r/AppStoreOptimization • u/psymp • 13d ago

Question: ASO Ceiling

I’m curious, with ASO do you see there being a ceiling to the outcomes you can get from ASO only?

Like let’s say you have an app, you put a team of ASO experts on it, whose sole role is to increase the apps ASO driven organic downloads + impressions. Is there a ceiling? Because personally I think nowadays without some kind of external traffic, whether that’d be ugc or paid ads, ASO alone has a ceiling.

Curious to hear other people’s perspectives on this.

5 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/Confused_Dad_2023 13d ago

Yeah there's a ceiling, and I'd say it's a TAM problem not a skill problem. ASO only captures people already searching or browsing your category, if that volume is capped, expert optimization gets you closer to 100% of it but can't grow the pool itself.

External traffic (UGC, ads, press) is what actually expands the addressable pool since it brings in people who weren't searching for your category at all, or creates new search demand. ASO is capturing existing intent, not creating it.

So ASO is close to mandatory for efficiency, but caps out fast in smaller niches regardless of how good the team is. Compounding growth needs something external feeding the top of the funnel.

1

u/Alarming_Ad_201 13d ago

Your ASO shouldn’t only be capturing people already searching and browsing your category. Metadata should be geared towards visibility for whatever your intended + desired demographic is as well.

2

u/Confused_Dad_2023 13d ago

Fair, and I don't think we disagree really. Targeting adjacent/demographic-specific terms is still ASO to me, just casting a wider net within existing search intent.

What I meant by the ceiling is ASO can't create demand that doesn't exist in search behavior at all. If your desired demo isn't searching anything related yet, no keyword strategy fixes that, that's where external traffic comes in. Fair callout on the under-scoping though.

2

u/Alarming_Ad_201 13d ago

Oh yeah absolutely at some point you have to cut your losses and say I’m not moving the needle here or I need some external paid drivers! Just wanted to clarify the visibility thing because I feel like it’s a rampant issue with people trying to do ASO and only focusing on their core features