Early App Store Search Ads adopters seeing $0.40 CPA and 49.4 percent conversion

App Store search ads study Mobile Action teaser 001

Announced in June of this year, first ads started cropping up in search results on the App Store beginning October 5. Aside from a few launch hiccups, App Store search advertisements seem to be performing pretty well in their early days.

A new study by mobile data intelligence firm Mobile Action—based on a random and anonymous sampling of 77 Search Ads campaigns—has determined that the average Conversion Rate (CR) is 49.4 percent while Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) sits around $0.40.

Search Ads, the survey concludes, is “the biggest opportunity in app marketing right now.”

You may be wondering about the average price of a Search Ads campaign.

Glad you asked: the campaigns in this study spent an average of $56.57 and that’s an average total for the whole campaign, mind you.

“This means that you don’t need a huge budget or do a ton of optimization to start to see results,“ commented the firm.

If you’re a web publisher, you don’t need me to realize that this is a fraction of the price advertisers pay for Google or Facebook campaigns, which typically require spending of a few thousand dollars to get their campaign noticed.

Here’s a closer look at the other metrics:

  • Average Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): $0.40
    • Minimum: $0.07
    • Maximum: $2.15
  • Average Cost Per Tap (CPT): $0.20
    • Minimum: $0.04
    • Maximum: $1.25
  • Average Conversion Rate (CR): 49.4%
    • Minimum: 0% (1 campaign)
    • Maximum: 71.9%
  • Average Tap Through Rate (TTR): 13.5%
    • Minimum: 2.4%
    • Maximum: 26.5%

“Although our initial study is relatively small, the results were pretty amazing across the board,” wrote Mobile Action. “So we believe that it is worth trying Search Ads, even with a small budget.”

They also proposed two ideas for how the Search Ads conversion rates might be improved in the future. The first involves adding the ability to swipe through all of the app’s screenshots in an ad without leaving the search results page.

The other feature would display the average rating right in the ad, which Mobile Action contends could be a great way to improve conversion.

Of course, not all advertisers will see these impressive conversion rates, especially as more developers start using Search Ads, but it certainly pays to be an early adopter.

My advice to developers: take Apple’s $100 credit and do a small spend that won’t require you to go through the entire approval process, then see how things go.

Source: Mobile Action via iGen.fr (Google Translate)