Portland Leather boosts purchases by 70,000+
Portland Leather is a leather goods brand that offers high-quality bags, wallets, and accessories at an accessible price point. Each product is handcrafted with full-grain leather from hides sustainably sourced as byproducts of the beef industry—materials that would otherwise go to waste.
Since its founding in 2015, Portland Leather has built a strong following by delivering timeless products at honest prices. The company has grown to over $100 million in annual sales and has received more than 300,000 five-star reviews.
Running ads in mobile games
Portland Leather has historically focused on social and search ads to drive new customer purchases of its leather products. Its customers tend to be women across different ages, including a core audience of women aged 35–45.
Looking for more ways to reach new customers, Portland Leather partnered with AppLovin to run ads in mobile games as one of AppLovin’s earliest ecommerce partners.
Testing a variety of video and end card styles
Portland Leather’s team set their AppLovin campaigns up for success by consistently testing new videos and end cards, with 40+ videos and 15+ end cards live at once.
Videos varied across a few main aspects:
- Hooks: The team tested hooks and formats such as “3 reasons why,” “if I could own 1 purse for the rest of my life,” and “how to style this Portland Leather bag.”
- Demographics: Videos featured women of different ages, mirroring Portland Leather’s audiences.
- Length: Videos ranged from 15 seconds to 47 seconds.
Portland Leather also tested numerous end cards across multiple styles. Some used carousels and scrollable pages to highlight multiple products, while others showcased a single product.
We’ve found that experimenting with different styles of videos and end cards—and a high volume of them—has been a big unlock in our campaigns performing so well, and we’re excited to continue to test and scale.- Vincent M., Portland Leather
Measuring performance with third party platforms
AppLovin became one of Portland Leather’s top channels for driving purchases among new customers. Using Triple Whale to measure AppLovin’s performance within its entire marketing mix, Portland Leather was able to get an unbiased picture of AppLovin’s impact.
From February 21 to May 22, 2025, AppLovin drove 65% higher ROAS than Portland Leather’s other social digital ads platforms and a New Customer CPA comparable to (1.8% better than) those platforms. In that time period, AppLovin drove over 8,000 new customer acquisitions.
To validate the distinct value AppLovin drives, the team used Triple Whale’s Moby Agent to run a correlation analysis which confirmed that AppLovin’s performance is uncorrelated with other channels, delivering clean, incremental growth by reaching net-new audiences.
Leveraging post-purchase surveys to validate impact
To understand how customers first hear about the brand, Portland Leather uses Fairing post-purchase surveys. As Portland Leather increased its investment on AppLovin’s platform by 83%, the team saw a 154% increase in customers selecting “App Games” as their answer to the survey question “How did you first hear about us?” This insight validated AppLovin’s incremental impact and strength as a discovery channel.
Since launch, AppLovin has driven more than 70,000 purchases for Portland Leather.
AppLovin has become a trusted partner and a major part of our growth strategy. It’s now one of our largest paid sources of new customers. The fact that this performance is validated across third party platforms gives us a lot of confidence in AppLovin as an incremental channel.- Matt Fey, Marketing Director, Portland Leather
Takeaways for advertisers
Test as many new videos and end cards as possible to maximize campaign scale and performance.
Videos: test a variety of styles and hooks, such as “3 reasons why” and suggestions for ways to use your product.
End cards: experiment with different formats, such as carousels featuring multiple scrollable lists of products, and static images spotlighting a single product.