Apple Search Ads Guide for 2024: From Beginner to Expert
Gabriel Kuriata
Gabriel Kuriata 
Apple Search Ads is an advertising platform exclusive to the App Store. It’s a must-have user acquisition channel for any mobile app or game developer focused on generating revenue there. Over 650 million users start their app discovery journey daily on the App Store’s Today tab, and many find new apps solely through the marketplace’s app.
This exclusivity makes Apple Search Ads unique. Its ads target a highly motivated audience with a clear intent of downloading new apps. Multiple ad placements connect ads with users throughout their journey, and as a result, they can be a significant source of downloads and revenue.
This article will help you discover and understand Apple Search Ads. It will guide you through our library of knowledge about the subject. If you’re a beginner, start your journey here to become an expert.
Read this article to learn:
– What is Apple Search Ads, and how it works
– What’s the scope of performance optimization
– How it impacts required management, workflow, and workload
– How to improve management with automation and SplitMetrics Acquire Starter Plan
– How to start building your account through our platform
– How to prepare your success with Apple Search Ads and ASO synergy
– Best practices to review and adjust your progress to ensure profitability
In the process, you’ll learn more about our free SplitMetrics Acquire Starter Plan and understand why many choose to start working with Apple Search Ads with our platform.
The free SplitMetrics Acquire Starter Plan is a platform for managing Apple Search Ads, extending its functionality with automation, reporting, insights, and interface. Signing up and using it is 100% free, just like Apple Search Ads. You pay only for your ads.
Apple Search Ads is an advertising platform functioning within the App Store. It offers four ad placements, allowing users to connect throughout different stages of their app discovery journey.
Always refer to Apple Search Ads documentation for technical data and specifications. This article is solely for understanding Apple Search Ads strategy, optimization, and efficient management.
Search results ads are displayed in search results and are the primary source of downloads in Apple Search Ads. It’s the first placement introduced to the App Store and the most popular among advertisers, responsible for most of their spending. Given their scope and focus on addressing countless search queries of App Store users, they require the most attention and a strategic approach. Most of the optimization and management insights in this article concern this placement.
Today tab ads appear on the Today tab and are viewed by over 650 million users every day. They can potentially increase your brand awareness and influence the performance of other placements.
Search tab ads appear on the Search tab before a user initiates a search. Like Today tab ads, search tab ads have an immense potential for impressions, as most users use the search feature to discover new apps.
Product page ads appear on product pages of similar apps in the “You might also like” section. They can potentially increase app downloads, taking them away from your competitors because users scrolling through product pages tend to be more engaged than others.
Each ad placement in Apple Search Ads connects with users at different journey steps. If you’re a beginner, you’ll most likely begin exploring Apple Search Ads with search results ads. However, it’s highly recommended that additional formats be included with the expanding budget to take full advantage of their synergy.
The advantage of multi-placement advertising in Apple Search Ads is the positive effect ads may have on each other’s performance. Increasing the number of touchpoints with a user exploring the App Store may lead to better conversion rates in search results and an increased volume of branded search terms.
Apple Search Ads uses the second-price auction model, meaning advertisers actively bid to display their ads. Advertisers pay only for taps, regardless of generated impressions. Ads are created using an app’s product page metadata—the app icon, title, subtitle, and, in some cases, screenshots.
A product page is the App Store’s equivalent of Google Play’s store listing.
Additionally, advertisers can introduce ad variations for search results ads. These are created using custom product pages added in the App Store Connect. Today tab ads also require custom product pages as a source of creatives and a target destination.
Optimal bidding aligned with a given category’s competitor’s activities is crucial, but money spent isn’t the only factor determining the likelihood of an ad being shown in the search results. The algorithm considers many elements. Although it’s not publicly disclosed, we’d personally highlight keyword relevance and user engagement as the top priorities.
This means the ad must be relevant to the keyword it’s being shown, and the product page itself must meet expectations, too.
We advise you to work on user engagement inside the app. It’s safe to assume that in-app user engagement will become increasingly important in deciding priority in search results on any app marketplace. Prioritizing relevance is the safest strategy for building long-term visibility on the App Store.
