Web2App · Published 2026-02-05 · 4 min read
Common questions about launching iOS campaigns
Please bear with me if some of these questions look too simple and obvious. I get them often, so I decided to write a full answer.
So what is Web2App?
Very briefly: Web2App is a way of bringing web traffic into a mobile app.
Why did a separate term appear at all? I published a report showing that companies in three categories bring traffic to iOS apps through Meta.
- 90% spend on Meta App
- roughly a half to a third of advertisers additionally use Web2App traffic
The difference between Meta App and Web2App is technical.
- Meta App: we pick the iOS app from a list.
- Meta Web2App: we simply write in the store URL.
This is not an isolated case but a settled practice — hence the separate term.
How do you tell Web2App from Web2Web?
Web2App: the payment is taken by Apple inside the app downloaded from the App Store. Web2Web: the payment is taken by the website, usually through Stripe. The test is simple: who receives the money.
Do you need a pre-landing page for Web2App?
A pre-landing page is the page a user lands on before downloading the app. In the last report those were usually very small pages with content along the lines of "Top Cleaner Of The Year".
Sometimes traffic is sent to them, sometimes not. For Web2App the pre-lander is a small technical layer. For Web2Web it is the most important part of the service.
A pre-lander is not compulsory. You can perfectly well send traffic straight to the store. I like going direct — most of the cases in this channel are about that.
How do I know which I need, Web2App or Web2Web?
That decision is set by the niche, not by testing.
An example from the previous post:
- AI Girlfriend as a standalone iOS category is small
- but the AI Girlfriend niche itself, beyond iOS, is considerably bigger
AI Girlfriend developers wrote in the comments that things are going well for them, while I was saying the niche is small. I looked at their traffic — and it is almost all Web2Web.
Categories that behave the same way:
- Health & Fitness
- Mental Health
- Astrology
- Parenting
- and plenty of other niches built around Web2Web and funnels
Whereas, taking the previous report again:
- Cleaner is almost always Meta/App plus Meta/Web2App
- Photo Editor, if there is no online or desktop version, is Meta/App plus Meta/Web2App
Why pay Apple such a high commission if you could take the payments yourself?
Could you not bring traffic to a site, take payment there and let people download the app? Short answer: no.
A little more detail. You cannot simply bolt on a pre-lander or a quiz and move from Web2App to Web2Web.
The moment you start taking money through Stripe it turns out that the user came from the web and their experience is better if they stay in the web; and in that scenario your LTV is almost always higher, which means you can afford more expensive users.
So you end up:
- moving part of the functionality into the web
- or, in effect, gradually turning into a web service
- in some niches that happens smoothly and naturally; in others it does not work at all
Important: Web2Web is not "a pre-lander plus Stripe". It is a separate discipline with its own logic, expertise and methods.
Understood. So what is your blog about?
This blog is about how to buy traffic for iOS apps properly, when the Apple app is the basis of the business rather than a side channel.
So how do I actually decide: Web2Web or Web2App?
Now that is a genuinely good question.
Development often starts from the thought "I want to build an app that will…". It is useful to rephrase that as "I want to build a service that will…".
And the form that service should take — an app or a website — is determined by the niche, not by personal preference.
The mobile market has one convenient property: all the information about company revenue and their traffic sources is public. How to get that information, work with it and read market prices correctly is something we go through in detail on my course.
About the course: UA Manager 2026. Cohort starts 15 March 2026. Registration open.