A brand campaign is an advertising strategy focused on building brand awareness, loyalty, and recognition rather than direct sales. It emphasizes the brand’s values, story, and unique selling points to foster a strong emotional connection with the target audience, often using consistent messaging across multiple channels.
A brand campaign in Apple Search Ads is a type of search results ads campaign containing branded keywords, either the app’s name or the developer’s name.
Brand campaigns are significant sources of user acquisition. Branded search terms constitute a substantial part of all queries on the App Store and typically enjoy very high tap-through and conversion rates, stemming from the high intent of users submitting them.
Because it’s allowed to bid on branded keywords that are also the names of competing apps or their developers, brand campaigns also serve as a means of brand protection or brand defense. This means that we preemptively bid on our brand so our competitors have a smaller chance of diverting valuable traffic from them to their product pages.
Because of this, it’s advisable to maintain a specific, high (around 90%) impression share for branded keywords through bidding.
Brand keywords are assigned a dedicated campaign to reflect their high priority in any Apple Search Ads campaign structure. They enjoy a separate daily budget and individual bidding strategy. The campaigns are always run with the exact match setting to ensure that ads are only shown to users searching for the exact brand name.
Brand campaigns are crucial for Apple Search Ads because they help to maintain brand visibility and protect against competitor bidding. By targeting branded keywords, advertisers can ensure their app is displayed prominently in search results, reducing the risk of users being diverted to competitor apps. Overall, brand campaigns are an essential component of a comprehensive Apple Search Ads strategy, helping to protect and promote an app’s brand presence in the App Store.
The free SplitMetrics Acquire Starter Plan offers a unique feature in its Ad Manager and Keyword Discovery tools: Brand Protection. It automatically detects and evaluates branded keywords (our own and competitors’) on their defense level, reflecting the difficulty of maximizing impression share for them. It can be used to keep track of our brand campaign health and spot valuable openings in the form of unprotected keywords of our competitors.
To fully understand the logic behind brand campaigns and the unique approach that is required for them, we strongly suggest reading the following articles:
