Best Practices to Structure Your Apple Search Ads Campaigns

With nearly 4 million users accessing the App Store weekly, standing out is more challenging than ever. As the app economy grows, Apple Search Ads (ASA) are becoming more vital for reaching high-intent users. In 2023, Apple reported that over 65% of app downloads came from App Store Search, underscoring the importance of ASA for app discovery.

To succeed, structuring Apple Search Ads (ASA) campaigns effectively is crucial for boosting app visibility and driving downloads. A well-organized campaign ensures your app reaches the right audience while maximizing ROI. Brands today need to segment and target users using brand, generic, competitor, and discovery strategies to optimize ROAS and reduce acquisition costs. New ad placements, such as the Today Tab and Product Pages, also provide additional opportunities for increased visibility.

In this blog, we’ll cover the best strategies for structuring your Apple Search Ads campaigns, highlight the benefits of a well-organized approach, and share key steps and best practices for success. We’ll also show you how to use AppTweak Search Ads Manager’s features to make data-driven decisions and optimize your campaigns effectively.

An ASA campaign refers to a set of ads, ad groups, and keywords that work together to promote an app on the Apple App Store. The components of an ASA campaign include ad groups, keywords, and ad creatives. Ad groups are clusters of keywords that share a common theme or target a specific audience. Keywords are the search terms that trigger your ads to appear on the App Store. Ad creatives consist of headlines, ad copy, and images or videos that entice users to click on your ads.

Organizing these components effectively is crucial for the success of your ASA campaign. By structuring your campaign in a logical and organized manner, you can improve the relevance of your ads, increase click-through rates (CTRs), and ultimately boost app downloads.

Key steps in structuring ASA campaigns

• Define campaign goals and objectives: Before creating an ASA campaign, it is essential to define your goals and objectives clearly. Are you looking to increase app downloads or boost user engagement? By identifying your desired outcomes, you can tailor and optimize your campaign structure accordingly.
• Conduct keyword research: Keyword research is a critical step in ASA campaign structuring. It involves identifying & segmenting relevant keywords that are frequently searched by your target audience. Additionally, analyzing keyword search volumes and competition can help you choose the most effective keywords for your campaign.

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• Create organized ad groups: Ad groups should be created based on relevant categories or themes. By grouping keywords into specific ad groups, you can ensure that your ads are highly relevant to users’ search queries. Additionally, allocating budget and bids accordingly for each ad group allows you to effectively manage your campaign’s performance.
• Develop compelling ad creatives: Crafting attention-grabbing headlines, writing persuasive ad copy, and incorporating relevant imagery or videos are crucial for creating compelling ad creatives. These components should be tailored to the preferences and needs of your target audience to maximize the impact of your ads.

Let’s take a look at the core campaign types you should consider and how to set them up for success!

1. Brand campaigns

Brand campaigns target users who are specifically searching for your app’s name or related branded terms. These campaigns are crucial for defending your app from competitors and ensuring that potential users find you easily. These campaigns generally have the highest tap-through-rate (TTR) and lowest cost-per-tap (CPT) due to the strong intent behind branded searches.

Structure your brand campaign by focusing on Exact Match keywords to avoid unnecessary competition and protect your brand from competitors bidding on your keywords.

Here are a few ways to structure your brand campaigns depending on your size, popularity, and brand name’s uniqueness:

• Single ad group structure: All branded keywords are placed into a single ad group, usually using Exact Match for specific terms related to your app’s brand name. The main use case for a single ad group brand campaign is for smaller brands or apps with limited resources and/or simpler brands that have a few branded terms requiring little granular control.

• Multiple ad groups structure: Brands with high traffic volume and multiple variations, brand-related queries, and/or misspellings can use a multiple ad group structure. With multiple ad groups keywords can be segmented based on variations (eg. exact match, broad match, misspellings) or user intent (eg. brand vs competitor, brand + feature, etc).

