Published on July 26th, 2022 | by Bibhuranjan

A Guide On Apple Search Ads And How You Can Optimize It

Apple Search Ads helps advertisers connect with relevant users. Usually, in any App Store, when a user enters a keyword, advertisers bid on the keyword to ensure they appear to the user. This way, you are encouraging users to check out your app, which satisfies the need of the user and also shares their proven interests. With Apple Search Ads Optimization, you ensure that users are exposed to relevant apps even when looking for specific functions. Now to help you understand better, here is a helping guide that tells you all about the importance of Apple Search Ads and the best practices related to that.

What Exactly Are Apple Search Ads?

With Apple Search Ads, as an advertiser or marketer, you can increase your app’s visibility on the App Store. The marketer with the highest bid gets their app placed at the top of the result page depending on the keywords used by the user and the functions they are looking for. This is highlighted in blue at the top.

With this, you get to stay one step ahead of your competitors even though they might have better app store optimization. As a marketer you would be exposed to two solutions: Apple Search Ads Basic as well as Apple Search Ads Advanced. You get more options with the latter one but it completely depends on the tools you require.

The Importance Of Apple Search Ads?

With millions of registered iOS developers catering to billions of iOS devices, staying in the competition and staying one step ahead requires a fierce strategy from your side. You just cannot sit idle waiting for organic traffic, and this is where Apple Search Ads steps in, it helps you reach the right users and also helps users find relevant apps.

Best Practices Regarding Apple Search Ads

Before Initiating Any Campaign Check The App Metadata: Whenever you start creating a new campaign, checking and reviewing the app metadata which you would find in App Store Connect is crucial. App metadata determines how your ad creative appears and it cannot be changed after the prior finalization. One crucial point to remember would be the same ad will never appear for all the users. There are several ad variants like preview videos, app descriptions as well as screenshots.
Be Aware Of The USP Before Targeting Keywords: This is another crucial practice you must be fully aware of. If you are using Apple Search Ads advanced, you need to use keywords that would attract more installs, but before that, you should know how your target audience would approach the keyword. How do you plan on communicating your USP, use keywords like “step counter”, and “calorie counter” if you are running a fitness and health app. Understanding what your audience would be searching for helps you provide relevant results accordingly. Specific keywords are better than general keywords because the later ones are more competitive.
Make Use Of Both Match Types: When it comes to Apple Search Ads, match type helps pair up users with relevant keywords. The two match types would be ‘broad match’ and ‘exact match’. With a ‘broad match’, your app would be shown in broader search terms but under an ‘exact match’, your app would be shown when users search for the exact term and you should take advantage of both of them. Although the later exposure does not give you as much traffic or audience, it does help you reach your target audience.
Combining As Well As Segmenting Regions And Using Negative Keywords: With Apple Search Ads Advanced, as a marketer, you can easily create campaigns that match or group together countries and regions which have similarities and help you optimize the links using different attributes like the same language, even customer value. Now, to gain knowledge about the similarities, you can run different individual campaigns first.

With negative keywords, you can clearly define the terms which you do not want in your bidding. This might narrow down the search results, but it would help you target the exact users.

Ensure You Optimize The Bids Over Time: For any advertiser, it is crucial to work on their strategy, bid, and budget to ensure they are able to generate a lot more ROI and installs. You should monitor whether the budget you are spending on bidding for a particular keyword is worth it? Or should you spend it on a better keyword that would give you better results! To guide you, Apple’s recommended bid informs you about how much more you would require to increase your chances. Utilize this during your search engine analysis.

Wrapping up, these guidelines will hopefully help clear any confusion that you might have. Whether you are new to Apple Search Ads or want to improve your performance, remember discoverability should be your target. The marketer who has a better understanding of the app and the USP would always be one step ahead.

However, if you need to understand this issue quickly and efficiently, you could turn to specialists. So, SplitMetrics will be able to improve your strategy with their AI algorithms.

Cover Image by Freepik

Tags: Apple, apple ads, apple ads optimization, apple search ads, apple seo, search ads

About the Author

Bibhuranjan Editorial Officer, technofaq.org I'm an avid tech enthusiast at heart. I like to mug up on new and exciting developments on science and tech and have a deep love for PC gaming. Other hobbies include writing blog posts, music and DIY projects.