Turning a Viral TV Show into a Retention Machine on Mobile
MTV Ghosted is the interactive mobile adaptation of Ghosted: Love Gone Missing, built on the Unrd storytelling platform for iOS and Android. Converting broadcast TV viewers into retained mobile users between episodic content drops required a full growth stack from paid acquisition through lifecycle automation. We run campaigns, creative production, funnel optimisation, and retention loops across the entire user journey.
When MTV Turned a Hit Reality Show into an Interactive Phone Experience
MTV Ghosted is the mobile adaptation of MTV's Ghosted: Love Gone Missing, the reality series hosted by Rachel Lindsay and Travis Mills that follows people trying to reconnect with someone who vanished from their lives. In November 2020, MTV partnered with Unrd, a UK-based mobile storytelling platform, to transform the broadcast format into an interactive phone experience where users swipe through text conversations, voicemails, social media profiles, and photo evidence to piece together why someone disappeared. It was Unrd's first adaptation of established television IP into a tap-driven mobile format.
The interactive storytelling category on mobile is dominated by Episode from Pocket Gems, Choices from Pixelberry Studios, and Chapters from Crazy Maple Studio, all built around original fiction with romance and drama hooks. Ghosted occupies a distinct niche, grounding interactive mechanics in real relationship scenarios that mirror the true-story appeal of the TV show. The brief was to build a full growth operation: paid acquisition, landing pages, lifecycle automation, creative production, app store optimisation, and retention loops that keep users returning between episode drops.
Paid Acquisition Surges Timed to Episodic Content Drops
We run Ghosted's paid acquisition across Meta, TikTok, and Snapchat, three platforms where the 18-34 demographic that watches MTV reality programming concentrates. Campaign structure follows the episodic content calendar, with spend surges timed to new episode drops when organic social conversation peaks and paid amplification converts at lower CPI. On Meta, we use Advantage+ App Campaigns with SKAN value optimisation trained on episode completion events rather than installs. TikTok runs App Event Optimisation bidding against the first match opt-in event. Budget rebalances weekly based on trailing cost per retained D7 user.
Intercepted Messages and Voicemail Hooks Tested Every 48 Hours
Every ad mirrors the in-app experience: text message threads, voicemail waveforms, social media screenshots, and evidence photos presented in 9:16 vertical format. We test across four hook categories: intercepted message reveals, suspect profile reveals, voicemail cliffhangers, and match outcome teasers. New variants ship every 48 hours with hooks tested independently from end cards. TikTok Spark Ads repurpose organic fan theory clips, delivering higher engagement than produced assets. App store screenshots and preview videos refresh with each episode drop, featuring updated character art and storyline teasers that lift organic conversion rates on both iOS and Google Play.
Three Retention Cohorts Built Around How Users Consume Episodes
Our lifecycle system segments users into three cohorts: active episodic players who complete drops within 48 hours, binge completers who exhaust available content, and lapsed users inactive beyond 7 days. Each cohort receives distinct push notification cadences and email sequences. Active players get cliffhanger-timed nudges referencing the specific plot point where they paused. Completers receive early access teasers and behind-the-scenes content from Rachel Lindsay and Travis Mills. Lapsed users see social proof messages showing how many players solved the latest case. The 41% push CTR validates that story-specific copy outperforms generic recall messaging by roughly 5x.
Push Sequences Timed to Story Cliffhangers That Pull Users Back
The defining retention challenge for an episodic mobile app is the gap between content drops. Users finish an episode and have no reason to return until the next one publishes. Most entertainment apps treat push notifications as blunt recall tools, achieving 5-8% CTR. We designed a trigger-based lifecycle system that treats every narrative cliffhanger as a re-engagement event.
Each Ghosted episode ends on an unresolved moment: a voicemail unanswered, evidence contradicting a suspect, a match reveal pending. Our push sequences reference these specific plot points within 4 hours of session end, using copy that names the scenario each user last encountered. A user who stopped after finding contradictory texts receives a push referencing the call log, not a generic reminder. This specificity drives the 41% re-engage CTR, roughly 5x the category benchmark. We segment into three lifecycle cohorts: active players completing drops within 48 hours, binge completers who exhaust available content, and lapsed users inactive beyond 7 days. Active players get cliffhanger-timed nudges. Completers receive early access teasers. Lapsed users see social proof showing how many players solved the latest case.
Story Fragment Ads Acquired Users Who Already Understood the Mechanic
The engagement has delivered a 28% lift in match opt-in rate, a 41% increase in push re-engage CTR, and a 23% improvement in D7 retention. These results stem from treating Ghosted as a narrative product where every growth lever must reference the story the user is living rather than the app they downloaded.
We innovated by building paid acquisition creative that mirrors the in-app experience. Ads show fragments of text conversations and voicemail transcripts in 9:16 format native to Instagram Reels and TikTok, making ads feel like opening scenes rather than promotional trailers. Users who install through story-fragment creatives show 1.6x higher D1 completion rates because they arrive understanding the mechanic. The forward opportunity sits in three converging shifts. Interactive TV-to-mobile adaptations are accelerating as platforms like Netflix with Bandersnatch and Peacock invest in companion app experiences. Apple's Live Activities API enables lock-screen story updates serving as ambient re-engagement without push notifications. And AI-powered procedural narrative generation will extend episodic content beyond manual writing capacity, reducing the content gap that limits retention between drops.
