Introduction to the Apple Search Ads Guide
Welcome to the complete guide to Apple Search Ads (ASA). By reading this article, you will become familiar with the fundamentals of running user acquisition campaigns in Apple’s App Store advertising platform. You will also learn how to set up, run, and optimize successful campaigns using some of the best tactics known to ASA experts. In addition, I will share a bonus document with five secret best practices we use at Topanda to help our clients achieve outstanding results with Apple Search Ads campaigns.
Apple Search Ads is a relatively new but already very popular advertising platform for mobile apps developers. ASA's share-of-wallet among app developers reached 15%, based on recent research by Appsumer, with only Google (34%) and Facebook (28%) ahead, threatening to break their duopoly in the mobile advertising market.
Why You Should Start Advertising on Apple Search Ads
Many mobile advertising experts will point to the recently introduced Advertising Tracking Transparency (ATT), enforced by Apple’s iOS, as the main reason for ASA’s success in driving mobile app developers’ advertising budgets away from Facebook and Google. However, there is another much more pragmatic reason — Apple Search Ads is the only large intent-based mobile advertising network in the market today.
If you are surprised by my last statement and are wondering if I have just forgotten about Google Ads, the answer is “Of course not.” Google App Campaigns (formerly UAC) don’t allow keyword-based targeting, making Google Ads an only halfway intent-based advertising network for mobile apps campaigns. While your Google App Campaign ads can still appear while users are conducting mobile searches with Google’s search engine, you cannot target specific keywords to show your ads on their search engine results page (SERP). Not only that, but you cannot choose the Google Search Network as the sole placement for your ads or even make bid adjustments for that placement. Your Google App Ads campaign will allocate your daily budget between Search, Display, Youtube, and Search Partners based on Google Ads algorithmic decisions.
In other words — Google App Ads are only intent-based when Google decides they are.
Since Facebook hasn’t developed its search product to a level where it can offer search ads placement, Apple Search Ads is the only truly large intent-based mobile advertising network in the world today.
Will Apple Search Ads Be a Good Fit for Your App’s UA Mix?
Almost any app will benefit significantly from intent-based search advertising to grow its loyal user base; however, for a selection of verticals, this type of advertising is an absolute must and probably the best direct-response advertising channel in terms of ROAS used today.
Among the verticals mentioned above, you can find utility and productivity apps, as well as many apps in the following Apple App Store categories: Business, Health & Fitness, Travel, Medical, News, Finance & Weather.
Key Benefits of Apple Search Ads Advertising
- Intent-based search advertising through exact and broad keyword match types (the only large-scale solution in the market).
- ASA allows you to start your UA campaigns with a small daily budget without prepayments.
- You can target your direct competitors’ branded keywords, as well as have a brand-protect campaign for your own app.
- You only pay for clicks (aka taps).
- ASA has a much easier tracking implementation with your mobile measurement platform (e.g., Appsflyer, Adjust) and much more accurate reporting (no need for SKAN).
- You can optimize your bids per tap (CPT) for each keyword, as well as have a CPI goal at the ad set level.
- A variety of additional campaign types (non-search) for complementary branding, and awareness purposes, all in a single platform.
- Regular search terms reports provide visibility into the search queries which prompt your ads.
- Enhanced App Store Optimization (ASO) derived from section 8 above through metadata keywords and headline and sub-headline optimization can boost your organic downloads as well.
Campaign Types in Apple Search Ads (Ad Placements)
While the main advantage of Apple Search Ads is its intent-based search campaign, it allows a variety of additional campaign types (officially referred to by Apple as “Ad Placements”). Let’s look at each of the available Ad Placements options in an ASA campaign:
Search Results
This is the main placement of Apple Search Ads, with which you can reach users while they are conducting a search on the Apple App Store. By choosing a set of keywords, your ad will appear first, above the organic results of the user’s search query.
Today Tab
The Today Tab can be a great opportunity to reach potential customers with an eye-catching creative. The ad placement appears after the user scrolls down the Today Tab and takes about 50% of the visible screen space when displayed in full size. The ad shows your custom product page, created for this purpose and approved by Apple’s team.
Search Tab
The Search Tab placement allows you to reach users that are about to make a search on the Apple App Store. Your ad will show as the first app in the “Suggested” section.
