Karthik Vaidyanathan — Senior Performance Marketing Manager
Chennai, Tamil Nadu
Performance marketer with nine years buying media for consumer fintech and D2C brands, now running a ₹22 crore annual budget and a team of six. Cut blended acquisition cost from ₹740 to ₹410 while monthly installs grew 2.4 times.
Experience
Senior Performance Marketing Manager, Arthway Finance · November 2021 – present
Owns paid acquisition for a consumer lending app with 6.1 million registered users. Team of six.
- Runs a ₹22 crore annual media budget across search, social and three demand-side platforms; blended acquisition cost fell from ₹740 to ₹410 while monthly installs grew 2.4 times.
- Replaced last-click reporting with a geo holdout programme; the first four tests showed brand search was 62% incremental rather than 98%, freeing ₹3.1 crore for prospecting.
- Built a creative pipeline that ships 40 new variants a month, which took cost per funded account on paid social down 34% in two quarters.
- Cut fraudulent installs from 11% to 1.4% by moving to deferred deep-link attribution and blocking 130 sub-publishers.
- Hired and now mentors six marketers across app, paid social and affiliates; three were promoted within two years.
Performance Marketing Lead, Kaarigar Living · April 2019 – October 2021
- Scaled paid spend from ₹18 lakh to ₹1.4 crore a month at a steady 3.8 return on ad spend, as the brand opened in eight new cities.
- Launched a WhatsApp retargeting programme that recovered 12% of abandoned carts at a third of the cost of the paid social it replaced.
- Rebuilt the product feed, taking disapproved items from 31% to under 2% and adding ₹60 lakh of monthly shopping revenue.
Digital Marketing Executive, Vriksha Organics · July 2016 – March 2019
- Lifted return on ad spend from 2.1 to 4.4 on a ₹9 lakh monthly search budget by rebuilding the account around single-theme ad groups.
- Set up server-side conversion tracking that ended a six-month disagreement between platform-reported orders and the finance team’s count.
Education
- B.E. Electronics and Communication Engineering · College of Engineering, Guindy, Anna University · August 2012 – May 2016
Skills
- Buying: Google Ads, Meta Ads, Apple Search Ads, Programmatic, App campaigns, Affiliate networks
- Measurement: Geo holdout tests, Incrementality, Media mix modelling, Mobile attribution, Server-side tracking
- Analysis: SQL, Cohort LTV, Looker Studio, BigQuery, Unit economics
- Creative: Concept testing, Hook libraries, Static and video variants, Landing page testing
Certifications
- Google Ads Search Certification — Google Skillshop
- Meta Certified Media Buying Professional — Meta
