Solved: Apple Search Ads Cost in Jacksonville (Data Inside)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

Happy to give you some of my initial thoughts and guidance on this. The first thing I've got to say is that trying to figure out Apple Search Ads costs on a city-by-city basis, like for Jacksonville, is probably the wrong way to look at it. It's a really common mistake to make, so don't worry, but the platform just doesn't operate on that granular a level for bidding. It's not like running local service ads on Google.

The real things that drive your costs are the keywords you bid on, how much competition there is for them, and how relevant your app is to the user searching. A user in Jacksonville searching for a "photo editor app" is in the exact same auction as a user in New York or Los Angeles searching for the same thing. You're bidding for the search term across the entire country, not for the user's postcode.

Thinking this way will save you a lot of headache and wasted budget. So, let's break down how you should be thinking about your budget and forecasting your customer acquisition costs. It's a bit of a mind shift, but it's how you build a profitable and scalable campaign.

We'll need to look at why geography isn't the main cost driver...

It's easy to assume that ad platforms let you slice and dice your targeting down to a specific town or city, because some do. Google Ads, especially for local businesses, is built around this idea. You want to show ads for "electrician near me" only to people in a 10-mile radius? No problem. But Apple Search Ads is a different beast entirely. Its focus is on the App Store, which is a global marketplace that's segmented by country, not by city.

When you set up a campaign, you choose which countries or regions you want your ads to appear in. For you, that would be the United States. Once you've done that, every single user within the US who searches on the App Store becomes part of the same potential audience pool. The auction is for the keyword, at that specific moment in time, across the entire US storefront.

Let me put it another way. Imagine two people are looking for a new productivity app. One is sitting in a coffee shop in Jacksonville, Florida. The other is on the subway in Chicago, Illinois. They both pull out their iPhones, open the App Store, and type "task manager app" into the search bar. In that instant, they both enter the *exact same* auction. Your ad is competing against all the other task manager apps who have bid on that keyword in the United States. Apple's algorithm doesn't really care that one user is in Florida and the other is in Illinois; it cares about who has the most relevant app and who is willing to pay the most for that tap. Your bid is for the keyword, not the location.

This is a fundamental point to grasp because if you spend your time trying to optimise for a specific city, you'll be chasing a ghost. There are no levers to pull to directly increase or decrease spend in Jacksonville. You can't set a "Jacksonville bid adjustment". Any agency or "expert" who tells you they can get you a specific CPL for a single US city on Apple Search Ads is either mistaken or not being entierly honest with you. The system just isn't built for it.

To illustrate this, here's a simple breakdown of the ad auction flow. Notice how location becomes irrelevant after the country-level targeting is set.

So, we need to forget about Jacksonville. It's a distraction. Instead, we need to focus on the variables that you actually have control over and that genuinely impact your campaign costs and performance.

I'd say you need to focus on these three cost factors instead...

Alright, so if city-targeting is a dead end, where should you focus your energy? Based on my experience running app campaigns, including one where we drove over 45,000 signups, it all boils down to three main pillars. Get these right, and you'll have a fighting chance of building a profitable campaign. Get them wrong, and you'll just be burning cash, no matter where your users are located.

1. Keyword Competition and Cost-Per-Tap (CPT)

This is the absolute core of the auction. Every time a user searches, you're bidding against other advertisers for the chance to show your ad. The price you pay for a single tap on your ad is the Cost-Per-Tap, or CPT. This is the metric that is most directly influenced by competition. Some keywords are like quiet country lanes, while others are like a ten-lane motorway during rush hour.

• High Competition Keywords: These are typically broad, high-intent terms. Think "investing app", "dating app", "food delivery", or "casino games". Thousands of apps are fighting for these terms, including massive companies with huge budgets. Bidding on these can result in CPTs of several dollars, sometimes even £10 or more for a single tap in hyper-competitive niches like finance.
• Medium Competition Keywords: These are more specific. Instead of "photo editor", it might be "vintage photo filter app". There's still competition, but the field has narrowed. CPTs here are more reasonable, maybe in the $1-$3 range.
• Low Competition Keywords: These are often long-tail or very niche terms, like "astrophotography stacking app". Very few users search for them, but those who do have incredibly specific intent. CPTs can be well under a dollar. Your own brand name should also fall into this category (unless your brand name is a generic word!).

Your job isn't to just find the cheapest keywords. It's to find the keywords that deliver users who will actually take valuable actions in your app, at a price that makes sense for your business. You might find that a keyword with a $4 CPT is far more profitable than one with a $0.50 CPT, because the users from the more expensive term actually subscribe to your premium plan.

Here's a rough idea of how CPTs can vary by app category. These are just illustrative, but they show the massive difference competition makes.