Product Pages (You Might Also Like)
This is the latest ad placement in Apple Search Ads, launched in October 2022. Your ads will be displayed when users scroll to the bottom of the product page of another app. You are able to choose between three targeting options:
- Show your ad on product pages of apps in the same category as yours.
- Show your ad on product pages of apps from a category different from yours.
- Show your ad on product pages of any category.
Bidding & Budgeting in Apple Search Ads
Currently, the only bidding type allowed in all of Apple Search Ads campaign types is CPT — cost per tap, which is parallel to the CPC bidding in Google Ads or most other large advertising platforms.
Apple’s Search Ads Auction
In an ASA campaign, you will specify the maximum cost you are willing to pay for a tap on your ad. Your bid will compete with other advertisers' bids for the same ad impression. However, you will only pay if your ad is displayed and tapped. To win the auction, you have to reach the highest rank of all bidders. The rank takes into account your bid and the projected TTR (tap-through rate) of your ad. This is similar to Google’s Ad Rank method, which uses both the CPC bid and the advertiser’s Quality Score. The main difference is that in Apple Search Ads, the “quality score” is not disclosed to the advertisers. However, Apple notes that the factors that most affect the projected TTR are the historic TTR and the relevance of the app’s metadata to the keyword on which the advertiser is bidding.
ASA’s auction is a second price auction, meaning that the amount you will pay if you win the auction and if an Apple user taps on your ad will be equal to the CPT bid that was submitted by the advertiser who finished second in the auction.
CPA Goal
Another feature of ASA’s bidding system is the “CPA Goal.” While setting a CPA (CPI) goal won’t affect your outcome in a specific auction, it will help you get into auctions that have a higher probability of achieving your CPA goal and skip on the ones that are more likely to result in a CPA higher than your defined goal. Note that currently, the CPA is actually the CPI, that is, your Cost per App Install.
Before using this feature, you should be aware of your average Conversion Rate (CR) from tap to install. If this is your first campaign, you should probably gather campaign data before setting your CPA goal or at least have an accurate estimate of your CR.
In order to make a positive impact on your campaign’s performance, the CPA goal should be set at a level close to the product of your expected CR and your CPT.
An effective CPA goal will allow you to increase your CPT bids and become more competitive on higher value auctions while keeping your cost per app install at a level that matches your business objectives.
Audience Targeting Options in Apple Search Ads
Apple Search Ads offer several audience-targeting options. While using as many of these options as possible seems beneficial (and when done properly, may indeed be beneficial), advertisers should define their target audience very carefully. Some of the targeting options may considerably narrow the potential reach of the campaign, which may lead to low-volume and high-cost campaign results.
Location Targeting
The location targeting option is defined at the campaign level, where you choose the list of countries in whose Apple App Stores you are willing to advertise.
Additional location targeting is available for a list of about 20 larger countries at the Ad Set level. In case your campaign targets one of these countries, you will also be able to target specific regions or even cities of these countries.
Device Targeting
At the Ad Set level, you can choose which ad to show on iPhone devices, iPad devices, or both (which is also the default option). If your app is only available for iPhone devices, it will only show for iPhones.
Customer Type Targeting
Apple combines App Store users into four categories and allows you to choose in which categories you want to show your ads.
- New Users: By using this option, your ads will only be shown to users who have never downloaded your app.
- Returning Users: With this option, your ads will only be shown to users who have downloaded your app in the past (a minimum of 5,000 users are required to run ads).
- Users of My Other Apps: This option will allow you to cross-promote your app by showing ads only to users who have downloaded one of your other apps (a minimum of 5,000 users are required to run ads).
- All Users: Targeting all types of users.
Demographic Targeting
ASA allows you at the Ad Set level to choose specific demographics based on age and/or gender. The minimum age to target is 18 in the US and most other countries; however, for some countries, the minimum for the demographics settings can be 19 or 20. In any case, ads are not shown to registered Apple IDs under the age of 13.
Although demographic targeting can be an important feature for many apps, you should consider the following before applying the demographic settings to your campaigns.
Apple limits the use of information of users that turn off “Personalized Ads.” Due to the fact that 78% of iOS users turn off the “Personalized Ads” option on their devices, according to Apple, demographic settings can limit your campaign's potential reach to a minimal level.
