3,310 installs that did not move the keyword
A casino app in Australia ran a month of dense keyword installs on Google Play. The two high-volume terms did not move at all. Here is why.
This campaign failed on the keywords it was bought for. We are writing it up because the pattern behind the failure is the single most useful thing we can tell someone shopping for keyword installs, and because a page of wins only teaches you what we are willing to show.
The campaign
A casino app on Google Play in Australia. The run was 3,310 installs over about a month, delivered densely at 120 to 220 installs a day. That is not a cautious test. It is more volume than most campaigns on this blog.
The two high-volume keywords went nowhere
pokies is the biggest term in the category in Australia. It took 1,260 installs and the position sat between 200 and 216 for the whole run. It did not move.
casino took another 790 installs and the app never appeared in the top 250 on any day of the period. Not a bad position: no position at all.
Between them that is 2,050 installs, about 62% of the run, spent on two terms that produced nothing measurable.
The low-volume keywords behaved differently
Three low-volume terms ran alongside them, along with real pokies, which is the only one that did anything inside the campaign window. It reached 4th or 5th place late in the run, held for three days, and then dropped out of the results entirely.
The other three entered the top 10 three weeks after the last install was delivered, which is too far out for us to claim it. Something moved them and we do not know what: it could be campaigns run through an account we were not looking at, or it could be the store. We looked, we could not tell, and we are not going to bill it as our result.
Why we think it went this way
In a category this competitive, install volume does not buy a position on its own. The apps holding the top of pokies are defending it with traffic that dwarfs 1,260 installs, and every one of those apps is doing the same thing we are.
The comparison that makes the point is not inside this case. It is a radio app in France, on 25 installs a week, that took a low-volume term to first place. That campaign spent a fraction of this one and got a better result, because the term had almost no competition on it.
So the variable that predicted the outcome was the competitiveness of the keyword, not the size of the budget. Across the campaigns we looked at while writing this, that held every time.
What this case does not show
No organic installs, no revenue. Same limit as every case here: we know what we delivered, not what arrived on its own.
No proof that more volume would have worked. We did not keep spending to find out where the ceiling on pokies is, and we would not recommend that anyone else does either.
No app name, and no purchase cost. The category, market, store, and keywords are real.
We also cannot rule out that something in the app or its store listing was holding it back. All we can see is traffic and positions.
What we take from it
If you sell in gambling, betting, or any category where the top of search is defended by budgets, do not buy a high-volume keyword and expect volume to carry it. Start on terms your app can actually take, and treat the big term as something you approach later from a stronger position, or not at all.
We would rather say that before you pay than explain it afterwards.