Likewise, engagement is a likely strong signal for the algorithm to show your ads in other placements: the Today tab, Search tab, and product pages. Therefore, considerate targeting with available options is highly recommended. However, we’d advise targeting all audiences initially due to the high percentage of App Store users having personalized ads turned off.
In this context, it’s clear that app store optimization (ASO) is vital to successful campaigns with all Apple Search Ads placements, as its key focus is conversion rate optimization.
App Store Optimization is the foundation of any successful Apple Search Ads campaign. The right creatives: app icon, screenshots, preview video, and name will increase your conversion rates. In our estimation, for the algorithm, it’s evidence of an app worth being advertised.
Apple Search ads are shown to highly motivated users already searching for apps. Consequently, this channel has an incredible average conversion rate—Apple Search Ads claims it usually’s around 60%. That said, the SplitMetrics Acquire team noticed that some categories could experience even more impressive CR (up to 79.69%, based on our campaign data).
Apple Search Ads are an integral part of an environment that hosts users with a high potential for revenue generation. According to Statista figures, users on the App Store generate half the downloads Google Play users do but more than twice the revenue. There are more notable characteristics of the App Store’s audience that might significantly impact your financial goals and proper assessment of campaign profitability in Apple Search Ads. For example, App Store users are much more likely to join paid subscription plans than Google Play users, with the average CPA for iOS users being close to 40% lower compared to Android ones for that type of monetization, according to Statista.
Apple Search Ads is available in two versions: Apple Search Ads Basic and Apple Search Ads Advanced. Before we explain the workflow, optimization, and management scope, it makes sense to explain the difference between them.
Apple Search Basic is a fully automated advertising platform that allows for an easy start and effortless campaign running. The algorithm handles all optimization within the designated budget. The platform introduces several restrictions regarding the number of promoted apps and maximum spend.
Apple Search Ads Advanced gives you complete control of your ad campaigns and offers many more options and insights into their performance.
The free SplitMetrics Acquire Starter Plan connects with your Apple Search Ads Advanced account through API to provide an additional layer of functionality for improved management, automation, reporting, and optimization. It will give you a high degree of automation for Apple Search Ads Advanced, significantly reducing your workload and, at the same time, giving you all the optimization flexibility to make this marketing channel simply work and be profitable.
Apple Search Ads Basic vs Advanced is one of the most common dilemmas app developers initially have. We highly recommend going for Apple Search Ads Advanced from the start for better optimization, optimized spending, etc. However, should you want to learn more about how these platforms differ and when each might be the best choice, we’d like to direct you to this article:
The cost of running Apple Search Ads campaigns is a critical consideration for those new to the advertising channel. It’s complicated to make a direct comparison with other platforms because there’s a wide range of factors influencing Apple Search Ads costs:
Based on SplitMetrics’ campaign data. Source: Apple Search Ads Search Results Benchmarks 2024
The best advice to Apple Search Ads newcomers is to take a holistic approach when evaluating their first campaigns. Don’t focus on taps alone. Cost per tap is a good indicator of the competitive level in a given category or market. Still, it’s the cost per acquisition (CPA), or even better, the cost per goal (CPG) or return on ad spend (ROAS), that truly reflects your performance.
Consider a user’s ROI (return on investment) and LTV (Lifetime Value) on a given platform and analyze CPA and CPG in their context.
The free SplitMetrics Acquire Starter Plan offers many tools for understanding and optimizing campaigns for target metrics, allowing you to achieve the best ROI and ROAS possible with Apple Search Ads.
To properly understand how a variety of factors influence Apple Search Ads cost, refer to our abridged version of our latest benchmarks report:
In this context, we must understand the Apple Search Ads metrics and how SplitMetrics Acquire Starter Plan expands them. This is the final step before we proceed to planning our campaigns.
Apple Search Ads includes the following metrics: Average CPA, Average CPM, Average CPT, Average Daily Spend, CR, Dimensions, Impression Share, Impressions, Installs, Match Source, New Downloads, Rank, Redownloads, Search Popularity, Search Term, Spend, Taps, TTR.
The most fundamental, basic metrics for planning and evaluating campaigns are cost per acquisition (CPA), cost per tap (CPT), conversion rate (CR), and tap-through rate (TTR). Consequently, we provide benchmarks for them, either online on our Benchmarks Dashboard or with an in-depth analysis of cyclical benchmark reports.
