Benchmarks in SearchAds.com are key performance metrics that help you improve your Apple Ads campaigns. This guide will explain what benchmarks are, why they matter, and how you can use them to boost your user acquisition efforts.
What is the Benchmarks tool?
Benchmarks in SearchAds.com gives you insights into your campaign performance by comparing your metrics against industry standards. Key benchmarks include:
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Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): The average cost to acquire a user who installs your app through the ad.
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Cost Per Tap (CPT): The average cost for each tap on your ad.
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Conversion Rate (CR): The percentage of users who click on your ad and then take a desired action, like installing your app.
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Tap-Through Rate (TTR): The percentage of impressions that result in a tap on your ad.
These benchmarks help you spot areas for improvement and make the most of your app marketing budget.
How to use Benchmarks
Log in to SearchAds.com, and navigate to the Benchmarks section under Insights Center.
Utilize the filters on the different sections to select one or more countries in which you are interested, choose the ad placement you’d like to check the benchmarks for and apply the date filter. You’ll see the benchmarks of that selected country, ad placement and time of arrival.
Keep in mind!
You can choose all ad placements and all countries if you need broader data.
At the top, you'll see a world map showing the distribution of the performance metric by category. Choose the category, placement and metric you want using the filters to customize the view according to your needs.
Below the first two panels of the page, you can find the performance trends by category and storefront.
This section helps you understand how key Apple Ads performance metrics perform across different countries, categories, and ad placements. It gives you a high-level view of market movement, allowing you to compare your results with broader trends.
At the top, you can select Country, Category, and Ad Placement. After applying your filters, the page updates both the AI-generated Metrics Summary and the trend chart on the right.
The Metrics Summary provides an automatic breakdown of how each metric changed during the selected period. It highlights direction, scale of movement, and whether there were peaks or dips worth noting. On the right, the line chart visualizes all four core metrics—Conversion Rate (CR), Tap-Through Rate (TTR), Cost per Tap (CPT), and Cost per Acquisition (CPA)—over the last 90 days, shown in weekly granularity.
Right below that section, you'll find the categories and their corresponding metrics in a table. One thing to remember is that the currencies are displayed in USD.
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Since the Games category has many sub-categories, you can also see a table of CPA, CPT, TTR and CR specific to gaming sub-categories.
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Best practices for using Benchmarks
We recommend considering using benchmarks for these three areas specifically.
1- Regularly check your benchmarks to monitor performance trends over time, and adjust your campaigns accordingly based on these insights to ensure continuous improvement.
2- Use the benchmarks to detect underperforming areas, and then conduct experiments with various ad creatives, keywords, and targeting options to determine the most effective strategies.
3- Utilize benchmarks to gain insights into how your performance compares to that of your competitors.
If you have further questions or need assistance, don’t hesitate to contact your dedicated Customer Success Manager or get in touch with us via live chat!