Apple Search Ads (Now Apple Ads): A Keyword Strategy for 2026

In short: Apple Search Ads was renamed Apple Ads in April 2025. For App Store campaigns, use an Advanced account: it gives you four placements, cost-per-tap pricing and control over keywords. Split keywords into four campaigns (brand, category, competitor and discovery), use exact match everywhere except discovery, let broad match and Search Match find new terms in discovery, and move winners into exact match. Set bids from a target cost per install, add non-converting terms as negatives every week, and track organic ranks alongside, because paid and organic search share the same results page.

Apple Ads is the only way to buy placement inside App Store search, and for many apps it is the most predictable paid channel they have: someone typed a search, your ad answers it. It is also easy to overspend on searches you would have won anyway. This guide explains how Apple Ads works as of October 2026 and a keyword strategy that keeps spend tied to installs.

From Apple Search Ads to Apple Ads

On April 14, 2025, Apple announced that "Apple Search Ads is now Apple Ads." The reason: the product started in 2016 with a single ad at the top of search results and now covers several App Store placements, and since then Apple has added more surfaces, including ads on Apple Maps in the US and Canada in 2026. Search volume for the old name is still high, and many tools and job titles still say "Apple Search Ads" or "ASA." They mean the same App Store product.

Two changes from the past year matter for keyword strategy:

• More ads in search results. On December 17, 2025, Apple announced that "early next year, we'll begin running additional ads in search results," further down the list, not only in the top slot. Apple's reporting now shows impression share for "all ad positions" and for "first ad position" separately.
• Maximize Conversions. On February 25, 2026, Apple added an automated bidding strategy for search results campaigns that pairs Search Match with an auto-bidder and a target cost per install. More on it below.

Basic or Advanced?

Apple compares the two like this:

Basic is the fastest way to buy installs without learning the system, but you cannot see or control which searches you pay for, which is the whole point of a keyword strategy. Everything that follows is about Advanced. Apple's Maximize Conversions page notes that Basic users must pause their Basic promotion and set up an Advanced account to use it.

The four placements

From Apple's placement options:

All four use cost-per-tap pricing. Today tab, Search tab and search results run in 91 countries and regions; product page ads run in 90. For ASO, search results are the placement that matters most, because they are where paid and organic compete for the same query.

Match types and Search Match

Apple Ads has two match types:

• Broad match (the default for new keywords) "is designed to run your ad for searches on relevant variants of your keyword and terms related to it." Apple warns it can match terms related to the category or to "the names of products and services similar to your selected keywords."
• Exact match "is designed to match queries to the specific term you select and to closer variants than broad match," such as spelling variations.

Negative keywords use the same types, with exact as the default. An exact negative blocks that word or phrase; a broad negative blocks a search only when all of its words are present.

Search Match is separate from keywords. Apple's keyword best practices say it automatically matches your ad to relevant searches using your app's metadata, similar apps in the genre and other search data. Apple recommends turning it on "in a campaign or ad group dedicated to keyword discovery," and notes it "can be especially useful in markets where you don't know the local language."

A four-campaign structure

Apple's own campaign structure guide recommends separating keywords by intent:

Two rules make this structure work:

1. Block the other campaigns' keywords in discovery. Apple says to "add all the keywords from your brand, category, and competitor campaigns as exact match negative keywords" in the discovery campaign. Otherwise discovery bids against your own exact campaigns.
2. Separate large markets. Apple suggests separate campaigns for big App Store countries that need their own budget, and grouping smaller countries that share a language or customer value. It also cautions that competitor keywords, Search Match and broad match "may not be appropriate for all countries and regions."

A note on competitor campaigns: Apple Ads offers them as a standard campaign type, but bidding on a name is not the same as using it. Your App Store metadata still may not contain competitor names under guideline 2.3.7, as our App Store keywords guide explains. Apple's terms also let it reject or remove any ad, campaign or targeting at any time, so expect occasional changes.

Choosing keywords

The best keyword list for Apple Ads looks a lot like your ASO list, with two differences: you pay for every tap, and you can see exactly which searches converted.

Start from your organic data. The terms you rank for organically and the terms you are trying to rank for are your first category keywords. Our App Store keyword research guide explains how to build and score that list, and the free App Store keyword checker shows who ranks in the top 10 for any term before you bid on it.

Read Apple's popularity score. Apple Ads shows search popularity for each keyword, displayed as numbers from 1 to 5 in reports, with 5 the most popular. It is the only first-party demand signal Apple offers, and you can see it without running a campaign. Our Apple popularity guide shows how to bring the score into your keyword tracking.

Mine the search terms report. Every week, open the search terms for your discovery campaign. Terms with installs at an acceptable cost move to exact match in the right campaign. Terms with taps and no installs become negatives.

Prefer relevance over popularity. A popular term whose searchers want a different kind of app will get impressions and some taps, then few installs. That is wasted spend, and it tells you the term does not belong in your organic metadata either.

Bidding: Maximize Conversions or Manage Bids

Search results campaigns offer two bidding strategies, according to Apple's campaign help:

• Maximize Conversions uses Search Match and an auto-bidder to "prioritize the keywords most likely to lead to installs." You set a target cost per acquisition (CPA), and Apple aims for the most downloads at that cost "on a weekly basis," so single days can run above or below. Apple recommends a daily budget that supports at least five conversions a day and at least two weeks before judging results. It is for post-launch campaigns, not pre-orders, and you can switch to manual bids at any time. Apple also says CPA caps "will soon be unavailable."
• Manage Bids lets you set a maximum cost-per-tap (max CPT) per keyword or per ad group. Apple calls its suggested bid "simply a reference point."

