance
For both iGaming brands and direct-to-consumer (DTC) businesses without an app, optimizing app-to-web (ATW) campaigns is a critical strategy for driving conversions. These campaigns focus on creating smooth transitions from in-app ads to mobile web experiences, reducing friction, building trust, and encouraging faster actions such as sign-ups, purchases, or first time deposits.
Pro Tip: To maximize the impact of ATW campaigns, focus on crafting highly relevant ad creatives and aligning them with personalized and fast-loading website.
5. Experiment with innovative creative formats to elevate ad engagement
In an oversaturated ad landscape, creatives are often the deciding factor when engaging with an ad. The availability of unique creative experiences is growing, giving advertisers more flexibility and options. One example is multiproduct display, which showcases several products within a single ad and is a proven way to stand out — especially for e-commerce brands.
Additionally, Liftoff Exclusive Ad Formats offer advertisers more ways to differentiate their campaigns. These unique formats allow for tailored, dynamic ad experiences that capture attention and inspire action. Whether showcasing multiple products, incorporating interactive elements, or emphasizing app features, innovative creatives give advertisers the tools to engage users meaningfully and drive measurable results.
Pro Tip: When using multiproduct display ads, ensure your creatives highlight complementary products or seasonal bundles to inspire higher cart values.
Planning for 2025: Take the next steps
As 2025 approaches, adopting non-traditional strategies like Concurrent Campaigns, Device Language Targeting, and innovative creative formats will be key to staying competitive in the evolving UA landscape. Now is the time to put these insights into action. Identify which strategies align with your goals, test their implementation, and iterate based on performance data.
Ready to take your campaigns to the next level? Explore how Liftoff’s innovative solutions can help you incorporate these strategies and more into your 2025 UA planning.
