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Bookmark This Tool To See How Are Ads & Apps Compare

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App Masters10:03Open on YouTube
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The bottom line

The AppsFlyer Benchmarks tool shows how your app's retention, install costs and ad spend compare with its category, country and media type. Checking it before and during paid campaigns shows where you really stand and where to find growth.

Key takeaways

  • The tool gives you two years of industry data to filter your own market. 0:34
    • Data is updated quarterly, and an AI co-pilot is coming.
    • You can filter by category, subcategory, region and media type (paid, social and search, or ad networks).
  • Ad money is moving toward Android and beyond the US. 2:51
    • In Q1 2025, Android outspent iOS in generative AI, and paid installs were also higher on Android.
    • The US takes over 70% of ad spend, but Mexico already has about 5%.
  • Most apps perform at or above average, so the next step is more downloads. 3:19
    • Day seven retention falls across nearly all apps.
    • Install costs are high, and social and search take over 62% of spend.
  • Narrow categories like graphic and design show higher intent than crowded ones. 8:54
    • Its IPM is over 30, while generative AI's IPM is sliding as chatbots multiply.
    • Some categories lack CPI data and show only IPM, so the picture is not always complete.

You're pretty much at average or you're doing a lot better than average, so stop feeling so bad about yourself. Go focus on getting more downloads.

Steve P. Young

Chapter summaries

0:00 Why paid marketing needs a benchmark

Organic work alone rarely scales an app past six figures, so paid campaigns need an industry yardstick.

  • Benchmarks belong both before and during paid acquisition. 0:52
    • Scaling to six figures and above takes some paid marketing.
    • Young uses it to see how he truly stacks up against the industry.
    • He usually talks about ASO, organic growth and growth hacks, but calls this his favorite tool for paid.
    • He used it for a finance app to decide where to target and how it compares.
    • The tool has been covered in earlier videos and was recently upgraded.

1:48 Reading a category in the tool

One filtered view puts spend, retention and cost per install side by side.

  • Cost per install is the most useful view. 3:52
    • A small arrow reveals the average cost per install for the category.
    • The paid view reads roughly 5.32 and 54 cents.
    • Young links the low figure to Android's rise.
    • The spend view also switches to remarketing, paid installs and sessions.
    • The example runs on generative AI, kept global, so the US view can be compared.
  • Changing the media type barely moves the numbers. 4:29
    • Retention stays almost the same, and cost per install is a little under 5.32.
    • Most spend sits on search and social: Apple Search Ads, Google Ads, Meta and TikTok.
    • His reaction: holy cow, pretty expensive cost per installs.
    • Ad networks (DSPs, AdMob) have their own split, shown next.

5:02 Ad spend by country

Spend is concentrated in a few countries, and the shifts between them show markets you may be missing.

  • The UK follows the US, and Mexico is the surprise. 5:22
    • Mexico's rise may come from the Android side alone.
    • Most marketers focus on the US, so other countries go unseen.
    • Q1 2025 paid installs rank the US first, then the UK and Spain.
    • On Android, the US and Mexico take a large share in this category.
  • The country movers show where spend is shifting. 6:22
    • Colombia, France, Canada and Italy are rising.
    • Belgium, the Netherlands, Peru and Spain are falling.
    • Spain ranks third in paid installs yet is on the falling list.
    • The list points to markets worth testing.

6:34 Graphic and design as a niche

Graphic and design is a less crowded category whose funnel looks healthier than generative AI's.

  • Graphic and design suits AI art tools because it is less competitive. 6:38
    • It is far less crowded than utilities, productivity or lifestyle.
    • The organic view shows whether the category is growing or shrinking.
    • The tool also gives organic retention and a country split.
    • CPI is missing here because the category has less data.
  • Its retention beats generative AI, and its spend is shifting. 7:44
    • Paid search spend is down quite a bit.
    • Day seven retention is a lot higher than generative AI's.
    • IPM is the impression to install rate, and higher is better.
    • Generative AI's IPM is higher on Android, which is surprising.

In the growth library

Steve P. Young, Founder of App Masters. Shows how to use the AppsFlyer Benchmarks tool to compare your app's CPI, retention, IPM and ad spend against your category, media type and country. The walkthrough on generative AI and graphic design apps shows how the data can point to cheaper categories, overlooked countries and what kind of app to build.

Lessons that draw on this:

More from App Masters · The whole library, and ask it anything

Transcript246 lines
0:00

Coming up, I'm going to show you the must-have tool that you got to bookmark if you're running paid marketing because it's going to show you all the data you need to become a smarter UA manager and ultimately see how you stack up against the entire industry. Stay tuned. What is up nation? It is Steve P. Young, founder of appmasters.com, the place you go when you want action-packed content related to help you grow your app downloads and more importantly those revenues. And a way to grow those revenues and those app downloads is to run meta ads campaign or frankly any UA campaigns. I know I talk a lot about ASO and organic growth and different growth hacks, but ultimately if you want to scale to six figures and above, you're going to need a little bit of paid marketing. And so, this is my favorite tool when I'm about to start any paid acquisition campaign and when I've already got paid acquisition

1:09

campaigns to see how I truly stack up against the entire industry. So, let's get to it. All right, guys. This is a tool that I've talked about in the past if you've watched almost all our videos, but it is the apps flyier benchmarks tool. They've recently upgraded it and so I'm going to break down all the cool features, but the most important thing that you have to know is this tool has over 2 years worth of data with quarterly updates and they've got an upcoming AI co-pilot tool that's going to really help you become a smarter UA manager. All right, let me show you what you can do now. Here you can select the category. This is the gaming. Here's the finance shopping. Actually use this for one of our finance apps that we're working with just to get a sense of where we should be targeting and how we stack up. And then ultimately, you can pick any category you want down here.

