Short answer: for most apps Meta comes first. Games add Google App campaigns on Android from the start, alongside Meta on iOS. Subscription apps pair Meta with Apple Ads (formerly Apple Search Ads), and add Google on iOS from about $50K a month with a $5K to $10K test. Don’t split the budget by percentage: fund each campaign for the conversions a day it needs, scale what holds its cost per conversion, and judge both channels from one source of truth. Make creative from shared concepts, built separately for each platform.
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Which comes first, Google or Meta?
It depends on what you are.
- Mobile games: Meta on iOS and Google App campaigns on Android are the starting pair. From about $500 a day, AppLovin can be your first channel. How to pick ad channels for a mobile game covers the order.
- Subscription apps: Meta, plus Apple Ads for people already searching for what you do. Google on iOS comes later, from about $50K a month in total spend, with a $5K to $10K test judged on the trend over weeks 1 to 3. How to pick ad channels for a subscription app has the full ladder.
Treat these as guides, not hard lines. Channels often run together, and the question at each step is whether the next one can be fed properly without starving the first.
How should you split budget between Google and Meta?
Not by a fixed percentage. Estimate each campaign’s monthly budget from conversions: your cost per conversion, times the conversions a day the campaign needs, times 30. A campaign should get enough conversions a day to find more of the right people and for you to judge your ads: ideally 30 a day, and 10 is good. On a small budget, 1 or 2 a day is fine.
On Google, its own App campaign setup guide recommends a daily budget of at least 50 times your target cost per install for install campaigns, and at least 10 times your target cost per action for in-app action campaigns, with an action that at least 10 different users complete each day.
Once a campaign works, scale it: about 20% a day if you want to move steadily, or 50% to 100% a week if you want to move fast. The channel that holds its cost per conversion as spend rises earns more budget. Over time the split falls out of that, rather than being set in advance. More on this in how to split your user acquisition budget across channels.
Can the same creative run on both?
The same ideas and compliant image or video files can work on both. Google also needs standalone assets to assemble its combinations. The two platforms build ads differently:
- Meta can run your finished image or video ads, with platform creative enhancements where enabled. Give each ad set several of them, typically at least about 8, across angles, hooks and formats.
- Google App campaigns build ads themselves from separate assets: up to 5 headlines and 5 descriptions, plus images in 1.91:1, 1:1 and 4:5, and YouTube-hosted videos in landscape, portrait and square, per Google’s App campaign specs. Each asset has to make sense on its own, because Google combines them.
So develop a creative direction once, then produce it for each platform. A compliant Meta video can be reused on Google through YouTube. Add other orientations, standalone headlines and still images to cover more of Google’s available formats. Creative assets for Google App campaigns lists every spec.
How often should you refresh creative?
There is no fixed cadence that holds across accounts. Refresh when your winners tire, which shows up as cost per conversion rising on ads that used to carry the account, and keep a steady flow of new creative directions coming so you are not waiting for that to happen. On Meta, the signal to watch is how concentrated spend is on a few ads: see how to measure creative diversity in Meta. On Google, the asset report ranks each asset Low, Good or Best against others of the same type in the campaign, using percentile rankings based on average daily cost over the last 14 days, not a direct profitability ranking; Google’s advice is to replace “Low” assets once you are at the maximum, and to do it gradually.
How often to refresh a winning ad goes deeper on what to make first.
How do you avoid counting the same installs twice?
Each platform reports the conversions it believes it drove, and both will claim some of the same people. Use a consistently configured measurement source, normally your MMP, for cross-channel comparisons. For device-level attribution, it can assign an install to one source; privacy-preserving and modelled reports require their own reconciliation. Do not add platform totals or separate MMP attribution views without checking overlap. On iOS, attribution includes consented methods alongside SKAdNetwork and AdAttributionKit, which changes what you can see and when; how to fix mobile attribution on iOS covers the setup.
To learn what a channel adds on top of the other, run a holdout: switch one channel off in a comparable set of regions for a few weeks and compare total installs and revenue against regions where both run. Attribution assigns credit; a well-designed holdout estimates incremental impact. Keep the groups comparable and account for noise and changes unrelated to the ads.
Frequently asked questions
What budget split between Google and Meta works for a new app? None in advance. Fund each campaign for the conversions a day it needs (ideally 30, 10 is good, 1 or 2 on a small budget), then move money toward whichever channel holds its cost per conversion as you scale.
Should a mobile game start on Google or Meta? Both: Meta on iOS and Google App campaigns on Android. From about $500 a day, AppLovin can also be a first channel.
When should a subscription app add Google? Google on iOS usually comes after Meta and Apple Ads, from about $50K a month in total spend, with a $5K to $10K test judged over the first three weeks.
How often should you refresh creative in user acquisition campaigns? When winners tire, which shows as rising cost per conversion on your top ads, rather than on a fixed calendar. Keep new creative directions coming continuously so there is always something ready to replace them.