2. Your App's Tap-Through Rate (TTR)

This is the second critical piece of the puzzle. Apple doesn't just want to give the top ad spot to the highest bidder. They want to show the ad that is most likely to be tapped on by the user. Why? Because a better user experience keeps people using the App Store, and Apple only gets paid when a user taps your ad. So, they have a vested interest in rewarding relevance.

Tap-Through Rate (TTR) is the percentage of people who tap your ad after seeing it. If 100 people see your ad and 5 tap on it, your TTR is 5%. A higher TTR signals to Apple that your ad is highly relevant to the search query. The algorithm rewards a high TTR with what's called a better 'Ad Rank'. A better Ad Rank means you can actually win a higher ad position than a competitor, even if they are bidding more than you. It can also lead to you paying a lower CPT.

So how do you improve your TTR? You optimise the only things a user sees before they tap: your app's creative assets on the App Store.

• App Icon: Is it clean, professional, and does it stand out?
• App Name & Subtitle: Are they clear and do they include relevant keywords?
• Screenshots & Videos: Do they immediately show the value of your app? Are they visually appealing and easy to understand? Poorly designed screenshots are a massive red flag for users.
• Reviews & Ratings: This is huge. An app with a 4.8-star rating is going to get way more taps than an identical app with a 3.2-star rating. Social proof is incredibly powerful.

This is a lever you have 100% control over, and it's where so many developers fall down. They spend months coding the app, but only five minutes on the marketing assets. That's a recipe for expensive, underperforming ads. Before you spend a single pound on ads, your App Store presence needs to be absolutely dialed in.

3. Your In-App Conversion Rate

Okay, so you've found some good keywords and your TTR is looking healthy. People are tapping your ad and landing on your App Store page. Great. But a tap is not a customer. The final, and arguably most important, factor is what happens *after* the tap.

First, they have to download the app. Then they have to open it. Then they have to complete your onboarding. And finally, they have to perform the action you actually care about – subscribing, making a purchase, signing up for a trial, etc. The percentage of users who complete that final action is your conversion rate.

This is what connects your advertising cost (CPT) to your actual business results (CPA - Cost Per Acquisition). The formula is simple:

CPA = CPT / Conversion Rate

Let's say your average CPT is $2.00.

• If 1 in 10 users who download your app becomes a paying subscriber (a 10% conversion rate), your CPA is $2.00 / 0.10 = $20.
• But if your app is confusing, buggy, or the value isn't clear, maybe only 1 in 50 users subscribe (a 2% conversion rate). Now your CPA is $2.00 / 0.02 = $100.

That's a 5x difference in your acquisition cost, and it had absolutely nothing to do with your ads. It was all about the quality of your in-app experience. You could have the best ad campaign in the world, but if your app doesn't deliver on the promise, you are just pouring water into a leaky bucket. This is why a smooth onboarding flow, a clear value proposition, and a compelling offer are not just "product" problems; they are fundamental marketing problems.

You probably should reframe your question from 'cost' to 'affordable CPA'...

This brings us to the most important shift in mindset. Instead of asking "How much will my ads cost?", the better question is "How much can I afford to pay to acquire a new customer?". The first question is external and unknowable. The second is internal and something you can, and must, calculate.

The answer lies in a metric called Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). This is the total amount of profit you can expect to make from a single customer over the entire time they use your app. Once you know what a customer is worth, you can make an informed decision about how much you're willing to spend to get one. This is the maths that separates the businesses that grow intelligently from those that burn through cash and die.

Let's walk through a hypothetical calculation. You'll need three pieces of data:

1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): How much revenue, on average, does a user generate per month? (e.g., your subscription price).
2. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue after app store fees, server costs, etc.?
3. Monthly Churn Rate %: What percentage of your customers cancel their subscription each month?

The formula is: LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

Let's say your app has a subscription of $9.99/month (so ARPA is $9.99). Your gross margin is 70% after Apple's cut and other costs. And you've observed that you lose about 8% of your subscribers each month (your churn rate).

LTV = ($9.99 * 0.70) / 0.08
LTV = $6.99 / 0.08
LTV = $87.38

So, in this example, each new subscriber is worth about $87 in profit to your business over their lifetime. Now we have a number to work with!

A healthy and sustainable business model often aims for a 3:1 ratio of LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC or CPA). This gives you enough margin to cover other business expenses and generate a profit. So, with an LTV of $87.38, you can afford to spend up to $87.38 / 3 = $29.12 to acquire a new customer.

This is your answer. Your target CPA should be under $29. This is the number you should be aiming for in your Apple Search Ads campaigns. It's no longer a vague guess about "costs in Jacksonville"; it's a hard business metric tied directly to your own economics. Suddenly, seeing a $2 CPT doesn't seem so scary if you know your conversion rate is high enough to deliver a final CPA under your $29 target.