When you choose to define specific age or gender settings, ASA will only show your ads to users that match your chosen demographics and have turned on the “Personalized ads” options on their device.
Therefore, the general practice is to keep the default settings unchanged, which means your ads will be shown to your targeted audience regardless of age or gender.
Ad Creatives
The creative assets of an ASA campaign consist of 2 types of ad creatives. The first is a preview of your product page, which users see in one of the ad placements. The second is the product page to which the user will be redirected after tapping on your ad/preview.
At the Ad Group level of your Search Results, Search Tab & Product Pages campaign type, you are required to choose the ad creatives of your campaign. You can choose your creatives to be based on your default product page, the current metadata details of your approved app version in App Store Connect, or a custom product page. The default product page is also the default option for your campaign’s ad creatives, and ASA will use your default product page unless you specify otherwise.
Setting up a custom product page might be recommended in some cases, but it is not mandatory for the Search Results, Search Tab or Product Pages ad placements. However, if you decide to run a Today Tab campaign, you won’t be able to set your default product page as the ad creatives for the campaign, and you will have to create, submit and approve a new Custom Product Page.
Custom Product Pages
A custom product page is a variation of your product page; it won’t show up organically when users search for your app in the app store but only when you decide to redirect users outside of the Apple App Store specifically to the custom product using its unique URL.
Custom product pages can also be used in ASA campaigns, instead of your main product page (default product page). At the Ad Group level of your ASA campaign, you will be able to choose one of your submitted and approved custom pages as the Ad Creative for that ad group. When you choose a custom product page, Apple will use the screenshots, app previews, and the metadata of that page to create your ads, and users will be redirected to that page upon tapping on your ad.
While you may use many different custom product pages in your ad group, only one custom product page can be active at a time.
The default product page will also be active, and a small portion of the users with Apple devices that run on iOS versions earlier than 15.2 will be shown ads based on your default product page and redirected to the default product page as well. If, for any reason, your custom product is placed on hold by Apple or removed by you, the ad group will use the default ads. You can see the performance of the default ads in the ad group’s reporting.
Search Results Campaign’s Tactical Objectives
Note: This is probably the most important section of this guide. Read it carefully if you want to learn how to make the most out of your ASA campaigns.
While officially, Apple only recognizes campaign types or Ad Placements (Search Results, Search Tab, Today Tab & Product Pages), there is also the question of the purpose of each campaign of the same type or the logic of running multiple Search Results campaigns.
For web-oriented marketers, this is a very basic question, as most of the Web-UA strategies are executed through a “multi-touch conversion funnel.” This requires running top-of-funnel campaigns to increase awareness of your product, mid-of-funnel campaigns to drive traffic to your website, and bottom-of-funnel campaigns to convert users that showed interest in your product into paying customers.
However, mobile marketers usually practice single-step UA campaigns whose goal is to get the user to download the app, install it on their device, and from there on it’s the retention expert’s job to convert the user into a customer. Moreover, ASA isn’t open to letting you use third-party data to retarget users who engaged with your content elsewhere on the web, and therefore, you couldn’t integrate ASA into your “multi-touch conversion funnel” UA operation even if you had one.
With Apple Search Ads, you can have only a single business objective (aka strategy), which is to get the right user to download your mobile app. “The right user” is a user that has a high probability of converting into a paying user. Since you would want to allocate your budget to maximize the number of “right users” who install your app for the minimal CPI, you’d have to use multiple campaigns of the same Ad Placement, but where each campaign has a different tactical objective.
This approach applies only for the “Search Results” campaign type. Other campaign types have a much more simplified structure, which usually doesn’t require setting up multiple campaigns with different tactical objectives.
Brand Protect Objective (Brand Protect campaign)
A Brand Protect campaign, as the name implies, is a campaign whose goal is to defend your branded searches from competitors’ bidding. If you don’t run a Brand Protect campaign, any competitor bidding on your branded search terms will be able to show its ad above your app's listing when users search for your brand name on Apple App Store.
The importance of this type of campaign cannot be overstated.
