Apple Search Ads: What to Know About iOS Apps Advertising?

Being a globally dominant mobile brand, Apple also has advertising approaches to suggest for merchants. However, the only digital marketplace that can be used for promoting other brands is the App Store. How can it be utilized, what are the specifics of the Apple advertising, and what conversions to expect from search ads? Login Casino continues diversifying the marketing space and helping today’s businesses, now explaining how to prepare and use Apple search ads for better sales.

The recent trends in advertising are tightly related to digital technologies and their usage for brand promotion and sales increase. In this regard, the most suitable platforms to launch ad campaigns are popular social media, search engines, and regularly visited websites or personalized pages.

However, it doesn’t mean that sites with a small number of users cannot be utilized for some kind of promotion. Thus, except for global digitization, the usage of narrower web-destinations is another trend in marketing. That is why the issue of local or narrowly-specialized influencers is a sharp one for marketers, who are able to identify the target audience and deliver the advertising message to a better-prepared public.

Here the practical value of the Apple search advertising becomes clearer. Even though the only place where the world-known brand can gather such an audience is the App Store, here the applications’ promotion becomes way important. Nevertheless, such a niche requires lots of aspects to be aware of, and we’ll try to explain the most important ones in simple words.

Practical values of Apple ads

Apple search ads are built on the principle of narrow seeking requests that are processed in the App Store. The only stage it can work is when Apple users seek some apps in the digital market and enter some keywords. It means that the only product that can be promoted in this way is a mobile application, which is driven by the iOS software.

Apple advertisement: what should be done before launching?

Despite the fact that recent digital advertising campaigns can be done by third parties, just like the media buying is bringing benefits for brands, Apple search advertising requires more thoughtful preparation. We recommend the following five elements to focus on:

Technically well-developed app. Even though it seems to be a clear step that has to be done before the promotion starts, a marketer has to be sure that the application is functioning well. App Store allows users to rate products quickly and independently, so even the most creative and costly campaign can be flushed down with a few technical problems only.
Unique selling proposition. As the Apple search ads campaigns are rather costly, it means that the platform offers numerous diversified applications. Before spending dozens of thousands of dollars on App Store promotion, it’s better to invest those costs into the development stage and create a really valuable product, skipping the advertising wastage.
Determine the target audience. This item is tightly related to the previous one as their combination forms the cornerstone of future success. In terms of Apple search ads, understanding the target audience helps to create a clearer marketing approach and weed out unneeded niches (include the younger slang into the campaign to attract adolescents or not). Understanding this element has a direct impact on the following item.
Determine all possible keywords. Compared to Google or Yahoo advertising specifics, Apple search requests are shorter, which means that keywords are not phrases but really words. Although the process of adding keywords can be postponed to the later stages, thinking about this aspect can influence the name of the app and, consequently, lead to the development/design stage. In other words, it’s better to have a bunch of assumed keywords as soon as possible.
Research competitors. Interestingly, some marketers set this item in the first place. A thorough review of the already available market offers allows for creating a rough draft of the previous items, which can be facilitated by personal knowledge and ideas. At the same time, turning to competitors’ research allows generating a plan that can be totally unbiased, but here the objective comparison plays a vital role. As a result, one can be completely unsatisfied with his or her personal Apple search ads campaign or feel proud of creating a unique approach.

Basic setting for the Apple advertising campaign

The process of activating Apple ads is rather simple and way similar to other advertising tools. If someone doesn’t know what to expect from the typical advertising tool, the step by step guide for Apple search ads looks like the following:

Create/login into an account;
Create/choose a particular ads campaign for further work;
Fill all the needed fields (locations, additional users, payments methods);
Determine the needed ad group and keywords;
Choose the creative set;
Set a budget for a particular campaign;
Edit the settings if you want to experiment with the campaign.

Traditionally, such tools have a perfect user interface, which allows to set them quickly and smoothly. Being one of the market leaders, Apple developed intuitively simple design so even an inexperienced marketer can set the promo campaign.

Specifics of setting Apple market ad

Despite the fact that the previous two subtopics help in setting Apple search ads, this one is dedicated to the specifics of making it. In other words, the following four items are the objects to know if a person wants to feel like an advanced marketer:

Segmented campaigns’ directions. Although Apple search ads are already a segmented approach to attract more attention to the application, plenty of additional settings can make the campaign even narrower. For instance, one can choose branded and non-branded ad types, select the main objective (download or return to the app), activate an exact match, or include similar categories. However, those steps will be more effective if you try them all and understand how they work with a particular product.
Bids and budget. The financial side is always a tricky item to discuss, and for Apple search ads, it plays a vital role. Like every marketing tool, search preferences are given to those who pay more, so the manager has to test which daily/monthly amount works better. It’s like setting the traditional CPA marketing campaign: stay in touch with trends not to overpay. Among the most common pieces of advice is to spend more if the keyword is rather popular and you need to compete with the top opponents. However, don’t forget about the product’s quality as a higher download rate can be nullified by the customers’ reaction.
Work with keywords. That is the item that deserves double attention. While the marketer has to provide a rough search of the keywords before the launch of the Apple campaign, he or she has no to forget about this action afterward. For example, one of the mandatory actions is to create and adjust the list of the negative keywords that must be excluded from the campaigns. Simultaneously, the advertising specialist has to discover new hooks and related keywords to make the ad more effective or in order to reach new target niches.
Analyze the results and adjust the campaign. That is some kind of concluding advice that tells not to forget about the possibility to adjust almost every aspect of the promotion campaign even if it runs well. There is no doubt that competitors monitor your activity and can just pay more for the same keyword and overcome you in the search results. That is why a cyclic checking of almost all the previous items is a must-have step.

Technical side: does the iPhone ad differ from iPad’s one?

Gladly, that is not the issue a marketer has to worry about when setting the Apple advertisement. Despite the fact that iOS-driven devices are more than a decade on the market, iPhones and iPads have great backward compatibility. It means that every creative set of the campaign is automatically adjusted for a full-screen of every gadget.

Nonetheless, it doesn’t mean that a marketer can ignore default requirements. For instance, it can be a significant mistake to saturate the campaign’s image with tons of text information. The default height-width proportion should not be dangerously changed even if the diagonal size is OK.

Specifics of gambling applications for Apple ad campaigns

App Store is quite a severe place in terms of the requirements for the platform’s applications. The team of programmers checks the application for non-harmful outcomes, which makes this digital market one of the safest in the mobile world.

As gambling is quite a tricky business, adding such apps to Apple’s digital warehouse is harder compared to other applications. Thus, gambling programs are included in the highly regulated fields, though they can be added to the App Store only by the legal entity, while simple entertaining applications can join the platform on behalf of the programmer.

However, that is not the only obstacle that a potential gambling app marketer can face. Apple reviews suchlike applications as highly regulated offerings, so it requires the following:

Gambling apps must be sponsored by the developer and clearly state that Apple isn’t involved in the process of creating a mobile program;
Gambling apps can be cash-free, including in-app purchases with further usage of the credits for free games;
Gambling apps that include real-money playing must have all the supportive legislative documentation before adding to the App Store.

What relates to the strategies that can be used in promoting gambling apps via Apple search ads, general recommendations from the previous sub-topics are actual. Independently on the kind of gambling app, the importance of the keywords or competitors’ research is critical and even tougher than with other kinds of apps.

All in all, a marketer that wants to promote the gambling app in Apple search ads has to combine attentiveness, creativity, and all the knowledge to be successful in his or her attempt.