Wao

The Objective

Wao is an AI-powered Vietnamese health and lifestyle app designed to help users build sustainable habits through a balanced approach to eating and physical activity. At its core, Wao combines a rich, localised Vietnamese food database with flexible meal customisation, allowing users to accurately log meals, adjust ingredients, and reflect real-life eating habits. AI is also integrated to simplify this process by helping users track faster, personalise recommendations, and stay consistent with less effort.

Rather than promoting restrictive diets or short-term results, Wao focuses on supporting users in achieving long-term, sustainable health goals through practical and culturally relevant guidance. As competition in the digital health space intensified, Wao focused on building a more scalable and efficient user acquisition engine.

In March 2026, the Wao team set out to scale high-quality app installs while maintaining cost efficiency, expand beyond core traffic sources to reduce channel concentration risk and maintain stable downstream conversion quality during growth.

The Solution

To support its growth objectives, Wao adopted a structured, test-and-learn approach as part of its broader performance marketing strategy. Instead of relying on a single setup, the team expanded its acquisition approach by testing a mix of manual and automated campaign structures, allowing greater flexibility in optimisation and scaling.

The team hypothesised that combining different campaign types with expanded placements could unlock incremental reach while improving overall acquisition efficiency. As part of this approach, Wao tested Automatic Placement, enabling campaigns to extend beyond TikTok in-feed and into the wider Pangle network.

This allowed the team to:

• Reach new audience segments beyond existing traffic sources 

• Dynamically allocate budget across placements based on real-time performance signals 

• Improve scalability while maintaining cost efficiency

Automatic Placement was implemented as a complementary layer within Wao’s acquisition strategy, contributing to a more flexible and performance-driven media mix.

This approach unlocked two key advantages:

1. Incremental reach: Wao was able to reach new audiences beyond its core TikTok traffic by tapping into a broader network of over 380,000 mobile apps and a global user base.

2. Improved efficiency: Automated optimisation helped prioritise the most effective placements, ensuring budget was allocated where it delivered the strongest performance.

The Result

Compared to campaigns run without Automatic Placement, Wao achieved a 22% lower Cost Per Action (CPA)* and a 42% lower Cost Per Click (CPC)*. At the same time, the campaign used 15% less budget than planned, proving that broader reach does not have to come at a higher cost. Most importantly, these improvements were delivered while maintaining stable downstream conversion quality.