What you actually pay is set by Apple's dynamic pricing, which weighs ad relevance, your bid, other advertisers' bids, user experience and any reserve price. Your max CPT is a ceiling: "the actual price you end up paying may be less."

A practical split: use Maximize Conversions for discovery and for large category campaigns where you have enough volume, and Manage Bids for brand and competitor campaigns where you want tight control of a few exact terms.

Worked example: bids from a target cost per install

Bids should come from what an install is worth to you, not from Apple's suggestion. The numbers below are hypothetical, for Streakly, the habit tracker we use across this blog.

1. Value of an install. Suppose 4% of new users start a subscription and the average subscriber brings 40 US dollars in proceeds over their lifetime. Each install is worth about 1.60 dollars.
2. Target cost per install. To keep a margin, Streakly targets 1.20 dollars per install on category keywords.
3. Tap-to-install rate. Apple reports CR (Tap-Through) as "total installs resulting from taps on your ad divided by the total number of taps." Suppose Streakly's category campaign converts 50% of taps.
4. Max CPT. Target CPA × conversion rate = 1.20 × 0.50 = 0.60 dollars per tap.
5. Budget. A daily budget of 40 dollars caps monthly spend at 40 × 30.4 = 1,216 dollars, because Apple says monthly spend won't exceed the daily budget times 30.4, the average number of days in a month. At 1.20 dollars per install that funds about 33 installs a day.

Then let the data correct you. After two weeks, compare each keyword's average CPA (Tap-Through), defined by Apple as campaign spend divided by taps that led to installs, against the 1.20 target. Raise bids on keywords well under target with low impression share; lower or pause those well over it.

Brand keywords follow different math. People searching your name already want your app, so these terms tend to convert well, but you would probably have won many of those installs organically. Bid enough to keep a competitor off your name, not more.

Setting up the first Advanced campaign

If you are starting from zero, this order keeps the first month clean:

1. Pick one or two countries. Each campaign runs in the App Store countries or regions you choose. Start where you already have organic traction and localized metadata, because your ad uses your product page.
2. Create the brand campaign first. Exact match on your app name and common misspellings, Search Match off. It is cheap insurance and gives you a baseline tap-to-install rate.
3. Create the category campaign with 10 to 30 exact match terms from your ASO keyword list, grouped into ad groups by theme, for example reminders, routines and streaks.
4. Create the discovery campaign with two ad groups: one with a handful of broad match keywords and Search Match off, one with no keywords and Search Match on. Add every exact keyword from the other campaigns as an exact negative.
5. Leave audience settings open. Apple's default shows your ad to all eligible users; it notes that narrowing by device, customer type, demographics or location limits impressions. Narrow later only with a reason, such as excluding people who already have your app from a category campaign.
6. Set daily budgets per campaign from your target cost per install, as in the example above, and keep most of the budget on category terms, where new users come from.
7. Add competitor terms last, after two weeks of data. Their results vary widely, and the brand and category numbers give you a benchmark to judge them against.

Use the first month to learn your real tap-to-install rate and cost per install per campaign. Those two numbers replace the guesses in your bid math.

Weekly routine

1. Search terms: promote winners from discovery to exact match; add terms with taps and no installs as negatives.
2. Impression share: for your best category terms, check share in all ad positions and in the first position. Low share on a profitable term means room to raise the bid.
3. CPA by keyword: adjust Manage Bids keywords toward the target; leave Maximize Conversions campaigns alone for at least two weeks after a change.
4. Organic overlap: compare each paid keyword with your organic rank for the same search.
5. Creative: if you advertise with custom product pages, check the conversion rate of each ad variation.

Paid and organic: use them together

Apple Ads and ASO touch at three points.

Shared reporting. App Store Connect's App Analytics counts App Store search as including "views and downloads from ads that appear in App Store search results." A rise in search downloads during a campaign is not all organic.

Organic overlap. When you already rank first organically for a non-brand term, an ad on the same search can take installs you would have had for free. Test pausing it for two weeks and watch total installs for that search, not just paid ones.

Organic lift. Apple lists downloads among the user behavior signals behind search results. Many practitioners report that paid installs on a keyword where an app ranks just below the first screen can help it climb organically. Apple has never confirmed this, so treat it as a hypothesis: track organic rank daily before, during and after the campaign, and compare with keywords you did not advertise on.

Custom product pages. Apple Ads can send search result taps to a custom product page built for that intent, and you can create ad variations for search results based on different pages. A "water reminder" ad that opens on hydration screenshots usually converts better than your general page, and those pages can now also carry keywords for organic search.

Common mistakes

How Searvia helps

Once you connect Apple Ads, Searvia shows Apple's official popularity for every App Store keyword you track, at no credit cost, and its Apple Ads copilot reads your last 30 days to suggest negative keywords, exact match moves, wasted spend and keywords where you already rank in the top three organically. Each recommendation is applied to your Apple Ads account only after you click Apply and confirm. Paid metrics sit next to your daily organic ranks, so you can see whether a campaign lifted the keyword or just bought installs you already had.