How The Economist grew app downloads by 44% with Apple Ads automation and custom product pages

Challenge

Apple Ads is a core channel for The Economist. The App Store is where all other marketing efforts lead, and their final opportunity to influence the install decision – making Apple Ads a key channel to reinforce credibility, defend against competitors, and communicate value.

The Economist’s Apple Ads campaigns were optimized primarily on high-funnel metrics, while the end goal was subscription growth. To bridge that gap, the team looked for more granular performance insights and automation to manage Apple Ads more efficiently while maintaining strong impression share.

Solution

The Economist used AppTweak to automate and improve core parts of its Apple Ads workflow.

Using automation templates, the team set up bidding rules to maintain high impression share on brand and high-intent keywords, and reduce the need for manual bid adjustments. This allowed campaigns to stay optimized in the background while protecting important brand visibility.

MMP integrations, impression share tracking, and competitor insights also provided visibility into how Apple Ads performance translated into downstream results, supporting more informed optimization decisions.

In parallel, The Economist set up custom product pages to align Apple Ads traffic with user intent. With multiple content themes across the app (politics, economics, technology, and so forth), The Economist paired the most relevant keywords with tailored creatives and app pages, ensuring customers saw content that aligned with what they were searching for.

Results

By combining strategic Apple Ads automation and custom product pages, The Economist:

• Maintained 90% impression share on high-intent keywords
• Increased app downloads by 44% within 1 month

In addition to performance improvements, managing Apple Ads campaigns in AppTweak helped The Economist:

• Reduce reliance on manual bid adjustments
• Make more data-driven bid and keyword decisions
• Roll out new custom product pages faster
• Gain a clearer view of ASO and Apple Ads synergies

What’s next

Looking ahead, The Economist plans to continue exploring market expansion opportunities and refining its automated bidding setup with AppTweak.