App Marketing Agency — Installs, ASO and Activated Users
App marketing is two jobs that keep getting confused: buying installs through Google and Meta, and earning them from a store listing that converts the traffic already landing on it.
- B2B & SaaS
- EdTech & coaching
- D2C & ecommerce
- Healthcare & clinics
- Travel & hospitality
An install is the cheapest thing an app campaign can be asked to produce, which is why it is the number most reports lead with, and also the number that says least. A campaign pointed at installs finds people who download and never open. A campaign pointed at a real in-app event finds fewer people who are worth having. The difference between those two costs does not appear on launch day. It appears in week-two retention, by which point the budget has already gone somewhere.
So the first question is what counts as an activated user for your app: a completed signup, a first order, a finished profile, a session after day three. Until that event is defined and firing reliably through your SDK, nothing else deserves spend. Once it is, both Google and Meta have something worth optimising towards, the store listing can be judged on conversion rather than raw traffic, and cost per activated user becomes a figure you can hold a budget against. Web campaigns live on our Meta and Google Ads pages.
Is this the right fit?
- Apps that launched with a large install push and few active users to show for it
- Teams buying installs who cannot say what a retained user costs them
- Listings that have never been tested against an alternative icon or screenshot set
- D2C brands whose app and website compete for the same buyer and the same budget
- Founders whose events were wired once at launch and never verified since
What app marketing includes
SDK and event verification
Before any spend, we confirm that installs, signups, purchases and your chosen activation event reach Google and Meta through whichever attribution tool you use. Missing, duplicated or misnamed events are the most common reason app campaigns quietly underperform.
Google App campaigns
Built for the inventory Google serves app ads across, including Play, Search, YouTube and Display, with enough distinct text, image and video assets that the system has genuine variety to assemble from rather than four near-identical lines.
Meta app install campaigns
Campaigns pointed at in-app events wherever weekly volume supports it, with creative cut for the placements that carry app traffic, and installed users separated out so re-engagement and acquisition are never judged on one blended figure.
Store listing optimisation
Icon, screenshots, preview video, title, subtitle and description, plus the keyword fields each store offers. Listing conversion rate multiplies everything paid and organic send to that page, which makes it the cheapest lever on the list.
Cost per activated user reporting
Reporting that runs install to activation to retention, so a source with a higher install cost and better week-four retention shows up as the cheaper one. Platform-reported numbers sit beside your own backend counts, never in place of them.
Re-engagement and deep links
Campaigns aimed at dormant installs, with deep links that open the relevant screen instead of the home tab. Reviving an install you already paid for usually costs less than buying a new one, and it is routinely left undone.
How we run it
Measure first
Audit of the SDK, event names, attribution setup and store console access. We agree the activation event with you and confirm it fires once, correctly, on both Android and iOS builds.
Listing baseline
The current listing is reviewed against its own store-reported conversion rate, and the first round of icon, screenshot and description changes is queued as a test rather than shipped on taste.
Launch acquisition
Google App campaigns and Meta campaigns go live with enough daily budget to leave the learning stage, starting on a shallow event where volume is thin and moving deeper as data builds.
Shift to activation
Once the activation event carries steady weekly volume, campaigns are re-pointed at it and budget moves by cost per activated user. Install cost becomes a diagnostic number, not the target.
Refresh on a cadence
Listing experiments and new creative batches run on a fixed rhythm, because both decay, and refreshing either is cheaper than bidding harder into the same auction.
What you actually get
- SDK and in-app event audit with fixes verified on both platforms
- An agreed activation event and the reporting built around it
- Google App campaigns built, launched and managed
- Meta app install and re-engagement campaigns
- Store listing rewrite with icon, screenshot and preview direction
- Listing experiment log with outcomes recorded
- Weekly reporting on install cost and cost per activated user
- Retention cohorts traced back to acquisition source
How pricing works
Managed channel pricing starts at the published rate on our pricing page for one channel, and most app work runs two channels, since Google and Meta behave differently enough to need separate handling. A standalone measurement and listing audit is a fixed-fee project at the published audit rate. Store experiments are part of the retainer; video production for app placements is quoted on top.
See starting prices →Questions and topics this covers
- — how much does an app install cost in India
- — app store optimisation services for Android apps
- — agency to run Google App campaigns
- — cost per install versus cost per activated user
- cost per install
- activation event
- attribution SDK
- Google App campaigns
- Play Console
- App Store Connect
- retention cohort
- deep link
App Marketing: frequently asked
What does an app install cost in India?
It varies far too much by category for a useful number: a free utility and a lending app bid in different auctions against different competitors. Anyone quoting an install cost before seeing your category, your store listing and your retention curve is quoting someone else's account. We give a figure after two or three weeks of live data, and we quote activated-user cost alongside it.
Should we optimise for installs or in-app events?
Events, as soon as you have the volume for it. Install-optimised campaigns are pointed at the easiest action in the funnel, so that is what they find. The catch is that a deep event needs steady weekly conversions before the system can learn on it, so the honest sequence is to start shallow, build volume, then move the target down the funnel.
Is ASO worth doing if we are already buying installs?
Yes, and it compounds with the paid work rather than competing with it. Every paid click still lands on the same store page, so a better icon and screenshot set lowers the cost of every install you buy as well as winning the organic ones. It is also a fixed piece of work, unlike a bid you keep paying.
How does iOS reporting differ from Android?
Apple limits what advertisers can attribute at the user level, so iOS reporting tends to arrive aggregated, delayed and modelled, while Android generally gives more direct event data. The rules have changed several times, so confirm the current position with your attribution provider. In practice it means judging iOS on cohort and blended numbers rather than per-campaign precision.
How long before app campaigns are worth judging?
Give the acquisition side three to four weeks before drawing conclusions, since the learning phase and attribution delays both distort the first fortnight. Retention needs longer: a fair read on activated-user quality takes a full four-week cohort. Listing experiments report on whatever cycle your store's testing tool uses, which is typically a week or more.
Related services and reading
Want app marketing run properly?
Tell us your numbers: spend, revenue, margin, current cost per result. We will tell you where the constraint actually is before anyone talks about a retainer.
- ₹50Cr+ ad spend managed
- 32+ brands scaled
- 12 documented Shopify case studies
- You keep account ownership