After your app is developed and live on app stores; its time to hit app marketplaces and get your new app exposure. A great way to get your foot in the door with app advertising would be to invest in Apple Search Ads. Apple Search Ads give your app exposure on the Apple App Store through keywords linked to your app, allowing users to find apps that best fit their searches.
Cost of Apple Search AdsÂ
Apple Search Ads are surprisingly simple to set up, given that Apple likes to make almost everything difficult to work around. All that is really required is for you to set a budget and follow it accordingly. Apple does not allow you to lower the budget, but you can set a cap in ad money spent.Â
Apple Search Ads follow a Pay Per Click model. This means that you only have to pay for an ad when the user clicks on it; creating cheaper Cost Per Installs and Cost Per Taps. A basic budget for Apple Search Ads will run you about $5,000, which is relatively cheap compared to other app advertising methods.Â
Keywords in Apple Search Ads
Keywords are big in any type of online marketing. In app stores, this is referred to ASO marketing and is the bare bones to advertising an app. Apple Search Ads rely heavily on keyword research and bidding on these keywords in order to have your app rank high in a user’s search. Apple allows you to place bids on positive keywords that relate to your app in order to help drive traffic organically to the app’s download page. In doing this, Apple Search Ads also weed out negative keywords that can incorrectly guide users to your app; wasting both the users time and wasting your ad budget.
Apple Search Ads CustomizationÂ
Apple doesn’t provide much customization in Search Ad copy, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  You can adjust Search Ad targeting based on a user’s location, gender, age, device, and other customer types. Apple Search Ads uses metadata collected from your app to best route users to your app and to display your app’s use cases in the search results. The best part about this is that because Apple prioritizes Search Matches based on keywords; Apple helps apps rank high based mainly on keyword matching. So it doesn’t matter how much you spend on ads, Apple will prioritize the user’s search over ad budget.Â
Apple Search Ads ConversionsÂ
The best place to start advertising your app is right in the app store. Over 70% of app downloads come directly from searches in the app store. So advertising at the source is a must. Apple Search Ads can help create a conversion rate of 50% and beyond. That’s phenomenal considering that an app’s conversion rate above 10% is good as is. With payments based on CPT, Apple Search Ads create an overall cheaper CPI (Cost Per Install), making app owners only pay when the ad is clicked on.Â