Paid UA is the sprint. ASO is the marathon. The real growth wins come from running both at the same time.
This is the third installment in Gamelight’s Growth Guides: a practical content series built to help UA managers, growth marketers, and mobile teams master the fundamentals of app growth.
If you want to scale an app, you’ve essentially got two ways to bring in users: buy their attention with Paid User Acquisition or earn it organically through App Store Optimization (ASO). One delivers instant results and precision targeting, while the other grows over time, boosting your visibility and conversion rates without ongoing ad spend.
Paid UA and ASO are often seen as separate parts of growth - one paid, one organic - but they work best together. Paid UA gives you data, speed, and scale. ASO builds long-term visibility and helps you convert that traffic efficiently. When both are aligned, every campaign becomes smarter: paid traffic improves your store ranking, while better ASO increases conversions and makes your paid campaigns cheaper over time.
In this guide, we’ll look at how to connect Paid UA and ASO, use insights from one to improve the other, and build a strategy that drives results beyond short-term spikes.
WHAT IS PAID UA?
Paid User Acquisition means running ads to bring users to your app through platforms like Meta, Google App Campaigns, and more. But it’s not just about buying installs; it’s about learning what works and improving with every campaign. Paid UA shows which audiences respond, which creatives perform best, and where the highest-value users come from. Those insights can then shape your ASO strategy and store optimization.
How it works:
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Create ad creatives (video, static, playable, etc.)
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Select audience targeting
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Set budget and bidding strategy
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Monitor installs, CPI, and performance (LTV, ROAS)
Scalable: You can increase voume quickly by raising spend.
Targeted: Reach users based on demographics, interests, behaviors.
Measurable: Track campaign results in detail (CPIs, ROAS, retention).
Costly if not optimized.
Requires constant testing (creatives, audiences, bids)
Can lose efficiency as you scale without quality controls
STRENGTHS:
LIMITATIONS:
When it comes to balancing Paid UA and ASO, many marketers make the mistake of sticking to fixed ratios - like a “70/30 split.”
There’s no universal ratio. It’s a moving target shaped by category competitiveness, product maturity, and even seasonality. Our team at REPLUG starts by estimating the organic ceiling through market and keyword analysis: how much traffic the store can realistically deliver at current retention and conversion rates, given the app position. Paid UA then becomes a testing and acceleration tool. As ASO conversion rates improve, the share of budget naturally shifts toward organic because every paid install drives more organic lift. The key is to track incremental installs from each channel and rebalance quarterly, not chase a static 70/30 split. We’ve seen that apps ignoring seasonality in their ASO (like not planning creatives around specific, relevant holidays or Q4 shopping surges) lose a competitive edge, even if Paid UA budgets are strong.
As Luca Mastrorocco, Co-Founder & Head of Growth at REPLUG,
explains, the reality is far more dynamic:
In practice, Paid UA gives teams the ability to move fast, testing audiences, creatives, and geos before doubling down on what performs best.
As Anatoly Sharifulin, CEO & Co-Founder at AppFollow, points out, this level of predictability is exactly what makes Paid UA indispensable:
Predictable, scalable daily installs. Paid UA allows you to generate traffic on demand and control the volume. ASO alone can’t guarantee steady growth — competition is intense, so the ‘right words in the right fields’ won’t reliably push you to the top by themselves.
App Store Optimization (ASO) is the process of improving your app’s visibility and conversion rate in app stores (Google Play, Apple App Store) to attract users organically. It’s your app’s “SEO”, making sure people can find it and feel compelled to install.
How it works:
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Optimize your title, keywords, and description for search rankings
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Choose attractive icons, screenshots, and videos
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Pay attention and improve store ratings and reviews
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Adapt listings to different markets and geos
Keywords open the door, but conversion closes the deal. Modern ASO is about persuading a visitor in the first few seconds: visual hierarchy, message clarity, social proof, and localized nuance. Iterative testing of icons, screenshots, and in-app events can lift conversion rates dramatically, often more than a jump in keyword rank ever could.
