New Tools to Manage Apple Search Ads Campaigns

These days, app marketers can no longer ignore paid advertising and one of its most prominent platforms, Apple Search Ads. According to Singular’s ROI Index 2023, Apple Search Ads is the second-largest network for user acquisition on iOS.

With 650 million people opening the App Store each week and 4.7 billion dollars driven by Apple’s global advertising business in 2022, Apple Search Ads has proven to be an effective way for iOS marketers to reach new customers.

To help you create and manage effective Apple Search Ads campaigns, we’ve launched Search Ads Manager, a powerful platform currently available with any AppTweak ASO subscription (limited-time offer).

If you’ve never created a Search Ads campaign and don’t know where to start, or if you want to access valuable insights that aren’t available in the Apple console, Search Ads Manager has you covered.

Read our comprehensive guide to Apple Search Ads

Now leverage pre-defined campaign structures, ASO metrics (e.g., volume, relevancy, and rank), new keyword recommendations, and lots of other useful features in AppTweak. In this blog, we’ll explain how you can use Search Ads Manager to more easily and efficiently manage your ASA campaigns.

1. Create the right Apple Search Ads campaigns with templates

Creating the perfect structure for your Apple Search Ads campaigns can be a hassle. Should you create one campaign per country? How do you choose between Broad Match and Search Match settings?

Search Ads Manager answers many of the questions you might have about ASA campaign creation. Leveraging Apple Search Ads best practices, we’ve created ready-to-use templates to help you build optimal campaigns:

• Brand campaigns focus on keywords that are related to your app/game, or company name.
• Generic campaigns focus on non-branded keywords that describe your app’s category or genre and what your app does.
• Competitor campaigns focus on keywords for similar apps to your own, in the same/related store category.
• Custom campaigns don’t have predefined settings and allow you to build your campaigns however you like.
• Discovery campaigns will soon allow users to find new keyword opportunities in Search Ads Manager, including automation to avoid bidding on the same keyword too many times.

Brand, generic, and competitor campaigns only target “exact match” keywords. “Search match” is disabled for these campaigns, meaning they will only target the exact keywords you’ve added – ensuring maximum control over what you spend. If you want to move away from these settings, custom campaigns will allow you to build a structure that fits your needs.

We would also recommend that you add negative keywords to any Search Ads campaigns, both at the campaign or ad group level. This way, you’ll make sure to not target irrelevant keywords or terms that are not aligned with your brand guidelines.

2. Combine ASO and ASA data to optimize your Search Ads bids

When allocating budget for Apple Search Ads, it’s important to have a deep understanding of the potential and value of your Search Ads keywords. In the old days, you had to use an ASO tool to answer many questions:

• Are the keywords you’re targeting via ASA popular/relevant enough to drive impressions and installs?
• How is your organic ranking for these keywords?
• Will paid advertising have any impact on your ASO efforts?

Selecting the right keywords for your Search Ads campaigns typically requires a lot of back and forth between different tools, making the process long and inefficient. But that time has passed; with Search Ads Manager, save time and optimize your resources by managing all your campaigns in one place.

Learn more about selecting keywords for your ASA campaigns

Access valuable data by unlocking your Search Ads campaigns

When you connect your Apple Search Ads console to AppTweak, we’ll sync all your campaigns so you can already browse through them and monitor their performance. When you’re ready to start managing them from AppTweak (e.g., changing a keyword’s max CPT, pausing a campaign, seeing ASO data for your keywords, etc.), you’ll have to unlock your campaigns by clicking the lock at the right of your campaign table. By doing so, your campaigns will then become editable.

For all unlocked campaigns (also called AppTweak-managed campaigns), we’ll automatically track all the campaign keywords and display their ASO and ASA metrics side by side. This allows you to easily identify high-value keywords and manage your bids accordingly.

