For every paid install of an app, the app can expect an additional 1.5 organic installs on average across all categories and platforms. However, the relationship between paid and organic installs varies by category and operating system. For example, an iOS game can expect 5.4 organic installs for each paid install, while an Android tools app can expect only 0.3 organic installs for each paid install. Marketers can use these organic multiplier metrics to inform their marketing strategies and balance of paid versus organic install efforts.

1. Understanding the
Relationship Between Paid
and Organic Installs
A STUDY ON HOW PAID DOWNLOADS IMPACT ORGANIC DOWNLOADS

2. Understanding the Relationship Between Paid and Organic Installs
PAGE 1
Understanding the Relationship
Between Paid and Organic Installs
Compared to online or digital marketing, mobile app marketing is still in its infancy.
Although relatively young in years, it has matured and evolved at an astounding rate.
This evolution has largely been driven by consumers spending more time on mobile
devices and within apps, which has led to a significant shift of time, money, and other
marketing resources towards these areas. As this transition continues, and
organizations focus more on marketing their apps, it's becoming increasingly
important for brands to clearly understand the implications of their ad spend -
particularly as it pertains to the unique relationship between paid and organic
marketing.
The balance between paid and organic marketing that exists in the online world,
seems to have been lost somewhere along the way in app marketing. In certain
instances, a one-sided approach has worked and resulted in very successful apps.
A STUDY ON HOW PAID DOWNLOADS IMPACT ORGANIC DOWNLOADS
ABSTRACT
The following white paper covers a study conducted by TUNE (parent company of MobileDevHQ
and MobileAppTracking).
The goal of the study was to answer the question: for every paid install, how many organic
installs can an app expect to see?
The results indicate that there is a significant positive correlation between paid and organic installs,
and also show that the direct impact on organic installs varies depending on the category and
operating system (OS) of the app. Read on to see how many organic installs an app can expect to
see for each paid install, segmented by category and OS.

3. Understanding the Relationship Between Paid and Organic Installs
PAGE 2
Apps that rely heavily on paid marketing usually have an extremely accurate
lifetime-value (LTV) measurement and marketers know exactly how much they can
afford to spend on paid installs. It makes sense for them to tap a reliable and steady
source of downloads through a publisher such as Twitter. Other apps, like Flappy Bird,
have zero marketing spend and still manage to dominate the Top Charts purely
through organic installs.
It’s important to remember that these types of apps are the outliers and not the norm.
For the other 99.9% of apps, having a strategic mix between paid and organic
marketing efforts is vital to success because of the unique relationship between paid
and organic installs. In the app world, running paid install campaigns boosts two (of
the many) specific metrics that impact an app’s rank in the app store: total downloads
and download velocity. With these paid campaigns, the boost to both metrics also
increases the app’s ranking in the Top Charts and search, which leads to greater
visibility and more organic downloads.
Experienced app marketers are aware that, on some level, an increase in paid installs
will lead to an increase in organic installs, which isn’t ground-breaking news. But is
there any way to quantify an approximate multiplier for the impact of paid installs on
organic installs? Or in other words, for every paid install, how many organic installs can
an app expect to see?
Methodology
Using anonymized data from thousands of apps (data provided by TUNE),
we were able to calculate a coefficient that significantly correlates paid
and organic installs. We then ran a linear regression between the paid and organic
installs. To validate the regression models, we checked residuals, adjusted R square,
and p-values (an indicator of significance). Our requirement for the data to be
sufficient was a correlation greater than 0.4 and a p-value less than 0.05.
Paid
Campaign
More
Downloads
+
Increased
Download
Velocity
Increased
Top Charts
and Search
Ranking
Increase
Visibility
More
Organic
Downloads

4. Understanding the Relationship Between Paid and Organic Installs
PAGE 3
We also segmented the data by different categories and operating systems because
these factors affect the results, which show the impact of paid installs on organic
installs across all apps. In addition, we created a table that highlights the impact of
paid installs on several distinct app categories.
Generalized Results: Is the Effect Real?
The first thing we wanted to test was the general impact of paid installs
on organic installs across all categories and both app stores (Google
Play and Apple). Essentially, we wanted to know if paid installs really do have a
significant impact on organic installs. The Business Intelligence team at TUNE
analyzed the relationship between paid and organic installs for thousands of
advertisers (apps paying for installs) over the course of 245 days. They found an
extremely strong relationship, and can say with 95% confidence that for every paid
install an app receives, it can expect to also acquire an additional 1.5 organic installs.
For all of the findings in this study, one
important factor is that this is a trend, and
scale matters. Many of the conclusions
drawn in this white paper are from apps
with millions of downloads (e.g. for every
one million paid installs, advertisers can
expect to see an additional 1.5 million
organic installs). So although the trend
can be applied to apps paying for
downloads on a smaller scale, the
confidence levels and p-values come
from numbers on a larger scale.
The following scatter plot shows the
direct correlation between paid and
organic installs.
Paid Installs
OrganicInstalls
1.3e+07
1.3e+07
9.0e+06
1,000,000 1,600,0001,400,0001,200,000