While you invest your marketing budget on other activities, such as social media or PR, and build your brand recognition, users will start searching for your brand name. These users have been persuaded, by your marketing messages, that your product is a good fit for their needs or can solve a problem they have. When they search for your brand name on the Apple App Store, they are ready to transact, but are they already loyal to your brand? Not at all, and your competitors know that. For your competitors, this is the perfect time to sneak in between you and your “almost-customers” with their offer or promotion.
Brand Protect campaigns are not big spenders, as branded search terms are often cheap in terms of CPT and also have low search volume. If you also rank first on your branded terms organically, you’ll have a huge advantage in the auction against your competitors’ bids.
This is a low-budget campaign that will make it impossible or extremely costly for your competitors to “steal” customers from you who, in fact, have been converted by your previous marketing and media efforts.
The potential damage of letting your competitors redirect your almost-certain customers to their apps when they are ready to buy from you is way higher than the amount you’d spend on your Brand Protect campaign.
Category Generic Dominance Objective (Generic-Exact-Match campaign)
In a healthy ASA campaign structure, this campaign should be your best campaign in terms of user value. Whether you measure your user value for UA campaigns by CPA (not CPI) or ROAS, this campaign type should consist only of exact-match generic keywords which generate the best results (lowest CPA, highest ROAS). Generic keywords are keywords that are non-branded and non-competitor-branded.
Each category in the Apple App Store will usually have a list of high-volume generic keywords which represent the most popular way that users search for a product in that category. For example, “VPN” in the utility category, “flights” in the travel category, or “fitness” in the health & fitness category.
If, and only if, these keywords have worked for you in terms of CPA (not CPI) or ROAS, they should run under a dedicated campaign with the goal of maximizing customer acquisition volume for a given budget. In most cases, this goal will be achieved by maximizing Impression-Share.
Usually, it will take a while to identify these exact-match generic keywords. While you may test a few dozen of them (and sometimes even more), most advertisers will usually stay with as little as 1–5 keywords that will meet your CPA or ROAS goals. If you have only one or two of these keywords, that’s OK, and you should focus on maximizing their Impression-Share while continuing to search and test new keywords on other campaigns.
If you want to control the budget per keyword, you can set up multiple campaigns and run each campaign with as little as one keyword.
Sometimes, you will find it difficult to maximize the Impression-Share of multiple exact-match keywords under a unified budget constraint of a single campaign. In this case, multiple campaigns might also be a good solution to get the most out of a term’s search volume.
Category Generic Exploration Objective (Generic Explore campaign)
As mentioned above, in order to find the best-performing exact-match generic keywords, it takes testing dozens or hundreds of different keywords. As you begin your keyword research for the ASA campaigns (find more details on keyword research in the *BONUS* document to this guide), you should test the ones with high search volume with an exact match type. However, some lower-volume keywords or keywords ideas will appear in your keyword research as well. Running them only as the exact-match isn’t enough since you’d probably be getting an extremely low volume of impressions; however, running them with a broad-match type could result in two beneficial outcomes:
- Discover other search queries that are made by relevant users and did not come up in your keyword research. In that case, you will recognize them through the search terms report. If these search queries are of high search volume, you can add them to your generic-exact-match campaign (or to the competitors' campaign; more details below).
- Serve as an extension to a matching exact-match keyword. Often, a broad-match keyword won’t lead you to discover other popular exact-match keywords (as in article 1). Nevertheless, it may have a good performance in terms of CPA / ROAS. This can happen when there are a lot of low search term volume variations of a keyword that is used with exact-match in the generic-exact-match campaign.
When this is the case, you can run and manage the broad-match keyword with the same objective as your generic-exact-match campaign, meaning maximizing customer acquisition volume for a given budget. However, with 1 exception. With broad-match keywords, the maximization of Impression-Share usually won’t help you achieve your goal, as higher bids and higher spending will cause ASA to show your ads on broader and broader search terms, thus reducing ad relevancy. The result will almost certainly be a significant increase in CPA or a decrease in ROAS, way over the level of your defined goals.
The solution is to monitor the daily performance closely and to try to find the sweet spot between volume and CPA/ROAS, then maintain that level for as long as possible.
