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JumpTrend vs Hiring a UA Agency
A user-acquisition agency is a team you hire to spend (and sometimes to think). JumpTrend is a matching layer: avatar on real phones, optional inbox and paper. This page is for a founder or a boutique shop deciding whether the next invoice should be a media retainer or a $1,500-$5,000 discovery line.
They are not substitutes. An agency that already knows how to buy ASA and Spark still needs to know who to put on camera. A feed-qualified list still needs someone to spend, or someone to decide not to.
What a UA agency is (fairly)
UA agencies (mobile-game, app, and performance shops) typically sell some mix of:
- media buying (Meta, TikTok, Apple Search Ads, sometimes networks)
- creative production or UGC coordination
- MMP / SKAN hygiene
- incrementality theater of varying honesty
- a retainer or a percent of spend
Public pricing is all over the map: monthly retainers in the low thousands and up, or a percent of ad spend, often with minimums. Look at the specific shop’s MSA. This page will not freeze a number as if the industry had a rate card.
A good UA agency is worth it when you have spend that needs an adult in Ads Manager and a creative engine that is not the founder on weekends. A bad one will run $20/day against screenshots and send you a deck of CPMs.
What JumpTrend is (fairly)
Avatar algorithm on real phones, TikTok and Instagram. Scout is $1,500. Outreach is $2,500. Dealmaker is $5,000 per month. Talent extra. No demo. You approve every creator and rate. No download guarantee. One avatar per plan.
JumpTrend does not buy media. It does not sit in your MMP. It does not promise a CPI. Boutique creator agencies are a buyer of the list (see jumptrend.co/agencies). That is not the same as JumpTrend being your UA agency.
When an agency is the right tool
Agencies optimize auctions and creative iteration once they have something to iterate. JumpTrend tries to make the creator the right person before you scale a hook. If you hire a UA shop to “do influencers” and they pull a database checkbox, you hired a media team to do a discovery philosophy they may not have.
If you already have a UA agency, the non-silly combination is: JumpTrend (or a disciplined DIY session) for in-feed names; the agency for Spark/ASA and for saying no to vanity views.
I did not build an ads agency. I built the part I kept having to do first: find the people the customer is already watching, then maybe email them.
Who should buy which
Hire a UA agency if: you have enough monthly ad spend that a retainer is a rounding error, you need SKAN/MMP adult supervision, and someone other than you should be in Ads Manager every day.
Buy JumpTrend if: the bottleneck is who belongs in the brief, you are the founder or a 3-15 person shop, and you want a public monthly price without a new-business process.
Hire both only if: the agency will use a feed-qualified shortlist instead of replacing it with their house UGC roster. Write that in the SOW.
Hire neither if: the listing cannot close or you cannot describe the avatar. Packaging and a sentence come first.
Honesty limits
Plenty of UA agencies are good at paid social and bad at creator matching. Plenty of creator shops are good at decks and bad at install measurement. JumpTrend is not “a UA agency but cheaper.” Cheaper software that does not spend your dollars is not a media retainer.
We will not invent a “cut your agency bill by X%” line. We will not libel a shop we have not worked with.
Measurement hygiene if someone else is reporting: Measuring creator UA without vanity views. Product entity: JumpTrend.