A guide to measuring true campaign impact
TL;DR Summary
App marketers investing in Apple Ads often equate increased installs with success on the platform, but impressive metrics can also mask expensive traffic redirection rather than true growth. Understanding incrementality—what wouldn’t have happened without your ad spend—is crucial to leverage Apple Ads effectively. For example, campaign types vary in their incremental potential; brand campaigns often capture existing intent, while discovery campaigns may drive genuine new user acquisition… (click to expand)
Measuring incrementality through blackout testing, correlation analysis, or marketing mix modeling (MMM) reveals the true impact of your spend on Apple Ads. Less-than-stellar results should not lead you to abandon the platform, but rather to reallocate budget from less incremental campaigns to more impactful efforts, ultimately ensuring sustainable and profitable growth. For marketers who optimize diligently, Apple Ads can indeed be incremental—and a key player in a healthy marketing mix.
Atticus’s meditation app was crushing it. Users were finding ZenFlow via Apple Ads campaigns at an impressive $2.20 CPA, and his monthly reports glowed with steady growth numbers on the platform. But when his data wingman casually mentioned, “Every time your branded search ads perform, our unattributed installs seem to drop just as much,” Atticus felt anything but zen.
He dug into the numbers, and it was true: Despite months of increased Apple Ads investment and rosy dashboards, the app’s incrementality measures across platforms were canceling each other out. His Apple Ads campaigns weren’t driving growth—they were expensive tollbooths collecting his fees for stressed-out users already searching for his app. Suddenly, Atticus was the one who needed ZenFlow.
This is the paradox haunting every Apple Ads marketer: when impressive attribution metrics are really expensive traffic redirection in disguise rather than genuine growth acceleration. We are often asked, Is Apple Ads incremental? Let’s dig in and uncover the answer.
Understanding Incrementality: The Foundation of True Performance
At its core, incrementality represents the sine qua non of advertising measurement: distinguishing between correlation and causation in campaign results. While attribution systems excel at telling you what happened just before a conversion, incrementality measurement reveals the direct results of your advertising investment. In other words, If you hadn’t served an ad, would the user still have taken the action anyway?
The language used to discuss this matters more than you might realize. Our industry’s casual use of organic installs is somewhat fallacious—as though these conversions sprout up spontaneously without any external influence. The more precise term unattributed acknowledges that every install happens for a reason, whether it’s a video you stumble upon, word-of-mouth recommendations, previous brand exposure, competitor advertising spillover, or marketing activities your measurement system cannot identify. This simple semantic shift informs how we effectively approach incrementality analysis.
Apple Ads incrementality naturally evolves with your app’s lifecycle. New apps typically demonstrate high incrementality across all campaign types since they often start out with neither brand awareness nor organic visibility. As you “build the buzz” and improve your rankings, incrementality decreases as more users discover your app through non-paid channels.
Different Apple Ads campaign types also exist along a spectrum of incrementality potential. Apps with strong brand loyalty may see lower incrementality from brand campaigns but maintain stronger incremental performance in discovery campaigns.
- Brand campaigns, while often delivering the most attractive cost-per-acquisition metrics, typically capture users who already possess strong intent to find your app.
- Discovery campaigns, on the other hand, introduce your app to users who haven’t yet formed preferences within your category, representing higher potential for incremental growth.
- Campaigns around category and conquest occupy the middle ground—their incrementality largely determined by competitive dynamics and the strength of user intent signals.
Three Pathways to Incrementality Truth
You can determine incrementality using three distinct methodologies, each offering unique insights while demanding different levels of analytical prowess and business risk tolerance.
Path 1: Blackout Testing
Blackout testing represents the most straightforward conceptual approach, essentially creating a controlled experiment by completely pausing advertising activities, then measuring the impact on total conversion volume. This requires establishing comprehensive baseline metrics encompassing both attributed and unattributed installs over several weeks of normal campaign operation. When you pause campaigns for the recommended minimum of 2 to 4 weeks, the results speak clearly: If your total install volume drops proportionally to your paused spend, your campaigns were indeed driving incremental growth. If unattributed installs increase to perfectly offset your lost attributed volume, you’ve discovered expensive traffic redirection rather than genuine growth acceleration—our ZenFlow example.
The challenge with blackout testing lies in biting the bullet and accepting its practical demands: Testing requires sacrificing potentially valuable growth during the experimental period, and the results can be sobering. Discovering that a significant portion of your ad spend delivers questionable incrementality forces difficult strategic decisions about budget reallocation.
NOTE: This type of testing must occur during stable seasonal periods, avoiding holidays, promotional activities, or other external factors that might confound your results.
