Your CPT Just Spiked? Here's a 5-Step Diagnosis Framework

Your Cost Per Tap just jumped 30%. Now what?

Panic is the wrong response. So is randomly lowering bids. High CPT has specific causes, and the right fix depends on correctly diagnosing the root cause. Cutting bids indiscriminately when the problem is a competitor surge just reduces your impression share without solving anything.

I’ve built a systematic framework for CPT diagnosis that I run in every audit. Here’s the exact process.

What you’ll learn:

• How to confirm you actually have a CPT problem (not all spikes are equal)
• A 5-step framework to isolate the root cause
• The four categories of CPT problems and what fixes each
• Specific resolution timelines and bid ceiling benchmarks
• When high CPT is the market and when it’s you

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First: Is Your CPT Actually High?

Before diagnosing, confirm you have a problem worth diagnosing. Expected CPT varies significantly by campaign type:

Campaign Type	Poor	OK	Good	Strong
Brand	> $4	$2-4	$1-2	< $1
Generic	> $6	$3-6	$1.5-3	< $1.5
Competitor	> $8	$4-8	$2-4	< $2
Discovery	> $5	$2.5-5	$1.5-2.5	< $1.5

A $3 CPT on competitor keywords is fine. A $3 CPT on brand keywords is a red flag.

High CPT triggers action when it: exceeds your 30-day historical average by 25% or more, falls into the “Poor” band for that campaign type, or shows a rising trend over 7+ consecutive days without a corresponding performance improvement elsewhere.

A single-day spike without a sustained trend is usually noise. A 7-day rising trend is a signal.

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The 5-Step Diagnosis Framework

Step 1: Scope the Problem

Identify where the CPT increase is happening before doing anything else:

• Account-wide CPT up? External market factor or structural issue across campaigns
• Campaign-specific CPT up? Configuration or targeting problem in that campaign
• Keyword-specific CPT up? Competition or relevance issue on those terms

This scoping determines everything that follows. An account-wide problem needs a different investigation than a single keyword spiking.

Step 2: Check Competitive Pressure

Before assuming the problem is internal, check whether the market moved:

• Has competitor bidding activity increased on your keywords?
• Are new advertisers entering your keyword auctions?
• Has category-wide CPT increased industry-wide?

How to check: Compare your CPT trend against Apple’s suggested bid trends. If suggested bids rose proportionally to your CPT, the auction got more competitive — that’s an external factor. If your CPT rose but suggested bids stayed flat, the problem is internal to your account.

This distinction is critical. Market-driven CPT increases require patience and target adjustments. Internal problems require structural fixes.

Step 3: Assess Relevance

Apple’s auction rewards relevance. When relevance scores drop, CPT rises — you’re paying more for lower-quality placement. Relevance issues typically follow:

• Metadata changes that affected keyword alignment
• New keywords added to ad groups without relevance verification
• Creative drift where your Custom Product Pages no longer match keyword intent

Check: Did you change your app metadata recently? Did you add new keywords without reviewing relevance? Are your CPPs matched to the intent of keywords in each ad group?

Fix: Realign metadata to target keywords, create CPPs that match keyword theme, and remove keywords that have low relevance to your current creative.

Step 4: Review Campaign Structure

Internal conflicts silently inflate CPT. The most common culprits:

• Keyword cannibalization: Multiple campaigns bidding on the same terms. You’re competing against yourself in the auction.
• Missing negative keywords: Discovery campaigns overlapping with Exact campaigns. Without negatives, Discovery spend bleeds into already-known performing keywords.
• Budget concentration: Capping total budget forces spend onto fewer, more expensive terms instead of distributing across a keyword portfolio.

Audit campaign structure by pulling all keyword lists across campaigns and identifying duplicates. Any exact-match keyword appearing in both an Exact campaign and a Discovery or Broad campaign without negative protection is a structural leak.

Step 5: Evaluate Bid Strategy

Sometimes CPT spikes because of how you’re bidding, not the market:

• Automated bidding without ceilings: Automation rules that increase bids without caps will creep CPT upward over time until something breaks.
• Outdated bid baselines: Bids calibrated to a competitive landscape that no longer exists, either too high or too low for current conditions.
• No bid ceiling configuration: Bids will drift to whatever the auction demands without ceiling constraints.

Bid ceiling benchmarks: Brand (1.2x your historical baseline), Generic (1.5x), Competitor (2x with a CPA cap), Discovery (0.5x your Generic baseline). If current bids exceed these ceilings, reset them before investigating further.

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The Four Root Cause Categories

After completing the diagnostic, every CPT problem falls into one of four buckets:

1. Market-Driven Seasonal competition spike, competitor aggressive campaign, new entrants in the category.

• Resolution: Adjust efficiency targets, wait for market normalization, or temporarily reduce spend on most competitive terms.
• Timeline: Days to weeks depending on competitive cycle.

2. Relevance-Driven Metadata changes that reduced keyword relevance, creative-to-keyword misalignment, new keywords without relevance validation.

• Resolution: Improve metadata alignment, create intent-matched CPPs, remove low-relevance keywords.
• Timeline: 1-2 weeks for relevance signals to update.

3. Structure-Driven Internal keyword cannibalization, missing negative keywords, budget concentration.

• Resolution: Add negatives, restructure campaigns, expand keyword coverage.
• Timeline: 48-72 hours to implement, 7 days to confirm impact.

4. Bid-Driven Uncapped automation rules, outdated bid baselines, no ceiling configuration.

• Resolution: Reset bids to historical baseline, implement ceilings, recalibrate automation.
• Timeline: 24-48 hours to implement. Monitor for 7 days and iterate if unresolved.

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Resolution Priority by Urgency

Immediate (24-48h):

• Implement bid ceilings if absent
• Pause keywords with high CPT and low CR simultaneously — they’re losing on both ends
• Add missing negative keywords if overlap is confirmed

Short-term (1-2 weeks):

• Adjust bids to current competitive landscape
• Evaluate creative alignment for underperforming ad groups
• Review metadata relevance for affected keywords

Long-term (1+ month):

• Restructure campaigns if internal conflict persists
• Develop competitive response strategy if market-driven increases continue
• Consider keyword portfolio rebalancing

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The Bottom Line

High CPT is diagnosable. Methodical diagnosis beats random bid adjustments every time:

1. Scope it — Account, campaign, or keyword level?
2. Check the market — Did suggested bids move? External or internal?
3. Assess relevance — Did metadata or creatives change?
4. Review structure — Are you competing against yourself?
5. Evaluate bids — Are automation rules running without ceilings?

Each step narrows the problem. By Step 5, you know exactly what to fix.

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Seeing CPT increases you can’t explain? Book a free 30-minute diagnostic — sometimes a fresh set of eyes catches what you’ve been staring past for weeks.