Apple Search Ads: Run Your First Apple Ads Campaign

Apple Search Ads is the App Store's ad platform, renamed Apple Ads in April 2025. You pick keywords, a maximum bid per tap and a budget, and your app can show up at the top of search results, labeled as an ad. Your budget doesn't buy you impressions: your listing's relevance to the search does, then your bid.

I ran Apple Ads campaigns for TradaZen and Solys in 2026, in more than twenty countries. This guide follows Apple Ads' official help, reviewed on October 15, 2026, plus my own mistakes. No spending figures here, just the method.

Apple Search Ads or Apple Ads: same service

On April 14, 2025, Apple Search Ads became Apple Ads, because the platform now serves ads outside of search too. The screens and the help docs say Apple Ads, but everyone still searches for "Apple Search Ads."

Basic or Advanced: which one to pick

According to the official comparison:

Criteria	Basic	Advanced
Placements	Search results	Four placements
You pay for	Each install	Each tap
Keywords	None, chosen automatically	You choose them
Budget	Monthly, $10,000 max	Daily, no limit
Per-keyword data	No	Yes
Custom product pages	No	Yes

If you want to learn what your audience types, go with Advanced. Basic is simpler, but it doesn't tell you which searches your ad showed up on.

The four placements

Apple Ads Advanced offers four spots, all paid per tap, in 91 countries and regions (90 for product pages):

• Search results: your ad shows up on a specific search, at the top or further down the list. Apple has been running ads further down the results since early 2026.
• Search tab: at the top of suggested apps, before the person types anything.
• Today tab: the App Store's front page, with a custom product page as the destination.
• Product pages: at the top of the similar apps list, at the bottom of other apps' listings.

For a first campaign, stick to search results. It's the only placement where you see the words people actually type.

Keywords: exact match, broad match and Search Match

According to the help page on match types:

• Broad match: the default setting. Your ad can show up on variants and related terms, including competing app names.
• Exact match: the word in brackets, [stock market game]. The term and its very close variants: misspellings, word order, translations.
• Search Match: Apple matches your ad to relevant searches, without a keyword list.
• Negative keywords: they block a search. In broad match, all their words must be present to block it.

One trap: you can't change the match type once the keyword is added. You have to pause the keyword, then add it again.

Apple recommends four campaign types: brand, category and competitor in exact match, plus a discovery campaign with a broad match ad group and a Search Match ad group with no keywords. I add one rule: a term that works in discovery moves to exact, and I exclude it from the broad group so I don't compete against myself.

On niche queries, almost all my exact keywords got zero impressions, because nobody searched for them. In the Finance category, Search Match put TradaZen on bank searches, as I explain in the TradaZen case study. In an ambiguous category, turn Search Match off at first and only turn it back on in a discovery group you keep an eye on. Exact gives you control, discovery gives you volume: you need both, with negative keywords.

Cost-per-tap bidding

You set a maximum bid per tap (max CPT), and you pay at most that amount. But Apple spells it out in its help on search results: if your app isn't relevant to the search, it won't show, no matter your bid. You don't pick your position either.

For a starting point, take what an install is worth to you and multiply it by the share of your taps that end in an install. You calculate an install's value the way I do in how much an app earns. Then raise bids in small steps on keywords with zero impressions, and lower the ones that cost more than they bring in.

Since February 2026, there's a second strategy: Maximize Conversions. You set a target cost per install, and Apple bids for you with Search Match required, no per-keyword bids. Its best practices page recommends a budget of at least five conversions a day and two weeks before judging. It also announces the end of the cost-per-acquisition cap (CPA cap).

For a small app that's still learning, I stick with manual bidding: you see every keyword, every search term, and you decide.

Budget: a ceiling while you learn

According to the help on budgets, the daily budget is an average over the month. On any given day, spend can go over it, but the month never exceeds 30.4 times that amount. Lifetime budget campaigns were paused in June 2026.

My rule: a low budget acts as a ceiling while you learn, it doesn't slow down delivery. A campaign that doesn't hit its budget isn't short on budget: it's short on winning bids or on searches. Raising the budget won't change anything.

During the first two weeks, that ceiling caps what an overpriced keyword can cost you. I only raise a budget if the campaign hits it and the installs turn into trials. Before that, the real bottleneck is often your paywall, not your traffic.

