Estimated Reading Time 6 minutes

If you’ve been searching lately in the App Store on an Apple device, you may have noticed ads appearing at the top of the search results.

Apple introduced their App Store Ads back in October 2016, though from April this year these were rolled out more globally to countries including the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

The ads that appear are created automatically by Apple, using the image and metadata from your app store listing.

Apple are offering $100 credit for advertisers to create their first campaign to help promote their apps, and have said there’s no minimum spend. Similarly to a CPC model, Apple’s search ads work on a ‘cost per tap’ basis, where you’ll only pay when someone taps on your ad. Within the reporting, similarly to other search platforms such as AdWords, metrics such as impressions, spend and ‘tap through rate’ (just like click-through rate) as well as being able to see how many taps have led to a download.

By default, Search match is already switched on when you are setting up your search ads. Using the metadata such as description and keywords applied when submitting your app store listing, Search Match will automatically try to match your ad to relevant searches. It’s recommended that these inputs are of high quality, as relevance takes priority over bidding on these app ads.

Although a default setting, Search Match can be switched off, and there are many other advanced targeting options including:

• Device
• Ad scheduling
• Keyword targeting
• Audience
  • Default shows only to potential new customers
  • Can show to everyone
  • Can show to existing customers
  • Show to downloaders of other apps that you own
  • Geographic targeting
• Audience demographics

With more than 1.5 million apps to discover, one of the key reasons to use app store ads is the same reason marketers use any form of search advertising:  to get their products and services in front of users at the exact time they’re searching.

For more information on app store ads, and how best to optimise your ads, get in touch with a member of the search team today.