Apple Search Ads,
straight from Apple’s own docs.
Apple Search Ads is Apple’s own advertising platform for the App Store: pay to appear at the top of App Store search results, the Today tab, the Search tab, or another app’s product page. This guide covers Basic vs Advanced, how cost-per-tap and cost-per-install actually get billed, how to structure campaigns and ad groups, and where the free certification and the Campaign Management API fit in, all checked against Apple’s own Apple Ads documentation. If you have not covered the free side of getting found yet, start with app store optimization first, since paid search ads spend faster when the organic groundwork is already in place.
The short version
Apple runs two products, not one.
Apple Ads Basic charges cost-per-install, caps your spend at $10,000 a month per app, only shows ads in search results, and hands targeting entirely to Apple. Apple Ads Advanced charges cost-per-tap through a second-price auction, has no budget ceiling, runs across search results, the Today tab, the Search tab, and product pages, and gives you full control over keywords, audiences, and ad group structure.
Which one to use is mostly a question of how much control you want. Basic is a budget and a target cost, set once. Advanced is a real campaign you manage, with the reporting and the upside that comes with it.
Basic vs Advanced
Apple Ads Basic vs Apple Ads Advanced.
Apple documents the split directly on its own Compare Solutions page. Every row below comes from there.
| Apple Ads Basic | Apple Ads Advanced | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Cost-per-install (CPI). You pay only when your ad results in an install. | Cost-per-tap (CPT), a second-price auction. You pay only when someone taps your ad. |
| Monthly budget | Capped at $10,000 (U.S.) per app, per month. | No upper cap. You set a daily budget instead. |
| Where ads run | App Store search results only. | Search results, the Today tab, the Search tab, and other apps' product pages. |
| Keyword control | None. Apple targets automatically based on your app's metadata. | Full control: exact-match keywords, negative keywords, and Search Match. |
| Audience control | None. | Device, demographics, location, and customer type, set per ad group. |
| Apps per account | Up to 50. | Unlimited. |
| Built for | A single developer who wants to set a budget and move on. | Developers, advertisers, or agencies managing bids and keywords directly. |
Basic's maximum monthly budget, per app, in the U.S.
Signup credit Apple offers eligible new Apple Ads accounts
The most apps a single Basic account can promote
What Advanced multiplies your daily budget by for the monthly cap
On Basic, you set
- Which app you're promoting
- Which App Store countries and regions to target
- Your monthly budget, up to $10,000
- Your maximum cost-per-install
Apple sets instead
- Which keywords trigger your ad
- Which audiences see it
- Where within search results it appears
- How your budget is paced across the month
Do the math
Estimate your Apple Ads budget.
Both tiers are budget-driven, but the math works differently. Pick a tier and enter your own numbers; the mechanics here come straight from Apple’s budget documentation.
Roughly this many installs at your budget cap
~400 installs
This is budget ÷ max CPI, the simple ceiling Apple describes. Apple maximizes installs up to that ceiling; actual delivery depends on competition and where your max CPI lands against it.
How the second-price auction actually prices a tap
Advanced never charges your full max bid. Apple’s own glossary puts it plainly: second-price auction principles mean advertisers may pay less than their expressed maximum bid amount. An illustrative example, not real Apple pricing data:
| Advertiser | Max CPT bid | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| You | $2.00 | Wins the tap. Pays just above the next-highest bid, not the full $2.00 max. |
| Next-highest bidder | $1.50 | Sets the price you actually pay. |
| Third bidder | $0.90 | Too low to affect the price or win the tap. |
Structure
Apple Search Ads campaign structure.
Advanced accounts nest five levels deep. Campaign groups are optional, mainly for agencies running several clients from one account; everything else applies to any account.
Apple’s recommended campaign types
Apple’s own campaign structure guidance lays out four Search Results campaign types, three of them exact-match only and one built around Apple’s automatic matching:
Brand
Your own app and company name. Exact match. Defends the search you should already win.
Category
Non-branded category terms. Exact match. The broadest reach among the exact-match campaigns.
Competitor
Names of similar apps. Exact match. Shows up on searches you did not earn organically.
Discovery
Two ad groups: one broad-match, seeded from the other three campaigns' keywords, and one running Search Match with no keywords at all.
Pick a campaign type to see how it’s actually set up
- Match type
- Exact match
- Example keywords
- Your own app name and company name
- Run it if
- You want to make sure a competitor's ad never wins the search for your own app.
