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If You’re Running Paid App Ads, You NEED to Watch This

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App Masters11:42Open on YouTube
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The bottom line

Paid ads lift organic and branded search downloads that last-touch attribution credits to other sources, so measuring incrementality and cross-channel journeys shows what each channel is really worth. Budget can then move to the channels that add installs.

Key takeaways

  • Paid marketing raises organic and branded search downloads. 2:08
    • Calm, Headspace and Resume built high branded search volume through paid campaigns.
    • Tinder and Hinge have more search volume than "dating", and Calm and Headspace more than "meditation". Stats like "63% of downloads come from search" are mostly branded search.
  • Even a small Meta spend can nearly double organic sales. 3:31
    • An indie app spent only $3,000 a month on Meta, starting in late August 2024. Its organic sales almost doubled by December 2024.
    • No sales were attributed to Meta at first, so the lift never showed up as paid.
  • True lift measurement shows how much each ad network adds beyond what it is credited. 5:43
    • In the AppsFlyer dashboard, incrementality is 150 for Network A, 85 for Network B and zero for Network C. It can be drilled down to campaign level.
    • Network A's classic attribution shows 234. Blending in incrementality changes the number to 156.
  • Unified journeys give connected TV the credit that last-touch gives to search. 7:47
    • A viewer sees a TV ad, searches the brand and clicks a branded Apple Search Ads campaign. Search Ads gets the credit and CTV looks near zero.
    • The unified dashboard splits users and revenue across mobile, PC and CTV. In the example, PC drives much more revenue than CTV.
  • Budget should follow incrementality, not cost per install. 7:06
    • Network C may deliver a decent cost per install yet add no lift, so budget moves to A and B.
    • Counting the lift on search downloads would push the true cost per acquisition well below what the dashboards show.

Calm and Headspace have more search volume than meditation. That's the value of running paid marketing.

Steve P. Young

Chapter summaries

0:00 AppsFlyer's release and the hidden lift from paid ads

Paid campaigns lift downloads that other channels get credit for, and AppsFlyer's new tooling is built to show that lift.

  • AppsFlyer's biggest release yet has eight products, and two matter most to app marketers. 1:02
    • It targets anyone running paid campaigns across CTV, web and mobile.
    • The first of the two is true lift in user acquisition.
    • Multi-channel just means multiple channels.
    • The goal is to measure the incrementality of lead marketing efforts.
  • Meta ads drive downloads that they never get credit for. 1:51
    • People find the app through search or the store, so the credit lands elsewhere.
    • AppsFlyer shows the lift by channel and by campaign.
    • Branded search volume is called the "dirty little secret" for ASO.
    • The lift appears as search incrementality growth.

3:16 An indie app shows the lift

In one indie app, organic sales rose with Meta spend while Meta itself showed almost no sales.

  • ASO alone had already built a solid base before Meta. 3:31
    • The app made about $42,000 in its first year.
    • It peaked at about $5,000 a month.
    • App Store sales were about $4,000, then about $7,000 a month by May 2024.
    • Total sales alone would make ASO look like the only winner.
  • Organic sales rise whenever Meta spend rises. 4:57
    • As the green Meta line goes up, so does the blue organic line.
    • Organic keeps climbing even when Meta stays flat.
    • Downloads by source show none from Meta until the campaigns started.
    • Meta grew only slightly, yet downloads rose a lot.
    • The app had no social media presence, so the effect is clean. Bigger clients are a mess.

5:51 Incrementality by network and campaign

A cheap cost per install can hide a network that adds no real lift, and only incrementality shows it.

  • A good cost per install can sit on top of zero lift. 6:11
    • Network C may look decent on cost per install, so it is easy to keep funding.
    • The same view can be drilled from network to campaign.
    • The dashboard is organized by experiment date, so each test can be read on its own.
    • Network A is called one of the best, and B "pretty decent".
  • Before this tool, measuring the lift meant a hacked-together spreadsheet. 7:12
    • It compared the installs Meta reported with the installs App Store Connect showed from Meta.
    • That was not true incrementality, only a rough check.
    • Counting the bump on search downloads would push cost per acquisition lower still.

7:47 Unified journeys credit the first touch

When one view links every device and channel, the ad that started the journey gets credit, not the last click.

  • Running many channels at once makes it hard to know which one works. 7:56
    • Some bigger clients run connected TV, SEM, ASO, Apple Search Ads and Meta together.
    • Last touch makes Apple Search Ads look strong and connected TV look minimal.
  • The unified view finds the initial touch point and credits it. 10:03
    • It works even when a user has several touch points.
    • Connected TV used to look close to zero. It now shows results without manual work.
    • A branded search campaign set up to protect the brand takes the credit. Organic can take it too.

