In this Share Knowledge, we talk about Apple Search Ads. How does it work, different ways of setting up a campaign and some important best practices to improve your mobile app performance.

Basically, everything you need to know before giving this media a try.

Below you can find the video transcripted:

Hi guys, Rafa here! You are watching Share Knowledge.  I hope you are all safe and at home. Today we are going to talk about ASA also know as Apple Search Ads a type of media that can bring you amazing results and it’s not exploited enough by the advertisers.

How does it work? Should I run it? What best practices should I put in to use in my campaigns? 

All those and several questions will be answered 

What are Apple Search Ads? 

It’s the first result that appears when you search for a keyword on the App Store. And they have this little blue background.

Why should I care? 

Basic Statistics 

70% App Store visitors who use search to find apps.

65% Downloads that occur directly after a search on the App Store

50% Apple Search Ads Average Conversion Rate

A part of having a great conversion rate, you’re reaching the users at the exact moment they’re searching for your app or a related keyword, so they are very engaged. It’s a great way to increase the number of iOS users of your app and improve your ASO results. Also, if your competitors are doing it, you don’t stay behind, trust me, I’ll explain later on. 

How does it work? 

Apple offers two types of ways of setting up a campaign. 

ASA Basic – It’s a quick, easy way to promote your apps. You don’t need any expertise in media buying or optimization. You just upload the app you want to promote, the country, your budget, and your max CPI and that’s it they will do all the rest for you. The bad part is that you can’t be really sure how well Apple is managing your budget. The reporting is kind of limited and you can’t know for certain on which keywords you are being found.  

ASA Advanced – This one is ideal for developers or agencies who want to really take control of their campaigns and target the audiences who see their ads. On Advance, you can select to target different keywords, audiences, regions, ad groups and you have a better reporting tool. 

Also, differently from the basic, the pricing is made on a cost-per-tap. It’s like a Cost per Click but since you don’t have a mouse is a tap. On ASA Advance you can create 4 types of campaigns. Discovery, Generic, Brand Keywords, and Competitor. 

• Discovery: It will act as an explorer, identifying new keywords that you could add to your other campaigns but you have not considered yet.

• Generic: Those who are interested in your app or its genre, general terms that are somehow related to our app or its vertical.

• Brand:  Ad to appear for searches that are directly related to your app and brand.

• Competitor: Get even. keywords help your ad show for queries that are more narrowly focused on your type of app.

Best Practices: 

• Run discovery. You can be surprised you with some very unexpected kw’s that can help your campaign.
• Find the keywords that are killing your performance, add them to your negative keyword list for your search match campaigns.
• ASA only tracks installs and not post-install activities so it’s crucial to MMP, not only to track the behavior of the users that you’re getting with ASA but also to use it as a guideline to optimize the keywords. 
• LAT: 20% of iOS users have limited ad tracking. That means that you still can reach them but you won’t be able to see from which keyword they came from or track their post-install activity. 

Geos Availables: ASA is available in most of the countries and they recently are available in Russia. For my Brazilian friends: Fica tranquilo que a ASA já vai chegar no Brasil. 

So I invite you all to try this great media to see it’s results.  Winclap it’s providing a free BI to help companies during the COVID situation. 

If you want to learn more about how ASA works or include these ideas to your app strategy contact our growth team.