Apple Search Ads

Apple Search Ads are a form of search engine marketing (SEM) that allows mobile advertisers to place ads for their apps as a sponsored result when users search for apps on the App Store.

Through this platform, developers can create ads that appear as sponsored search results when users search for apps on the App Store, or on the Today tab in the App Store app, or below targeted listings of other publishers’ apps.

There are a few key advantages of Apple Search Ads for mobile marketers, such as the ability to quickly and easily way to drive visibility and downloads for your app. These ads can be targeted to specific audiences, allowing developers to reach potential customers who are most likely to download their apps. 

As SearchAds highlights, Apple Search Ads can produce a much higher ROI than traditional acquisition channels for apps:

Apple Search Ads states that 65% of downloads on the App Store occur after a search…​​That is why Apple Search Ads reports a conversion rate of 50%, which is impressive.

In addition, as discussed in our recent article on Apple Search Ads, Apple is now offering ads on both the Today tab. With Apple’s new ads, app publishers can now buy something very similar to an Apple-created app featuring, which is always highlighted on the Today page. In addition, your own app listing page is now content for other apps to advertise against.

Apple’s new Today tab ads offer premium front page placement on the App Store. When people open the App Store, the Today tab is where they come, as Apple notes:

Today tab is where over half a billion weekly App Store visitors start their journey to discover new apps.

As you can see, this new ad placement is a massive opportunity for all app publishers to increase the visibility of their apps.

As a leader in mobile attribution, Singular supports mobile marketers in their effort to achieve the highest possible ROAS from their Apple Search Ads. Singular helps you achieve that by providing attribution insight into what and who is driving all your app installs – including the App Store, both organic and paid – as well as your costs and return on marketing investment.

Apple Search Ads uses a last-click attribution model, which means that the last ad that a user clicks on before downloading an app will be given credit for the download.

As highlighted on our Apple Search Ad integration page:

Apple Search Ads is integrated with Singular via a “self-attributing” integration, where Singular relies on reported attributions on Apple’s side, processing them through a last-click attribution model.

Although Apple is offering new placements, the Apple Search Ads Attribution API remains unchanged. That said, with more placements, there is more complexity in managing it all. Singular is here to help mobile marketers measure, monitor, and maximize their Apple Search Ads results.