10:14 Why indies should watch new releases

New measurement products preview the problems that appear at larger scale.

  • Studying new products shows what problems are coming. 10:31
    • Even teams not ready for this sophistication can see which problems the tools solve.
    • Mobile marketing changes almost every day, month and year.
    • All eight releases are worth a look, if only to learn what's coming next.

In the growth library

Steve P. Young, Founder of App Masters, an app marketing agency. Paid ads such as Meta lift branded organic search and downloads, but last-touch attribution gives them no credit, so incrementality and cross-platform journey measurement are needed to judge channels fairly. An indie app spending $3,000 a month on Meta almost doubled its organic sales, which shows how much paid impact standard reports miss.

Lessons that draw on this:

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

Transcript278 lines
0:00

Coming up, I'm going to share with you some exciting news of new products that you have to pay attention to, especially if you're running paid marketing campaigns or [music] you're doing multi- channelannel, which is just a nerdy way of saying multiple channels, which includes CTV, web, mobile, all that stuff. We're going to show you the products that allow you to measure and properly analyze the effectiveness, including the incrementality of [music] your lead marketing efforts.

0:37

Stay tuned. [music] What is up app nation? It is Steve P. Young, founder of appmasters.com, the app marketing agency and friendly YouTube channel that you check out when you want to learn how to increase those downloads and more importantly those revenues. And I want to give you some exciting news from our friends at Appsflyer who just released one of the biggest product releases they've ever done almost ever right now. And I want to show you the two products. They released eight in total, but I want to share with you the two that I think is going to be a gamecher and most relevant to the appmasters's audience. So, without further ado, let's get started.

1:25

All right, here it is. I'm going to put this link into this YouTube video and in the description. So, whether if you're listening to on the podcast, go watch the video. If you're just listening and you just want to follow along through my amazing voice, then click that link and go check it out because it is very interesting stuff. But I really just want to highlight two of the eight that I think makes most sense for this audience. Okay, the first one, the true lift in your user acquisition. Now, if you've been following the channel, I've been talking about how meta ads help you drive more downloads through apps or search and they won't get credit for it, right? Secondly, the search volume of your brand increases. If you think about some of the biggest brands out there, Calm, Headspace, Res, shout out to you guys. Their paid marketing efforts have led to their branded search calm headsp space and resume being really high

2:25

volume. They have a search score. And this is a little like dirty little secret for ASO. If you hear any stats of ASO companies saying 63% of all downloads come through search, well, it's because literally most of them are branded. All right? Like most of them are. You think about Tinder, Hinge, those all have more search volume than dating. Now, Calm and Headspace have more search volume than meditation. That's the value of running paid marketing. And with Appsfly, you can see the true lift that some of your paid marketing efforts by channel, by campaign, are leading to that search incrementality growth. So before I show you the product demo for apps, I want to show you this is a video I recorded in January of 2025. Can you imagine? Sorry, December for crying out loud. All right, here we go. So ASO meta. This is an indie developer. Okay, this is the impact that you can see just from a small spend from an indie developer. We

3:31

only spent $3,000 a month on Meta. So, long story short, we're able to take this app through sheer ASO first year about $42,000. Not too shabby, right? At the peak, making about $5,000 a month. If you don't believe me, here's the slide to prove it. Sales from App Store, 4,000 right here. In May of 2024, we're able to take it to about $7,000 a month. Now, in about late August is when we started running some meta campaigns, right? And you can see it's starting to clip up in September. And then in October and November and then December of 2024, we were able to almost double our organic sales, right? With the help of Meta. Okay, so let's break it down. Sales by source type. You can see nothing, no sales were coming from Meta. Now, not all graphs look like this. Some of our biggest clients, this is a mess. Luckily, this indie, he had no social media presence. So, I can clearly show you the incrementality.