What an apple search ads keyword actually controls
An apple search ads keyword only exists inside a Search Results ad group. Set to exact match, it triggers your ad only for that precise search term; Search Match, Apple’s alternative, skips keywords entirely and matches your ad to relevant searches automatically, which is why Apple’s own Discovery campaign pairs a keyword-based ad group with a separate Search Match-only one, rather than mixing the two inside a single ad group.
| Match type | What it matches | Who sets it |
|---|---|---|
| Exact match | Your exact keyword, plus common misspellings and plural variations. | You, in a Search Results ad group |
| Broad match | Close variants: singular, plural, misspellings, synonyms, related searches, and phrases containing the term. | You, in a Search Results ad group |
| Search Match | Relevant App Store searches, matched automatically, with no keyword list at all. | Apple, toggled on per ad group |
| Negative keyword | Nothing, it blocks your ad from specific searches instead. | You, at the campaign or ad group level |
Ad groups are not identical across campaign types
This is easy to miss: an ad group in a Search Results campaign carries keywords, negative keywords, ad variations, and an optional CPA cap on top of bids and audience settings. An ad group in a Today tab, Search tab, or Product Page campaign carries bids and audience settings only, since there is no search query to match keywords against.
The table below maps what people often search for as apple store search ads to the specific campaign type that controls each placement, since “Apple Search Ads” on its own covers four genuinely different ad formats:
| Placement | Campaign type | What people see |
|---|---|---|
| Search Results | Search Results campaigns | Above organic results, for the keywords you bid on or Search Match finds. |
| Today Tab | Today tab campaigns | A featured card as people browse the Today tab, no keyword bidding involved. |
| Search Tab | Search tab campaigns | Near the top of the Search tab, before anyone has typed a query. |
| Product Pages | Product Page campaigns | At the bottom of a similar app's own product page, to people already comparing options. |
Product Page ads pull straight from your existing App Store listing, including your screenshots, so this guide will not walk through creative specs here. For the exact dimensions each device needs, see app store screenshot sizes.
Certification
Apple Search Ads certification, free, from Apple.
Apple runs its own Apple Ads certification course directly, not a third party. It is short, it is free, and passing gets you a certificate worth listing if you manage Apple Ads for a living.
- No cost, and no existing Apple Ads account required to enrol
- Self-paced lessons, each roughly 10 to 20 minutes
- A free exam once you have completed the lessons
- Open to marketers, developers, and beginners alike
- Available in nine languages, including English, German, and Japanese
- A shareable certificate once you pass
For bigger teams
The apple search ads api, when the dashboard is not enough.
Apple’s Campaign Management API lets you create and manage campaigns and ad groups, build and edit keyword lists, and pull performance reports programmatically, authenticated with OAuth 2. Your account’s Account Admin assigns an API user one of three roles, API Account Manager, API Account Read Only, or Limited Access, and that user generates the client credentials from Account Settings.
This matters once you are managing enough keywords or apps that hand-editing bids in the dashboard stops scaling, or once you are building reporting that pulls Apple Ads numbers alongside other channels. A solo developer running one Basic promotion will never touch it; an agency running Advanced across a portfolio usually ends up here within the first quarter.
Where it fits
Search ads get taps, not downloads.
A tap on your ad still lands on your App Store product page, same as an organic search would, and the page still has to earn the install. Apple Search Ads is a distribution lever, not a fix for a product page that is not converting, which is why it is worth pairing with a real app referral program and the rest of your organic mix, not running it alone. If downloads are thin across every channel, not just paid search, the broader list of levers is worth a read in how to get more app downloads.
If you are still building the app itself, that ordering matters. Newly is an AI app builder, from $25 a month: describe the app you want and it generates a real, native iOS and Android app you own the code for. Spend on Apple Search Ads is only worth it once there is an app on the other end of the tap that is actually worth installing.
FAQ
Apple Search Ads, answered.
Apple Search Ads, now branded Apple Ads, is Apple's own advertising platform for the App Store. It lets you pay to have your app appear at the top of App Store search results, on the Today tab, on the Search tab, or on the product pages of other apps, so people find your app while they are actively browsing the App Store rather than somewhere else on the web.
Build the app first, then buy the tap.
See what teams have shipped with Newly before you put a budget behind Apple Search Ads, so you know the product page you are sending taps to is worth the spend.