Measure your App Search Ads Cost: CPT, TTR, CR and CPA

Did you know that 70% of the App Store visitors using search to discover apps ? Did you know 65% of downloads coming directly from the App Store search? And did you know Apple Search Ads has an average conversion rate of 50%? There are some apps earning 500 million visitors per week via the App Store, which is a remarkable number. Hence, it is no secret the App Store has become a powerful platform for marketers to share their apps with over 1.5 billion active users worldwide.

Optimizing your Apple Search Ads with an effective campaign strategy can Maximize Your App's Potential, making it easier for users browsing the App Store to find you. Maximize Your App's Potential: the Power of Apple Search Ads Metrics, Benefits, and Measurement Strategies.

But how do you ensure that your Apple Search Ads campaigns are really effective and that the App Store ads costs are truly manageable? There are actually several ways we could approach our goal whether it is targeting the right keywords or monitoring the bids. Analyzing data is undoubtedly the most intergral part among that. Use metrics such as costs per tap (CPT), through tap-through rate (TTR), conversion rates(CR), costs per acquisition (CPA) to understand the performance of your campaigns and make adjustments as necessary.

In this article, we choose to analyze these metrics for the most popular app categories in 2022, and will share our ideas on how to improve the performance of your ads to the best outcomes. The following data is analyzed:

• 6 billion impressions;
• 2 million taps;
• 6 million app downloads;
• 8 million keywords;
• 15 categories;
• 61 countries.

App Store Ads Cost per Tap (CPT)

Cost Per Tap (CPT) is a metric used to measure the cost of each tap. CPT is calculated by dividing the total cost of the ad campaign by the number of taps or clicks it receives, which is an important metric evaluating the effectiveness of ad campaigns.

As shown in the figure, the application of financial and educational categories ranks in the top two, and they are the highest category of CPT, with CPT of $ 3.37 and $ 2.13 respectively, followed by games and business applications. As at the end of some other applications such as navigation, travel, health, sports and others CPT is lower than the average level.

In general, if there is a high level of competition for specific keywords or ad placements but limited supply of target audience, the CPT may be high, which is due to the fact that advertisers will be bidding against each other to reach the high-value specific audience, driving up the cost of each tap.

And all auction-based platforms operate in this way, where strategy is more important than a category's physical population of available apps. In such an environment, a handful of large players with ample financial resources can make it more difficult for a larger group of smaller publishers. The finance category illustrates this mechanism quite well.

For reference, keep an eye on A Complete Guide to Mobile Attribution For Finance Apps on Apple Search Ads

Apple Search Ads Tap-through Rate (TTR)

Tap-through rate is the number of times your Apple Search Ads were tapped by customers divided by the total impressions your ad received. It allows you to understand the relevance of your paid keywords and the success of your advertising ideas. In order to establish the bearings and evaluate whether the current state of things needs urgent adjustments, app publishers are frequently inquisitive about what makes an decent tap-through rate in the App Store Search.

According to the figure, entertainment ranks first with 24.64 % TTR, followed by sports (17.17 %), graphics and design (14.37 %), food and beverage (13.34 %), business (12.63 %), tourism (12.41 %) and navigation (10.81 %).

A high TTR usually indicates that customers in that category are seeking for particular applications. They use the Search to install apps. This may be demonstrated by the entertainment category, which includes all of the most popular streaming applications, such as Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max. Aso, a major event release may result in a surge of new and returning customers looking to install or update these programs. This may be applied for the Sports category, where a significant event, such as the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, might radically move its standing.

While a low TTR indicates that discovery keywords related to the app's functionality or purpose are more important. Users may also prefer organic results over ads, or just keep scrolling for other possibilities if they are unclear where to place their faith. Do you remember the extremely high CPT in the financial and educational categories? As a result, education ranked 11 th with a low TTR of 8.52 %, while finance did not even in the list. Users searching for finance apps might not have a clear intention to download or use a specific app, and the complexity of financial products and services contributes to the low TTR by requiring more investigation and careful thought before choosing.

This is not a new trend, and it will continue in 2023, despite some users choosing organic outcomes (reducing TTRs). However, the most popular App Store keywords compiled by The Most Popular App Store Keywords in 2022 are Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok, and so forth... Others are likely to be familiar as well. This suggests that the bulk of the Tap-Through Rate in App Store Search and Ranking Refinement Suggestions are not about discovery. It's about gaining access to something specific.

Therefore, the most important lesson for TTR is to understand your users and app category. Users motivations and their behavior trajectory differ greatly that we must learn as much as we can about them in order to succeed. Seasonality is also an important factor in several areas.

For reference, we encourage you to How to Optimize TTR & CR in Acquisition & Conversion Stages of ASA Marketing to get more inspriation.