How Did a Prayer App Get to the Top of the App Store?
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It's always exciting to see a new icon making it to the top of the App Store. I have nothing against Temu and TikTok being the top duo for months but I like some variety.
New icon of the week is Hallow, a prayer and meditation app that rose in popularity over the span of a couple of days thanks to the beginning of lent, a prayer challenge, celebrity backing, and... Apple Search Ads!
Hallow, which was released back in 2018, has been growing steadily. But also very slowly. Hallow averaged 2K downloads per day in 2022 and a little less this year.
It saw a few peaks in the past, especially around this time, but none nearly as serious as the spike it's seeing right now.
As Hallow climbed to the #4 position in the App Store this week it managed to accumulate 300K new downloads from the App Store. Though, most of those came in on Wednesday, as Hallow made its way into 100K new iOS devices. In one day.
Will Hallow stick to the top?
I think that's really a question of budget and not demand.
Why do I say that? Because according to our Apple Search Ads Intelligence (which is coming soon, really), Hallow is currently paying for visibility in 4,500 keywords!
That's a massive ad campaign -- even if it's a simple broad-match campaign -- which doesn't seem to be the case from my analysis.
Getting to the top of the App Store is much easier with a big ASA ad campaign, something super-sticky Temu knows very well, and likely the reason it's been glued to the top for months now.
PSA: Please don't use broad-match campaigns or Apple Search Ads Basic. They're terrible for a variety of keywords I will go over in my next live stream about Apple Search Ads.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
