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 cheapest install promise is pulling against the learner habit it is meant to start.
Google Universal App Campaigns rewards a low-cost creative while day-seven retention favors a different expectation for daily practice.
Who you’d be doing this for
“I downloaded it for the speaking bit, then the first lesson felt like something else entirely.”
Dagny Forsberg · Commuter learning Spanish · a character in this brief
A self-directed learner who installed after seeing a paid mobile ad promising quick speaking practice.
What is at stake
One low-cost Google Universal App Campaigns creative is attracting learners who leave before day two. You have to weigh cheaper installs against the retention signal that proves the ad is finding future learners.
Why it isn’t already fixed
Every obvious fix costs something else. That’s the part you’d have to decide.
- cheap installs vs returning learners
- creative speed vs clean learning
- weekly pacing vs cohort quality
- platform efficiency vs promise-to-product fit
Why Duolingo
Short daily lessons only compound when paid learners return after the first session.
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)
- You’ll help lead the strategy and team that bring new learners to Duolingo across 100+ markets and multiple products, including language, chess, and math.
- Run user acquisition across platforms such as Google UAC, Meta, TikTok, AppLovin, and programmatic partners, plus channels in China.
- Head of Influencers & Community (opens in a new tab)
- As Head of Community & Influencers, you’ll build and own the function responsible for UGC reach, word-of-mouth acquisition, and creator-driven growth across all Duolingo verticals.
- 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)
- 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
- Build creative production that scales, combining agency, UGC, creator, and in house work with testing infrastructure that finds winners fast
- Senior Marketing Analytics Manager (opens in a new tab)
- Create data-driven insights about the impact of our global performance marketing campaigns
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 turns on committing to a deal before it checks out.
TikTok first-week subscription conversion is 4.1%, versus 5.5% required to hold the channel’s economics.
You have to weigh a faster message change against preserving an honest first-session expectation.
A creator-led ad campaign for paid subscriptions must deliver 1,200 paid subscription starts within 60 days.
You have to weigh creator trust, channel reporting, and a budget choice that cannot be quietly reversed.
Subscription starts from the affected paid cohort sit at 3.8% despite strong video attention.
You have to weigh a tighter message against the learning volume a broader audience provides.
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.