Since last year, Apple has invested so much in Search Ads but more than Apple, the app publishers has been investing a great cumulative amount. Even though it is a low-budget in-store advertising platform, the overall importance and popularity of Search Ads is increasing among the publishers and many impressions are being gathered via this disruptive service Apple brought into the App Store.
Although it is mostly considered as only an advertisement platform, we think that Search Ads is capable of impacting your App Store Optimization metrics drastically. But how? Let’s get into some details about how Search Ads might affect your ASO. Getting to know these can help you to implement a Search Ads strategy along the track of your ASO efforts.
1. Organic Rankings
Running Search Ads for your app and appearing at the ad slot for keywords will basically increase two main performance metrics for your app: Impressions and Downloads. And as far as we know from what we’ve seen, these two metrics also increase your rankings in the App Store.
Think this way: The more you get impressions on the App Store via Search Ads, some of these impressions will surely turn into downloads. As long as your app is downloaded more, eventually you’ll be climbing up the search results for certain keywords, and even you’ll be running up in your category as well. Therefore, running Search Ads will positively impact your category and keyword rankings in the App Store in the mid-to-long term periods.
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2. Brand Recognition
As we’ve already said before, Search Ads is basically an advertising service built-into the App Store. That’s why we call it an in-store advertising platform. The primary function of advertising, as a result, is to increase your brand recognition and that’s what Search Ads implicitly offers you when you bid and win a slot. Presenting your app with a great amount of space for your creatives and brand identity will certainly increase your brand recognition among your targeted keywords and audiences.
However, one particular point you should consider here is Relevancy. If you’re bidding on keywords that are not directly or much related to your app’s service, then this recognition might transform into neglect among the users. That means you should pick your keywords very carefully and build your app’s front face in a relevant manner to that keyword, so that users will consider you as worth looking at. A great set of advices for building a good brand recognition is listed here at the Inkbot Design’s article.
3. Competition
The general framework that Apple built Search Ads platform is based on an auction system. Therefore, the competition on certain keywords always goes ahead at a radically competitive manner, and one keyword might be won by a different app at a given day.
This brings a harsh competition into the market, in which you can easily gain advantage over your competitors, no matter you drawback at some other app metrics. This does not mean that the relevancy is not considered for the auction, however it is still clear that the competition for Search Ads runs much radically than the other ranking environments.
4. Disruption of Search Results Page
Consider wiping out 2 apps at once from the initial search results of a keyword! Not only this, but you almost cover half of the screen as the top result when you won the Search Ads on a given keyword. This means a lot in terms of your conversion rates, given that your screenshots and much of your visual identity are displayed.
Using this for the better conversions to your app is in your hands with hiring a good graphic designer and conveying your message to the possible user with a neat and smart visual language. Of course that only happens at the top of the Search Results and users are always tend to scroll immediately.
However, for the most, an interesting content is always worth looking at and that can be your app. There are certain strategies for converting the impressions into app page visits and downloads, and you can find them in separate articles like this one.
The Bottom Line
Hopefully, we are all now familiar with how Search Ads is capable of affecting the key metrics of App Store Optimization. As we’ve seen, with the disruptive facilities of reordering search results and bringing a new ground for a strong competition, Apple Search Ads is doubling its importance every day for the app publishers.
At SearchAds.com, we’re providing you a platform for everything you need to have about SearchAds: Finding promising keywords, live optimization of your bid amounts and much more… We’re planning to publish a much more detailed article about our new SearchAds platform soon, so stay tuned and consider diving into this new sea of possibilities.
Cheers!
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MobileAction Team