Anyone involved in mobile app marketing should know the terms listed above. From the Apple Search Ads management, optimization, and reporting perspective, we need to mention what additional features are available in the SplitMetrics Starter Plan.
The free SplitMetrics Acquire Starter Plan allows no-code integrations with multiple mobile measurement partners. In practice, you can connect Apple Search Ads data to in-app events, like subscriptions, ad views, in-app purchases, etc. Use our platform to assign a monetary value to your goals, in-app purchases, game events, and more, and focus on ROI as a true indicator of your success with Apple Search Ads.
MMP integrations allow us to introduce multiple “goal-centric” metrics for users performing those activities, such as the average cost per goal (CPG) or simply the volume of goals. Given that goals have been assigned a monetary value (based on your app monetization plan), our platform can easily analyze additional metrics like return on ad spend (ROAS).
To better understand Apple Search Ads metrics and how they can be used on our platform, please refer to the article:
After we’ve covered the basic concepts, let’s get to campaign planning. The first step is to choose the right Apple Search Ads campaign structure.
An account structure orders your keywords, ads, and search terms into multiple campaigns containing different ad groups. Today tab ads, search tab ads, and product page ads always have their dedicated campaigns. Search results ads require structuring to consider their themes and value, influencing CPT bids and spending.
It’s essential to categorize keywords and their match types and group them accordingly. The campaign goal is the most common characteristic when building your Apple Search Ads account structure. However, two factors are important too:
You might have a separate budget to promote your app in a specific market or market its particular features (this is true for apps with diverse features). This may call for a more granular approach to creating your campaigns.
If you’re a beginner, you’re most likely to use the semantics-based account structure for search results ads recommended by Apple Search Ads for your search results ads, with possible additional campaigns for the other three placements. There’s also a value-based account structure, but given this article’s introductory character, we’ll focus on the semantics one. Anyway, should you desire to learn more about the topic, we recommend starting here:
Regardless of the chosen account structure, whether prioritizing value or theme, being more granular or simple – you’ll always run the following types of campaigns.
Three of the four ad placements, search tab ads, product page ads, and Today tab ads, occupy their separate campaigns with their dedicated budgets and specific targeting options.
Things become more complex with the search results ads. In general, you’ll be running a one Brand campaign, one or multiple generic or category campaigns, and most probably a single competitor campaign and a single discovery campaign, as shown in the example earlier.
International markets, specific app features, and seasonal promotions can all have distinct campaigns, but that depends mainly on your budget’s structure. First, let’s introduce some basic terminology related to the components of these campaigns and Apple Search Ads match types.
Campaigns contain ad groups and define the daily budget and target markets.
Ad groups contain keywords, search terms, and ads. Targeting and bids are set here.
Search terms are search queries submitted by the App Store users.
Keywords are words or phrases that you, as an advertiser, bid on.
Ads are ad variations, selected keywords leading to custom product pages.
Exact match shows ads to precise versions of keywords for best profitability.
Broad match will show ads to relevant variants and phrases for best reach.
Search Match algorithm shows ads automatically for relevant search terms.
Brand, Competitor, and Generic campaigns are optimized for user acquisition and maximum profitability with exact match type. Discovery campaigns are geared for maximum reach, with broad match type and Search Match feature turned on.
Brand campaigns contain keywords directly associated with your brand, such as the name of your app or publisher. Despite their lower volume in the overall keyword pool, they have very high conversion rates and are a significant source of downloads (although this may not be the case for recognizable brands). This is why they’re placed in a separate campaign, regardless of the structure chosen (semantics-based or value-based). Bidding on them is necessary, as high impression share means that only our ads, not those of competitors, will be shown for them.
This campaign type mirrors Brand Campaigns. Using the brands and names of your competitors and their variations, you can get installs from users who came to the App Store looking for your business rivals. Brand Campaigns support your defense strategy, while Competitor Campaigns reinforce your offensive efforts.
Generic or Category Campaigns should include non-branded keywords relevant to your app’s features or category. The primary goal of Generic Campaigns is to reach users browsing the App Store in search of an app like yours. Such campaigns are highly relevant and reach a broad audience, giving you more impressions than Brand Campaigns.
