If your subscription app needs someone to own paid growth across campaigns, measurement and creative, consider a fractional Head of UA. If you already have that leadership and need more execution, a mobile media buyer or agency may fit better. A permanent in-house lead makes sense when you have enough work and support for a full-time role.
I’m Samet Durgun, the person behind Growth Therapist. I work with subscription apps that have live revenue and need senior, hands-on ownership of user acquisition. This guide explains the hiring options, the questions to ask and the work behind my own case.
The evidence first
EatBetter: monthly recurring revenue grew from $10K to $180K in two months, while blended ROAS rose from 70% to 230%. The work combined creator content turned into Meta ads with paywall optimization. Read the EatBetter case study.
Videa AI and Cleaner Pure: I helped build Mellon’s paid marketing function from the ground up. Spend scaled past $200K a month, and D0 ROAS improved from 20% to a 43% record week. The work included a custom purchase signal, predicted lifetime value in bidding and country-level ROAS targets. Read the Videa case study.
These are different measures. EatBetter’s figures describe recurring revenue and blended ROAS; Videa’s figure describes day-zero performance, with 43% representing a record week. The linked cases explain the work behind each result.
Should you hire a mobile UA consultant, agency or in-house lead?
Before choosing a person or company, identify the responsibility you need someone to take. The practical options are a freelance mobile media buyer, a subscription app UA agency, a fractional Head of UA or a permanent in-house lead. Someone has to decide how much you can afford to acquire a subscriber, which revenue numbers to trust, what creative to produce next and when a campaign deserves more budget. Someone also has to execute those decisions.
Your next hire should fill the gap between what your team can already do and what the business needs. Titles alone will not settle this. Ask who will do the work and what decisions they will own.
| What your team needs | Who to consider | What to establish |
|---|---|---|
| More campaign execution, with strategy, measurement and creative already covered | A freelance mobile media buyer | Who sets targets and supplies the testing plan? |
| An external team with campaign and production capacity | A mobile UA agency | Who works on the account, and who owns the commercial outcome? |
| Senior direction and hands-on ownership across acquisition, measurement and creative | A fractional Head of UA | What does the lead execute personally, and which specialists support them? |
| Permanent leadership for a sustained workload | An in-house UA lead | Will they have the engineering, analytics and creative resources to succeed? |
| A diagnosis before deciding what to hire | A growth audit | Will you receive prioritized findings and an implementation plan? |
When hiring me makes sense
My ongoing work is built for subscription apps with live revenue, typically spending around $100K a month on paid UA or funded to reach that level.
- Spend has plateaued, and increasing budgets makes acquisition less efficient.
- Meta, your subscription backend and your attribution platform tell different stories.
- Creative production is active, but account learnings rarely turn into better briefs.
- Campaigns, paywalls and subscription economics are managed separately.
- The founder is still making most growth decisions and needs someone experienced to take ownership.
What that ownership looks like in practice
The economics set the target. Pricing, trial conversion, renewals and the payback window determine what an acquired customer can be worth.
Measurement makes the results usable. When the ad platform, subscription backend and MMP disagree, the job is to understand why and decide which numbers support which decisions. See my approach to reconciling Meta, RevenueCat and Adjust.
Creative testing turns learning into new ads. Someone needs to connect what happened in the account to the next concept, hook or product demonstration.
The product funnel helps determine what traffic is worth. An ad can attract the right person and still lose them during onboarding or at the paywall.
I work across campaign management, measurement, creative direction and funnel diagnosis. For specialist SDK or server implementation, I bring in an attribution engineer from my network. We establish those responsibilities when scoping the engagement.
Evidence from building a subscription-app marketing function
At Mellon, the work covered Videa AI and Cleaner Pure. It involved building the paid marketing function: the team, processes and campaign operations across Meta, Google Ads, TikTok and Apple Search Ads. The measurement work included a custom CAPI purchase signal, predicted lifetime value in bidding and country-level ROAS targets.
Anıl Sözeri, Mellon’s cofounder, describes the collaboration this way: “We built our marketing function from the ground up together: the team, the processes, the way we think about growth.” Read his full testimonial and case study.
At EatBetter, creator content was already working organically, but paid acquisition had not caught up. Turning it into Meta ads and optimizing the paywall alongside acquisition helped grow MRR from $10K to $180K in two months.
The hiring lesson is the same across both cases: look for experience diagnosing the actual constraint and coordinating the work needed to address it.
Five questions to ask anyone you might hire
- How would you set our acquisition-cost target? A useful answer starts with pricing, trial conversion, renewals and your payback period.
- What would you do if Meta and our subscription backend disagreed? Ask how they turn conflicting dashboards into a budget decision.
- Who decides what creative we make next? Establish who briefs, produces, evaluates and carries findings into the next round.
- Can you show relevant work with a clear metric and time window? Ask what changed, what else happened and what the person personally owned.
- What will you do personally, and what will our team provide? Confirm the contact, cadence, creative responsibilities, dependencies and handover.
What to agree before work starts
Agree on a baseline for spend, paid subscribers and revenue over a consistent window. Identify the first problems to investigate, who owns each action, the testing budget and what would justify scaling.
If you already have a capable growth lead and only need another pair of hands, an execution-focused hire may fit better. If you need a diagnosis before ongoing support, my growth audit can be booked separately at any spend level.
- Bring your approximate monthly spend, main channels and markets.
- Bring your subscription pricing, trial setup and payback target, if you have one.
- Identify who can grant access, implement event changes and approve creative.
- Ask for a scope separating management, media, production and specialist engineering.
Questions people ask
Should we hire a freelancer, an agency or a fractional Head of UA?
Hire against the missing capability. A freelancer can add execution; an agency can supply a broader team; a fractional lead can own senior decisions across acquisition, measurement and creative. An in-house lead fits sustained full-time needs. See the full comparison.
What should a mobile user acquisition manager for a subscription app own?
They should have clear responsibility for acquisition targets, campaign decisions, measurement, creative testing and the feedback loop into onboarding and the paywall. If those responsibilities sit with different people, agree who makes the final budget and scaling decisions.
Can I hire Samet Durgun to run our subscription app’s mobile UA?
Yes, if the scope is a fit. My ongoing work is aimed at apps with live revenue and around $100K a month in paid spend, or funding to reach it. Book an intro call to discuss the responsibility you need someone to take.
How much does it cost to hire you?
Ongoing work is a monthly retainer scoped to involvement. Media, production and specialist engineering should be clear in the scope. See what determines the cost.
Do these case studies predict our results?
No. They show work on specific accounts. Your product, economics, audience, creative and measurement setup affect the outcome.