App portfolio turnaround: Rebuilt to positive unit economics

From 2023 to 2024 I worked as Lead User Acquisition, on an independent consulting basis, for a client under NDA. The client owned an app portfolio that lost money. I took it over and rebuilt it to positive unit economics.

The client, the apps and the figures stay private, so this page describes the method. A portfolio like that can lose money in two ways: budget flows to campaigns that do not pay back, or reporting hides which campaigns those are.

Unit economics compares what an acquired user costs with what that user returns. Positive unit economics means a user returns more than they cost, and that is the state the portfolio was rebuilt to.

Unit economics decided each call: CAC against revenue, with ROAS and payback per campaign.

Traffic quality was checked by conversion rate per source, placement and creative, which caught weak and fraudulent traffic early. Positive unit economics is the only result published here, because the figures are under NDA.

The method rests on rules and reporting applied across the portfolio. Allocation logic decides where budget goes, thresholds decide when it grows, and testing feeds new options into both. Because the logic is rule-based, another team can read the thresholds, see why a campaign received budget and challenge the call.

If your own portfolio loses money, the useful first question is which campaigns pay back and which do not. An audit answers that, and a run engagement keeps the rules in force.