Data Snack: As finance apps’ ad spend soars, their conversion rates are declining
- The average ad spend on an app store by a finance app rose by 51% between 2020 and 2021, crossing the half-a-million dollars mark.
- Conversion rates for finance apps fell across the App Store from 6.8% to 5.8%, and Google Play Store from 60% to 55%.

The proliferation of fintech services into American consumers’ financial lives started building before 2019, but the pandemic dramatically accelerated the trend. Today, digital financial services claim 88% of U.S. consumers, challenging the 95% that traditional banks claim. In this environment, AppFollow’s new study reports on how the finance category is performing in terms of user engagement and satisfaction across the App Store and the Google Play Store.
“The category is growing like a jungle,” the app store optimization service found.
The finance category saw a trend of rising downloads between Q1 2020 and Q1 2021, as they increased from 5.9% to 18.6% on the App Store, and 5.4% to 17%.
In addition, the number of apps in the category with over 10,000 downloads a quarter rose by 21% between Q4 2020 and Q1 2021. Much of this can be attributed to financial services’ increase in ad spend, as competition in the space grew over the past two years. Average spending went up by 51%, to more than half a million dollars. The cost-per-install across the industry rose by 46% between Q3 2020 to Q2 2021.
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