Two weeks of Apple Search Ads on Todorant: 1,927 impressions, 16 taps and 3 installs for CA$13.97

Todorant’s first Apple Search Ads test ran for 14 days, from October 29 to November 11, 2026, in the US App Store. It produced 1,927 impressions, 16 taps and 3 installs for CA$13.97, about US$10, which is far less than the CA$80 cap I had set. The eight exact-match keywords I had picked from store research got 105 of those impressions between them, and none reached 8 taps, which was my bar for calling a keyword a winner. The three installs all came from the Search Match campaign, whose daily budget was a quarter of the exact campaign’s. This post has every number from Apple’s report, what I changed halfway, and what I am trying in round two.

What did the Apple Search Ads test for Todorant look like?#

I wanted to know which English keywords turn into installs before leaning on them in the App Store metadata. Todorant is a to-do manager that shows one task at a time, and its US listing is called “Todorant: To-Do List & Planner” with 13 ratings at 4.08 stars (App Store lookup, November 13, 2026).

The account bills in Canadian dollars, so every amount below is CAD unless I say otherwise. There were two campaigns in the United States storefront:

The eight keywords were procrastination, eat the frog, to do list, todo list, daily planner, task manager, adhd planner and to do list widget, with max bids from CA$1.10 to CA$2.07. I had written down the rules before launch: a keyword needs at least 8 taps, a 40% tap-to-install rate and a cost per install of at most US$2.50 to count as a winner, and under 8 taps means “we can’t tell”. The exact campaign also rotated three custom product pages (beat procrastination, one task at a time, ADHD-friendly planner) against the default page, one per day.

What did 14 days of Apple Search Ads actually deliver?#

Those are Apple’s own numbers, pulled through the Campaign Management API for October 29 to November 11. The tap-through rate was 1.9% on the exact campaign and 0.8% on discovery. Of the 16 taps, 3 became installs, which is 19%, and the discovery campaign paid CA$3.48 per install (about US$2.51 at the 0.72 rate the ledger uses). That is right at my US$2.50 limit, but it comes from three installs, so I would not build anything on it.

The budget was never the limit. The two campaigns could have spent CA$70 over the 14 days and spent about a fifth of that, because there were simply not enough auctions we entered.

Why did the exact keywords get so few impressions?#

The 105 exact impressions split like this:

Two things stand out. The first is that “to do list” had 23 impressions on the first day and 7 on the second, then none for the remaining 12 days, even though the bid never changed. I can’t see why Apple stopped showing the ad, and I do not want to guess at its auction.

The second is the bid change. The plan said that after three full days, any keyword with no impressions would get CA$0.30 more, up to the CA$2.50 ceiling my API key allows. On November 1 that applied to procrastination, daily planner, adhd planner and to do list widget. The widget keyword got its first impression the next day, and adhd planner its first four days later, on November 5. Procrastination and daily planner stayed at zero with bids of CA$1.95 and CA$2.09. A keyword that is still unseen at the highest bid I am allowed to set is “too expensive”, and I had written that down as a valid result.

What I can show from outside Apple is the competition on the same searches. I ran the App Store search API for the US storefront today, November 13, 2026 (the same method as the October 27 research), and Todorant is not among the results for any of these searches:

With 13 ratings, Todorant is up against apps with tens of thousands for the generic words. For “procrastination” and “eat the frog” the leaders have between 0 and 28 ratings, so those two are where a small app could rank organically, which is a different question from what a tap costs.

What did Search Match find, and what was noise?#

Search Match is where all three installs came from, and it is also where the budget went to words that have nothing to do with a to-do manager. Apple reported 21 search-term rows, and one of them, “(low volume)”, is a bucket it does not break down. That bucket held 1,098 of the 1,822 impressions (60%), 8 taps and 2 installs. I cannot tell which searches those installs came from.

The named terms were mostly work-scheduling and remote-desktop searches: workday (84 impressions), qgenda (69), todesk (68), proton calendar (49), workjam (39). Four terms got taps: “workbuddy” (2), “do” (2), a Chinese countdown-app term (1) and “involve” (1). Only “involve” came with an install, from 14 impressions and a CA$0.49 tap. That is a single event, and I treat it as noise rather than as a keyword to buy.

Search Match volume also faded. The discovery campaign had 1,252 impressions in the first seven days (October 29 to November 4) and 570 in the second seven. I did not change that campaign in between, and I do not know why it shrank.

Did the custom product pages make a difference?#

Only the exact campaign rotated custom product pages, and it had 105 impressions in total. The default page had 51 impressions and no taps, the ADHD-friendly planner page 31 impressions and 1 tap, beat procrastination 11 impressions and 1 tap, and one task at a time 12 impressions and none. Two taps in total cannot separate one page from another, so I am reporting these only so nobody has to wonder whether I looked.

What did I learn about keyword testing for a small app?#

1. Start with Search Match, not with your keyword list. It was the only part that got volume, and the only thing it could show was how little of that volume looked like a to-do list.
2. Write the verdict rules before the test. Because I had set “8 taps” in advance, the result was easy to state: no keyword qualified, and the metadata stays on the research-based words instead of picking a favorite from two taps.
3. Count how much of a report is hidden. Sixty percent of the discovery impressions sat in Apple’s “(low volume)” row, so any story about “which search term converted” would have covered a minority of the data.
4. A daily budget is a ceiling, not a purchase. I budgeted CA$70 and spent CA$13.97. If you are planning a test around a number of taps, plan around the impressions you can win at your bids.

What happens in round two?#

Round two started today, November 13, and runs until November 20 with the same daily budgets (CA$4 and CA$1). It moves the four keywords that showed any impressions (to do list, todo list, adhd planner and to do list widget) from exact to broad match at the same bids, adds “involve” as an exact keyword, and gives the Search Match group “involve” as a negative. The winner rule is the one above: 8 taps, a 40% tap-to-install rate and a cost per install of at most US$2.50. I will write up the result after the week is over, whichever way it goes.

Data: Apple Search Ads Campaign Management API reports for Todorant’s two US campaigns, October 29 to November 11, 2026, in CAD; App Store search and lookup APIs, US storefront, checked November 13, 2026. Todorant itself is at todorant.com.