Apple Ads Search Results Benchmarks Report 2026
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Throughout our decade of experience, SplitMetrics has been trusted to manage $2B+ in Apple Ads ad spend, running up to 1.6 million campaigns daily. We know that each metric has a story and unique factors behind it. To provide more context for our data, our experts recounted their experiences with Apple Ads to paint a fuller, more actionable picture of this advertising platform.
Sports emerged as a high-value outlier: The Sports category cemented its position as a unique, high-value vertical, commanding the highest CPT at $14.41 and the highest CPA at $19.74, justified by the highly engaged, high-value users in this segment.
Over the years, the Sports category in Apple Ads has successfully transformed into one of the most promising (and all-the-time growing) categories in user acquisition. The reason for that is not accidental – this part of the market is a sophisticated space, filled with high-intent users with decent LTV. What else is there? Stable demand around RMG & Sport events around the globe.
This all sounds like a premium category – and it definitely is, being filled with top-tier developers presenting exceptional products. Being in a highly competitive field is not easy though; that’s why a successful presence in this category requires constant evaluation, working with custom product pages, narratives, automation testing, and more.
The price for such a user might seem like a deal-breaker to some, but it comes with the highest quality, better conversion rates, better LTV, and more deposits in the end.
Leading apps are winning not only through a well-crafted strategy and numerous automation rules, but also through AI bidding. They’re winning by maximizing relevance: constant custom product page production, personalized bidding strategies for each event, and seasonal automations.
AI may be driving effective user engagement: We’ve observed apps from many categories like Medical, Health & Fitness, Travel, Productivity, Education, and Finance successfully communicate new, improved, and personalized AI-driven experiences or features. It’s likely that leveraging them on custom product pages and other creatives, contributed to the performance of these apps in terms of TTR and CR.
In 2025, we even took a closer look at this trend in our How Top Apps Showcase AI Features on the App Store in 2025 analysis, and found that AI messaging in Productivity apps to be more widespread than in any other category analyzed at the time — especially in titles (25%) and descriptions (38%), reflecting both strong user interest and high competition.
Certain categories exhibit higher AI implementation rates due to their data-rich nature and user-personalization requirements. Medical, Health & Fitness, and Travel apps may have benefited from leveraging AI-powered solutions in 2025. Throughout the year, I observed our clients building personalized, AI-driven nutrition and fitness plans, reflected in their messaging on product pages and custom product page creatives.
Naturally, more factors are always at play, with many trends starting back during the pandemic, when telehealth solutions and self-care became more popular
Competition can and should incentivize apps to explore multi-placement Apple Ads strategies. The Finance category, which has consistently ranked very high in CPT and CPA, is a good example of this trend and may be a strong example for all verticals where brand and competitor campaigns constitute a significant part of spend and revenue. Today tab ads, search tab ads, and product page ads may positively impact brand awareness and increase their efficiency.
For Finance apps, 2025 once again highlighted the value of Apple Ads beyond pure search. In the finance vertical, we have seen Display placements, such as Today Tab Ads and Search Tab Ads, provide high-quality users and deliver strong post-install performance, including meaningful deposit activity, while also supporting brand awareness goals.
In markets where a finance brand is already well known, the search tab and Today Tab placements proved effective entry points for users with a genuine interest in investing. When supported by the right bidding and budgeting approach, and paired with tailored custom product pages aligned to specific investment use cases, these placements can become a valuable and scalable source of engaged users.
At the same time, these placements can require more consideration while optimizing than Search, as they are not category-focused and operate within a broader auction where apps across all verticals compete for visibility. Here, automation plays a critical role—helping teams effectively control Default Max CPT bids and budgets, maintain efficiency at scale, and simplify ongoing optimization without sacrificing performance.
Seasonal Bidding is Critical: CPT and CPA showed a major combined cost peak in September, making it the most expensive period. Seasonal fluctuations are visible in both the category- and market-level analyses. However, there’s more to this story:
Tracking macro-seasonality—like holidays or quarters—may not be enough. To truly win on Apple Ads, advertisers must embrace micro-seasonality, which means optimizing campaigns to the hour, or even minute, of peak user intent. Our data shows that conversion effectiveness isn’t spread evenly across the day; it’s concentrated in ‘micro-windows.’
