Apple Search Ads can supercharge your app’s growth — but only if you get them setup right. Today, I'll lay out a clear, actionable plan to set up winning campaigns, avoid costly pitfalls, and capture the high-intent users you need. Whether you’re just starting out or optimizing existing campaigns, here’s your blueprint for smarter spending and bigger results.
I've seen just about every Apple Search Ads campaign imaginable, and along with keeping tabs on industry data over at Appfigures — I've been to able to come up with a solid foundation that anyone can try. This guide does cover the entire setup, start to finish, so get in a good mindset to dig in on the topic. Let's get started.
Starting on the right foot with campaign setup
When you first log into Apple Search Ads, you’re presented with two modes: Basic and Advanced. The Advanced mode unlocks a wealth of settings, offering granular control over targeting, budgeting, and ad group organization. In Basic mode, many of these robust options are hidden, leaving you with a one-size-fits-all approach that might not be best for a competitive market.
For our discussion, we’re using the Appfigures app as an example. As soon as you select your app, the first decision you face is choosing the campaign type. Apple Search Ads primarily offer search results campaigns, which are crucial if you want to capture users with high intent—those actively searching for apps that can solve a problem or meet a need. By focusing on search results, you ensure that your ad reaches people already in an exploratory mindset, and that'll give you a competitive edge right from the start.
Defining your target region
The next important setting is choosing your campaign’s geographic scope. At first glance, it might seem tempting to target the entire world. However, every country and society has unique market dynamics and user behaviors. Optimizing your app's performance on a global scale can lead to wasted spend and unsatisfactory results, especially if your app isn’t tailored for every region.
If you’ve localized your app for several regions, consider running separate campaigns for each country. This way, you can adjust your keywords, messaging, and bidding strategy according to local trends and competitive landscapes. In our example, we’ll focus on the United States. By tailoring our strategy to a single, well-defined market, we can avoid the pitfalls of mixing countries with different cultural and consumer behaviors. You can always expand your reach gradually as you learn which markets yield the best results.
Setting a budget that works
Budgeting is both an art and a science. Your daily ad spend should be driven by your business goals and overall marketing budget — not merely by what your competitors are spending. A good rule of thumb is to multiply your daily budget by 30 to understand your monthly commitment. For instance, if you want to keep your spending around $500 a month, setting your daily budget to roughly $10 is a logical choice. Your actual daily spend can flucuate higher or lower depending on the day.
For our campaign, we might opt for a more aggressive daily spend, let's say $50 per day, if our goal is to secure a higher volume of downloads or test a wider range of keywords. Remember, consistency is key. A well-defined daily budget forces you to think in monthly terms and keeps your spend predictable. Apple Search Ads does not provide an automatic tool to benchmark budgets against competitors, so it’s essential to determine what you’re comfortable investing and then monitor performance closely. Always keep in mind that every tap on your ad represents money spent, so ensuring each tap is meaningful should be one of your top priorities.
Skipping search match
Apple’s “Search Match” feature is designed to automate keyword targeting by including queries that are related to your app without you needing to add them manually. On paper, this sounds helpful! After all, why wouldn’t you want advanced algorithms making educated guesses on your behalf? However, relying solely on automation can backfire. And in this case, if often does.
Apple’s documentation suggests that Search Match is intended for queries that aren’t covered by your manual keyword selection. Yet, in practice, this can mean that your ads begin showing up for search terms that might be tangentially related or completely irrelevant to your app. If your campaign is focused on driving high-intent traffic, any wasted exposure due to broad automation is money down the drain.
For campaigns that aim to optimize cost efficiency and maintain high relevance, it’s critical to disable Search Match. Turning it off forces you to choose your keywords deliberately and ensures that every dollar you spend is aligned with your specific campaign goals. Even though it might seem like extra work at the outset, manually curating your keyword list offers far better control and transparency over your ad spend and campaign performance.
Like anything else, you get out what you put in with Apple Search Ads. Take the time to come up with the right keywords instead of outsourcing the job to an algorithm that may get it entirely wrong.
Building an effective keyword strategy
Keywords make or break your Apple Search Ads campaign. Always use exact-match keywords to ensure your ads appear only for highly relevant searches, avoiding costly taps from irrelevant searches. Complement these with a carefully maintained negative keyword list, keeping your spend targeted and efficient. Together, those two techniques create your best chance at winning by targeting those who are likely to convert, while avoiding spend on those who won't.
Competitive analysis tools like Appfigures can unearth valuable insights into keywords your competitors are targeting, both paid and organic. Leveraging these insights can help you discover high-intent terms you might have missed. And this drives home another point — that as with any ad spend, you're most likely to be profitable when you take a disciplined attitude towards it. You can't set it and forget it, having a deliberate keyword strategy ensures you’re capturing the right audience — those most likely to download and use your app. And, in turn, pay for it.
Understanding the power of negative keywords
Before diving deeper into the structural elements of your campaign, it’s crucial to address negative keywords. Negative keywords are essential for ensuring that your ads aren’t shown in irrelevant searches. In our example, while our app focuses on app analytics, Apple’s default settings might inadvertently drive traffic for unrelated searches, such as queries related to social media management. They both may deal with analytics, but they also mean entirely different things. Spending money on these types of keywords is, quite literally, a waste.
