How it works
At first open the platform looks for a qualifying click or impression inside the attribution window and asks self-attributing networks whether they claim the install. If nothing matches, the install is labelled organic. Users who found the app by searching the store, heard about it from a friend or came from a press article all land here.
Why it matters for an app team
Organic installs cost no media budget, so their share shapes your blended acquisition cost. A change in the organic line is also a diagnostic. A drop right after pausing a campaign suggests that the campaign was driving installs it did not get credit for. A jump after shortening attribution windows is an accounting effect, not growth.
In practice
Example with made-up numbers: an app gets 10,000 installs in a month. 6,500 are attributed to campaigns and 3,500 are organic. Total ad spend is $9,750, so the paid cost per install is $1.50 and the blended cost per install across all 10,000 is about $0.98.
Common confusion
Organic is a remainder, not a channel. It contains real word of mouth, but also installs from ads nobody tracked, clicks that fell outside the window and, on iOS, users who can only be measured in aggregate. Treat it as "unattributed" rather than as proof of brand strength.