Apple Search Ads Continues Growth in the Wake of WWDC 2023

Apple Search Ads (ASA) has become a go-to advertising platform for many iOS marketers in recent years due to an increased importance in user privacy. Post WWDC 2023, the use and adoption of ASA shows no sign of slowing down. More privacy changes on iOS will only continue to make ASA more attractive and tangible as a growth driver.

Search Ads Maven, an ASA campaign management platform, helps marketers better optimize their ASA campaigns and take their growth and ROI to the next level. Our product team is deploying enhancements weekly to align our roadmap with customer-driven feedback. 

Let’s unpack some of the most impactful updates first, including: 

• Automated keyword optimization journey
• Advanced impression share reporting (a.k.a. share of voice)
• Customized ASA automation built by the Kochava Foundry

We’ll also take a peek at some exciting releases right around the corner.

It’s difficult to know if any given word has the potential to become a valuable keyword. Testing new words can be cumbersome and time consuming, not to mention outright daunting when you’re trying to scale to hundreds or thousands of keywords. To solve this, our experts built automation that tests new keywords, optimizing spend toward those that are performing well, while halting spend on those that are not. Go beyond installs and focus your ad spend on outcomes to dramatically increase the volume of your performing keywords and maximize return on ad spend (ROAS). We take the guesswork out of finding high performing keywords and empower you to more confidently capitalize on words that will have an impact on your campaigns. 

The flow diagram below showcases the journey a word takes to become an established keyword that you can confidently invest in. Details are provided on the strategies and configurations at each step in the process, all of which are automated through Search Ads Maven’s Automation Studio. While the entire keyword journey expands over five steps, the first several steps are exploratory spend, with the final two steps revealing which keywords are worth locking into your ongoing campaigns. Bottom line: with keyword journey optimization, you get a turnkey process to identify new keywords at scale that meet your ROAS targets.

With the growing use of ASA, the platform has become increasingly competitive. Separate yourself from the crowd by optimizing your share of voice. In the context of Apple Search Ads, share of voice refers to the percentage of ad impressions your ads receive for a given set of search terms compared to the total number of ad impressions for those terms. 

As competition increases, controlling your share of voice becomes a requirement. We’ve made it easy for you to get your impression share reports delivered daily or weekly, and filtered on the search text you care about, so that you can focus on what matters.

In an upcoming update, you will have the ability to optimize your max and min bid via automation studio to maintain impression share at the most efficient cost per acquisition (CPA) or cost per goal (CPG) based on your budget. Read more about that optimization below.

Gain expert analysis into your ASA campaigns and strategy with the help of Kochava Foundry™. Kochava Foundry is a team of data analysts that help marketers understand their users and optimize advertising campaigns based on 50+ years of combined experience in digital marketing.

New this quarter, our Foundry team will analyze your ASA history and develop a custom automation strategy tailored to your specific goals and constraints. The strategy will be built directly into Search Ads Manager’s powerful automation just for you, so you start seeing results immediately.

Let Foundry and Search Ads Maven fine-tune your ASA spend while measuring your campaign success to save time and resources, increase efficiency, and improve accuracy. 

Contact your client success manager or email info@searchadsmaven.com for more information on Foundry services with Search Ads Maven.

Optimized install-to-event timing

Search Ads Maven has enhanced its install-to-event timing capabilities by allowing users to define a time window after install to consider in the goal calculation. This can help users focus on events that are more likely to be directly related to the install, such as in-app purchases or sign-ups. The new feature is available for all custom goals in Search Ads Maven and can be used by selecting the “Limit Goal By Days Since Install” option and entering the desired number of days.

Hourly automation 

Automation rules previously ran as frequently as every four hours. To empower Search Ads Maven to respond more dynamically to changing conditions and provide clients the most updated campaign information, we have increased the frequency of automation to run hourly. This ensures our platform is always learning, adapting, and optimizing at the highest frequency possible. 

New user permissions tier for read-only access

Now you can share visibility into your ASA spend and performance metrics with other users in your company all without the risk of those users making accidental changes. Any user can now be set to “read only”, restricting them from taking any actions on your campaigns, bids, and other settings.

Custom lookback windows

Search Ads Maven has enhanced its advanced rules feature with the addition of custom lookback windows. This new feature allows users to specify a time period, in days, for which data will be considered when running a rule. For example, a user could create a rule that targets users who have not converted in 30 days. The new feature is available now and can be enabled in the settings for any scripted rule.

As ASA continues to attract more ad spend, an ASA campaign management platform like Search Ads Maven gives marketers an upper-edge to outmaneuver their competitors and scale their keyword footprint while optimizing ROAS. Our product team is constantly looking for ways to improve the product through innovative and customer-centric solutions. Below are more updates you can expect to take advantage of soon.

• Maximize share of voice AND minimize CPA: Impression share matters, but so does CPA. In the near future, let Search Ads Maven deliver both. We will enable you to balance share of voice maintenance within your desired budget parameters.
• Generative AI keyword recommendations: Let generative AI suggest ideal keywords for you to incorporate across various ASA campaign types, all within the Keyword Analysis dashboard in Search Ads Maven.
• Easy advanced rule creator: Explore the boundless potential of our advanced rules within Automation Studio without any technical coding experience. Our easy-to-use scripted rule creator makes building advanced rules like painting by numbers. 

Give Search Ads Maven a test run with a 30-day FREE trial. Use our frictionless self signup to sign in now, sync your Apple account, and start exploring your ASA campaign data in a whole new light.