Impression share
Impression share tells you how much of the paid visibility on a search term is yours. It is the clearest signal of whether a keyword has room to grow or is already close to its ceiling.
Updated
Impressions show how often your ad appeared. Impression share adds the context impressions lack: how often it appeared compared with every ad impression served for the same search term. A keyword with modest impressions and a high share is nearly maxed out. A keyword with the same impressions and a low share is leaving most of the auction to other apps.
How impression share is calculated
Adapty Ads Manager lists impression share in its Insights metrics as the percentage of impressions your ad received compared with the total impressions for the same search term. The total comes from Apple, since only Apple sees every auction, and it is reported per search term and per country or region.
Apple reports share for search terms that people actually typed, not for the keywords you bid on, so broad match and Search Match traffic appears under the underlying queries. Low-volume terms may not have enough data to report.
Rank (current)
Rank (current) is your app’s current position in terms of impression share for the selected search term in a specific country or region. Rank 1 means no other app got a larger share of impressions on that term. Rank turns a percentage into a competitive picture: a 30% share can put you first on a fragmented term and third on a term where two competitors split most of the impressions.
How to use impression share for bidding
Impression share is most useful for deciding where more bid can buy more volume, and where it cannot.
- Low share on a keyword that converts to paying subscribers is the best reason to raise a bid. There is untapped volume, and you already know it pays back.
- High share with a good rank means extra bid mostly raises what you pay per tap. Hold the bid and look for growth on other keywords.
- Low share despite a competitive bid often points to relevance. Apple weighs how well your app matches the query, so a better-matched custom product page or more precise keyword can help more than money.
- A sudden drop in share or rank on a term you own, such as your brand name, usually means a competitor started bidding on it.
- Daily budget caps also cut share. If a campaign runs out of budget early in the day, it misses auctions regardless of its bid.
Impression share and subscription economics
Share measures visibility, not value. Before acting on it, check what the keyword earns: cost per trial, cost per subscription and cohort ROAS. A keyword with 10% share and strong payback deserves a higher bid far more than a keyword with 10% share and trials that never convert.
Related terms: share of voice, the broader strategic idea impression share measures; search popularity, which says how big the term is; and impressions, the raw count behind the share.