Search Match Exploration Objective (Search Match campaign)
The Search Match campaign is very similar to the Generic Explore campaign. It shares the goal of discovering new search terms which were not identified in the keywords research. The difference between Search Match and Generic Explore is that the former doesn’t use keywords to target users. With Search Match enabled, the ads in your Ad Group will target users in the Search Results placement based on the metadata from your product page. Although you shouldn’t define keywords when you enable Search Match, you could still view search queries that triggered your ads under the Search Terms report. Relevant terms that you were able to identify are usually good candidates for your Generic-Exact-Match or Competitors campaigns.
Competitor’s Funnel Infiltration Objective (Competitors campaign)
In Apple Search Ads, for many apps, a Competitors campaign can be the most successful campaign that they have across all their advertising networks. This was explained in the section on Brand Protect campaigns, and now, you only need to look at it from the other side.
If you have a competitor that runs multi-channel marketing communications activities, they are probably engaging your exact target audience through several online (and perhaps even offline) touchpoints. That audience is being educated on a product similar to yours, which happens to serve a need they have or solve a problem that they face. That audience is being persuaded to make a decision that will meet their need or fix their problem.
As soon as the user makes that decision, they go to Apple’s App Store and search for the brand name that promised to deliver on that need or solve that problem. At this point, the user isn’t loyal to any brand. If, at this stage, you could squeeze in a compelling message to a potential customer who is already motivated to use a product similar to yours, you would have a good chance of converting this user into a customer in only a few taps.
As mentioned above, if your competitors have a Brand Protect campaign, it probably won’t be so easy to win those impression auctions against them, and the CPA may turn out to be too high. However, if they don’t run a Brand Protect campaign, or if they do it ineffectively by allowing a large chunk of their brand’s search terms volume to slip out of their campaigns, you’d have a very good shot at “stealing” customers away from your competitors right under their noses.
In your Competitors’ campaign, make a list of all your app’s competitors that have a similar product to yours and then look up the different variations of how users search for them on the App Store (more details on how to conduct this keyword research in the *BONUS* document). Then, add all the variations with an exact-match and manage the campaign in the same way as the Generic-Exact-Match Campaign.
Competitors Exploration Objective (Competitors Explore Campaign)
This campaign type has the same modus operandi as the Generic Explore Campaign. Many brands have a large number of branded search terms variations that you may not be able to find through keyword research. A good example is an app that has been rebranded, and users keep using the old brand name in their searches. This situation may not show up through a general keyword research method, but you may detect it through an exploration campaign by using competitors’ branded keywords with a broad match and analyzing the search terms report.
Account and Campaigns Structure in ASA
ASA accounts and campaigns should be structured in a way that aligns with business objectives, allows bidding optimization, and maximizes scale.
ASA Account Level
Your ASA account has two hierarchical levels:
- The account itself
- Campaign groups
Each account can have multiple campaign groups. Different campaign groups can be used for managing multiple apps, using multiple agencies to run different types of campaigns, or executing different sets of business goals. Since this is a matter of organization, this article won’t cover the case of multiple campaign groups. Please note that any campaign group can be structured according to the principles described in this section.
ASA Campaigns Group Structure (Inter-Campaigns Level)
For each campaign group, or in case your account has only one campaign group (what usually is the case for most advertisers), I usually structure the campaigns in the following manner:
Each campaign contains three operational determinations:
- Geo Location (country)
- Campaign Type (search results, search tab, etc.)
- Tactical Objective
Geo Location
At the campaign level, you’re required to choose the eligible countries in which you’d like to run your campaign. While you can choose several countries, I recommend having dedicated campaigns for each country.
At the Ad Group level, you can choose specific regions or even cities as the targeted locations for your campaign. Your ads will only show to users at these locations. The Ad Group’s location refinements option isn’t available for all countries. However, if you plan to run campaigns in the US, you will be able to set location targeting for most of the states and major cities.
Campaign Type
Choose the campaign type (or the placement where your ads should run).
Tactical Objective
As explained in the previous section, choose the tactical objective of the campaign by defining it as a Brand Protect campaign, a Generic Exact Match campaign, a Generic Explore campaign, a Competitors campaign, or a Competitors explore campaign.
ASA Campaign Structure (Intra-Campaign Level)
- Campaign Level: Budget and location targeting decisions.
- Ad Set Level: Bidding, audience targeting, another level of location targeting, creative assets.
