Inside the demand-gen strategy that delivered guaranteed installs, real revenue, and new confidence in CTV.
Results at a glance:
● 16,000+ installs
● 76% Day 7 ROAS
● 5 figures in attributable revenue from Samsung-acquired users within a seven day period
● Guaranteed CPI delivery with target rate achieved
Introduction
When Crumbl set out to grow its app audience in Q4, the team wasn’t just looking for additional installs. The dessert company, with nearly 1,200 stores nationwide, was seeking higher-intent installs. Social and search had delivered significant volume, but the growth curve was starting to level off and Crumbl looked elsewhere for reach.
“The premium appeal of the TV screen was huge for them,” said Mark Costa, Platforms Solutions Manager at Samsung Ads. “You can work with social platforms, but it’s not the same as owning a CTV environment on a big screen.”
That curiosity brought Crumbl to Samsung Ads for the first time. What started as an experiment quickly became one of the brand’s most efficient, highest-performing acquisition initiatives of the year.
The problem: social saturation and the need for incremental users
By mid-2025, social and search had taken Crumbl far, but the growth curve was starting to level off. The team needed new users who weren’t just downloads on paper, but customers likely to engage and convert. They were looking beyond awareness to guaranteed, trackable installs.
“We view Samsung as a premium brand that aligns with our own standards, which is why we chose to engage with them to expand our marketing efforts,” said Giana Flores, paid media specialist for Crumbl. “We were looking for a way to bring our visually driven product into the living room to reach households and families together.”
Crumbl wanted a partner who could safely expand the brand into the new channel. “A key question we had to answer was whether CTV could actually drive additional installs and meaningful revenue, not just awareness,” said Costa. “We felt confident we could.”
The solution: ML-driven CTV-to-mobile performance
In early October, Crumbl launched a seven-week campaign with a clear goal of guaranteed number installs at a fixed CPI. What set this campaign apart was Samsung’s CTV-to-Mobile solution, powered by proprietary machine learning and realtime cross-device signals. This technology identifies patterns in devices that install the app and uses those insights to find similar, high-intent users across the Samsung ecosystem.
“What’s exciting for advertisers is that this approach finds the people most likely to make purchases,” said Costa. “That’s how we built an audience to engage with Crumbl.”
The machine-learning system dynamically optimized campaign delivery across multiple high-impact placements, including Immersive Masthead units, Samsung TV Plus, and native first-screen environments. Samsung’s auto-optimizer continuously shifted spend to whichever placement drove the most installs. That meant Crumbl wasn’t tied to a static media plan; performance dictated delivery.
“Samsung’s approach was radically different from what we've experienced in other platforms and with other vendors,” said Flores. “The integration we made with AppsFlyer gave us extreme confidence in the results we drove. Having the integration gave us a backbone to go to leadership and vouch for the success of the campaign.”
In the end, Samsung delivered something social and search couldn’t. “Running on Samsung's Home UI placements felt very professional and gave our brand a premium feel,” said Nicole Mackelprang, Direct of Paid Media at Crumbl. “We liked the fact that you simply can’t miss it. On social media, people are used to scrolling past ads quickly, but on the Samsung Home UI, we are the first thing they see when they turn on the TV. It captures attention in a way mobile can't.”
The business payoff: high-intent users plus strong early revenue
When all the results were tallied in late November, the campaign produced exactly what Crumbl wanted and more.
Samsung delivered over 16,000 installs during the flight, exceeding Crumbl’s primary goal. Those installs immediately translated into measurable business impact. Within seven days, new users had already placed orders through the app, generating over five figures in attributable revenue. This direct connection between campaign exposure and revenue demonstrated not just audience reach, but also engagement and quality. “Compared to others in this space, Crumbl’s dayseven revenue was very high,” said Costa.
“The Samsung team exceeded our expectations,” said Mackelprang. “In the end, we achieved results that were surprisingly competitive with our social platforms.”
The success validated CTV as a repeatable acquisition channel and opened the door for bigger cultural moments, holidays, and tentpole seasons.
Lessons learned and what’s next
The campaign highlighted one of Samsung’s core advantages of pairing machine learning with human strategic guidance. Because it overperformed so strongly, Samsung now plans to benchmark Crumbl’s revenue against peers, discuss mid-flight scaling opportunities earlier, and treat revenue signals as an optimization lever (not just a post-campaign surprise).
“The ease of working with this team stands out,” said Mackelprang. “I have more confidence in the platform itself and the results it can drive for conversion. I originally saw this platform as an awareness play, but now my perspective has changed.”