Dive Brief:
- Apple Search Ads, which enable marketers to increase awareness of their apps in the App Store, launched publicly in early October, and although the sample size is small, mobile marketing platform Singular found that mobile conversion rate for the units is 4.9% compared to 0.12% for social search ads, 0.02% for search ad channels like AdWords and 0.01% for display ad channels such as AppLovin in data provided to Marketing Dive.
- Because the format is so new to the marketplace, spending on Apple Search Ads is only 3%, far behind the leader social ad channels at 41.9%
- The cost-per-ad for Apple Search Ads was also significantly lower than the other three mobile channels.
Dive Insight:
The numbers come with a strong statistical caveat since search ads, social search ads and display ad channels are all much more mature marketplaces than Apple’s recent foray into the space. At the same time the low cost-per-ad coupled with strong conversion rates means high ROI for those marketers who are spending mobile ad budgets with Apple.
Marketers face a growing challenge in encouraging consumers to download their apps as competition increases. App install ads have proven to be a popular format on other platforms and Apple is playing catch up here.
“It’s exciting to see Apple beginning to level the playing field between them and Google Play in terms of capabilities offered to marketers,” said Gadi Eliashiv, co-founder and CEO of Singular, in a quote provided to Marketing Dive. “We see lots of new marketing platforms and advertising channels come online all the time, but it’s not very often that we witness such a dramatic change that impacts both marketers and users in such a profound way.”
It’s not surprising that Apple is interested in tapping into its user base for search ads as Zenith’s Advertising Expenditure Forecast found that global spending on mobile advertising will overtake desktop in 2017 and that mobile ad growth is expected to hit 48% this year.
