Complete guide to Apple Search Ads
The reach of Apple is surely one of the largest in the world. As its app store contains more than 2 million apps, this platform offers great opportunities, which marketers should leverage.
If you are seeking quality traffic and your monetization practice is based on in-app purchases, then Apple search ads could be a great preference.
With Apple iPhones making up a huge chunk of the world smartphone market, it is no surprise as to why marketers would not be interested in Apple search ads to connect with a large audience.
In this blog, we have mentioned a brief rundown of the complete guide to Apple Search Ads and help you in how you can start.
What is an Apple search ad?
Apple search ads are sponsored ads that are meant to market iOS applications within the Apple app store. These ads are placed above the search results when an individual searches for apps. Due to this, your brand visibility and chances of appearing in front of your target audience increases significantly.
Apple search ads provide treasured inventory for tapping into the iOS audience for brands for which mobile apps is critical for reaching out to their potential audience.
Announced in 2016, Apple search ads have allowed many App store publishers and developers to build brand awareness and beat their competitors.
Benefits of Apple search ad
If you are still asking yourself why should you invest in Apple search ads, then no need to worry! Read down below to know the various benefits Apple search ads have to offer.
- Higher rankings: Apple app store takes all the traffic into account, unlike the Google Play store, where organic traffic is separated from the paid traffic. This not only enables you to showcase your ads in front of a substantial and relevant audience, but you’ll also avail better organic results.
- Higher conversion rate: Apple boasts over a more than 50% conversion rate. It means that more than 50% of their audience download an application after they click on a search ad, as most people visit the store to make a purchase.
Most people visit the app store to download apps. No wonder why being recommended on top of the search results has an irrefutable advantage. - Better audience engagement: It has been noted that users who download an app via an Apple search ad have about 18% more returns. Moreover, they also possess a better retention rate than someone who has found the app from somewhere else.
These users are more likely to also purchase make in-app subscriptions. This suggests that the engaged user base in the Apple search ads is a cherished one that you can’t leave!
- Low investment and high returns: Apple search ads are comparatively new and comparatively economical. In comparison to giants like Google and Facebook, it is significantly reasonably priced. The CPT (Cost Per Tap) is very cheap and is much cheaper for small developers.
This can be ascribed to the platform being relatively new and is not flooded with advertisers.
Why Apple search ads are different?
Here are a few factors which make the Apple search ads stand out from the crowd.
- Customer behaviors: Customer behavior varies immensely on Apple search ads in comparison to Google or Bing search. Some of the most successful keywords on the Apple ad platform are usually one-term words that may not perform well on Google or Bing.
- Creative sets: They refer to ad differences that one can craft based on audiences or keyword grouping. This constitutes various screenshots and app previews that designers take from the product page.
The ad platform presents a different approach to creative customization. Here, as a designer, you won’t be able to upload pictures or text like one would do on some other channels. - Limited ad tracking: Apple search ads require you to work with a third-party MMP (Mobile Measurement Partner) to trace in-app events. Why? Because with Apple search ads, you can only measure downloads.
Apple enables you to select “Limited Ad Tracking”. This helps in case you have firm performance objectives or tight budgets so that you can understand what true performance is.
How can you customize your Apple search ads?
In this section, we will cover 5 best practices in running Apple search ads that can help you achieve optimal performance.
- Segment your ad types: You need to segment your ad types so that you can modify or scale based on your marketing objectives. This can also help you monitor your performance effectively. These are some of the categories in which your ad types can be segmented.
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- Top-performing keywords
- Search match and broad match
- Parallel themes
- Branded vs non branded
- Use keywords based on your app’s USP: Select keywords that can generate app installs if you wish to run the advanced version of Apple search ads. Try to understand how your app’s audience will attempt to search for your app.
Furthermore, be as specific as possible to limit competition on your keywords. If your keywords are generic, there will be more competition.
With regular PPC campaigns, one should consistently evaluate the performance of his/her keywords to check if they assessing enough users. - Leverage impression share report: The impression share report presents the share of impressions your ad gained from the total impressions served on similar keywords.
Strive for boosting your impression share percentage for the most related keywords.
Along with the impression share report, ensure you also leverage the data and analytics Apple search ads shares.
Moreover, brand protection is significant if you don’t want to share your traffic with your competitors. Hence, pay attention to the share of voice for your keywords. - Test several creative sets: While Apple doesn’t allow for custom ad copy, it does allow space for crafting sets of custom arrangements of the screenshots.
You can set new creative sets to check what works the best for you as soon as you get a baseline with your “default” set.
Final words
Apple search ads is another such platform that can boost your brand presence and drive out of the park results with low-cost strategies.
That’s all for now. This was the complete guide to Apple search ads. Utilize it to optimize your Apple search ads and get the most out of them.