KPIs to select the best app keywords: volume, relevancy & more

To analyze which keywords perform better either in terms of ASA or ASO, don’t hesitate to customize your table by the metrics you’re interested in! For example, you might want to see if you’re spending a lot of money on a low-volume or irrelevant keyword. Combining these metrics would bring useful insights.

3. Expand your reach by bidding on high-value keywords

In ASO, there are two main techniques to gain more installs. The first is to try improving your organic ranking for keywords so you reach the top search results and gain additional downloads. The second is to target more keywords so you become visible for a maximum of relevant search terms.

Driving more installs in Apple Search Ads involves adjusting your bids by changing your campaign’s budget and/or by updating the maximum cost-per-tap for different keywords. On top of this, you should also make sure to use as many relevant keywords as possible like in ASO; since you’ll only pay when users tap on your ad, it’s a good practice to test lots of keywords to identify those that will bring the most value.

However, identifying the most high-value keywords can be difficult, especially when entering new markets with different languages or preferences.

An easy solution to find new keyword opportunities is AppTweak’s keyword suggestions, on top of your Search Ads Manager keyword table. There, you’ll find tons of relevant search terms split into different tabs:

• App Keywords: terms from/related to your app. In this tab, see keywords in your app metadata, those generating the most organic installs, those you rank high organically for, and more. Adding terms from “App Keywords” to your campaigns is a great way to utilize ASO insights for ASA.
• Generate Keywords: Type a relevant term to generate lots of other keywords that are semantically related to it. This tool will help you expand your reach and build a strong semantic dictionary.
• Market Keywords: Discover the keywords that are trending on the store or the most relevant terms for a given category or AppDNA.

4. Connect Adjust to leverage MMP metrics in AppTweak

While it’s already very powerful to see ASO and ASA data side by side, adding MMP data can bring your campaign management to another level.

UA managers are often interested in metrics like retention rate, Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), and many figures that aren’t available in the Apple console. Gathering this information in one place usually involves manually exporting and consolidating the data to get interesting insights.

In Search Ads Manager, you can integrate your Adjust account in a few clicks to see all your MMP data on the campaign, ad group, or keywords page. Thanks to this, you can get the full picture of your user funnel, from the first App Store impression to the money a user spends in your app later down the line.

Adjust integration also available in Reporting Studio

5. See custom product pages (CPP) linked to your ad groups

Search Ads campaigns are no longer only about keywords. Custom product pages were introduced to the App Store with iOS 15, and allow app marketers to display up to 35 different product pages with new screenshots, app preview videos, and promotional text to different locales and markets.

Each CPP can be connected to your ad groups; once connected, they are then called “ad variants.” The goal of this is to target specific themes in each ad group (e.g. different features, competitors, etc.) that align both your targeted ASA keywords and the product page these users see. As we know, screenshots that better reflect a user’s keyword search intent are typically more effective than generic creatives.

Use our expert tips to leverage CPP for Apple Search Ads

When looking at a specific campaign in Search Ads Manager, you’ll see an extra column called “Ads Variants (CPP)” next to each ad group. In the blink of an eye, you’ll be able to review the ad groups that are already linked to a CPP and those that are using your default app page.

Then, when you select an ad group that is linked to a CPP, you’ll be able to click the “Ad Variants” tab to see all the CPPs that were linked to that ad group. For each, we’ll show you many impressions they brought and which version performed best.

Want to visualize CPP for any app or keyword in ASO Intelligence? Discover CPP Explorer in this blog

Conclusion

You can now upgrade your Apple Search Ads campaigns with Search Ads Manager, our new platform dedicated to powerful ASA tools and techniques. Whether you’re focusing on creative optimization by using ad variants (CPP) or if you want to target new keyword opportunities, Search Ads Manager has something for you.

We have lots of exciting features coming up: Automated rules, CPP management, more reporting, and many other releases are on the agenda. Stay tuned!

Search Ads Manager is currently available with any AppTweak ASO subscription (limited-time offer).

Start a 7-day free trial