For instance, sports betting app conversions spike in the hours directly preceding a game’s kickoff, while fitness signups surge before 8 a.m. Missing even a single one of these hourly peaks results in lost conversions and wasted spend. The strategic takeaway is clear: success requires early, automated activation.
You must have your bids and budgets prescheduled, ideally hours in advance, and utilize AI bidding to be ‘always on.’ This automation bridges the gap between identifying high-intent micro-windows and the agility to dominate the auction when those windows open.
Games are the biggest category on the App Store. Its TTR of 8.3% and CR of 60.3% indicate a highly competitive category, where the average CPT of $1.60 and CPA of $2.60 cover diverse subcategories and genres across not only gameplay but also user acquisition strategies.
The gaming vertical in Apple Ads operates under a clear, high-stakes rulebook: it is the most competitive and highest-spending category, a trend solidified by recent privacy changes that have made the App Store ecosystem critical for user acquisition. A core pattern is the “Keyword Volume Arms Race,” where major players maintain massive keyword portfolios, often exceeding 5,000 to 12,000 paid terms, emphasizing that maximum visibility requires extreme scale.
In terms of sub-vertical dominance, Real Money Gaming and Casino apps lead the spending. Strategy games also command significant budget and keyword volume.
To compete, a multi-faceted strategic approach is essential. Successful campaigns rely on perfect keyword strategy alignment, ensuring ad creative, product page assets, and keyword intent are harmonized. Furthermore, custom product pages are not optional; they are a necessary mechanism for segment-specific messaging and standing out in a saturated market.
International markets offer opportunity: Dynamic changes in our best-performing market lists, and high engagement in markets such as China (TTR of 15.1%), show that many competitors are looking beyond the United States and Europe for profitable growth, with markets from other regions offering growth opportunities.
China is becoming a very important market for Apple Ads. After 2010, China experienced fast growth in the mobile internet industry, which led to many successful app companies. Chinese users are very used to mobile apps, and developers are very experienced with online marketing. Although Apple Ads started in China in 2021, the market has grown quickly.
As always, multiple factors contribute to a market’s performance, with our observations suggesting high iOS adoption, strong developer engagement, and competitive optimization within the market as likely ones.
In my experience, Chinese developers are good at using SEM-style advertising, and they know how to create strong creatives and use keywords in a smart way. In general, developers put a lot of effort into making high-quality ads to win better results.
At the same time, Chinese developers are also very active in global markets. Instead of only targeting the US or UK, they choose different regions based on the type of app. For example, they often launch heavy games in Japan and Korea, utility and finance apps in Southeast Asia, and e-commerce or entertainment apps in Europe.
Additionally, this report is released at a moment of a significant update to the placement, one we’re observing with excitement.
Apple Ads is introducing a new search results ad placement on March 3, 2026, marking the largest update to App Store search advertising since the introduction of Today Tab ads and product pages ads. Instead of a single ad at the top of search results, there will now be two ad placements within the search results.
In our view, this change gives advertisers more visibility and more chances to influence user decisions, even for highly competitive brand and competitor keywords. The additional position will be a great opportunity for impressions and awareness.
We also invited our partners to share their experience and recommendations for the platform:
Singular’s 2025 benchmarks and ROI Index data point to a clear trend: Apple Ads remained one of the most resilient and efficient iOS acquisition channels in a privacy-first ecosystem. While signal loss impacted measurement across much of the mobile ad landscape, Apple Ads continued to deliver strong performance anchored in user intent and App Store discovery.
We consistently saw strong performance in gaming, fintech, and subscription apps, where users searching the App Store already know what they want. The teams that really won were the ones treating Apple Ads as more than “set it and forget it.” Custom Product Pages, keyword-specific creative, and tight ASO alignment made a measurable difference. Relevance at the moment of search was everything.
Measurement got smarter in 2025 too. More marketers started layering Apple Ads’ native attribution with SKAdNetwork and AdAttributionKit to better understand downstream value, not just installs. We also saw increased use of preorder and view-through attribution for major launches, especially in gaming and entertainment, which helped teams capture impact that would have been invisible a year earlier.
Looking ahead to 2026, we expect Apple Ads to move from a performance staple to a strategic anchor, powering smarter ROI decisions across the entire UA mix.
