It’s been a few years since Apple introduced Search Ads, giving marketers the opportunity to promote their app at the top of relevant search results in the App Store—and it’s no surprise that they’ve proven to be effective in driving highly relevant app installs. If your business publishes iOS apps, it’s definitely worth taking a closer look at Apple Search Ads to reach more potential customers.
But first...some clarity
Before digging into the “how,” I should mention that there are two different systems you can opt into: Apple Search Ads Basic and Apple Search Ads Advanced. Search Ads Basic is exactly how it sounds—it offers limited reporting, has no keyword or audience refinements, and has a monthly budget of $5,000. A big key differentiator is that businesses pay for installs versus taps.
In contrast, Search Ads Advanced operates more like a standard PPC channel. You pay for taps, and have both flexibility and granularity with the keywords and audiences you can choose, including demographics, device, types, and locations. Marketers are able to fine-tune their campaigns to the exact people they want to target. On top of that, the reporting dashboards are more sophisticated, and make it easy to track improvements over time. A/B testing with different demographics becomes a whole lot easier.
Because it's designed for, well, more "advanced" advertisers running enterprise marketing campaigns who are continually looking to scale and allocate spend more efficiently, Marin offers full support for Search Ads Advanced.
So how does Search Ads Advanced work?
Like most popular search engines, such as Google or Bing, a user searches for keywords and if there are advertisements that align with the query, they’ll appear at the top of the search results. Ads are apparent to the user by their blue background and a small blue “Ad” notification next to the app name.
Ads are automatically created from the app’s metadata and imagery that businesses create for their App Store product page. Apple’s algorithm takes into account both the bid and app relevancy when determining if your ad displays. This is why optimizing your listing for keyword relevancy is a very important first step.
You can add keywords individually, or bulk upload them using a spreadsheet. There’s also a “Search Match” tool within the Apple Search Ads campaign builder to help you identify keywords most relevant to your app.
In terms of ad scheduling, you can set up your ads to start and stop on specific dates, or show only on specific days of the week or times of the day.
Why should I be using it?
According to Apple, Apple Search Ads have a conversion rate of 50%, with about 65% of app downloads coming from App Store searches. This makes this ad format an effective marketing channel for acquiring new and engaged users, and an essential part of improving an app’s visibility on the App Store.
Where does Marin fit in?
MarinOne helps deliver growth from your Apple Search Ads programs, giving you the opportunity to promote your app at the top of relevant App Store search results. With Marin’s support of a number of premium publishers, our all-in-one solution gives advertisers the opportunity to manage all of their mobile app ad campaigns in one place and at scale, reaching the users that matter.
Apple Search Ads’ tools to efficiently drive app downloads, paired with Marin’s proprietary marketing technology, delivers the next level of performance for mobile app marketers.
Some of the benefits of running Apple Search Ads through MarinOne include:
- MarinOne Bidding: Our machine-learning algorithm goes beyond the historical performance data of a keyword or creative. We look at over 75 signals, including audiences, promotional schedules, and inventory levels, to calculate better bids and increase ROI.
- Customized Reports: Create customized reports to see data the exact way you want it. Choose report dimensions, metrics, and granularity, and easily schedule reports to run once, daily, weekly, or monthly.
- Advanced targeting options: Parameters include location, gender, keywords, and the ability to target people who’ve previously installed your app. You can also use creative sets to segment variations by ad group themes or audiences, and expand your reach into top-performing audiences.
- No wasted ad spend: Our biggest value-add is our support of premium publishers and ability to leverage a full-funnel view with our cross-channel attribution tool. To make it easy for our users to allocate spend to the most efficient marketing channels, we built an integration with Search Ads Advanced to give our advertisers the best opportunity to make smarter, data-driven decisions.
Interested in integrating your Apple Search Ads into your MarinOne application? Contact your account representative for more information, or request a demo today!