So, this means that without hands-on intervention, you could be paying for taps from users looking for Instagram analytics or social media tools. Obviously, those aren't relevant to our app’s functionality. By proactively adding negative keywords (for instance, “Instagram” or “social media management”), you ensure that your ad spend is directed only at users whose intent aligns with your offer. And that's important, because if the intent doesn't match the offer, then there's no shot at converting them to a paying user later on.
Investing a little extra time at the start to curate a comprehensive list of negative keywords can save you significant money in the long run. It’s much easier to remove a keyword from your ad group than to try and claw back wasted dollars that resulted from tapping into the wrong audience.
Demystifying audience targeting
Not all users who see your ad are equally valuable. To maximize returns, carefully segment your audience. Prioritize targeting new users to fuel genuine app growth, and select device types relevant to your app’s design — avoiding wasted spend on incompatible devices. If Instagram ran ads, I don't think they'd likely target the iPad.
Refine further this idea even further with demographic settings, focusing initially on a narrow audience segment based on age or gender when appropriate. In addition, location targeting can boost effectiveness, especially if your app serves specific regions or cities. And, finally, consider ad scheduling to fill organic traffic gaps, optimizing your spend during peak engagement hours.
Simplifying your ad group structure
When diving into the structural components of an Apple Search Ads campaign, the concept of ad groups can seem daunting at first. What exactly is an ad group, and how does it differ from a campaign? Think of your campaign as the overall container for your advertising efforts, while ad groups allow you to organize specific sets of keywords or targeting criteria within that campaign. If you have paid acquisition experience, then this matches up with how many other networks structure their ads, such as Meta.
For many advertisers, especially those just starting out, keeping things simple often works best. Rather than setting up multiple ad groups, which can complicate management and testing, starting with a single ad group is usually sufficient. This approach allows you to test how your keywords perform in aggregate before you begin experimenting with more granular segmentation.
One of the key settings within your ad group is the maximum cost per tap (CPT). Although Apple might suggest a higher default CPT — say, $4 — setting a lower maximum (for example, $1) can help prevent overspending. Often, Apple’s system nudges you toward using broader matches and more keywords, inadvertently increasing your expenditure. By limiting your CPT, you maintain greater control over how much you pay for each potential download, ensuring your budget is allocated prudently.
Crafting a creative ad experience
Your creative assets are the final, critical step to driving user engagement. Default screenshots from your App Store page can work, but customizing your creatives specifically for ads can significantly boost performance. Use clear, high-quality visuals that reinforce your app’s value and resonate directly with your target audience. You can even match assets to a particular search ad or term.
However, consistency is essential — ensure your creative assets align with your ad’s keywords, messaging, and audience segmentation. Testing multiple creatives will help identify which visuals deliver the best results, but if you’re just starting out, simplicity and clarity are your strongest allies. Don't get too bogged down in these types of details when starting, but you can also can't forget about them once you're comfortable running campaigns. They can drive even more results.
Launching your campaign and monitoring performance
Launching your Apple Search Ads campaign is just the start. Continuous monitoring of key metrics like cost-per-tap, conversion rates, and return on ad spend is essential. Whether you use Appfigures or another tool, try to simplify tracking by clearly highlighting what’s working and what’s not. That's the only way forward to making quick and informed decisions.
Regularly reviewing analytics helps you pivot swiftly, reallocating budget to high-performing keywords, audiences, and creatives while trimming some of the more underperforming areas. Incremental adjustments — such as testing new demographics or creatives — can steadily improve your campaign, delivering stronger results and a better ROI over time.
Remember that efficiency is critical: every tap costs money and should ideally result in some sort of meaningful engagement.
Final thoughts: a targeted, data-driven approach
So, wrapping up, here are some key points to remember. Overall, setting up an effective Apple Search Ads campaign is all about control over ad spend and precision about where it goes. Here’s what we’ve covered:
Use Advanced search ads for precise control.
Use the search results ads to reach high-intent users.
Focus geographically on relevant markets first to maximize efficiency.
Set a daily budget aligned with monthly goals.
Disable any automated feature, like Search Match, for better keyword control.
Prioritize exact-match keywords and use negative keywords strategically.
Segment audiences by device, demographics, and location.
Leverage ad scheduling during high-engagement periods.
Choose creatives that clearly highlight your app’s value.
Continuously monitor performance and adjust based on real-world data.
At its core, Apple Search Ads gives you the tools to precisely target users who are most likely to convert. By carefully selecting your keywords, refining your demographics, and closely managing your budget, you’ll minimize waste and maximize the quality of every download. Continually monitoring performance and making data-driven adjustments will ensure your campaigns deliver sustained growth and a strong return on investment.
Whether you’re launching your first campaign or optimizing existing ones, the strategies outlined here offer a proven roadmap to smarter spending and better results. If you need to go a bit deeper and learn how to use competitor's data to create better campaigns, I've put together a guide over how to do that. Or, if you're a visual learner, you can check out a video version of this post over on Appfigure's YouTube channel:
Happy advertising!