4:35

Now, Apps Flare makes it easy. But now, I can clearly show you the effect that these meta campaigns had on his organic search because if you look at overall sales, you would think this blue line is growing. Oh my god, Steve, you're doing amazing with ASO. Yeah, we did. It is true. But with the help of Meta, we're able to do even better, right? And that's where you see that effect. As the green line goes up, so does the blue line. And even as the blue green line stays steady, the blue line is still going up. That's the effect that meta campaigns have on your organic growth. Okay. So, here are the sales numbers. And then you can see by downloads, by source type, no downloads were coming from Meta just to give you a sense until we started those campaigns. And then as you can see the downloads really went up even though the meta campaigns went up just slightly right now. How do you measure this? You

5:31

can't until now. So let's get into apps flyier. I'm going to hit that link. Here is where the dashboard I want to show you. I zoomed in for you. So you can see that network A the incrementality effort is 150. Network B 85 not too shabby. and network C absolutely nothing, right? And there are some networks that are going to be like this. And so now you can see it from a network perspective and you can even drill down from that network to a campaign perspective to see which campaigns are actually adding more incrementality than the other campaigns you might be doing. But just at a network level, you can see that while network C, like for example, might get you a really decent cost per install, the incrementality. So here, this is what I love and this is what I try to show in my numbers as well, but now you don't have to do it like I did. I hacked it all together. Here's the classic attribution, right? Network A is getting

6:32

234, but if you really think about it and blend in the incrementality, it's actually 156 because there was a lift that Meta isn't attributing it to your particular campaign. Now, Apps Flyier can do it for you in this really cool dashboard. So, you can see from the experiment date, the incrementality efforts right here, right? And from this, you can clearly see that network A was doing really great. is probably one of the best ones. Network B pretty decent, but network C, no incrementality effort. So, let's put more budget in A and B versus C. Look guys, here's my in just an example. Here's my hacky way of doing it. All right, [laughter] this is very complicated and I'm not even measuring incrementality, okay? I'm just measuring from what Meta was telling us the installs to versus what we actually saw on App Store Connect coming from Meta. But if we even take into consideration the the bump the

7:31

incrementality of meta on the search downloads, we can probably get this cost per acquisition a bunch lower than what you're seeing right here. Right? So this is a hacky confusing way. This is the easy way through apps. Right? The next one I want to show you is this unified journeys. All right. Prove crossplatform LTV. So, if you're running ads on connected TV, which a few of my our bigger clients are doing, they have connected TV. They're running SEM, ASO, ASA, Meta, like everything, right? How do you really figure out which one's working? So, here's an example, right? I see an ad on TV. I'm like, "Oh my god, that's a cool ad. I got to download the app." But then I go search for it and I click on an Apple search ads, right? or maybe I just download it organically.

8:23

Now, I was actually I should have been credited with a connected TV, but I wasn't because the last thing I touched was maybe an Apple search ads campaign. So, Apple search ads campaigns look really positive, right? Whereas the connected TV campaign shows very minimal results. Well, apps flyier just fix all of that for you. So, let's take a look at the dashboard. You can watch the videos, too. They're very fancy. You got to check it out. All right, let me zoom in here. So, here's the dashboard, right? You can see user acquisitions by platform. You can see mobile, PC, and then connected TV and then total revenues by that. And so, you can see mobile driving a good amount of revenues. But look at PC is actually driving a lot more than connected TV, right? So, they break it down for you into an easy to see and use platform. The thing that I want to show you is this thing right here. This is the cool part, right? So

9:21

now you can really see the breakdown. The before would be connected TVs pretty much zero and now apps flyier is able to see without the manual work which is you know you saw my spreadsheet earlier. Now you're able to see that connected TV did drive results versus me maybe my last touch point was some mobile campaign that I saw or like an Apple search ads campaign, right? I usually what usually happens you see a connected TV campaign you search for that brand maybe there's a branded search ads campaign to protect yourself I click on that and then search ads gets the credit or organic gets the credit when connected TV should have gotten that credit so really really cool product that you can see here and despite the multiple touch points apps is going to understand that initial touch point and give credit where credit is due all right the last recommendation I would make is go check out that link

10:17

in the description. Even if you don't feel like you're quite ready for this level of sophistication, here's why I want you to do that, right? For those indies, here's what the advantage I have with my platform. I talk to a lot of different people and for me, I'm looking for trends. So, if anything, look at some of these new products, see what problems they're trying to solve. then you'll start to understand the problems that will exist in the future once you get to that scale and some of the different trends that are happening in the mobile marketing landscape because one of the things I love and hate but no absolutely love about mobile marketing is everything changes almost every day, almost every month and definitely every year. So, really cool stuff from Apps Flyier. You got to check it out. Go check out all those eight product releases, if only to get educated about what's coming next. All right, that is

11:20

it, my friends. Thank you to Appsfire for being a longtime partner of App Masters. So, if you do go check it out and request a demo, let them know that you sent you and they might treat you a little bit better than if you don't. All right, until next time. I'll see you on the next video.