The main focus of Apple Search Ads discovery campaigns is to find new performant keywords targeting your most popular and relevant search terms. Such campaigns reach a vast audience, boast many impressions, and attract new customers. They utilize the broad match type to find more variants of your best-performing exact match keywords and the Search Match feature to deliver new keyword ideas based on found search terms continuously. To better understand these campaign types, please refer to the article below:
To understand the workflow and workload related to Apple Search optimization, you need to understand the full scope of optimization. Remember that these apply to search results ads in every case, while other placements – Today tab ads, search tab ads, and product page ads campaigns can be optimized solely by adjusting their targeting.
Additionally, this list doesn’t include conversion rate optimization, as it’s within the scope of app store optimization (ASO). This article also discusses the synergy of ASO and Apple Search Ads later.
Keyword optimization is a key aspect of Apple Search Ads Optimization.
Keyword discovery, evaluation, and selection are continuous processes. They ensure that the best-performing keywords are prioritized in user acquisition while irrelevant ones are removed from the keyword pool.
Keyword expansion is a significant process at the beginning of advertising with Apple Search Ads. In day-to-day operations, it is relegated mainly to your Apple Search Ads discovery campaign.
There are good reasons never to stop keyword discovery:
Optimization of Apple Search Ads keywords focuses on finding the right ones for your app or game—those that are highly relevant and, at the same time, viable to bid on financially. It’s no easy task, which is fully explained in the following article:
Keyword performance must be controlled regularly. The best-performing keywords should be moved to designated campaigns with exact match type and specified bids to ensure maximum impression share and traffic, and bad-performing keywords should be paused.
In Apple Search Ads, keywords continuously flow between various campaign types according to the chosen account structure, which allows better bidding optimization.
This optimization process is inherently tied to the account structure of your choice, and its principles (with visual examples), are provided in the article on the semantics-based account structure.
Strategic Apple Search Ads bidding is crucial to maintaining profitability on the advertising platform. The key is to be flexible and optimize bids on time. Bidding optimization must account for many factors and consider delays in conversions, meaning revenue-generating in-app events set as goals in Apple Search Ads can occur days following an installation. In essence, bid optimization involves:
Don’t hesitate to utilize Apple’s suggested bid range as a baseline. Bid optimization should be a strategic, data-driven process. The principles of bidding optimization are explained in the following article:
Custom product pages are additional versions of your default product page with unique URLs. Each custom page includes screenshots, promo text, and video app previews.
However, these page elements can (and should) differ from those within the app’s default page. Thus, Apple Search Ads custom product pages designed for ad variations in search results campaigns can be used to customize your ad campaigns following different seasons, cultures, locations, etc., as well as:
Custom product pages are also necessary to run Today tab campaigns, as they serve as destinations and sources of creatives for their ad backgrounds. To learn more about custom product pages and how you can leverage them, make sure to read our article:
Apple Search Ads targeting options include the following parameters:
How these are handled depends mainly on the chosen account structure, app functionality, business goals, and budget. Remember that according to recommendations for audience settings of Apple Search Ads, in the first quarter of 2022, 78% of App Store iOS 15 search volume came from devices with Personalized Ads turned off. In most cases, it’s recommended to target all ages, genders, and locations and include device type, customer type, and schedule when the app’s functionality validates it.
Adjustment of audience targeting is an Apple Search Ads optimization activity applicable to all four ad placements.
Apple Search Ads targeting is inherently tied to managing your campaign structure. The logic of creating designated campaigns or ad groups around these parameters is well explained in the article on the semantics-based account structure.
Apple Search Ads provides three dashboards or reports: the Campaigns dashboard, the Charts dashboard, and Custom Reports.
In essence, Apple Search Ads conversion tracking allows advertisers to view and process all the data needed to evaluate campaign performance, starting with impressions and all the way down the funnel to downloads.
Apple Search Ads is also equipped with the Attribution API, which our platform uses. Thus, SplitMetrics Acquire Starter Plan provides a full-funnel view of a user’s journey. One key reason advertisers use our platform is that it extends Apple Search Ads reporting.
