According to The State of Mobile 2025, the industry’s leading report by Sensor Tower, in-app purchase (IAP) revenue for non-gaming apps reached $69 billion in 2024, growing 25% year-over-year. While categories like Entertainment, Productivity, and Photo & Video led this surge, Utility apps showed only modest growth, contributing an additional $0.5 billion. This signals that while the overall app economy is booming, utility apps must adopt innovative growth strategies that unlock new growth and increase their revenue.
This article explores how utility app developers can overcome these challenges and unlock growth opportunities using XMP’s intelligent media buying solutions.
Image from Sensor Tower
What Are Utility Apps?
Utility apps are tools designed to help users complete specific, functional tasks more efficiently. These include:
-
VPNs
-
Phone cleaners & battery savers
-
Document scanners & PDF converters
-
File managers
-
QR/barcode scanners
-
Recording & screen capture tools
-
Weather, calculator, flashlight, calendar, etc.
These apps usually serve a single, practical purpose. While they are lightweight, easy to download, and often deliver immediate value, advertising them effectively across global markets presents a unique set of media buying and campaign management challenges.
Challenges for Utility Apps
While utility apps may seem simple, their ad operations are not. The UA teams often face very real problems during campaign setup, optimization, and scaling. Below are the most common execution-level pain points:
Short User Lifecycle and Low Retention
Utility apps often solve one-off problems, such as document conversion, file compression, or speed testing—leading to naturally low repeat usage.
-
Low Retention means fewer chances for upselling, retargeting, or subscription conversion.
-
One-time usage makes LTV low, directly limiting how much you can spend to acquire a user.
-
ROAS stalls quickly, even if CPI is cheap, because there's little to no recurring value.
To grow revenue, utility apps must maximize value extraction within the first session, whether through ads, upsell, or onboarding.
Difficulty in Identifying High-ROI Channels
Utility apps often face challenges in identifying high-ROI channels due to the complexity and fragmentation of the programmatic advertising landscape. Some sub-channels deliver high volumes but low-quality users, while others have strong conversion potential but come at a higher cost. Without precise data insights, the UA team often spends excessive budgets on trial-and-error testing across numerous sub-channels, struggling to pinpoint the ones that truly generate profitable returns.
Poor or Misleading Creatives Trigger Platform Restrictions
Utility app marketers often push CTR with exaggerated or misleading ad creatives, but this backfires:
-
Platform policy violations (fake promises, clickbait) → ads get throttled or rejected.
-
High CTR but poor UX (user exits fast, high complaints) → Platforms lower your ad score.
-
No creative versioning process → Low ability to spot or replace penalized ads.
A scanner app promoted “free unlimited scans,” but the free version had many limits and pop-ups. Users felt deceived, causing negative reviews and poor ad results. The gap between ads and actual experience hurts conversions and reputation.
How XMP Solves Key Challenges for Utility Apps？
Event-Level Analysis to Optimize Short-Term Behavioral Metrics
Utility apps often face challenges such as short user lifecycles and low retention rates, which limit their ability to generate substantial revenue compared to gaming apps. However, with XMP’s Real-Time Dashboard, you can optimize campaigns to drive strong short-term ROI, maximizing revenue during these brief user engagement windows.
XMP seamlessly integrates with leading attribution platforms (e.g., AppsFlyer, SolarEngine), providing direct access to critical metrics such as ROAS, CTR, and paid conversions. Hence, utility app teams to concentrate on boosting first-day conversions and monetization efforts, thereby maximizing revenue within users’ limited lifecycle.
For example, a VPN app team used XMP’s Real-Time Dashboard (via AppsFlyer) to track early user actions like "VPN Connection Started." They discovered that users who connected within the first 10 minutes were 3x more likely to start a trial. Based on this, they optimized ad creatives and set automated bidding rules in XMP to prioritize high-quality traffic, resulting in a 22% increase in trial activations and an 18% lift in ROAS.
Unlock High-Value Sub-Sources Using Traffic Pool
XMP’s Traffic Feature offers two key capabilities to help utility app teams optimize their channel strategy.
First, its Cross-channel Source App Analysis provides a comprehensive view of where competitors and the industry allocate budgets across major programmatic networks like Mintegral, Unity, and Applovin. This insight uncovers valuable, untapped traffic sources that may have been overlooked or underutilized.
Second, the Single-Channel Sub-source Analysis dives deeper into each programmatic platform, enabling advertisers to identify which sub-channels deliver the best returns. Using metrics such as competitor coverage, traffic value, and potential estimation, UA teams can quickly spot high-ROI sub-channels and unlock more high-quality traffic efficiently.
