How to Personalize Ads for New Users Without Sacrificing Revenue
By Ivan Oliveri
User acquisition is more expensive than ever. So why are many apps treating brand-new users the same way they treat long-time players — especially when it comes to ads?
If you’re showing the same number of interstitials or rewarded videos to a user on day 0 as you are to one who’s been playing for two weeks, you might be leaving revenue — and retention — on the table.
Let’s talk about how to fix that.
What Are You Doing With Your New Users?
We’ve spoken to dozens of publishers about how they handle ads during onboarding. Here’s what we found:
- Some avoid showing ads during the first few minutes of gameplay or until a specific event is triggered
- Others insert ads directly into the onboarding flow
- A few show no ads at all to new users — hoping to increase retention
Every approach has its logic. But when we asked how those decisions were made, the answer was often:
“We just tried it once and stuck with whatever seemed to work.”
In most cases, there was no proper A/B test, no segmentation, and no data-driven iteration — even though these same publishers run hundreds of experiments per year in other areas.
Why?
Because onboarding ad strategies are hard to test. Until now.
Why Ad Onboarding Needs a Rethink
First impressions matter. When you show ads too early or too aggressively, you risk:
- Pushing away non-organic users before they form habits
- Lowering Day-1 (D1) retention
- Missing higher LTV potential from long-term users
At the same time, if you don’t show any ads, you risk leaving revenue on the table — especially from paid user acquisition traffic, which can be expensive.
The key is finding the right balance.
How Loomit Helps You Build a Smarter Onboarding Flow
With Loomit, you can run true A/B and multivariate tests for onboarding ad strategies — without extra development work.
Our platform helps publishers:
- Test multiple onboarding ad setups (e.g., skip the first 3 minutes, trigger ads after the tutorial, etc.)
- Personalize the ad experience based on user type: organic, paid, country, or app version
- Optimize for engagement and ARPDAU simultaneously
- Track retention impact in real time with clear dashboards
- Adjust ad logic remotely without waiting for a new app update
Real Results From Publishers Using Loomit
“We were showing interstitials too early and didn’t even realize it. After testing with Loomit, we found a 15.6% increase in D1 retention just by delaying ads until the end of onboarding.”
— Growth Manager, Mid-Core Game
What Could You Discover?
With Loomit, you can answer high-impact questions like:
- How many ads should I skip for new users?
- Should paid users see fewer or different ad formats?
- Are certain networks more valuable for new users than others?
- Can I increase engagement without sacrificing monetization?
And more importantly: you can test all of this quickly and safely.
Get Started with Loomit
1. Sign up at loomit.ai
2. Connect your mediation setup
3. Launch smarter onboarding experiments and measure the real impact on revenue and retention
Still Giving All Your Users the Same Onboarding Ad Experience?
It’s time to change that.
With Loomit, you can personalize onboarding, improve retention, and optimize monetization — all with real data and no added complexity.
Related reading: Improve ad monetization with loomit