Apple Search Ads Analytics: Track Keyword ROI and Improve App Store Ranking
Connect your account once, and every install gets a real campaign name, a real keyword, and a real cost - down to whether that keyword's traffic ever finished onboarding.
The keyword that converts and the keyword that ranks are the same keyword
Apple Search Ads gives you cost-per-tap and cost-per-install, broken out by keyword. That's useful, and it's also where the picture stops. It can't tell you whether the person who typed "invoice scanner for freelancers" into the App Store actually made it through your onboarding, activated, or ever paid you a cent. Most teams end up making budget calls off half the story: cheap installs look like winning keywords, until someone checks retention three weeks later and finds out they weren't.
→ Insight
Apple's organic search ranking rewards apps that convert well for a given term, not just apps that already rank for it. Search Ads is, in effect, a live paid experiment running on the exact keywords you'd want to rank for organically. If you're not watching what happens after the tap, you're funding the experiment and throwing away the result.
Connecting your account
Unlike some ad platforms, Apple doesn't require OnRamp to register as a partner before you can connect. You generate your own API credentials directly inside your Apple Search Ads account, and the integration is live the moment you paste them in - no approval queue to wait on.
Create an API-enabled user
In Apple Search Ads, go to Account Settings → User Management and give a user one of the API roles. API Account Manager covers most teams.
Generate a client
Switch to that user and open Account Settings → API to generate a client. This is where your Client ID, Team ID, and Key ID come from, along with a private key.
Connect in OnRamp
Open Integrations → Ad Spend → Apple Search Ads and paste in the four values.
Pick your org
Choose the org you want to track from the account picker. OnRamp confirms access and kicks off the first sync automatically.
Spend starts backfilling within minutes, and every sync after that pulls both campaign- and keyword-level performance.
What actually changes once it's connected
Real names everywhere. Apple's install attribution resolves asynchronously as a numeric campaign and keyword ID - normally you'd just see 48213908 in your reports. OnRamp matches those IDs against your synced spend data and swaps in the real campaign and keyword text, on the funnel breakdown, the sessions list, and every visitor's own profile.
CAC at three altitudes. A blended cost-per-install for the whole channel, a cost per campaign, and - the one nobody else gives you - a cost per keyword, each measured against installs Apple's own device-side confirmation actually attributed to it, not just app opens.
Filter the whole dashboard by keyword. Click a keyword and every chart on the page - funnel conversion, retention, revenue - narrows to just the people who arrived through that search term.
Attribution on every visitor. Open any user's session timeline and see exactly which campaign and keyword brought them in, right next to what they actually did in your product.
Turn Search Ads data into an ASO strategy
Apple's organic ranking isn't just about relevance - conversion rate for a given term is one of the strongest signals it uses. An app that reliably turns a search into a completed onboarding and a paying customer will, over time, rank higher for that phrase than one that just has the words in its title.
Search Ads keyword data is the fastest way to test that before you commit to it organically. Historically, the only numbers you had were cost-per-tap and cost-per-install from Apple's own console - nothing about what happened next. With spend and keyword data flowing into the same funnel your organic traffic runs through, you can finally ask the question that matters: which keywords convert people who searched them into people who stayed?
Two patterns worth watching every time you review spend:
| Pattern | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Cheap installs, weak funnel | People tapped because the ad matched loosely, not because your product matched what they searched | Pull the bid back, and leave the term out of your keyword field - reinforcing it would likely drag down your conversion rate for that phrase, which hurts ranking too |
| Expensive installs, strong funnel | People who complete onboarding, activate, and pay - proof your listing converts for this exact phrase | Add it to your title, subtitle, or the 100-character keyword field in App Store Connect, even if the bid isn't cheap |
✓ Tip
Run this check monthly against your top 15-20 keywords by spend. You're not just tuning a Search Ads budget - you're running a continuously updated ASO research program funded by ad spend you were already committing.
Here's what that looks like against a real set of keywords:
| Keyword | Installs | CAC | Funnel completion | Read |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| expense tracker for freelancers | 412 | $2.10 | 71% | Reinforce |
| invoice scanner | 205 | $3.40 | 68% | Reinforce |
| self employed taxes | 96 | $4.15 | 63% | Watch |
| budget app | 890 | $0.85 | 19% | Cut |
| free money app | 1,240 | $0.40 | 8% | Cut |
Illustrative example - your own breakdown is under Funnel → Acquisition once Apple Search Ads is connected.
What to look at first
Rank keywords by spend, then sort by funnel completion - not by CAC alone
A $4 CAC at 68% completion is a better keyword than a $0.40 CAC at 8% completion.
Get started
If you're already on OnRamp, the integration lives under Integrations → Ad Spend. If you're weighing whether to invest more in Apple Search Ads at all, this is the fastest way to find out - you'll know within a sync cycle which keywords are actually worth the bid, and which ones are worth adding to your next App Store update.
Ready to see your keyword ROI?
Connect Apple Search Ads in minutes
No developer-token application, no partner approval - paste in your API credentials and see campaign and keyword performance against your real funnel. OnRamp is built specifically for onboarding analytics.
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