The setting
is a digital education company for consumers. Its gives short, game-like lessons on phones and the web, and most learners use it for free, supported by ads.
The next creative test must move quickly without mistaking cheap installs for durable learners.
Meta and TikTok offer faster campaign signals, while early retention protects the quality of acquired learners.
Who you’d be doing this for
“I installed after the ad, did one lesson on the train, and then it just disappeared from my day.”
Thiago Souza · Self-directed language learner · a character in this brief
A mobile-first learner who installs after seeing a paid campaign and decides within days whether daily practice fits their routine.
What is at stake
Agency partners need a next creative brief, yet Meta and TikTok point to different learner quality signals. You have to decide what the system recommends and what strategists must verify before acting.
Why it isn’t already fixed
Every obvious fix costs something else. That’s the part you’d have to decide.
- agency pacing vs. creative test depth
- cheap installs vs. returning learners
- platform signals vs. trusted retention reads
- campaign-level reads vs. learner-level quality
Why Duolingo
Duolingo Language Learning App depends on paid acquisition that brings learners back for daily practice, not merely installs.
Written with these in mind
Not your kind of problem? 23 more at Duolingo, or browse every organization.
Where the organization context comes fromThe postings this brief was written from, and the reporting read before it.
The organization context comes from public information. The situation and characters are written for the brief.
Job postings it was written from
Public descriptions of the work at Duolingo. They are listed as sources, not as openings. The lines under a posting are its own words, where it meets this brief.
- Performance Marketing Lead (opens in a new tab)
- Partner with Product and Engineering on measurement infrastructure, onboarding for paid users, and tests that connect acquisition to retention.
- Own Duolingo’s paid user growth goals, setting the strategy for acquiring new users who stay and learn.
- Head of Influencers & Community (opens in a new tab)
- Duolingo’s brand is one of the most beloved and talked-about in consumer tech — and we’re looking for a senior leader to turn that cultural relevance into a measurable growth engine.
- Design and launch a tiered loyalty and rewards program that turns our most engaged learners into an owned growth channel
- Senior Performance Marketing Manager · no longer posted
- Strategically run and optimize mobile install campaigns across major platforms, such as Google UAC, Meta.
- Own day-to-day execution of global performance marketing campaigns, including setting the creative strategy, with a primary focus on mobile user acquisition and growth.
- Senior Director of Performance Marketing (opens in a new tab)
- We’re looking for a Senior Director of Performance Marketing to lead the team that drives Duolingo’s paid user acquisition across 100+ markets and our language, chess, and math products.
- Own the global paid acquisition budget and portfolio across Google, Apple Search Ads, Meta, TikTok, AppLovin, DSPs, and China platforms, deciding where to scale, hold, or pull back as efficiency changes
- Senior Marketing Analytics Manager (opens in a new tab)
- Create data-driven insights about the impact of our global performance marketing campaigns
- Mold data from multiple sources to answer key strategic marketing questions
This is the setup. The work is inside.
Running it puts you in the room: the full situation and its constraints, stakeholders who push back in their own words, and the decisions that are yours to make. What you produce becomes a Day One Plan — work you can show someone instead of describing.
Where similar work appears
Other live briefs connected to this one, and what connects them.
Similar problems at other organizations
Like this one, each of these is about people starting something and never quite finishing it.
Weekly mobile reviews are producing competing test ideas, leaving some experiments waiting while spend stays unchanged.
You have to decide where the recommendation stops and the strategist takes over the choice of the next test when Apple Search Ads and Adjust disagree about a campaign.
Strong signup campaigns are producing uneven funded and payment-active accounts.
You must decide whether the system or the strategists judge if a Segment identity join is sound enough for a next-test recommendation to appear.
SRE leaders are registering for events but taking follow-up meetings at uneven rates.
You must decide whether AI recommends the next test from linked evidence or leaves competing interpretations for strategist review.
The same setting, from another role
Each is set around Duolingo’s Duolingo Language Learning App, written for a different role. They’re separate briefs, not the same scenario.
iOS learners are being returned to a completed exercise while their streak still advances.
You must decide how far the AI carries the trace from the release's Swift changes to a named cause, and at which point an iOS engineer takes it over.
Learners preparing for specific conversations are seeking practice outside their usual short lesson routine.
You must weigh personal relevance against a flow that remains simple enough to become a repeat habit.
Support contacts rose 34% in the limited rollout, and affected learners may lose their daily practice window.
You must weigh a fixed access boundary against an explanation and recovery path people can trust.
Other problems with a similar purpose
In each of these, as in this one, the aim is to turn fragmented, conflicting operational signals into one clear, actionable call.
Checking customers retry account actions when the mobile app and backend services tell an incomplete story.
You decide where the AI's trace of an incident stops and where the on-call engineer's confirmation of the cause begins.
Conflicting updates are letting carrier-integration risks reach readiness reviews too late.
You must decide which dependency changes the workflow sends straight to a Program Manager as uncertain and which it records as flags for the readiness record.
Regional production can stop while aggregate workspace activity still looks healthy.
You must decide where the ranking stops and the CSM starts: which signals set an account's place in the order, and which the CSM reads for themselves before choosing what to say.
