TL;DR. In-App Purchases you mark as promoted can appear in App Store search results, on your product page, and in the Today, Games, and Apps tabs — built from a 30-character display name, a 45-character description, and a 1024x1024 image. You can promote up to 20 at a time, and toggling which ones are promoted needs no new build: it’s a checkbox in App Store Connect that reflects on the Store within about 24 hours. Consumables are excluded from search results. Most indie developers with live IAPs have never checked the “Promote on the App Store” box.
If you sell subscriptions, upgrades, or content packs, you already have App Store Connect metadata sitting unused: your In-App Purchase display names and descriptions. Unless you’ve explicitly promoted them, that text exists only inside the purchase sheet a user sees after they’ve already downloaded your app. It never touches search.
What is a promoted in-app purchase?
A promoted In-App Purchase is one you’ve flagged in App Store Connect to appear outside the in-app purchase flow — on your product page, in App Store search results, and potentially on the Today, Games, or Apps tabs if Apple’s editors feature it. You can promote up to 20 In-App Purchases at once, across all countries and regions, on devices running iOS 11 or later.
Each promoted IAP is built from three pieces of App Store Connect metadata, each with its own limit:
| Field | Limit | Where it appears |
|---|---|---|
| Reference name | 64 characters | App Store Connect only, never shown to users |
| Display name | 2-30 characters | On the promoted card and in search results |
| Description | 45 characters | On the IAP’s App Store product page |
| Promotional image | 1024x1024 px, PNG or high-quality JPEG | On the promoted card |
The reference name is internal bookkeeping, same as with In-App Events — it’s what you’ll see listed in App Store Connect and in Sales and Trends reports, and it’s editable anytime without review. The display name and description are the only user-facing text, so they carry the same weight a subtitle does: whoever searches has to decide whether to tap based on 30 and 45 characters, nothing else.
Do promoted in-app purchases actually show up in App Store search?
Yes. Apple’s own developer documentation states that Promoted In-App Purchases “can appear in Search results” in addition to your product page and featured tabs — with one exclusion: consumable In-App Purchases will not appear in search results, regardless of promotion status. If your monetization model is subscriptions, non-consumables, or non-renewing subscriptions, this surface is available to you. If it’s consumables only (coin packs, single-use credits), search is off the table and promotion only helps your product page.
Do you need a new app version to promote an in-app purchase?
No — changing which IAPs are promoted, and in what order, is done entirely in App Store Connect and does not require a new build. Under Monetization > In-App Purchases, open the IAP, add the promotional image, check “Promote on the App Store,” and use the reorder control to set display priority. Apple states changes can take up to 24 hours to reflect on the Store.
That said, two things have to already be true before a promotion can go live:
- The IAP itself must be Approved by App Review. Promotion is a display setting on top of an existing, approved IAP — it does not submit anything new for review.
- Your app must support the
PurchaseIntentAPI for the App Store to display promoted product pages and let a user purchase directly from one. Without it, Apple won’t surface the promotion even if the checkbox is on.
If you’ve never submitted an IAP before, that first one is a different story: your first consumable, first non-consumable, first auto-renewable subscription, and first non-renewing subscription each have to be submitted together with a new app version. Every subsequent IAP of a type you’ve already shipped can be submitted for review on its own, no app update required.
Who can turn promotion on?
Promoting an existing, approved IAP needs the Account Holder, Admin, App Manager, Developer, or Marketing role in App Store Connect — notably wider than the roles that can submit an IAP for review in the first place (Account Holder, Admin, or App Manager only). In practice: your developer can ship the IAP, but your marketing hire doesn’t need elevated access to decide which ones are promoted and in what order.
Writing a display name that earns the tap
You get 30 characters and no second field to lean on. A few things that hold across the promoted-IAP guidance Apple gives:
- Don’t write generic labels like “100 Gems” or “Plan 1.” If you have three subscription tiers, give each a distinct name tied to what it unlocks, not a number.
- For auto-renewable subscriptions, include the duration in the name — a user scanning search results should be able to tell “Pro Monthly” from “Pro Annual” without opening anything.
- Tie the name back to your app. A promoted card can surface outside your product page, in a tab, where your app icon is the only other context a user has.
- The 45-character description is where you differentiate, not where you repeat the display name. If two tiers only differ by price, say so — price varies by region and can’t be hardcoded into the copy.
The promotional image has its own constraints worth checking before you export anything: no screenshots, no app icon reused as the image, nothing important in the lower-left corner (Apple overlays your app icon there when the card shows outside your product page), and no text baked into the image itself.
A first-promotion checklist
If you have live, approved IAPs and have never promoted one:
- Confirm your monetization model isn’t consumables-only — if it is, promotion still helps your product page but won’t reach search.
- Pick your highest-intent IAP first: the tier or subscription you’d want a searcher to land on, not necessarily your cheapest one.
- Write a display name (30 characters) that names the thing, not the price tier.
- Write a 45-character description that adds information the name doesn’t already carry.
- Export a 1024x1024 image with no text, no screenshot, and nothing critical in the lower-left corner.
- Confirm your app implements the
PurchaseIntentAPI — without it, the promotion won’t display even once approved. - Toggle “Promote on the App Store,” set its order, save, and give it up to 24 hours before you check whether it’s live.
The unused surface
Most indie developers treat In-App Purchase metadata as internal plumbing: a display name that exists so the purchase sheet has something to show. It’s actually one of the few pieces of App Store metadata you can add to your search footprint without a new build, a new review cycle for the promotion itself, or touching your title, subtitle, or keyword field at all.