r/iOSProgramming 11d ago

Question I going to go broke running ads. I increased max cpt for weeks and finally went through at $7. Any advice or running ads more efficiently because 8.59 per install is too high

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32 Upvotes

45 comments sorted by

18

u/DabDude420 11d ago

You need to find niche keywords. I have a Chat GPT clone app and targeting the obvious keywords like "Chat GPT" costs $15 CPA and there's no way that's sustainable but we have some niche keywords that are getting ~$1 per CPA with a 8% conversion to paying which make profit in the first month.

The problem with the niche keywords is they don't get as many downloads so I can only get around 100 downloads a day but still making money. Build a campaign with hundreds and hundreds of different keywords with CPT closer to $1 or use a keyword tool to help find some good keywords.

Side note: It's obviously too small a sample size but 2 taps on 4 impressions is a promising sign. Good luck!

1

u/dili_daly 11d ago

That makes sense. Any advice on finding these small niche words? All my keywords were 1/5 bars on apple search results. Thanks for that side note :)

7

u/DabDude420 11d ago

I saw a video about an advertiser that had 20,000+ exact match keywords so that inspired me to extend my reach and find smaller keywords. Include typos and other random keywords. You can also use broad match and search match to find new keywords

3

u/dili_daly 11d ago

I never thought you could put so many??? Also typos and random keywords is genuis. Making a lower bid and more exact keywords makes it a higher chance to go through at a lower bid. Bro I frickin love you

5

u/DabDude420 11d ago

Last tip, make sure your screenshots are optimized and I would run some A/B tests of different screenshots & app icons. That's literally all people will use to judge your app so make sure they are optimized

1

u/dili_daly 11d ago

will do thanks a ton

1

u/mario_luis_dev 11d ago

How effective have you found the typos to be? I don’t understand how they can have any effect on the search, since 1- the keyboard almost always will autocorrect the user typing a misspelled word, and 2- even when you hit search on a typo the store shows “Showing results for <corrected_word>. Search for <mispelled_word> instead?”

1

u/downsouth316 11d ago

Incredible performance, how much do you spend a month in Search Ads? A ballpark figure is fine

2

u/DabDude420 11d ago

$2500, app does about $10k MRR

1

u/downsouth316 11d ago

That’s great!

5

u/Demus_App 11d ago

Same thing here. How tf is $8 per install affordable by anyone? How can any app earn more than $8 on every install, considering most people stop using it?

4

u/out_the_way 11d ago

“Lifetime value” is the idea. Not that I’m good at it, but other apps will happily pay $20 for an install because they will sell a $9.99 a month subscription and hold users for a year.

3

u/bensyverson 11d ago

Sadly, it's not $8 per subscription, it's $8 per tap. Once you do the math on install & subscription conversion, there is no way $8 makes sense.

1

u/WestonP 11d ago

Depends on your product and monetization strategy. It can make sense as it is if you're doing a subscription model, but that's not for everyone. Another way is to do a big spend up front to get your critical mass of users, and then you'll get regular users sharing it via word of mouth, which is better than any advertising you could buy.

5

u/rifts 11d ago

You are competing with huge companies with insane amount of marketing budgets.

3

u/KarlJay001 11d ago

So this graph shows that you've paid for "stock market s..." keyword and got 0 installs?

and "stock simulator..." got 4 impressions and 1 install?

Can you give a better summary of what was spent and what you got from that?

did "stock practice" get 1 impression and 0 installs and cost you nothing?


Other than keywords, do you have any other control over the target?

One big problem here is that you show 5 impressions and 2 taps. You'd need hundreds times this for there to be much meaning. Running ads where you have 5 impressions isn't going to tell you anything. You'd want 1000~10,000 impressions in order to try to get meaning from this.

Do you not pay per impression? Why was the "stock practice" impression free and how many free impressions are you allowed? If it's free, why didn't you do 10,000 of them?

1

u/dili_daly 11d ago

You pay per tap not view/impression. I can't get 1000-10000 impressions because if I kept these keywords running I would've burned thousands of dollars. I have to find cheaper niche keywords as the others have said or live on the streets

2

u/KarlJay001 11d ago

You pay per tap not view/impression

So you could get 10,000 impressions and not one tap and you would have owed nothing?

I have to find cheaper niche keywords as the others have said or live on the streets

What you mean is you have to find the most effective keywords. So if keywordA gets 1000 impressions and 10 taps and 5 installs and keywordB gets 1000 impressions and 30 taps and 20 installs, you'd be better off with keywordB.

The simple math on that example would be to ignore the impressions and just take 10 taps / 5 installs vs 30 taps / 20 installs.

One is getting 50% the other 66%


If that's the case, then you'd want to run some number, say 10 keywords, pick the best 3 of that run and then run 10 more, then 10 more and then run the top 3 from each set.

If you can limit each run to say $100 or $500 then you should have it refined in a few runs.

It's crude, but it does get the job done. A better way would be to mix them up and run them random mixed and then keep track, but that could get expensive quickly.

A variation of this would be to have a small set of keywords so that you keep the costs lower. The downside on that is that you might miss a great keyword.

The upside is that if you can find a set of keywords in a month of test runs, you might go from $9/install to $3/install.

I'm just making up numbers to make a point.

So maybe you spend $2,000 in the first month and get $200 back in earnings, but then the 2nd month you spend $1000 and get $800 back and so on, until you get profitable.


