apple-search-ads

apple-search-ads is a specialist skill for setting up, optimizing, and scaling Apple Search Ads (ASA) campaigns — the only ad platform that places ads natively within the App Store. It addresses the challenge of running ASA effectively: users searching the App Store are in high purchase intent, ads appear like organic results, and targeting is keyword-based only (no demographic or interest targeting), with conversion data unaffected by ATT/SKAdNetwork limitations. It helps practitioners structure accounts, choose match types, set bids, tailor creatives, and read performance metrics to drive qualified installs and ROAS.

The skill prescribes a concrete account structure that separates Brand, Competitor, Category, Discovery (Search Match), and optional Search Tab campaigns so budgets, bids, and performance data stay clean. It documents the four placements (Search Results, Search Tab, Today Tab, Product Pages) and recommends starting with Search Results. It explains match types (Exact, Broad, Search Match) and a discovery-to-exact mining workflow, keyword seed lists per campaign, negative-keyword hygiene, and starting bid ranges per campaign type. It defines the core metrics with formulas and benchmarks — TTR (Taps/Impressions), CVR (Installs/Taps), CPT, CPI, and ROAS — plus the target-CPT formula (Target CPI × Historical CVR). It covers Creative Product Sets and CPP routing to link Custom Product Pages to ad groups for keyword-specific creatives, automated bidding prerequisites (50+ conversions per ad group per week), and it references Appeeky endpoints (GET /v1/keywords/metrics and GET /v1/keywords/suggestions) to validate keyword volume and difficulty.

It is aimed at app marketers and user-acquisition specialists, and provides a weekly optimization checklist, a scaling checklist (e.g. CVR > 30% on main campaigns, CPI < 3× target before increasing budget), and a campaign-audit output format. It notes ASA's tradeoff that CPI is typically higher than other channels while LTV is proportionally higher. For paid UA on Meta/Google UAC/TikTok it defers to the related ua-campaign skill, and points to keyword-research, screenshot-optimization, and ab-test-store-listing for adjacent work.