ABLY

Shoppers get personalized style.
ABLY increases lifetime value.

ABLY curates personalized recommendations for shoppers across fashion, lifestyle, and cosmetics. With Apple Search Ads,
the Korean shopping app increased revenue and
lifetime value while reducing costs.

The Results

30% higher average revenue per user compared with similar channels.

25% higher lifetime value compared with similar channels.

13% higher day-30 retention rate compared with similar channels.

60% lower customer acquisition cost compared with similar channels.

The Challenge

To drive new customer acquisition, the team at ABLY wanted to reach shoppers with diverse interests ranging from designer brands to the latest street-style fashion. Specifically, they needed to increase app discovery with prospective customers across South Korea at the moment they were ready to make a purchase. Protecting their leadership position in an already crowded category was also critical to the team as they faced growing competition on the App Store.

With Apple Search Ads, we attract new shoppers based on keywords that are highly relevant to them.
This helps ABLY build highly valuable,
long-term customer relationships.

Irye Lim,

Performance Marketing Manager at ABLY

The Solution

Maximize impressions to remain competitive.

With Search Match and broad match on Apple Search Ads campaigns, the ABLY team was able to find new, relevant search terms, including misspellings and variations of shopping-themed keywords. For higher efficiency and scale, they moved these high-opportunity terms to exact match. Competitive and category campaigns helped maximize impressions for high-intent keywords related to similar types of apps.

The team at ABLY monitored campaign performance at the keyword level with Recommendations. By checking impression share and bidding insights regularly, they adjusted daily caps to increase investment in the highest-performing terms.¹ “With Apple Search Ads, we found keyword sets we had never considered. In fact, we discovered terms related to e-commerce that were highly efficient and helped us scale acquisition with motivated shoppers,” says ABLY Performance Marketing Manager Irye Lim.

Drive efficiency by including all users.

To reach the widest base of potential customers, the team at ABLY did not apply any audience refinements to their Apple Search Ads campaigns. This helped them serve their ads to relevant searches made by the broadest audience on the App Store. “Including all users in our Apple Search Ads campaigns was an important strategy for maximizing user acquisition and driving efficient scale,” says Irye Lim.

Leverage insights to optimize growth.

The ABLY team leveraged Apple Search Ads insights to extend reach beyond South Korea. Based on their successful keyword strategies in their top market, the team ran Apple Search Ads campaigns directly following the release of a new app named Pastel in Japan. They plan to continue to optimize growth for both Pastel and ABLY, particularly as the apps expand across more product categories.

“Apple Search Ads outperforms other platforms in average revenue per user as well as lifetime value and retention rate. We plan to add more keyword variations and new keyword sets as our business evolves and optimize based on conversions and first purchases,” says Irye Lim.

Company Snapshot