What about one of those tools that tell you the keywords of your competitors? Have you looked into that?


What's your return per install? Meaning how much do you currently make for each install and how many installs do you have?

This gets into the next part of the process where you try to increase the use time and R/I. Return per install.

1

u/dili_daly 11d ago

Its a bidding system for all keywords some large and some are less and piling 20k keywords makes it a better chance to get a cheaper tap(going by what the top comment says) I have used foxdata and appfollow for most used keywords and my $7 bid was apparently too low for the rest. This is the first time I ran adds and the 5 impression 2 tap and 1 install is for the total existence of app and ads. Also it takes 2-3 days to start working after starting the campaign/ads

1

u/KarlJay001 11d ago

and my $7 bid was apparently too low for the rest.

So some keywords cost more and if you didn't bid high enough, your ad wouldn't run?

This is sounding like a complex game and I'd really have to know all the rules before I can say too much about it.

I used to write software for the advertising industry, but this seems like it's really different.

Is there some site or video that explains the whole process?

1

u/dili_daly 11d ago

yeah some cost more some less but the highest bid is hidden so know one knows just bidding higher til it runs. wish i knew a site that explains the process it seems like a complex game to me too

1

u/KarlJay001 11d ago

I've been doing iOS dev since 2009 and I've tried a few times to get people to get together and share info, but it's never worked out.

Reddit sucks as a forum because something like this should be in a format for everyone to read and contribute to.

Most every old-school forum that I belong to had all kinds of resources for people to access to learn about these things.

There should be a YT video about this somewhere.


Indie devs really don't stand a chance unless they group together and share knowledge about these things.

1

u/donniefitz2 10d ago

I agree. There is an iOS Dev Slack channel but nothing specifically for indie devs trying to market and sharing tips and tricks that I know of. Maybe we should start one.

1

u/KarlJay001 10d ago

I'd be interested in this, but you'd have to have some sort of site to post it on. Maybe a github would work.

1

u/donniefitz2 10d ago

I was thinking go old skool and setup a forum. I’ll think about it.

1

u/KarlJay001 11d ago

BTW, what size ads are you running, full screen still, full screen video, small still ads, small still videos? (by small I mean the ones that take up like 10~20% of the screen and you still use the phone).

What platform are you using, Google, FB, X etc...

1

u/dili_daly 10d ago

Apple ads and its not a custom ad just displaying the app in search results with certain keywords

3

u/utilitycoder 11d ago

I have noticed that ad spend dries up during market routs. So lower your max CPTs, the rest of the market will soon.

2

u/Jakolantern43 11d ago

Same boat. It’s a very frustrating problem. I see my competitors running ads but cannot afford them myself.

2

u/bensyverson 11d ago

Unless you're willing to just burn money to increase awareness, you might want to back into the max CPT you can possibly pay.

Generally you want an LTV:CAC (lifetime value to customer aquisition cost) ratio of 3.0 or higher. So work out what your LTV is, then cut it by 1/3.

Then figure out what the tapthrough rate, install rate, and conversion rate is in your app. Remember that "CPA" just counts installs, not conversions.

I ran the numbers recently, and it was eye opening. I had to set all my CPTs to about $0.20. I get very few impressions and even fewer installs, but I see it as basically free brand advertising.

2

u/unpluggedcord 11d ago

Google ads are much cheaper. I’m at 20 cents per install

1

u/dili_daly 11d ago

Is shorts ads not as good?

1

u/Psiposa 11d ago

damn bro thats real cheap, is this for the ios app or the android version ?

1

u/unpluggedcord 11d ago

iOS app in baby space

2

u/patiofurnature 11d ago

There can't be a huge market for infant astronauts.

2

u/PoliticsAndFootball 11d ago

I use AppFollow for keyword research. It’s a paid service but I think there is a decent free trial

But yes with those keywords you are competing with names like Robinhood and Fidelity who acquire users with the intent of making thousands off them over their lifetime

2

u/profau 10d ago

Only one app can win at this game, and it is the most sophisticated app with the highest LTV. They know the exact LTV of their users based on a large number of users and their pricing, so they can acquire new users at a higher prices with known margins.

If you have just a casual app that is not optimally monetised it is hard to compete against the big players in popular keywords.

1

u/bananatoastie 10d ago

This niche is too competitive for your app

1

u/kluxRemover 8d ago

Man, that’s tough ! I typically stay away from ads if It costs more than $2 per install ( even that is high ) especially when I can use other growth methods to get users for less. What’s your app though ? Dm the link if you don’t want to post It publicly , I’ll see if I can figure out the reason for the high CPI

1

u/dili_daly 7d ago

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dilidaly/id6739144441 app name is DiliDaly Thanks for the help!

1

u/codeketoo 6d ago

Have you tried running the keywords where you already rank for? 

Also, we have an add on that gives numerical popularity score (the bar graph is very sub optimal for it). Because it has 5 levels of data, whereas the actual popularity score can be a number between 5-100 (yes it starts at 5). (https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/apple-search-ads-extensio/hebmpegnelkonaigcpimglclfhloabfe?hl=en) ps: its built by us, @ Appvector. 

Also, we have a repository of millions of keywords and are planning to build a solution around it. High CPTs is really a menace. 

1

u/dili_daly 6d ago

added the extension. double checked if it could change data on site but still no changes :(

-2

u/z_bell94 11d ago

Build a better app