That said, testing too often or without a hypothesis can create misleading results. Testing should be done with the goal of learning and improving CVR, not just running experiments for the sake of it. At REPLUG, our ASO team follows a structured testing framework that allows us to predict results quickly and avoid false positives. For example, in recent internal tests across multiple app categories, our ASO team has seen icon and screenshot experiments lift retained installs by as much as 13–14%. These experiments help us predict results with more accuracy, rather than running random tests.
Strong ASO doesn’t just attract more users: it maximizes every click, improving conversion rates and magnifying the impact of Paid UA campaigns.
Luca Mastrorocco,
Co-Founder & Head of Growth at REPLUG
WHAT IS ASO?
Installs are free after you put time into optimization
Conversion rates from different traffic sources can be improved
It’s sustainable in the long term, as ASO can work for months
Might take time to achieve significant increases in installs
Popular keywords are very competitive
Constant updates are needed to maintain rankings
STRENGTHS:
LIMITATIONS:
While Paid UA is about scale and speed, ASO is about precision and persuasion. As Luca Mastrorocco describes it, ASO has evolved far beyond keywords; it’s now about storytelling and visual impact:
WHY PAID UA & ASO WORK BEST TOGETHER
When combined, Paid UA and ASO create a performance loop that amplifies results across both channels.
They work in a dual way:
- Paid UA drives traffic
- ASO converts that traffic more efficiently
If both are optimized, paid UA campaigns have better ROAS, while ASO rankings grow faster thanks to increased install velocity.
This synergy is best described by Ece Bahtiyar, Founder at appleads agency:
Paid UA brings a surge of high-quality traffic that helps us quickly test creatives, messaging, and audience segments. The data from those campaigns shows us which keywords, visuals, and value props resonate, so we fold those learnings back into our app-store listing and metadata. A stronger, better-converting store page then improves organic rankings and conversion rates, which lowers our blended CPI. Over time, that virtuous cycle (in other words, growth loop) means we can spend less per user while sustaining growth.
The “growth loop” mentioned is a perfect example of how both disciplines feed each other: Paid UA provides data, ASO refines it, and together they create sustainable momentum.
Paid UA and ASO aren’t competitors; they’re partners. Paid UA drives instant visibility, while ASO ensures that traffic actually converts. Paid UA data can be used to test new creative angles and value propositions, and then those learnings can be applied into ASO to improve store performance. It’s a loop that delivers results over time.
Günay Azer, Co-founder of Gamelight, adds another perspective on how this partnership plays out in practice:
WHEN TO LEAN ON PAID VS. ORGANIC
The ideal balance between Paid UA and ASO depends on where your app is in its lifecycle. Early-stage apps often rely on Paid UA to overcome the zero-data barrier, while mature products can leverage strong ASO foundations to sustain growth organically.
As Anatoly Sharifulin explains, it’s rarely an either/or decision, as success comes from using both in tandem:
It depends on your app and niche. If you’re a market leader with a strong brand, you can usually scale Paid UA more aggressively — while still maintaining ASO. For newer or less established apps, run both in parallel: build a strong ASO foundation and use Paid UA in focused tests to learn, validate messaging, and unlock incremental growth.
DO VS DON'T IN PAID UA & ASO
DO
Track CPI against ARPU to ensure profitability
Increase budgets gradually to let algorithms learn
Refresh creatives regularly and store assets
Localize keywords, visuals, and descriptions
DON'T
Overspend without monitoring returns
Scale campaigns too fast
Ignore creative fatigue or skip testing
Use one-size-fits-all store assets
CONCLUSION
Paid UA and ASO are not competing strategies: they’re complementary. Paid UA brings speed, scale, and targeting precision. ASO brings long-term efficiency, credibility, and higher conversion. Together, they can lower your blended CPI, boost keyword rankings, and create a steady growth loop.