Tips and best practices

• Defend against competitors: If competitors bid on your brand name, ensure you have strong bids to secure your own branded traffic. This also helps you track the impact of other marketing activities (like ATL ads) by monitoring branded searches after a campaign.

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• Lower bids, higher conversion: Brand campaigns usually have the lowest Cost-Per-Tap (CPT) due to high relevance and Tap-Through-Rate (TTR). Focus on optimizing for these to bring in high conversion with minimal expenditure.
• Use automations: Automations can help you save time while optimizing your ad campaigns, reducing complexity, and avoiding overspend. For instance, using bid increase/decrease automations can help you manage spend between multiple ad groups simultaneously while achieving your campaign goals.

2. Generic campaigns

Generic campaigns are designed to capture users searching for broad terms related to your app’s offerings. For example, a meditation app might use keywords like “relaxation” or “stress relief.” To optimize performance, you can build generic campaigns with two distinct segmentation types.

Keyword segmentation

• Focus on non-branded keywords: Unlike brand campaigns, generic campaigns use broad keywords that describe your app’s core features, services, or category. For example, a fitness app might target keywords like “workouts” or “health tips”.
• Exact match for control: Use exact match keywords to precisely control the search terms your ads appear for. This helps ensure your ads are shown only to users looking for features that closely align with your app.
• Broad match for exploration: Incorporate broad match keywords sparingly to reach related search terms. However, keep a close eye on performance to avoid irrelevant impressions and clicks.
• Feature-specific CPPs: For generic campaigns that target broad, non-branded keywords, design CPPs around the specific functionalities users are searching for. For example, if you’re targeting “photo editing” related keywords, create a page that focuses entirely on those capabilities with screenshots and descriptions highlighting relevant features.

Intent-based ad groups

• Segment by user intent: Break down your generic campaign into multiple ad groups based on user intent. For example, users searching for “easy workouts” might have a lower intent than those searching for “best weight loss programs.” This allows you to adjust bids and allocate budget effectively across different user intents​.
• Intent-based customization: Align your CPPs with different levels of user intent. For high-intent keywords, you can emphasize immediate actions (like “Get Started” or “Free Trial”), while for lower-intent keywords, you might focus on educational content that highlights app features.

Tips and best practices

• Segment ad groups by keywords: Create Ad groups that compile generic keywords describing your app’s core features, services, functions, or category. For example, a meditation app might target keywords such as “affirmations” or breathing exercises”
  
• Segment ad groups by intent: Group keywords based on the user’s intent. For example, you can create separate groups for high-intent and low-intent users. For example, users searching for “beginner workouts” may have a lower intent than “best weight loss programs”. Bid more aggressively on high-intent keywords to capture users ready to download, and lower your bids on lower-intent keywords to balance cost efficiency.
• Optimize keywords with performance data: Continuously review and refine keyword performance to focus on the terms that bring the highest ROI, while excluding underperforming or irrelevant ones.

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• Leverage CPPs: The default store listing can be limited if you have a broader set of features. Therefore, use Custom Product Pages (CPPs) for each ad group to match the specific keywords or features users are searching for. This is where leveraging CPPs can further educate users as well as target users by intent and/or features to improve your TTR.
  
• A/B test: Test multiple CPPs within your generic campaign to determine which features and pages drive the best conversion rates for each ad group​.

3. Competitor campaigns

Competitor campaigns focus on capturing users searching for your competitors’ apps. These campaigns can be expensive due to high competition and lower conversion rates, but they are useful for being visible to users as an alternative to the competitor and acquiring users directly from your competitors as they have a higher intent.

Similar to generic campaigns, you can build the campaign as a single ad group campaign or consider diversifying and segmenting the competitor campaign into groups based on user intent or creating baskets for competitors according to your key features.

1) Single ad group: A single ad group targets competitor brand terms as Exact Match. For example,

• Target direct competitors: Only targeting competitors that share like-to-like features and selling propositions as your app.
• Competitor defense strategy: An ad group designed to capture users searching for your app in comparison with competitors.