For example, a file scanning app leveraged XMP’s sub-source analysis on Mintegral to identify several underperforming but promising sub-channels with low competitor presence. By increasing bids on these sub-channels and testing untapped sources, the app achieved a 20% increase in ROI within weeks while reducing wasted spend on saturated channels.
Tracking and Pruning Low-Performing Creatives
With XMP’s Creative Report, the Utility app teams can gain full visibility into how each creative performs across formats, channels, and strategies. They will quickly identify top-performing assets and flag those that underperform by filtering key metrics like CPA, CTR, and CVR, etc. By analyzing different creative variations, teams can spot low-performing formats and detect patterns in what each channel tends to penalize. Therefore, they can proactively refine the creative strategy, remove risky or ineffective assets before they impact delivery or drive up acquisition costs.
For example, a VPN app ran multiple ad creatives, but some “Lightning-Fast Connection Guarantee” ads showed unusually high CPA and low conversion rates. Using XMP’s Creative Report, the team precisely pinpointed these underperforming creatives, paused their delivery promptly, and adjusted the copy style. As a result, overall CPA dropped by 20% and conversion rates increased by 15%.
Final Thoughts
Utility apps face tough challenges, but you can turn these into new opportunities. From tracking user actions to optimizing ad channels and managing creatives, XMP helps you improve ROI, reduce wasted spend, and stay compliant. Start using XMP today to boost your utility app’s growth and make every ad dollar count.
;}.cls-2{fill:%230868f7;}.cls-3{fill:url(%23未命名的渐变_44);}.cls-4{fill:%23333;}%3c/style%3e%3clinearGradient%20id='未命名的渐变_8'%20x1='33.73'%20y1='100.61'%20x2='-0.03'%20y2='-1.06'%20gradientUnits='userSpaceOnUse'%3e%3cstop%20offset='0'%20stop-color='%237ae9fb'/%3e%3cstop%20offset='0.67'%20stop-color='%232b90f8'/%3e%3cstop%20offset='1'%20stop-color='%230868f7'/%3e%3c/linearGradient%3e%3clinearGradient%20id='未命名的渐变_44'%20x1='27.86'%20y1='18.67'%20x2='68.36'%20y2='22.22'%20gradientUnits='userSpaceOnUse'%3e%3cstop%20offset='0'%20stop-color='%235ac7f2'/%3e%3cstop%20offset='1'%20stop-color='%230868f7'/%3e%3c/linearGradient%3e%3c/defs%3e%3cpath%20class='cls-1'%20d='M29,28.74V81.91l-9.51-3.68v0L8.52,74A7.17,7.17,0,0,1,4,67.32V24.54A3.76,3.76,0,0,1,9.08,21Z'/%3e%3cpath%20class='cls-2'%20d='M68.09,78.07a13.15,13.15,0,0,1-17.9,12.06L29,81.91h0V28.74L50.19,37A13.17,13.17,0,0,0,68.08,25.3h0Z'/%3e%3cpath%20class='cls-3'%20d='M68.08,25.3a13.19,13.19,0,0,1-6.73,10.87A13.09,13.09,0,0,1,50.19,37L29,28.74V6A3.76,3.76,0,0,1,34.1,2.52l25.59,9.91A13.22,13.22,0,0,1,68.08,25.3Z'/%3e%3cpath%20class='cls-4'%20d='M129.06,81.76a4.33,4.33,0,0,1-3.19-1.31,4.4,4.4,