Path 2: Correlation Analysis
Correlation analysis offers an elegant approach to incrementality measurement, analyzing the statistical relationship between attributed and unattributed install patterns without requiring campaign interruptions. The method shines in real-world scenarios, such as when one advertiser experienced a concerning 13% drop in Apple Ads attributed installs during a crucial December period. Rather than panic, the team conducted deeper analysis, which revealed that unattributed installs also increased by 13% during the same timeframe. The total install volume remained stable, indicating that the “lost” attributed installs were largely non-incremental captures of users converting through other pathways.
This approach involves tracking both attribution streams daily and calculating rolling correlations over 7-day periods. Moments of strong negative correlation—attributed installs decreasing as unattributed installs increase—provide clear signals of non-incremental spend patterns. The beauty of correlation analysis lies in its ability to provide ongoing incrementality insights without sacrificing campaign performance or requiring complex experimental designs.
Path 3: Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM)
MMM represents the most sophisticated approach to incrementality measurement, utilizing advanced statistical techniques to comprehend the complex interdependencies among all marketing channels. Next-generation MMM platforms introduce such concepts as variance inflation factor (VIF) scoring, which measures multicollinearity among different advertising channels. VIF scores below 3 indicate healthy channel independence, while scores above 5 suggest problematic dependency relationships that signal incrementality concerns.
VIF reveals the degree to which channel factors are entangled, possibly signaling incrementality concerns
The power of MMM reveals itself through real-world case studies, such as a retail brand that shifted their Apple Ads strategy from 25% to 95% brand allocation while simultaneously increasing total spend by 50%. The MMM system detected VIF scores spiking to 6.5, indicating strong statistical dependency with other channels like Meta and TikTok. Despite the dramatic spend increase, total first-time purchases remained frustratingly flat. Analysis revealed that upper-funnel social media campaigns were driving brand awareness, leading users to search for the brand in the App Store, where they encountered the heavily funded brand campaigns. So the advertiser was essentially paying twice for the same conversion—once through social media impression costs and again through Apple Ads brand keyword costs.
Want to see these incrementality concepts in action? Watch our on-demand webinar where measurement experts dive deeply into real client case studies, live data analysis, and advanced techniques for optimizing Apple Ads incrementality. Get the tactical details and see the aforementioned methodologies applied to actual campaigns with real results.
Placement-Specific Dynamics
Apple Ads’ evolution beyond search results into Today tab, Search tab, and product pages has incrementality implications across different user contexts:
- Today tab ads potentially demonstrate higher incrementality potential since users encounter them before expressing specific search intent.
- Search Results ads—where marketers tend to invest the lion’s share of their resources—show variable incrementality depending on keyword types, competitor activity, and strategic management.
- Search tab and product pages ads can be considered to occupy middle ground in the incrementality spectrum.
For more information about the various placement types, see our Apple Ads 101 blog post Understanding the Four Ad Placements.
Apple Ads Brand Campaigns—An Incremental Labyrinth
Brand campaigns present the most nuanced incrementality challenges, often delivering impressive surface-level metrics while concealing complex underlying dynamics. These campaigns typically generate the lowest cost-per-acquisition figures and highest conversion rates, making them appear exceptionally efficient. However, this apparent efficacy often masks their tendency to capture users who already possess strong intent to find your app.
The strategic complexity deepens when considering brand protection. Even campaigns with minimal incrementality serve valuable defensive purposes, preventing competitors from capturing users who specifically search for your app name. Remember that your brand keywords are highly incremental to would-be conquesters! The optimization challenge becomes finding the precise balance between brand protection and budget efficiency—maintaining enough presence to defend against competitive conquest while avoiding excessive investment in capturing non-incremental traffic.
Rather than eliminating brand spend entirely, savvy marketers optimize allocation strategies. Most apps benefit from maintaining modest brand campaign investment—typically 20% to 30% of total Apple Ads budget—while concentrating growth investments on category, competitor, and discovery campaigns that demonstrate stronger incrementality signals. This approach recognizes brand campaigns as necessary insurance rather than primary growth drivers, although there are pivotal strategic times when marketers do want to lean into them.
For a detailed guide to lead you through the brand defense maze, check out our Brand Protection Strategy Playbook for Apple Ads.
Getting Started With Measurement
Successful Apple Ads incrementality measurement demands proper analytical infrastructure tailored to Apple’s unique attribution landscape. With Apple Ads now supporting SKAdNetwork as well as AdServices API, your measurement approach must account for both attribution frameworks while avoiding double-counting or attribution gaps.
For marketers setting out to unearth incrementality, correlation analysis using existing attribution data provides an accessible starting point. Track attributed vs. unattributed install patterns specifically for your Apple Ads campaigns—inverse relationships suggest incrementality concerns without requiring complex experimental designs or campaign interruptions.
More experienced teams can implement strategic blackout testing on suspected non-incremental Apple Ads campaigns, beginning with brand campaigns during stable seasonal periods when external factors won’t muddle results.