2) Multiple ad groups: The campaign is split into multiple ad groups, with each one targeting a specific competitor or a group of similar competitors.

A multiple ad group campaign can help you dissect the top-performing ad groups, while also giving the flexibility to customize the creative assets to improve TTR. The structure provides a data-driven granularity on key metrics to adjust your bid strategy and improve ROAS on competitor campaigns.

Tips and best practices

• Focus on key competitors: Target keywords related to your direct competitors. Be selective about which competitor names you target, prioritizing those that share a user base similar to yours.
• Monitor costs closely: Competitor campaigns tend to have higher CPAs due to intense competition. Keep an eye on the performance of each keyword and adjust your bids to prevent overspending.
• Use Broad Match with caution: While Broad Match campaigns can increase reach, it may also lead to irrelevant clicks. Use it sparingly or rely on exact match to control costs more effectively.
• Leverage CPPs: Highlight ways your app outperforms the competitors such as with better features, pricing, user experience, testimonials, etc.

4. Discovery campaigns

Discovery campaigns help you find new keywords and scale your reach by leveraging Apple’s Search Match feature. These campaigns automatically match your ads to relevant search terms, including keywords you might not have targeted directly.

Keep a close eye on performance and CPA, as costs can quickly escalate. Adjust bids and implement CPA goals to maintain control.

You can identify good keyword results from the discovery campaign by checking if:

• they have a high search volume
• are competitive
• are relevant to your app/game

You can set up your discovery campaign by including at least two ad groups:

• Broad Match: Include all keywords from the aforementioned campaigns (Brand, Generic & Competitor) and set them as Broad Match with Search Match toggled off.
• Search Match: Search Match uses Apple’s algorithm which automatically matches your ad to relevant search terms based on your app’s metadata (title, description, etc), category information, and metadata of similar apps. It is an effective way to discover new keywords that you might not have included manually.

Tips to keep in mind

• Avoid double bidding on the same keywords: For the Discovery Campaign, it is crucial to add all the Exact Match keywords from your other campaigns (Brand, Generic, Competitor) in the Negative Keywords List.
  
• Use Broad Match and Search Match: Enable Broad Match and Search Match to allow Apple’s algorithm to find new search terms based on your app’s metadata. This can help uncover untapped keyword opportunities.
• Set clear CPA goals: Discovery campaigns can quickly get expensive if not managed carefully. Set a clear CPA goal to ensure the cost per download is within your target range, and adjust bids accordingly.
• Test before scaling: Always test new keywords before committing to a large budget. Discovery campaigns are ideal for experimenting with a low budget, and then scaling once you’ve identified high-performing keywords
• Automate bids for efficiency: Discovery campaigns should generally start with lower bids to collect data and test a wide range of keywords. As you continue to gather performance insight and identify high-performing keywords, you can either start increasing the bids or transferring them to relevant ad groups.

TL;DR

A recap of how you can optimize your ASA campaign structure:

• Structure your campaigns according to size, brand presence, and availability of competitors: Based on your keyword research, identify your positioning and define clear goals and objectives prior to structuring your campaign.
• Regularly monitor and analyze campaign performance: Tracking key metrics such as impressions, clicks, and conversions is essential for understanding the performance of your ASA campaign. By identifying underperforming ad groups or keywords, you can make data-driven adjustments to improve campaign efficiency.
• A/B test ad creatives and landing pages: Experimenting with different variations of ad creatives and landing pages allows you to identify the most effective combinations. By analyzing the results of these tests, you can optimize your campaign’s performance and increase your app’s visibility.
• Make data-driven adjustments to campaign structure: Based on the performance data, it is crucial to make adjustments to your campaign structure. Pausing or removing ineffective keywords and adjusting bids based on performance can help you allocate your resources more efficiently and improve campaign effectiveness.
• Leverage automation to optimize campaigns: Use a Search Ads Manager tool that allows you to build some rules in order to easily and continuously optimize your ad campaigns and improve your ROAS. Set them according to your category benchmarks and budget.

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