Executive summary
Highlights of the year
- Search results ads TTR averaged 8.08% in 2025, compared to 9.07% in 2024, signaling a lower engagement baseline year over year.
- The 2025 TTR pattern showed a Q2 peak (8.32%), and a steady close in Q4 (7.99%), reinforcing the role of seasonality and relevance signals in taps.
- Search results ads CR finished 2025 at 65.82%, slightly below 2024’s 66.70% but still above the long-term benchmark, showing continued strength in turning taps into downloads.
- Cost dynamics in search results ads were split across the year: CPT reached a low in Q2 ($1.26) before rising through Q4 ($1.88), indicating a more competitive finish compared to the first half.
- Search results ads CPA improved to $2.51 in 2025 (from $2.76 in 2024), showing that acquisition efficiency can strengthen even when late-year auction pressure increases.
- On categories, Food & Drink remained the highest-TTR category at 12.55%, keeping its lead while settling from 2024’s level, and continuing to reflect strong intent alignment.
- Games led category conversion rate at 72.51%, reinforcing that tightly structured, intent-led keyword clusters in Games can sustain high download readiness at the moment of search.
- Lifestyle was the standout engagement mover, rising to 9.50% TTR from 4.59%, alongside a major CR improvement to 70.37%, suggesting stronger keyword-to-message alignment in 2025.
- Regionally, China (CN) led region TTR at 11.32%, with several other markets also showing high engagement, reinforcing that top performance is distributed across both mature and expanding regions.
- Brazil (BR) led region CR at 72.51%, with a close-following cluster near 70%, while many established regions concentrated in a tight mid-60s CR band.
- Great Britain (GB) was the highest-cost market for both CPT ($2.60) and CPA ($4.53), while Turkey (TR) and Italy (IT) remained among the lowest-CPT regions ($0.85 and $0.87), and Italy also delivered the lowest CPA ($1.60).
- Ad variations using custom product pages scaled significantly in 2025, with impressions rising from 6.56B to 15.80B, and taps from 93.83M to 271.01M, signaling broader adoption of intent-based ads.
- Custom product pages’ performance shifted to a more cost-efficient baseline, with CPA improving to $3.07 (from $4.58) and CPT decreasing to $1.46 (from $2.56), while TTR increased to 1.72% and CR came in at 47.57%, reinforcing the importance of tight keyword-theme to custom product pages alignment as volume grows.
- Custom product pages creation activity remained concentrated in high-volume verticals and markets, led by Games (3,637 newly created custom product pages) and the United States (11,655 newly created custom product pages), with stronger activity building into Q4.
- Across additional placements, Search tab ads maintained a scalable profile in 2025 with 1.25% TTR, 54.58% CR, $0.95 CPT, and $1.81 CPA, with the clearest cost lift occurring in Q4.
- Today tab ads sustained a reach-driven but efficient funnel in 2025, with 0.64% TTR and 18.66% CR, and the strongest efficiency window in Q3, where engagement and conversion aligned most closely.
- Product page ads continued to perform as an intent-rich placement, with 3.28% TTR and 17.99% CR in 2025, and a relatively steady cost profile that rewarded tighter relevance and targeting.
The data in this report has been gathered using MobileAction and SearchAds.com tools.*
