App Store Acquisition Channels

What are App Store Acquisition Channels

App Store Acquisition Channels are all the potential channels that user acquisition (UA) teams can utilize, usually via a paid ad, to advertise an app or game and generate more visitors. Channels include Facebook, Google, Universal App Campaigns (UAC), Apple Search Ads (ASA), Snapchat, Tiktok and different mobile ad networks such as Vungle, Unity and ironSource. 

Why App Store Acquisition Channels are Important

It’s important to optimize the App Store acquisition channels that are working well for an app or game in growing and expanding its audience. But a key activity that’s even more important as part of any growth team is sourcing new ways for an app to grow / bring in new audiences. So something to consider for maximizing installs without compromising on quality is by: 

• looking for ways to expand into new acquisition channels
• testing them in order to see if they bring in high quality traffic, if they do..
• scale them to maximise growth. 

Acquisition channels vary in what they offer, a channel that works for one app can be ineffective for another, depending on what kind of traffic and audience an app requires. Some won’t be suitable for a product and will fail to bring quality traffic, as there are definitely market leader channels that offer very advanced targeting features such as Facebook and Google. 

Understanding the target audience will shape an app’s ‘acquisition channel mix’, like we’ve said there’s no one channel an app developer / marketer should use. Understanding what each channel offers means it’s possible to optimize them. Some channels offer huge impression figures that may result in lower conversion rates, whereas others may offer higher-quality users but at a higher cost per install (CPI). It would be beneficial to experiment in order to strike the right balance.. if in doubt, test’em.

App Store Acquisition Channels and ASO

ASO teams should always be in the loop with any and all acquisition channel strategies. A good example would be if a team in charge of growth prioritizes a certain channel such as Snapchat, and runs a paid ad campaign through it to drive growth and improve UA numbers. The ASO team’s role here is to learn what converts traffic from that source and test it to make sure there’s nothing in the messaging of the App Store that might push away or exclude an audience. 

Testing is key to successful ASO which is why app developers / marketers use A/B testing platforms like Storemaven to crunch the data to offer Insights. These can then be offered to a growth team and the campaign will be optimized for that specific acquisition channel.