Keep Track of the App Store with SearchAds.com's Benchmarks Dashboard

The Apple Search Ads Benchmarks dashboard by SearchAds.com is now open to the community. It presents data from thousands of apps across 60 countries and 26 app categories.

Talip Sencan
August 27, 2021

The Apple Search Ads Benchmarks dashboard by SearchAds.com is now open to the community. It presents data from thousands of apps across 60 countries and 26 app categories. App marketers will be able to view the major Apple Search Ads KPIs for each category. In this way, advertisers will be able to learn the industry averages and analyze their performances accordingly. 

Our Apple Search Ads Benchmarks Dashboard Includes:

  • Tap-Through Rate (TTR)
  • Conversion Rate (CR)
  • Cost-Per Tap (CPT)
  • Cost-Per Acquisition (CPA

In the first half of 2021, apps that are linked to SearchAds.com have brought almost 1 billion impressions, 76 million taps, 46 million downloads. The vast amount of data coming from these apps provides accurate estimations about industry performance standards. 

Now It's time to talk about the significance of tracking our performance against the industry benchmarks.

Why Is It Important to Track Our Performance?

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

Have you ever heard of this philosophical thought experiment? It looks simple yet it sparked a huge debate in both philosophy and metaphysics when first asked in 1883. 

It mainly aims to question the importance of observation and perception. Don’t worry we are not going to bore you with these heavy subjects. It is just a good metaphor to our main question of why it is important to track our performance. 

Let’s rephrase the question into our subject. 

If you look at your KPIs and no data is out there to compare against, how can you be sure that you are successful?

Assume that you have an app listed under the Music category. Your current CPA might indicate that you are profitable. However, in reality, you might be paying much more per acquisition compared to your competitors. As our Benchmarks indicate, in the Music category, a CPA of $0.64 can be a valid reference point to evaluate your strategy.

In this situation, you would want to optimize your Apple Search Ads strategies, wouldn't you? 

With our dashboard, you can track your performance against the industry averages, optimize your Apple Search Ads strategies, and improve the effectiveness  of your advertising campaigns 

Now let’s take a look at the findings in our report.    

Industry Averages: Which categories become prominent?

We are going to talk about the findings for the time period between January 1, 2021, and June 30, 2021. However, you can filter the date range and also the region in our dashboard. This way, you can compare your KPIs more precisely via reaching out to the desired dates and regions. 

Now, let’s take a closer look at the data. 

As you can see above, app categories are listed with the main metrics of Apple Search Ads. When we sort them in order of highest CR to the lowest, we see that the Food & Drink category leads the way with an outstanding rate of 69%. Shopping, Utilities, Finance, and Photo & Video categories are tailgating with rates of 68%, 66%, 65%, and 64% respectively.

While the Developer Tools and Utilities categories are the top 2 in TTRs, Stickers, News, and Sports categories are placed at the very bottom. 

Now, you may be wondering why the Sports category is covered with blue for CPT and CPA. It is because they experience the highest user acquisition costs. 

Apple search Ads benchmarks

They are paying $9.75 for a tap and $18.37 for acquiring a user on average. This is 9 times more than the industry averages of CPT and CPA. Their closest followers are Books and Shopping apps however, as you can see the gap between them and Sports apps is quite big. 

As you can see, different categories of apps have different user acquisition dynamics. With our Dashboard, you will never be out of touch!

Observe, Analyze & Improve

You may look at the data above, and think that the Sports category is overpaying. However, these CPT and CPA levels are the norms for the Sports Category.

This means that as a corollary result of the fierce competition in the Sports category, apps have to pay around these averages. A high cost in a category can be a low cost for another. Once you comprehend the metrics and industry standards via utilizing our Apple Search Ads Dashboard, you can start mending your fences. 

An important part of how to optimize Apple Search Ads is managing your bids appropriately. That is why we should know the norms of our app's category and we should manage our Apple Search Ads campaigns accordingly. 

In this manner, you can utilize advanced keyword tools of SearchAds.com to bid smart. Moreover, with automation rules, you can save time and focus on things that really matter

Check out our Apple Search Ads Benchmarks dashboard and find out how you can optimize your results. Or you can schedule a demo with our experts today and start scaling your campaigns!

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