We’re excited to announce that our new feature cohort analysis for Search Ads is finally here! You can find this new feature on our dashboard for more detailed analytics.

Cohort analysis being dynamic, it could be confusing. Dynamic, meaning that it doesn’t sum up your activities over a specific time range but it describes behaviors of many groups of users within time. You need cohort analysis to follow the behavioral analysis of your app and understand when did your average user start to spend money on your app.

With the introduction of cohort analysis feature, users are now able to use the tool to help them understand the rate of return, the amount of ROAS (return on ad spend) and revenue coming from Apple Search Ads.

When a user downloads or purchases the app from the app store, the first part until the download is shown using Apple’s data and after download it’s shown by MMP(mobile measurement partner).

On the basis of deep segmentation, cohort analysis procures marketers with insights on their users.

During the marketing activities first stages, cohort reports give you the quality data for the definition and refinement of KPIs. On further stages, cohorts analysis makes it possible for you to decide on the performance trends of Apple Search Ads and use them on other campaigns and overall improvement of your users’ lifetime value (LTV).

As an example, let’s say you made an in-app purchase on the first day and if you use the app for 2 months it is most likely that since you have paid before, you will pay again. This is called LTV and you can find new ways or decide when to push a new campaign by relying on the data from cohort analysis.


   “By using data from Apple Search Ads and combining
     it with the data streaming from your MMP, cohort analysis
       provides you the information for keywords that are likely to
draw profitable users.”

This is possible through the evaluation of ROAS and revenue when you follow your purchasing activity over a specific period of time. Hence, the campaigns, ad groups, keywords, etc. that needs optimization can be identified.

Subscription based apps usually have free trials for limited time. Therefore, when you gain a user it’s unlikely to earn money from them. It usually starts after the 3rd day and in order to understand this you need cohort analysis.

Usually, app publishers tend to be interested in their ROI (return of investment) in ads for a certain time period, for example, the actions of a user by the 7th day. Therefore, it’s not enough to know the total ROAS as it shows ads profitability from the first day a user clicked on your app to the present moment.

After a user comes to your app with some sort of action like in app purchase, subscription, etc., the revenue is looked at (for free apps). Cohort analysis shows you how much money you’re earning from these users on Day 1, Day 3, Day 7, Day 14 & Day 30 and how much money the user is bringing to your app.

Let’s say there’s a campaign and it shows how much you’ve earned on these days through the user who came from the campaigns, meaning they are most likely spending money with these intervals, you’ll see how much you’ve earned on specific days and can compare how much the user is bringing you.

Another example could be that let’s say your ROAS (return on ad spend) is the highest on the 3rd day, you can see if the user is still bringing you money after a month. Cohort analysis helps to analyze such information.

You can access data on ROAS and Revenue of exact days on SearchAds.com and by using our metrics you can optimize your Apple Search Ads campaigns accordingly.

How to enable cohort analysis on your Search Ads funnel?

  • Go to Ads Manager tab
  • Under Campaigns, there is an edit columns option on the right.
  • When the edit columns pops-up, you will see “Revenue Day 1/3/7/14/30, Goals Revenue, ROAS Day 1/3/7/14/30, Goals Roas Day 1/3/7/14/30” under Columns to hide
  • Pick these four options and move them to Columns to show by using the arrows
  • Click Apply
  • It will redirect you to Campaigns section
  • When you scroll to the right you will see that they have been added.

Thanks to SearchAds.com features you will get great comeback on your ad campaigns performance by saving from your time as we do it all for you!