2:05

All right, I've already done some homework for you. So, I've picked the generative AI category. So, I went down here and picked generative AI. And then I sort of filled out the categories right here, the subcategories. I kept it global for now just so you guys can see the difference between global or if you're targeting the US market. And then ultimately I kept it paid. I prefer to do it completely paid, but you can actually go social and search paid or ad networks. So anybody running DSPs or ADM mob campaigns, you can find out data for those type of ad networks. But most people will probably go under the social and search category. But let's just keep it simple. I kept it all paid. Now, here's what you can see. Here's the overall UA spend. Now, the surprising thing is in Q1 of 2025, you're starting to see Android outspend iOS. Pretty surprising, but I like it. It's very interesting. I would have never known.

3:01

You can do remarketing, you can do paid installs, and you can do sessions. So you can see like the even the paid installs in Q1 of 2025 a lot higher on Android. All right, I'm going to go down here and see performance benchmarks average per app. And now you can see the retention and see how you stack up. So this is the day one retention. And unfortunately under this category and really across all apps, you're going to see the day seven retention really fall.

3:30

And so you can sort of kind of see like I know a lot of times I talk to app developers, they say, "Steve, I can be doing better, right? I can't be doing better." I always say, "Look, you're pretty much at average or you're doing a lot better than average, so stop feeling so bad about yourself. Go focus on getting more downloads, right? Here's the day 30." And then you can do all this stuff. And this is the feature that I love the most right here. This is the CPI feature. So, you're going to have to hit this little arrow to see it, but you can see the average cost per install across this specific category. All right. So, this is the really cool feature. I'm going to pull this just so you guys can see the change. I'm going to change it to So, this is roughly about 532 and then 54 cents. Probably why Android's starting to peak, but I'm going to just change it to social and search. Okay.

4:24

I love the AI category, so I'm going to just stay here for a bit if you don't mind. All right, the retention doesn't really change much. Now, here's the difference, right? The ad networks and the social search, but here, let's pull this CPI. So, roughly about the same. A little bit lower was 532, but roughly about the same. As you can see, most of the ad spend probably happening on search and social. So that's Apple search ads, that's Google ads, and then that's meta, Tik Tok, and so forth, right? So you can start to see like, holy cow, pretty expensive cost per installs. All right, here's a split from media type. And so you can see the at networks versus the search. And as you can see, the data already said it as I predicted that social and search getting the bulk over 62% of the entire ad spend versus the ad networks. And here's the most interesting part in my opinion is this country. So obviously the US is winning,

5:22

right? As you can see the US is dominating getting 70 over 70% of the ad spend and then UK. But here's a surprising part. Mexico is starting to go as well. And that could be just the Android side of things. But at the same time like it gives you insight on what other countries you might be actually missing out on. And so obviously everybody's focused on the US market, but the surprising thing was Mexico was 5% of the entire ad spend. So I'm going to go into paid installs as well. I'm just going to look at Q1 of 2025. You can see US top one, UK, Spain, and then Mexico again being the top one even on iOS. So this is the breakdown between iOS and Android with the paid installs.

6:11

And with the the Android version, you can see I was right. Right. Like US and Mexico taking up a lot of the the Android market in for this particular category. Okay. Here the country movers and shakers. You can see Colombia, all that stuff and these other countries, Colombia, France, Canada, Italy, and then the ones that are going down, Belgium, Netherlands, Peru, and Spain. And that's not all. One of my other favorite categories is graphic and design because some AI tools, especially like the AI art generators or all these AI tools. I like to go under the graphic and design category because frankly it's a lot less competitive than let's say utilities, productivity, even lifestyle, frankly. And so I wanted to check this out. You can do organic as well and just kind of get a sense of what that data looks like. So, I'm going to show you that real quick. The organic installs just to see if that category is growing

7:07

or is it trending down, right? Here's the retention as well. And then here's the country split for the organics, the movers and shakers. And then you can change it to paid here for this particular category and then get the same insights. So, let's see how much graphic design changes. Oh, the CPI is not there for this particular category. Unfortunately, it's a little bit less data in this particular category, but still that one I like. Let's try changing it to global.

7:38

See if we that changes anything. Paid in search. Yeah, let's do this. Hey, we're learning together. All right. UA spend paid ins. Okay. Conn down quite a bit. All right. That's very interesting. Retention day one. Day seven. a lot higher than the generative AI. So, okay. Bing, right? Like maybe something to do. Oh, unfortunately, let me move over here and then IPM here. Unfortunately, we have IPM and not the cost per install. But this is just impression to install rate. So, that gives you an indication of like the higher the better. You know, the more impression you get, the the higher the installs. That's always a good sign. And if we compare the IPM to here, the generative AI. Let's just take a look here. I have to change the settings here. Paid social.

8:34

So we got the CPI here, which is a lot higher. It's a broader category. The IPM for this, you can see a lot higher on Android, surprisingly. So Q1 maybe less people, right? With the emergence of chat GPT and all the different chat bots out there, the IPM is going a bit down. Whereas this graphic design, the IPM's over 30, so higher intent in my opinion. This gives you some ideas on like what types of apps to create as well. All right, pretty easy to find. What I would prefer you do is use that link or up here. I'll put that link in there. If you want to check out the website so that we get a little bit credit for sending you there or if you just want to check it out and you're just listening to it, just go to appsflyier.com/benchmarks or just go to appsflyier website, go under learn, and then go under industrybenchmarks and you'll find it there as well. And thank you to our friends from Appsflyer for supporting

9:37

our channel and our show and being great partners of ours. I got to speak at a couple of their events. Phenomenal people to work with. And if you're looking for an MMP, go check out appsflyer.com. But this in particular is all about their benchmarks. All right, until next time. I'll see you on the next video.