Apple Ads follows your listing, not the other way around

In Japan, an exact match keyword that wasn't in the title of my live listing got zero impressions, even with a high bid. The title containing it was waiting in the next version.

Apple says so in its tips for poor performance: your listing's title, descriptions and keywords are used to judge your relevance. A change takes up to two hours to reach your ad. Launch your exact match campaigns on the day the version carrying those words goes live, and work on your App Store keywords first.

Attribution: knowing what each keyword brings in

Apple Ads counts installs. To know who starts a trial or pays, you have to tie the install to your campaign. That's the job of the AdServices framework: your app requests a token, valid for 24 hours, and sends it to Apple's attribution API. The response gives you the campaign, the ad group and the keyword, except for Search Match.

With RevenueCat, the integration makes that call for you: read my RevenueCat guide, then the integration docs. One limit to know about, according to Apple's help on attribution: an ad group that targets an age or gender returns "attribution: false", with no details at all.

Keep the default audience: you keep attribution, targeted links to your app, and people who've turned off personalized ads.

Bulk import

Past three campaigns, the setup wizard gets tedious. Apple Ads accepts an XLSX template: one row per campaign, ad group and ad, 500 rows max, every column present, empty IDs for new items. Keywords and negative keywords are then uploaded as CSV.

My method: I create everything paused, check it in the interface, then activate it with a second file. A file rejected with a vague message often hides a single bad row, like a bid that's too low: split it in half until you find it.

My first-campaign checklist

1. Your listing is live in the country's language, with the target keywords in the title or subtitle.
2. Your paywall already turns some installs into trials.
3. AdServices attribution is hooked up and tested.
4. Advanced account, search results placement, manual bidding strategy.
5. One country, or one language, per campaign.
6. An exact match group for brand and category, a discovery group with Search Match, and the exact keywords excluded from discovery.
7. Negative keywords from day one: banks, off-topic apps, ambiguous terms.
8. Default audience, no age or gender.
9. Low daily budget, treated as a ceiling.
10. Starting bid calculated from an install's value.
11. Everything created paused, checked, then activated in one go.
12. Review at 48 hours, 7 days and 14 days, in the Search Terms tab.

Symptom, likely cause, fix

Symptom	Likely cause	Fix
No data after a day	24-48 h delay	Wait before touching it
0 impressions everywhere	Bid too low	Raise it in steps
0 impressions on an exact	Keyword missing from listing	Add it to the listing first
Budget never reached	Few searches or low bid	Don't raise the budget
Off-topic searches	Broad or Search Match	Add negative keywords
Impressions without taps	Ad doesn't speak to people	Variation with a dedicated page
Taps without installs	Listing isn't convincing	Rework screenshots and text
Installs without trials	Paywall or onboarding	Fix the app before the budget
"attribution: false"	Age or gender targeted	Remove those settings
Whole file rejected	One invalid row	Split the file in half

Going further

An Apple Ads campaign won't save a weak listing. The ASO Kit bundles my keyword method and the skill that translates your listing into 30 languages, country by country.

Haven't published yet? The free diagnostic sends you my Apple anti-rejection checklist. The full listing method is on the App Store ASO page.

Frequently asked questions

Are Apple Search Ads and Apple Ads the same thing?

Yes. Apple Search Ads was renamed Apple Ads on April 14, 2025, because the platform also serves ads outside of search. Your account, your campaigns and AdServices attribution stay the same.

How much does Apple Search Ads cost?

There's no fixed price. In Advanced, you pay for each tap, at most your max bid, within your budget. In Basic, you pay for each install, at most the cost you set. The real price depends on competition for each keyword and in each country.

Why does my Apple Ads campaign have zero impressions?

In order: your listing isn't considered relevant for the keyword, your bid is being beaten, or nobody types that keyword. Check that the keyword is in your live listing, raise the bid in steps, then add a discovery group. The budget is rarely the problem.

Should I turn on Search Match?

Yes, in a separate discovery group, with negative keywords, and not in your exact match groups. It finds unexpected searches, but it can also put your app on unrelated queries.

Does Apple Search Ads improve organic ranking?

Apple doesn't say. What's documented goes the other way: your listing's relevance determines whether your ad shows. Work on your listing first, then refine it with the search terms from your campaigns.