5. Understanding the Relationship Between Paid and Organic Installs
PAGE 4
These results were very encouraging, and allowed us to be confident in the underlying
assumption that paid installs do have a strong positive correlation with organic
installs. Although confirming the correlation can be useful, all app categories are not
equal. We know that in terms of total number of apps and total downloads, some
categories are more popular than others. For example, the following graph shows the
distribution of iOS apps sorted by category.
As you can see, the top five categories account for more than 50% of the total app
population. So how strong or how varied is the correlation between paid and organic
installs across different app categories and operating systems? The following section
substantiates the coefficient across these factors.
22.5%
20%
17.5%
20.38%GAMES
10.36%EDUCATION
9.43%BUSINESS
8.01%LIFESTYLE
7.13%ENTERTAINMENT
5.21%UTILITIES
4.8%TRAVEL
4.31%BOOKS
3.24%MUSIC
2.87%PRODUCTIVITY
2.74%HEALTHANDFITNESS
2.73%SPORTS
2.57%REFERENCE
2.55%PHOTOANDVIDEO
2.43%NEWS
2.42%FINANCE
2.18%FOODANDDRINK
2.11%MEDICAL
1.9%SOCIALNETWORKING
1.27%NAVIGATION
15%
12.5%
10%
7.5%
5%
2.5%
Source: Statista

6. Understanding the Relationship Between Paid and Organic Installs
PAGE 5
Category-Specific Results: The App Marketer’s Cheat Sheet
Knowing that paid installs do, in fact, impact organic installs, we wanted to provide
more insightful data than a simple generic 1.5x metric. We calculated new multipliers
for separate categories and operating systems. In the following table, you can see how
many organic installs an app can expect to see for each paid install, on average. We
only present categories that have sufficient correlation and p-values (correlation > 0.4
and p-value < 0.05). Therefore, not every category is listed below.
This information has huge implications and can be extremely useful for informing
marketing decisions and strategy. For example, an Android Tools app could look at
their multiplier of 0.3, and know that they will likely have to pay for three or four
downloads in order to receive one additional organic download. Armed with this
information, and working with the knowledge that organic users tend to be higher
quality than paid users (based on intent, engagement, revenue, ratings, etc.), they
might decide to pay a premium and work with a publisher who can deliver a high
quality, targeted, paid user.
*Predicted Organic Installs = Paid Installs x <Organic Multiplier>
iOSANDROID
CATEGORY
Entertainment
Games
Lifestyle
Social Networking
Sports
Utilities
ORGANIC MULTIPLIER
0.9
5.4
5.2
4.8
1.5
3.9
CATEGORY
Adventure
Arcade
Business
Card
Casino
Casual
Music & Audio
Personalization
Racing
Shopping
Strategy
Tools
Transportation
Travel and Local
Word
ORGANIC MULTIPLIER
3.6
1.5
1.6
1.4
2.1
5.4
6.1
0.2
13.3
1.0
0.6
0.3
16.6
1.6
7.2

7. Understanding the Relationship Between Paid and Organic Installs
PAGE 6
On the other hand, a marketer for an iOS Game, working with the same
knowledge about user quality, might decide they can risk using a
less-reputable publisher, because they will receive five high-quality organic
users for every one low-quality paid user. Does this mean Android Tools
shouldn’t be doing paid marketing? Absolutely not. It just implies they should
be more conscious about which publishers they are choosing.
There are numerous other ways this information can be applied. But it’s
important to remember that these are trends based on larger scale, and they
are averages. If an Android Casino app runs a one-time burst campaign for
100 downloads, we do not guarantee that they will see an additional 210
organic downloads.
Bringing it All Together
The harmonious relationship between paid and organic marketing is
something that is truly unique to apps. Because this relationship is
so strong, app marketers cannot afford to only focus on one or the other.
Having a strong balance between paid and organic efforts is key to thriving as
an app marketer. We hope that this white paper has helped provide
understanding around how app marketing is unique, why having a balanced
strategy is important, and how the relationship between paid and organic
installs works.
We will continue to update data and add new categories to this table in the
coming months. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to
research@mobiledevhq.com.
For more insights on app marketing strategies and app store optimization,
please visit www.mobiledevhq.com/articles.

8. Understanding the Relationship Between Paid and Organic Installs
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About MobileDevHQ by TUNE
MobileDevHQ is the leading enterprise organic app marketing platform. We've
been working with app marketers since 2009, and over and over again, we've
met smart, hungry marketers looking for better ways to get downloads for their
app. Tired of spending large sums of money on paid advertising (only to
generate low LTV on those users), they're turning to organic channels such as
App Store Optimization (app store SEO) for low-cost, high-quality installs with a
high ROI.
If you’re interested in learning more, feel free to sign up for a free account today,
or reach out to sales@mobiledevhq.com for a free demo!
About MobileAppTracking
MobileAppTracking (MAT) is the industry standard for mobile app marketers
to measure performance, and builds best-in-class tools to help marketers
attribute their user acquisition, engagement, and retention campaigns to the
appropriate channels and partners. MAT provides attribution for more than
half of the top grossing apps in the iTunes and Google Play stores today.
Customers include: Supercell, Spotify, Kayak, Uber, Square, EA, G5, Sephora,
Hipmunk, LINE, Gilt, JackThreads, William Hill, Gumi, Nickelodean, Zoosk,
eHarmony, and eBay Korea.
To learn more about MAT, you can visit their website at
www.MobileAppTracking.com