Strategic Responses to Discoveries
When you discover non-incremental spend patterns in your Apple Ads campaigns, don’t panic—this is a fantastic opportunity to optimize your strategy. The revelation that certain campaigns capture traffic that would have converted anyway opens pathways for smarter budget allocation across Apple Ads campaign and placement types.
Budget reallocation strategies within Apple Ads begin with reducing investment in campaigns showing questionable incrementality—typically brand campaigns—while maintaining minimum viable brand protection levels. The liberated budget can flow toward campaign types demonstrating stronger incrementality signals. Discovery campaigns that capture users earlier in their consideration process often outperform heavily funded brand campaigns on true incremental metrics.
Advanced Apple Ads campaign management platforms such as Search Ads Maven by Kochava automate the optimization process by continuously monitoring individual campaign performance across multitudes of keywords and adjusting bids accordingly. When specific campaigns or ad groups show declining incremental efficiency, these systems can proportionally reduce bids and shift budget toward higher-performing keywords within your Apple Ads account, maintaining optimal performance without requiring constant manual intervention.
Interested in checking out Automation Studio features in Search Ads Maven? Request a demo with the team now!
Expanding Your Marketing Mix
When Apple Ads optimization alone reaches its limits, expanding into complementary marketing channels like Meta or TikTok can improve overall portfolio incrementality by targeting more of the customer funnel and reducing overreliance on any single platform. Media mix diversity generally benefits overall incrementality performance. Marketing organizations then benefit from deploying agile, next-generation MMM solutions that provide ongoing incrementality monitoring and optimization recommendations across Apple Ads alongside other marketing channels.
The combination of robust automation capabilities in Search Ads Maven and agile incremental measurement offered by AIM by Kochava creates a comprehensive solution: AIM continuously monitors dependency relationships across all marketing channels, while Search Ads Maven automatically adjusts Apple Ads campaign bids and budget allocations based on these incrementality signals. This integration optimizes spending balance without requiring constant manual intervention, ensuring that your Apple Ads campaigns consistently target the most incremental opportunities.
So, How Incremental Is Apple Ads?
The incrementality question—How incremental is Apple Ads?—lacks a universal answer because it depends on multiple evolving factors: your app’s maturity, brand awareness level and loyalty, organic ranking strength, and competitive landscape. All of this calls for individual investigation.
Once you uncover any uncomfortable truths about your campaigns, the solution is not abandoning Apple Ads upon discovering non-incremental spend—but optimizing incrementality within the platform. Again, the key often lies in reallocating budget from high-VIF campaigns toward discovery campaigns that capture users earlier in their consideration process.
As privacy-first measurement becomes industry standard and customer acquisition costs continue their fluctuations, incrementality measurement evolves from optional analytics into essential business intelligence. Successful Apple Ads management requires moving beyond attribution comfort zones into true incremental impact measurement. Marketers who master these concepts today build sustainable growth engines while competitors remain trapped in attribution theater—impressive dashboards masking expensive inefficiencies.
Don’t assume incrementality—measure it, optimize for it, and let empirical evidence guide your investment decisions toward sustainable profitability. After all, through better measurement and optimization on Apple Ads, Atticus finally finds his zen—and more importantly, genuinely incremental growth.
Take Your Next Step Toward Stronger Incrementality
Download the Guide
Check out our Brand Protection Strategy Playbook for Apple Ads for in-depth guidance on incrementality-preserving brand defense.
Watch the Webinar
Watch the complete webinar for insights on optimizing Apple Ads incrementality for real results.
Contact Our Team
Talk with our Apple Ads incrementality experts. Contact the Search Ads Maven Team today!
Apple Ads Incrementality FAQ
What is incrementality in the context of Apple Ads?
Incrementality measures what happens as a direct result of your advertising investment on Apple Ads. It helps distinguish genuine new user acquisition and growth from attributed installs that would have occurred anyway.
How can I measure incrementality for my Apple Ads campaigns?
You can do this through blackout testing (pausing campaigns to observe the impact), correlation analysis (examining statistical relationships between attributed and unattributed installs), and MMM (deploying advanced, holistic measurement to understand interdependencies among all marketing channels).
Why are brand campaigns often less incremental than discovery campaigns on Apple Ads?
Brand campaigns frequently capture users who already have a strong intent to find your app, meaning they may have been inclined to install it even without the ad. Discovery campaigns, conversely, introduce your app to users who haven’t yet formed preferences, making them more likely to drive truly new and incremental installs.
Does Apple Ads incrementality change over time?
Yes, incrementality typically decreases as your app matures. New apps often see high incrementality across all campaigns due to limited brand awareness and organic visibility. As you build awareness and improve organic rankings, more users discover your app through non-paid channels, reducing overall incrementality. Stronger incrementality can be found in discovery campaigns that capture genuinely new audiences. Additionally, upper- and middle-of-funnel media can drive lower-funnel search. For example, if you’re advertising heavily on CTV, your brand spend on Apple Ads during that time frame may be less incremental.