How Intervals Fitness App Used Qonversion Apple Search Ads Dashboard to Grow In-App Subscription Revenue by 2x

Interval Timer is the mobile app in the fitness category monetizing with in-app subscriptions. The app helps to create and monitor interval training. Leveraging Qonversion’s Apple Search Ads attribution dashboard, the app’s team doubled its monthly revenue in six weeks.

Mobile User Attribution Challenge

The app’s founder was experimenting with different user acquisition channels after the app launch. The main challenge was to get accurate marketing attribution data, including in-app events like trial-to-paid conversions and subscription renewals on the marketing channel and campaign level. The profitability of marketing or ROAS (return on ad spend) in the case of subscription apps is determined by the total cohort’s revenue, including revenue from subscription renewals. And since Apple enforced its strict ATT tracking policy, accurate attribution became challenging for most user acquisition channels.

Apple Search Ads was one of the marketing channels the app’s team tried to leverage for user acquisition. Native Apple’s Search Ads interface provides only basic information from impressions to installs without any data on the following in-app events. Without that in-app data, it was impossible to see if the Search Ads user acquisition was profitable, and there was no data to adjust keywords and campaigns to improve performance. 

Qonversion SDK and Apple Search Ads Dashboard

The Intervals team decided to test Qonversion’s SDK and its Apple Search Ads dashboard to get a full view of their Apple Search Ads marketing performance. The implementation process took 30 minutes and was as simple as installing the SDK and adding a couple of lines of code and several settings in the Qonversion dashboard.

Qonversion Apple Search Ads dashboard leverages Apple Search Ads API and AdServices framework combined with device-level data and server-side receipt validation. This combination allows Qonversion to report accurate data from impressions on the App Store to entire in-app revenue on a campaign and even keyword level with high precision. And it works independently of the SKAdNetwork, meaning that the attribution data is always available.

“Qonversion accurately measures the effectiveness of Apple Ads campaigns. We can see exactly how much revenue each Apple Search Ads keyword generates and how much we spend on it to adjust and grow our campaigns.”

Aleh Sorochich, Founder. 

Qonversion Apple Search Ads dashboard shows in-app events, including trial conversions, subscription renewals, in-app purchases, and total revenue, to define top-performing campaigns and keywords quickly. Qonversion also shows the data on impressions, installs, CPA, ad spend, and the resulting ROAS of ASA campaigns.

The specific metrics displayed can be selected from a dropdown list. The order of the columns can be rearranged to deliver the best user experience.

Using Qonversion Apple Search Ads dashboard, the Intervals team identified the keywords with the highest ROAS and quickly scaled profitable user acquisition. The revenue of the app jumped twofold in just six weeks.

“We started using Qonversion initially to get a full view of our Apple Search Ads. But we also got a set of convenient and easy-to-use subscription analytics that became the single source of truth for our subscription app now.”

Aleh Sorochych, Interval Timer App Founder