0,0,1-1.31-3.24V56.86H97.65V77.21a4.36,4.36,0,0,1-1.35,3.2A4.68,4.68,0,0,1,93,81.76a4.32,4.32,0,0,1-3.19-1.31,4.37,4.37,0,0,1-1.32-3.24V27.27A4.58,4.58,0,0,1,89.83,24a4.59,4.59,0,0,1,7.82,3.27V48.15h26.91V27.27A4.58,4.58,0,0,1,125.91,24a4.59,4.59,0,0,1,7.82,3.27V77.21a4.37,4.37,0,0,1-1.36,3.2A4.65,4.65,0,0,1,129.06,81.76Z'/%3e%3cpath%20class='cls-4'%20d='M163.77,81.66c-6.57,0-11.76-1.92-15.44-5.7s-5.54-9.07-5.54-15.74a26.76,26.76,0,0,1,2.09-10.43,17.72,17.72,0,0,1,6.67-8.06,19.15,19.15,0,0,1,10.68-2.95,19,19,0,0,1,10.46,2.8,18.7,18.7,0,0,1,6.55,7.36,22.53,22.53,0,0,1,2.36,10.28A4.51,4.51,0,0,1,177,63.77H152.23a10.8,10.8,0,0,0,3.49,6.65c2,1.68,4.88,2.52,8.66,2.52a22.25,22.25,0,0,0,7.54-1.21c.74-.3,1.55-.67,2.37-1.07a3.75,3.75,0,0,1,1.84-.4,4.09,4.09,0,0,1,3,1.15,4,4,0,0,1,1.12,3,4.38,4.38,0,0,1-2.58,3.82,32.34,32.34,0,0,1-6.36,2.61A28.67,28.67,0,0,1,163.77,81.66ZM172.4,55.9a9.72,9.72,0,0,0-1.63-4.56A9.9,9.9,0,0,0,167,48a10.38,10.38,0,0,0-4.64-1.14,12,12,0,0,0-4.77,1.06,9.54,9.54,0,0,0-4.89,5.66,11.78,11.78,0,0,0-.51,2.3Z'/%3e%3cpath%20class='cls-4'%20d='M193,81.64a4.49,4.49,0,0,1-4.51-4.55V27.28A4.58,4.58,0,0,1,189.84,24a4.48,4.48,0,0,1,3.28-1.36A4.36,4.36,0,0,1,196.35,24a4.46,4.46,0,0,1,1.31,3.31V77.09a4.34,4.34,0,0,1-1.35,3.2A4.67,4.67,0,0,1,193,81.64Z'/%3e%3cpath%20class='cls-4'%20d='M263.79,81.71a5.7,5.7,0,0,1-4.2-1.74,5.76,5.76,0,0,1-1.73-4.19V27.37a4.58,4.58,0,0,1,1.35-3.27A4.59,4.59,0,0,1,267,27.37V72.53h24a4.58,4.58,0,0,1,3.27,7.82A4.66,4.66,0,0,1,291,81.71Z'/%3e%3cpath%20class='cls-4'%20d='M424.48,81.74a4.71,4.71,0,0,1-2.71-.88,5.43,5.43,0,0,1-1-1l-.07-.09-12.41-17-5.41,5v9.44a4.31,4.31,0,0,1-1.36,3.19,4.66,4.66,0,0,1-3.3,1.36A4.29,4.29,0,0,1,395,80.42a4.36,4.36,0,0,1-1.32-3.23V27.37A4.58,4.58,0,0,1,395,24.1a4.52,4.52,0,0,1,6.58.12,4.54,4.54,0,0,1,1.24,3.15V56.31l17.72-16.38.05,0a4.8,4.8,0,0,1,2.94-1.11,4.4,4.4,0,0,1,3.27,1.2,4.57,4.57,0,0,1,1.2,3.27,4.44,4.44,0,0,1-.77,2.33,7.45,7.45,0,0,1-1.43,1.65l-11,9.64,13.34,17.68a5,5,0,0,1,1,2.71,4.12,4.12,0,0,1-1.36,3.24A4.64,4.64,0,0,1,424.48,81.74Z'/%3e%3cpath%20class='cls-4'%20d='M317.93,81.76a21.5,21.5,0,1,1,21.17-21.5A21.37,21.37,0,0,1,317.93,81.76Zm0-34.1a12.61,12.61,0,1,0,12.42,12.6A12.52,12.52,0,0,0,317.93,47.66Z'/%3e%3cpath%20class='cls-4'%20d='M212.18,101.22a4.12,4.12,0,0,1-3.05-1.26,4.17,4.17,0,0,1-1.26-3.1V43.34a4.37,4.37,0,0,1,1.3-3.14,4.26,4.26,0,0,1,3.13-1.3,4.19,4.19,0,0,1,3.1,1.26,4.32,4.32,0,0,1,1.26,3.16,20.77,20.77,0,0,1,13-4.54,21.51,21.51,0,0,1,0,43,20.51,20.51,0,0,1-13-4.57V96.86a4.15,4.15,0,0,1-1.3,3.06A4.5,4.5,0,0,1,212.18,101.22Zm17.43-53.63c-6.23,0-12.93,4.11-12.93,12.72a12.73,12.73,0,0,0,25.46,0A12.71,12.71,0,0,0,229.61,47.59Z'/%3e%3cpath%20class='cls-4'%20d='M365.76,81.76a21.5,21.5,0,1,1,21.18-21.5A21.37,21.37,0,0,1,365.76,81.76Zm0-34.1a12.61,12.61,0,1,0,12.42,12.6A12.52,12.52,0,0,0,365.76,47.66Z'/%3e%3c/svg%3e)