Introduced in 2016, Apple Search Ads enabled thousands of developers and App Store publishers to be ahead of the competition and acquire users in the App Store. Though it’s an excellent platform to promote your app, your campaigns may never reach their full potential unless you comprehend how to optimize Apple Search Ads thoroughly.
Still, there isn’t one accurate strategy written in the stone for this platform. You should set a course for a custom-made strategy and develop it phase by phase. With the participation of Jerome Turnbull from Applovin, Reggie Singh from Adjust and the moderation of Alptuğ İka, we addressed how you can make the most of your full potential for growth in user acquisition channels, especially in Apple Search Ads, in our latest webinar.
In this article, we summarized the primary takeaways from the webinar for those who were unable to participate in this valuable discussion session.
A whole year in front of us to review our mobile app user acquisition strategies. Considering Apple Search Ads Benchmarks 2021, what should we expect for the year 2022?
Reggie: From the standpoint of MMPs, the key advancement in 2021 is Apple’s new attribution to API. We could only track non-LAT (Limit Ad Tracking) users beforehand, and we can now track all attribution data by means of MMPs. This enables our clients to evaluate the performance of their campaigns on Adjust more simply and correctly, granting more confidence in which partner clients should spend their budget more.
Indeed, with the release of App Store Product Page Optimization, App Store marketers are now presented with splendid opportunities to boost their apps’ growth by targeting the right audience with the right assets.
Jerome: What makes the search so good is users are telling you exactly what they are looking for. They’ve already decided they need something, and are now trying to find it. According to Tap-through-Rates (TTR) in Apple Search Ads Benchmarks 2021, we can simply point out that creating a relevant paid search ad should be your first step as an advertiser in fulfilling that need.
Also, we can infer from the benchmarks that targeting the right audience with custom-made marketing campaigns can aid you in boosting your Conversion Rate (CR). By carrying out a specific message for a targeted group of audience, you have a better chance of capturing their attention and turning them into customers.
What should we take as a lesson from 2021 in terms of mobile app retention and long-term sustainability in user acquisition?
Reggie: In 2021, Apple introduced App Tracking Transparency (ATT) with iOS 14.5. This fundamentally transformed how measurement works on iOS devices as well as how advertisers interpret their data.
Over the last year, we’ve seen an increasing number of advertisers lean on SKAdNetworks, where Apple carries out this attribution. With the help of Adjust, these advertisers are able to have actionable insights from their SKAdNetwork campaigns. We anticipate more improvements around these networks are on the way to empower performance marketers.
Jerome: When it comes to paid UA, it’s critical to understand your users. To exemplify, depending on whether a user is likely to purchase or interact with ads, you may want to have differentiated flows. This enables you to customize these flows based on the user to ensure you monetize them properly.
After all, getting users in the door is just the first step. You need to understand not only where your users are coming from, but also their journey from start to finish. Monitoring their post-install metrics is the key to understanding your users’ ROAS and LTV.
Metrics and performance marketing have become essential. How should we build Apple Search Ads campaigns to boost user acquisition, and taking into account which metrics?
Jerome: First of all, you should begin with more predictable keywords such as brand, defensive and those directly related to your title. Secondly, you should broaden your horizons with new keywords and search matches. Once you’ve discovered a new segment, you should switch from exploring to exploiting. Lastly, set a budget limit for your brand and defensive keywords because prices tend to fluctuate based on the competitors bidding on your keywords.
Reggie: It’s important to keep track of both install and post-install events in order to analyze how they are converting users. Therefore, you need to analyze the performance of your Apple Search Ads campaigns based not only on install number, but also on custom events and retention rate. These could be essential metrics for advertisers to figure out whether they acquire valuable users via their Apple Search Ads campaigns.
It may seem challenging to get ready for these upcoming changes. However, building up an effective Apple Search Ads strategy is much more straightforward with the right toolkit. Schedule a demo with our experts now and learn how SearchAds.com can aid you in scaling up your campaigns and take your user acquisition strategy a step further.
