AppTweak dropped its 2026 ASO & Apple Ads Trends report this week, and I went through the whole thing. Most of it confirms what we already suspect, while a few numbers made me stop and re-read twice.
Splitting this into three parts: ASO, Apple Ads, and GEO.
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Here’s the number that got me: 90% of apps never A/B test their icon, 90% never test a video, screenshots fare only slightly better, with 35% test twice or more in a year.
If you’re running Apple Ads without ever having tested your creatives, you’re paying to send traffic at a conversion rate you’ve never actually tried to improve.
The pattern holds across ranks too: the top 20 apps by downloads refresh their metadata far more aggressively than everyone else, and same for top games which update screenshots around 12 times a year.
Correlation isn’t causation, but whether they test more because they’re ranked higher, or rank higher because they test more, the top of the store simply doesn’t stop iterating.
My take: if you haven’t tested anything in your last 12 months on App Store Connect / Play Console, it’s worth flagging. Start with metadata, which is the easiest and requires the least resources. Use a tool like Astro to follow progress on keywords ranking, and be patient.
Apple Ads: New placement and pricier Discovery
Apple rolled out additional ad placements in search results on March 25, 2026. AppTweak compared the 28 days before and after across ~2,800 US advertisers, and Discovery campaigns saw the biggest reach gains by far: +44.9% impressions, +41.6% taps, +35.8% installs. Generic, Competitor and Brand campaigns moved in the single-to-low-double digits.
Here’s the part that’s more interesting than “more inventory = more volume”: cost per tap dropped across every campaign type, including Discovery (-1.9%). But cost per install actually rose for Discovery (+4.3%), the only campaign type where CPI went up. Brand, Generic and Competitor CPI all fell (-2.6% to -3.8%).
My theory: this isn’t only about the second placement. Maximize Conversions campaign dropped around the same time as the new ad placement. It also requires pairing it with a Discovery / Automated Search Match ad group, which pulls in a wave of low-volume, previously-untapped keywords.
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