SplitMetrics Acquire connects data from Apple Search Ads campaigns with in-app events tracked by mobile measurement partners, like in-app purchases, engagement, or subscriptions. This allows advertisers to set individual goals for Apple Search Ads campaigns with an assigned monetary value.
This allows us to track Apple Search Ads attribution and introduce many more metrics into our system, like return on ad spend (ROAS), cost per goal (CPG) etc. We can provide additional insights on organic rankings, how protected branded keywords are, a more detailed search popularity metric, or even our own, like the Apple Search Ads share of voice that may serve as a supplementary one to the default impression share or Relevance score that includes machine learning based evaluation (the latter two are available in the full version of SplitMetrics Acquire though, not the free Starter Plan).
The scope of optimization required to make Apple Search Ads profitable should paint a good picture of the workflow and workload related to its day-to-day management, which covers weekly health checks, bid adjustments, moving keywords around, etc.
If you’re familiar with self-service advertising platforms like Google Ads, then you should be close to home. The good news is that with platforms like ours, you can attain a very high degree of automation in Apple Search Ads management that at the same time fits your goals perfectly.
SplitMetrics Acquire Starter Plan provides an immense variety of automation rules that can improve your Apple Search Ads experience, reduce workload, optimize performance, and ultimately make your decisions even more data-driven. For more information on Apple Search Ads automation, read the article below, which contains many examples of rules and alerts to make your weekly or daily work easier:
What is the connection between ASO and Apple Search Ads? App Store Optimization (ASO) and Apple Search Ads can be used together to improve the visibility and performance of mobile apps on the Apple App Store. Let’s explore the connection between ASO and Apple Search Ads.
The brief answer is yes: Apple Search Ads can potentially influence your ASO efforts.
First, Apple Search Ads is a fantastic data source for ASO. Here are four types of information that can be beneficial to your research and evaluation of keywords worth organically ranking for:
Apple Search Ads can help you identify which keywords attract the most taps. Ad variations using custom product pages are a great way to test ideas for visuals and keywords. All this data can improve your keyword research and evaluation, provided you leave room for optimzation, as paid and organic search aren’t necessarily aligned.
We see the best results from our clients when they start streamlining their Apple Search Ads and ASO efforts and having them enhance each other. Check out these brilliant success stories of Locals and Livintis to learn more about the synergy of Apple Search Ads and ASO!
App Store Optimization (ASO) is the foundation of every successful Apple Search Ads campaign, as one of its pillars is conversion rate optimization. ASO is concerned with making available imagery that is as appealing to the user as possible. It includes designing and optimizing the icons, screenshots, preview images, videos, etc.
Additionally, a strategic approach to the app’s product page metadata can send the proper signal to the App Store’s search algorithm, potentially impacting the effectiveness of discovery campaigns or product page ads (shown on pages of relevant apps, most similar to yours).
We’ve reviewed and aced the basics; now it’s time to learn about 11 Apple Search Ads best practices that will help your app triumph on the App Store.
SplitMetrics’ 11 Best Apple Search Ads Practices:
1. Measure Post-Install Performance
2. Create the Right Account Structure for Search Results Campaigns
3. Think Carefully of Your Campaigns and Ad Groups
4. Never Give Up on Keyword Research
5. Research Your Competitors
6. Don’t Rely Solely on Search Match
7. Put Negative Keywords to Good Use
8. Optimize Apple Search Ads
9. Pick App’s Metadata With Care
10. Unite Your ASO and Apple Search Ads Efforts
11. Make Use of Custom Product Pages
Learn more about these in the article below.
In the ever-changing world, steady app market growth seems to remain one of a few constants and it’s especially true for the App Store.
Being the only ad platform that allows you to advertise apps within the App Store itself, Apple Search Ads offers app marketers an opportunity that should not be ignored. It’s all about discoverability and improving your overall performance. Some advertisers even notice higher app store rankings associated with the success of their campaigns.
Once you have a clear understanding of your app’s value and your audience, you’ll be able to launch thoughtful and meaningful campaigns.
SplitMetrics Acquire, an Apple Search Ads partner, can help you streamline your efforts to get the most out of this user acquisition channel. This Apple Search Ads management platform provides AI algorithms and competitor insights backed up by a dedicated team of professionals. Maximize Apple Search Ads ROAS and minimize workload with smart automation rules!
