When classic push wears out

Fatigue, measured, not guessed. The classic-push subscriber pools this offer bought had seen VPN creatives for years. Our best creative opened at 0.31% CTR and slid to 0.11% in nineteen days, and each refresh bought less time than the one before. Deniz's fatigue model flagged the decay slope in week two: the problem was the channel's audience, not the ads.

In-page push renders as an ad unit on the page instead of going to a subscriber list, so there is no exhausted pool, and it reaches iOS users classic push never could. Same networks, same tracker, new audience. We shifted budget in steps of 20% while the classic whitelists kept running, and by week five in-page carried 70% of daily spend on merit.

Install cost went from $1.40 on classic to $0.86 blended, and week-eight ROAS closed at 2.9 against the 1.1 we inherited. CTR on in-page held between 0.24% and 0.29% for the whole period because rotation was scheduled, not reactive: a fresh ten-creative refresh pack every three weeks, retired at a written 0.15% floor.

It helped, honestly. Chrome 144's rate limits punish low-engagement blasting, which thinned exactly the inventory that was dragging classic push down. Senders that survive the engagement scoring keep cleaner lists, and our creatives are written for that world: the Chrome 2026 checklist is the standard we brief against.

Split-test the format, not just the creative. Classic and in-page price differently, fatigue differently, and reach different devices; the media-buying page explains how we run both. If your install cost has crept up 40% on flat bids, you probably have a fatigue chart that looks exactly like this one did.