- Keywords (only in the Search Results campaign type): Search keywords and their match types and negative keywords and their match types.
Reporting in Apple Search Ads
Apple Search Ads has created a reporting system that is very simple to understand and use.
There are two types of reports in ASA:
- Operational Reports (through the main dashboard).
- Custom reports.
Operational Reports
The operational reports are a great way to monitor high-level metrics such as ads, daily spend, and installs through the account and the different campaigns.
These reports are clear and simple to understand as well as generate. You specify a set of metrics you’d like to include in your reports, choose a date range for that data, and your report will be presented at the campaign level with an option to break down by ad group and keyword.
The operational reports allow you to assess the main campaign’s performance information quickly, such as which keywords spend most of your budget, which ones generate most of your installs, which campaigns are reaching their daily spending cap, and which are far from it.
Another important piece of information that is present in the operational reports is the “Bids Suggestions” columns. When looking at the keywords level, you will see that Apple is willing to provide you with an indication of the strengths of your bid in comparison to what other advertisers are bidding. These columns are populated with the relevant information based on their volume, meaning that as soon as the keywords reach a certain threshold, this information or part of it will be presented to you per keyword.
Bid Strength:
Assesses the strength of your bid in comparison to what other competitors are bidding or based on the effectiveness of your bid in winning auctions and receiving ad impressions for that particular keyword.
Suggested Bid Ranges:
Apple’s recommended range at which to place your bid for a particular keyword. Bidding within this range will improve your ability to win auctions and receive impressions for these keywords.
Custom Reports
The custom reports are more advanced. However, they are not meant to be used only by ASA pros. Anyone involved in the campaigns can create a custom report and follow campaign data daily by automating a daily or weekly report run, which will also automatically notify them by email as soon as a new report is generated.
Custom reports mainly serve two purposes for campaign management:
- Daily breakdown of data: Savvy campaign managers love to see their campaigns’ performance broken down into multiple time frames, starting with daily, then weekly, and monthly. You can schedule a report to run daily or weekly, based on your preference.
- Impression Share data: As mentioned in previous sections of this guide, Impression Share data is used as an optimization tool for your best-performing campaigns and keywords. This kind of data is accessible only through a custom report, although it is built into the reports creation interface. It is recommended to save historical documentation of Impression Share data, as currently, it is only possible to generate a report within the last 12 weeks lookback window (daily imps-share breakdown allows custom data range definition, which is longer than 12 weeks but will take much longer to generate. I don’t recommend looking at Imps-Share daily).
Conversion Tracking
Since Apple Search Ads only provide performance tracking for app installs, an MMP (Mobile Measurement Provider) connection is recommended to track app opens (such as first open) and in-app events (such as free trial starts or purchases).
There are several MMPs in the market, the most popular being Appsflyer and Adjust.
There are other platforms officially partnering with Apple and allowing conversion tracking along with campaign management capabilities such as bids management and budget optimization. Since Apple Search Ads is a fairly easy ads platform for campaign managers, I don’t recommend using this kind of extended service. I do, however, strongly recommend working with an MMP to track the funnel in-app events.
Having a unified reporting where you can match your ASA campaigns with in-app events is the only way to benefit from an optimized campaigns structure that will allow you to scale UA through Apple Search Ads campaigns.
In most cases, ASA integration with an MMP is simple and quick, especially due to the fact that ASAs installs aren’t affected by Apple’s Aggregated Advanced Privacy introduced in iOS 14. This means that while other networks have to rely on a SKADnetwork solution (such as Appsflyer’s Conversion Studio for example), your ASA campaigns will report directly to the MMP via Apple’s ATTrackingManager.
So make sure to choose an MMP solution that will allow you to track in-app events coming from your Apple Search Ads campaigns. This will have a huge effect on your ASA campaigns performance.
**BONUS**: Apple Search Ads Best Practices
If you’ve read this far, ASA is probably very important to you, and there is nothing I’d like more than to help you get the most out of your campaigns.
Therefore, I’ve prepared a document with five of the most helpful best practices I’ve developed through over five years of managing ASA campaigns.
Kindly register using the form below, which will help us stay in touch with you via email and inform you when new material is published about Apple Search Ads and other topics related to mobile marketing and user acquisition.
