Getting to Know Apple Search Ads

If you have an iOS app and you’ve published it in the App Store, you should use Apple Search Ads to make sure that it gets in front of your audience. Here you can set up and run paid advertising for key queries and attract real users. And in order to justify the expense and the advertising that has brought the result, it’s worth getting to know more about the capabilities and structure of Search Ads.

Native advertising instead of intrusive

Sponsored search results in the app store look the same as regular search results. Ads are seamlessly integrated into the market interface and don’t spark frustration from users.

Relevance comes first

Apple Search Ads, as well as other advertising services, host bidding auctions which lead to an ad taking its own place in a search. However, there is one important caveat – if the bids are equal or almost equal, priority is given to the more relevant offer.

The App Store positions itself as an assistant in finding the most fitting applications. Therefore, the system carefully analyzes the proposed product, and its ability to solve the user’s problem, attaching metadata, a set of screenshots, and selected key queries. In Search Ads, you can’t use the name of a competitor’s app to advertise your own product. It’s also important to be well prepared when it comes to advertising. Paid advertising for a useful application with well-chosen keywords will bring high conversions and high-quality targeted traffic.

Consumer Confidence

Another advantage of advertising on the App Store is the audience’s trust and confidence. First, by clicking on an ad, the user knows that they definitely won’t end up at a third-party platform. And secondly, given the service’s approach to advertising, the user will be on the application’s page that fits what they’re looking for.

Are there downsides?

Some of the features of Search Ads may seem inconvenient or unusual compared to the same system on Google Ads and Facebook Ads. But these are just a few nuances that a professional marketing expert can handle. Let’s go over them further:

• Search Ads is less effective as a single promotion channel than it is in combination with other sites. Experts recommend not limiting yourself to advertising within the App Store, but to utilize other promotion channels.
• Compared to advertising on Facebook and Google, there are a lot fewer creatives here. Apple Search Ads only works with graphic data from an advertiser’s app. Therefore, it’s important to remember to get everything totally in order before setting up an advertisement. But if you use an advanced advertising account, you can add your own options for screenshots.
• There is no 100% hit in the target audience. The reason for this is Apple’s privacy policy. Since about 50% of the users’ personal data is hidden, this can’t be used, among other things, to set up ads. As a result, the ‘view’ of the target audience is a little blurry.
• Discrepancies in statistics with trackers. While Search Ads counts every download of an app, many third-party trackers take into account its further use or at least one visit. This is worth keeping in mind when doing analytics and calculating ROI.

Considering all the advantages and even the disadvantages of Search Ads, this service should definitely be used if you are working on applications for IOS. Important factors for effective promotion include the applications’ quality and usefulness, the audience’s interest in its functions, and the involvement of a professional to set up and run the advertising.