What's a Good CPI for Apple Search Ads? [2026 Benchmarks]

“My CPI is $4. Is that good?”

It depends. $4 on competitor keywords in the US? Solid. $4 on brand keywords? Something is very wrong.

CPI without context is meaningless. Here’s the framework I use to evaluate Apple Search Ads efficiency — built across 500+ campaign audits.

What you’ll learn:

• How CPI is actually calculated and what drives it
• Benchmarks by campaign type with clear Poor/OK/Good/Strong bands
• Why low CPI can be a red flag, not a success signal
• A diagnostic process for CPI that’s above benchmark
• When to stop optimizing for CPI entirely

---

What CPI Actually Measures

Cost Per Install (CPI) = Total Spend ÷ Installs

But the useful breakdown is: CPI = CPT ÷ CR

Where CPT is Cost Per Tap and CR is the Tap-to-Install Conversion Rate.

This decomposition matters because it tells you which lever to pull. High CPI can stem from:

• High CPT — you’re paying too much per tap (auction or relevance problem)
• Low CR — taps aren’t converting to installs (product page or alignment problem)
• Both — systemic efficiency issue

Treating CPI as a single number obscures where the problem actually lives. Always decompose before optimising.

---

CPI Benchmarks by Campaign Type

Brand Campaigns

Rating	CPI
Poor	> $8
OK	$4-8
Good	$2-4
Strong	< $2

Brand campaigns should have the lowest CPI in your account. Users are searching for your app by name — intent is as high as it gets. If brand CPI exceeds $8, the most likely cause is a competitor bidding aggressively on your brand terms, eating into your impression share and driving up auction costs. Check the suggested bid trend and your impression share side by side.

Generic Campaigns

Rating	CPI
Poor	> $10
OK	$5-10
Good	$3-5
Strong	< $3

Generic keywords represent users looking for a solution in your category. CPI depends on how well your intent match and category competitiveness align. Generic campaigns also tend to be your highest volume driver — which makes efficiency here directly material to total acquisition economics.

Competitor Campaigns

Rating	CPI
Poor	> $12
OK	$6-12
Good	$4-6
Strong	< $4

Competitor campaigns always carry the highest CPI. You’re acquiring users who were searching for someone else — lower conversion rates are structural, not a failure of execution. Anything under $6 genuinely means your positioning and product page are doing effective work. Don’t benchmark competitor CPI against generic. They operate differently.

Discovery Campaigns

Rating	CPI
Poor	> $9
OK	$4-9
Good	$3-4
Strong	< $3

CPI varies widely in Discovery because keyword quality varies widely. Don’t optimise Discovery campaigns for CPI. Optimise them for surfacing keywords worth promoting to Exact. A Discovery campaign that finds one high-converting keyword has done its job, even if average CPI looks mediocre.

---

The CPI Trap: When Low CPI Is a Warning Sign

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: a falling CPI is not always good news.

A $2 install that never converts to paid is worthless. A $8 install that subscribes on day one might be your best acquisition. Teams that celebrate CPI drops while actual unit economics deteriorate are optimising for the wrong variable.

The pattern looks like this: you reduce bids, CPI drops, install volume stays roughly stable, but cohort data six weeks later shows lower D30 retention and worse trial conversion. You optimised cheapness into your funnel and filtered out the high-intent users who were worth paying for.

The check: Run CPI and CPA (cost per paying user) side by side. If CPI is falling but CPA is rising, you’re acquiring cheaper installs from lower-quality users. That’s not efficiency — it’s a slow-moving problem.

---

Diagnosing High CPI: A Structured Approach

If your CPI lands in the “Poor” band, work through this before changing bids:

Step 1 — Decompose into CPT and CR Is CPT high, CR low, or both? Each has a different fix. High CPT is an auction or relevance problem. Low CR is a product page or alignment problem.

Step 2 — Scope the problem Is high CPI concentrated in specific keywords, ad groups, or campaigns? Account-wide high CPI points to a structural or market issue. Keyword-specific high CPI usually points to relevance or targeting mismatch.

Step 3 — Check competitive pressure Compare your CPT trend against Apple’s suggested bid trends for affected keywords. If suggested bids rose proportionally, the market became more competitive — that’s an external factor, not something you can fix by restructuring. If your CPT rose but suggested bids didn’t, the problem is internal.

Step 4 — Review campaign structure for cannibalization Multiple campaigns bidding on the same keywords create internal auctions where you’re competing against yourself. Discovery campaigns overlapping with Exact campaigns without proper negative keyword coverage is the most common structural driver of inflated CPT.

Step 5 — Evaluate bid ceiling and automation rules Automation rules that increase bids without ceilings will creep CPT upward over time. Review your rules for uncapped escalation logic. Set bid ceilings by campaign type: Brand (1.2x historical baseline), Generic (1.5x), Competitor (2x with CPA cap), Discovery (0.5x Generic baseline).

---

Resolution by Root Cause

Root Cause	Fix	Timeline
Market-driven (competitors, seasonality)	Wait for normalization or adjust targets	Ongoing monitoring
Relevance-driven (metadata or creative mismatch)	Improve metadata, align CPPs to keyword intent	1-2 weeks
Structure-driven (internal cannibalization)	Add negatives, restructure campaigns	48-72 hours
Bid-driven (uncapped automation)	Reset bids, add ceilings, recalibrate rules	24-48 hours

---

The Bottom Line

CPI benchmarks only make sense when segmented by intent:

• Brand: $2-4 is healthy
• Generic: $3-5 is solid
• Competitor: $4-6 is strong
• Discovery: Focus on keyword finding, not CPI

And remember: CPI measures install efficiency, not whether those installs are worth anything. A healthy CPI paired with terrible cohort metrics means you’ve optimised the wrong thing. Track CPA and ROAS alongside CPI to understand real acquisition efficiency.

---

CPI that doesn’t make sense by campaign type? Book a free 30-minute diagnostic — I’ll find where the auction efficiency is breaking down.