To make this easier, I've built a simple interactive calculator for you. Play around with the sliders to see how small changes in your pricing, margins, or user retention can dramatically change what you can afford to spend on ads.

You'll need a solid campaign structure to test this...

Now that you have a target CPA, you need a methodical way to go out and try to achieve it. You can't just dump a list of 100 keywords into one campaign and hope for the best. That's a surefire way to get messy data and waste money. A professional, structured approach is essential to control costs, understand performance, and scale what works.

I usually recommend starting with a structure that segments keywords by user intent. This allows you to set different bids and allocate budget more intelligently. Here’s a tried-and-tested structure that works for most apps:

Why structure it this way? Control.

• Your Brand Campaign should be your most efficient. People are already looking for you. You need to be there, and it should be cheap. You can set a low bid here and still win almost every time because your relevance is perfect.
• Your Competitor Campaign is more aggressive. You're trying to poach users. You might be willing to pay a higher CPA here because these users are already "product aware" and likely ready to pay for a solution. You can set a higher bid to reflect this.
• Your Generic Campaign is your workhorse. This is where you'll spend most of your budget to grow. You need to watch performance here closely and prune keywords that don't convert within your target CPA.
• Your Discovery Campaign is your research and development lab. It runs with Search Match on, and its job is to unearth unexpected search terms that people are using to find apps like yours. When you find a search term that is converting well in this campaign, you pause it there and add it as an exact match keyword to your Generic or Competitor campaign. This creates a feedback loop of continuous improvement.

By splitting your efforts like this, you're not just throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. You're running a portfolio of strategic initiatives, each with its own goal and budget, which gives you the controll you need to steer the ship towards profitability.

So, what results can you actually expect?

This is where we can look at some real-world data to ground the theory. While I can't give you a number for Jacksonville, I can tell you what we've seen across various app campaigns we've managed.

For example, we ran a large-scale growth campaign for a software/events app across Meta, TikTok, Google, and Apple Ads. On Apple Search Ads specifically, we were part of a strategy that drove over 45,000 signups at an average cost per signup under £2 (around $2.50). This wasn't a fluke, and it certainly wasn't because we found a "cheap city" to advertise in. It was the result of methodically applying the principles we've just discussed:

• Calculating an Affordable CPA: We knew the LTV, so we had a clear target for what we could afford to spend.
• Optimising the App Store Page: The client had fantastic creative, a clear value prop, and great reviews, which gave us a strong TTR from the start.
- A Solid Campaign Structure: We used a tiered structure similar to the one above to test hundreds of keywords, identify the winners, and scale the budget into what was working. - Relentless Optimisation: We didn't just 'set and forget'. We were constantly analysing search term reports, adjusting bids, and moving keywords between campaigns to improve efficiency.

More broadly, we typically see B2C signups or app installs cost anywhere between $1-$5. This is a much more realistic benchmark for your initial forecasting. Your goal should be to start somewhere in this range and, through optimisation, push your CPA down as low as possible while still getting the volume of users you need.

Think of performance as a spectrum. On one end, you have an unoptimised campaign with a poor App Store page, messy structure, and no clear CPA target. On the other, you have a highly-tuned machine. Your final cost will depend on where you fall on this spectrum.

The key takeaway is that your cost is an output of your strategy, not an input. You can't just pick a number off a shelf. You have to earn a low CPA by doing the hard work of optimisation.

This is the main advice I have for you:

So, to bring it all together, here is a clear, actionable plan for how to approach budgeting and forecasting for your Apple Search Ads. Forget about Jacksonville and focus on these five steps instead. This is the framework that will give you clarity and a much higher chance of success.

Following this plan will put you miles ahead of most new advertisers on the platform. You'll be operating from a position of strategic clarity, using your own business metrics to guide your decisions, which is the only sustainable way to grow with paid advertising.

While this framework is straightforward, the execution can be complex and time-consuming. Continuously monitoring search term reports, adjusting hundreds of keyword bids, refreshing creative, and analysing performance data is a full-time job. It requires a deep understanding of the platform's nuances and, frankly, a lot of patience.

This is where expert help can make a huge difference. An experienced agency or consultant has been through this process hundreds of times. We know the benchmarks, we can spot opportunities and problems faster, and we have the systems in place to manage the complexity efficiently. We can help you navigate the initial learning phase much more quickly and avoid the common costly mistakes that can drain your budget before you even get started.

If you’d like to have a chat about how we could apply this kind of strategic thinking to your app specifically, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can take a look at your app, your goals, and give you some more tailored advice on how to get started on the right foot.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh